Posted on 08/05/2008 12:11:25 PM PDT by cowboyway
TAMPA, FLA. - Chip Witte doesn't consider himself a Rebel. He doesn't hang Dixie battle flags in his living room, nor does he wear one on the back of his leather jacket.
Yet when the Tampa motorcycle mechanic saw the world's largest Confederate battle flag unfurl above the intersection of I-75 and I-4 in June, he felt a jolt of solidarity with the lost cause and lost rights that he says the battle flag represents. "I think it's great that they're allowed to fly it," says Mr. Witte. [Editor's note: The original version misidentified the highway intersection.]
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
The Southern position in 1861 was the right to unilaterally secede from the Union to protect their institution of slavery from what they saw was the threat from a Republican administration.
So, you placing a label on Southern people of 150 years ago with that simplistic narrow generalization is a misrepresentation of commonly known facts.
Fair enough. Name one Republican who supported the Southern rebellion in 1861.
The 'states rights' position of non-seceding states was most important in view of the several Northern states engaging in nullification of laws designed to protect what was then widely accepted as humans as property.
Their disagreement would have been with the federal government. And that government, as well as the court system, upheld their rights in every instance. At the expense of the state's rights of the Northern states.
The Federal government had specified the right of Dred Scott to be held as a slave. The nullification states continued their open disregard of the law.
Any attempts at nullification had been struck down every time they reached the Supreme Court. Again, the federal government lived up to its obligations to the Southern states in every regard.
The final straw, or the partial list of causes of the secession were the reapportionment of the Congress, the dominance of one party,and the expansionist and tariff raising planks.
Please point out to me where any of those were prohibited by the Constitution. The South had, and continued to have, a disproportionately large representation in Congress, but they were not guaranteed equal footing with the non-slave states. Nor were they guaranteed that the Democrats would remain the dominant party. And tariffs were not illegal.
Secondly, the secession was due to the numerous violations of the Constitution.
The Constitution is not violated merely because the Southern states said they were.
Did you have any family members who fought in the war at all?
You're welcome and the same back at you. I apologize for the length of my reply below.
The usual Lost Cause claim is that the Southern states seceded and attacked Fort Sumter not because of slavery at all, but because the federal government was usurping "states' rights."
I think slavery was the main issue that led to the war, or perhaps the "occasion" that led to the war. It was not the only issue. The protectionist tariff and other sectional aggrandizement by the North were issues as well, but it was easier to work up the Southern public for a separation over slavery than other issues.
As Alexander Stevens, vice president of the CSA, stated in his 1868-70 book, "A Constitutional View of the Late War between the States":
It is a postulate, with many writers of this day, that the late War was the result of two opposing ideas, or principles, upon the subject of African Slavery. Between these, according to their theory, sprung the "irrepressible conflict," in principle, which ended in the terrible conflict of arms. Those who assume this postulate, and so theorize upon it, are but superficial observers.
...the opposing principles which produced these results in physical action were of a very different character from those assumed in the postulate. ... The conflict in principle arose from different and opposing ideas as to the nature of what is known as the Government of the States. The contest was between those who held it to be strictly Federal in its character, and those who maintain it was thoroughly National. It was a strife between the principles of Federation, on the one side, and Centeralism, or Consolidation, on the other.
Slavery, so called, was but the question on which these antagonistic principles, which had been in conflict, from the beginning, on diverse other questions, were finally brought into actual and active collision with each other on the field of battle.
Some view the above as post-war whitewash used to minimize the role that slavery played in bringing about the war. Perhaps it was. I know of his Cornerstone speech. In my reading of a few pre-war Southern newspapers, slavery issues were often front and center. But slavery wasn't the only issue.
There were fundamental differences between North and South in how the Constitution was viewed (the old conflict between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists) and between the Democrats of the time and other parties. Here's how some Northern Democrats (or Copperheads if you will) saw it in 1864:
The great principle now in issue, is the centralization of power, or the keeping it diffused in State sovereignty, as it is by the organic laws, constituting States and forming the General Government.
... The great boast of the Democratic party, has been, that it has met and beaten back the party of centralization, since the formation of the Union; and though it has never ordained any principles in regard to the status of the inferior races, it has at all times strictly adhered to the doctrine of making it a purely local matter, and leaving to the States, by the exercise of their reserved powers, to regulate it as a domestic institution ...
I looked up that quote in my old archived posts and found it as a part of a long, interesting, civil discussion about these issues with a pro-Northern poster I respected, capitan_refugio (since banned). The discussion starts here. I commend it to you.
(1) The only right Southerners convincingly claimed was being violated was the right to recover escaped slaves, as you have so well described. So multiple "rights" were not being violated - the entire controversy revolved around slaveholding and slaveholding alone.
