Why Do They Hate The South?

If they hate the South so much, why didn't they let us go when they had the chance? They had their chance.

#2 Slavery was not the main reason for the War of Secession. While it was certainly one of the issues, the primary reason was states rights: the sovereignty of the states, and the powers of the states versus the encroaching federal powers.

Yes and no it's like the abortion argument ..is it really about freedom of choice or a child?

The prewar conflict between the states was Slavery...

The Fed claims the right to control and or ban Slavery in the new territories going back to the Northwest Ordinances (not in existing states)(see Lincoln's cooper union speech)

Also the non slave states would not enforce Slavery in there own states..so no return of run away slaves and or if a slave owner and his slaves enter a non slave state...the non slave state did not recognize or enforce a slaves owner claim and the slave was free (Dred Scott issue)

The Slave states and slave owner expected they had the right to go in to other states and territories and have their rights enforces..and by the Fed if needed ...

Your slave ran to a non slave state and the non slave state would not return them..then the fed was to go in to that non slave state and enforce the slave owner right...(so much for we are for "states rights" claim)

Lincoln first inaugural address speaks of this he was not going to use the Fed to enforce slave owner right in non slave states and territories and foot drag on the Supreme Court/Dred Scott ruling the slave states had won....This is the split..

The slave state were not getting their property rights to their slaves enforce by the Fed in the other non slave states and territories

The south can say "states right" all day long but it was only when it was their ox being gored ...

They wanted a Fed that enforce slavery outside of their own states and any territories... The Confederate Constitution required a member states to enforce slavery...their was no "state right" not too

Also ..for the non slave states to say in was about "The Union"...

The non slave states were ready to secede from the union if the Fed did try to enforce slave state rights in non slave states and territories...again "Save the Union"was only when it was their ox was being gored

The war was going to happen between the states no matter what path the Fed took...

And really there was the idea that even if a peaceful split between the slave state and non slave state they would be a war soon enough over of all the new territories and land in the west

Because that goes back to the original problem of slavery in all the new territories and new farm land in the west..

And THAT really goes back to the idea was that new farm land going to be smaller settler owned farms ....Or vast big plantation worked by one big owner with lot of slaves...

Slaves workers allows one person to own and work more land then freeman owners...And desire not to have big new plantation is in part be a race based on the free states part

Because freeman farm = Lots on White settles in new territories as new US Citizens ...VS....big slaves plantation = lots of blacks & few whites...think middle America as a giant "Haiti" with no desire to be connected to the US

Again Yes and no it like the abortion argument, is it really about freedom of choice or a child in a human being and has rights to life...what does the Fed enforce or not enforce on the states

I always hate it when this comes up, trying to divide the nation into nice, clean, red and blue blocks. Truth is, the US isn't either - it's purple.

“A civil war is between factions who want to take over the government”

Is this any sort of official definition? Because I was under the impression that we call some wars civil to distinguish them from foreign wars. The war for independence, for instance, was a civil war from Britain’s perspective. From ours it was foreigners trying to impose their will on us.

Most abolitionists thought good riddance at the time. And they had a point as regards their obsession, since without the Fugitive Slave Act the peculiar institution would die sooner. However, the North absolutely wouldn’t have been better off. They’d.have been plunged into a depression precipitously with a free or quasi-free trade zone to the south. Trade would jump from New York to Charleston, etc. And without revenue from King Cotton and the tariff as assessed at southern ports goodbye to most of the protective scheme for northern industry and the massive redistributionism that was “internal improvements.”

Methinks that’s why Lincoln really went to war. For the same reason among others we’re so dang interested in the Middle East these days: national defence construed as national interest construed as economic interest construed as the economic interest of some powerful faction of society.

Such was the short and middle term interest of the North, anyway. As for longterm, maybe they would have changed their ways and been better off.

Your analysis is fine for what it is, but misses many, great big shiny issues. Fist there was the Fugitive Slave law and the Dred Scott decision, neither of which were in danger of being overturned. The South already had what you claim as their disiderata: that is a means of making slavery legal in every state. As for the much balleyhooed Westward expansion issue, that’s a red herring. There wasn’t really anywhere for slavery to expand into, unless we conquered Canada or set up colonies overseas.

No, the South had all the slavery chips in its hand. Aside from the radical and unpopular abolitionists nobody ran in 1860 on upsetting the balance. Lincoln even proposed strengthening the Fugitive Slave Act with an unrepealable constitutional amendment. Not that such a thing is possisble, unless perhaps you amend the amendment process itself. But there was the promise.

So why did the South secede? If you listen them it was slavery. But why do we choose this instance of all instances to take politicians at their word? We don’t believe Obama when he says he’s going to go through the budget line by line, nor really Mitt when he says he’ll restore he nation to its former whatever. Slavery was to milt mind the symbolic issue. Standing as it did for the Southern way of life it did a lot of political arguing for itself. The masses can grasp slavery in peril immeasurably easier than agriculture versus industrialism and free trade versus protectionism, for instance.

The South seceded because for the first time a president was elected without winning a single Southern state. Lincoln wasn’t an abolitiinist, but it wasn’t outlandish to think abolitionists, perhaps with a bit of the John Brown in them, could take over he Republican or any other popular Northern party at some point. And that was the motive for secession: deep fear for the future now that the section of the country they’d been griding win from the beginning would permanently hold the upper hand. The easiest way to communicate this was via its danger to slaveholder.

Much likelier a means of the North dominating the South was the way it had been dominating it for decades: that is, the tariff and internal improvements. The way Lincoln put it in his inaugural was basically that the South had to choose taxes or war. And though no new tariff was passed to spark secession, after some States left Congress passed the Morill Tariff, which is exactly the sort of thing the South feared.

Is it any wonder that the war started over ownership of a fort in Charleston harbor, where among elsewhere the North would have to assess taxes to prevent the collapse of its protectionist system. Is it any wonder that his response to he South’s attack, and what SCOTUS later determined to be the start of the war was to blockade Southern ports? Britain’s perspective at the time, as with other foreign powers, was that taxes, not slavery, provoked the war. And who can honestly argue against them? What with slavery as strong as or stronger than it ever had been, the “preserving the union” argument having no place in American, English, or international law as justification for war, and the response of total war and unconditional surrender being so divorced from the “first shot” of firing on Sumter.

I rambled a bit above, so let me get down to brass tacks:

“They wanted a Fed that enforce slavery outside of their own States and any territories.”

They already had that via Dred Scott and the Fugitive Slave Act. Secession took it away. So tell me how that fits in with them seceding over slavery.

It doesn’t. They seceded because the North elected a president on its own, and this was seen as foretelling the North’s ability to legislate, execute, and decide whatever it wanted over the objections of the South. One of which issues it thought the North could impose its will upon being slavery, yes. But that would be the most difficult issue for the feds to reverse themselves on, as they would have to wait for a new SCOTUS.

being slavery, yes.beingbeing slavery, yes.

“Is this any sort of official definition? Because I was under the impression that we call some wars civil to distinguish them from foreign wars. The war for independence, for instance, was a civil war from Britain’s perspective. From ours it was foreigners trying to impose their will on us.”

Latter - no. Not foreigners, but sovereigns treating birthright British as mere colonials (i.e., conquered peoples).

A civil war basically is simply in-fighting. In some ways, indeed, it’s hairy calling the “CW” such when basically 1 side just wanted to part ways.

And really, “Revolution” isn’t really good for the British-American war, because THAT absolutely implies someone wants to take over. Perhaps simply because they wanted to “take over” the land they lived on rather than letting far-away kings have ultimate rule.

In any case my take is:

Insurgents win - revolution

Insurgents lose - civil war.

Great post! ottbmare.

You’re absolutely right in that both the American colonists and the Southern States, or some of them, had declared independence before the wars got into full swing. So according to them they were a foreign nation, and it took the Americans winning to prove it and the Confederates to lose it.

Which isn’t to say what’s civil is always a matter of who you ask, who wins, or it being a fight between two or more factions to control the whole. It can, also, be between a sovereign and lesser internal power for less than independence but more than they have. And probably other scenarios I can’t think up, too.

The hate the south because the south used to be solid democrat. A republican in office in the south was a very rare bird.
They hate the south because they lost all those votes.

"Why Do They Hate The South?"

Because we had the audacity to challenge federal authority at one time and we have threatened to do it again. Many Southerners still have that mindset; you know, independence.

Also, we have the greatest number of guns and people who know how to use them, plus the greatest number of self-sufficient, self-reliant people who have absolutely no need for the federal government.