Not the entire controversy. A couple of the state secession documents refer to sectional aggrandizement by Northern states. For example, Congress was spending money on extensive studies of the Great Lakes and not fully reimbursing Texas for using its own troops to fight Indians and Mexican invaders, a Federal responsibility under the Constitution.
Protectionist tariffs had the effect of extracting wealth from the South for the benefit of Northern manufacturers and providing jobs for northern workers. Put a pencil to paper sometime and you'll see how much this amounted to. Here is what the Daily Chicago Times said on December 10, 1860:
The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole . . . We have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually.
The Morrill Tariff which greatly increased protectionist tariffs had been passed by the House in 1860 and was likely to be passed by the new Senate in 1861 even if all Southern senators had remained. A head count by Texas Senator Wigfall had that conclusion. Here is what the New Orleans Daily Picayune said on April 3, 1861, right after the Senate passed it:
Some months ago we said to the Northern party, "You sought sectional aggrandizement, and had no scruples as to the means and agencies by which to attain your unhallowed purposes. You paid no heed to the possible consequences of your insane conduct." The fact was then patent that the condition in the bond by which the Northern protectionist party gave its weight and influence in aid of Black Republicanism was the imposition by the party of a protectionist tariff. The South was to be fleeced that the North might be enriched.
Having driven the South to resistance, instead of adopting a policy of conciliation, it added to the existing exasperation by adopting a tariff as hostile as could be to Southern interests. The estrangement of North and South was not sufficiently marked and intense. New fuel must be added to the fires of strife, new incentives to embittered feelings.
Southern states were being taken advantage of. If the Union no longer comported to their happiness and economic well being, Southern states felt they had the right under the Tenth Amendment (the Tenth being the basis of so-called "state's rights") to leave the old voluntary union and form a more perfect union of their own (where have I heard that before).
And, as a practical matter, the uproar over fugitive slaves was just a minor aspect of the larger slavery agenda - the motive behind secession and war was the South's desire to expand slaveholding to the federal territories and the knowledge that the South did not have enough votes to ensure that the organization of the federal territories would go their way.
Under Republican party positions, a huge amount of territory was to be reserved for non slave holders, perhaps a relic of the old Northern Free Soil party which reserved land to their constituents without competition from slave holders. Well, that is what political parties do, I guess, award the people who voted for them. Some 81% of the huge Louisiana Territory, which had originally been a slaveholding area, was made off limits to slavery. With slavery excluded from such large areas, the Southern interest in protecting slavery, the basis of their economy, would be in great danger in the future. There would be more free states in the future, thus endangering the future of the Southern economy.
I've read somewhere that the value of slaves on the market took a big hit when Lincoln was elected. For similar reasons that their influence was declining, New England states threatened secession when the Louisiana Purchase expanded the area of slavery (later legislated away) and when slave state of Texas was added to the Union.
Here is what Jefferson Davis said in the Senate on January 10, 1861 about the access of Southern slave holders to the territories.:
Is there a Senator on the other side who to-day will agree that we shall have equal enjoyment of the Territories of the United States? Is there one who will deny that we have equally paid in their purchases, and equally bled in their acquisition in war? Then, is this the observance of your compact? Whose fault is it if the Union be dissolved? Do you say there is one of you who controverts either of these positions? Then I ask you, do you give us justice; do we enjoy equality? If we are not equals, this is not the Union to which we were pledged; this is not the Constitution you have sworn to maintain, nor this the Government we are bound to support.
No. My father's family came over from Europe after the rebellion was over. My mother's paternal family also came over after the rebellion. On her maternal side, they were East Tennessee Unionists. One was murdered for being Unionist but none served in either army that I know of. The confederacy didn't hold a whole lot of sway out there and the Union army didn't hit the Bristol area till late in the war.
States right to do what?
The disagreement was with other states that were actively encouraging non-enforcement of federal laws, as well as with the incoming party of abolitionists.
The Fugitive Slave Laws were federal laws and as such the states could not be compelled to enforce them (Prigg v. Pennsylvania). The federal government enforced those laws to the best of its ability. Every time the states enacted laws meant to hinder the enforcement of the fugitive slave laws, the courts struck them down.
And if the issue was Northern state interference with the enforcement of the fugitive slave laws then why didn't the states rebel in the 1840's or 1850's? Why did it take the election of a president opposed to the expansion of slavery to cause their actions?
That is verified in the secession documents.
The fact that the South rebelled to protect slavery is also verified in the secession documents, as well as speeches and writings of Southern leaders of the time.
States right to do what?
The disagreement was with other states that were actively encouraging non-enforcement of federal laws, as well as with the incoming party of abolitionists.
The Fugitive Slave Laws were federal laws and as such the states could not be compelled to enforce them (Prigg v. Pennsylvania). The federal government enforced those laws to the best of its ability. Every time the states enacted laws meant to hinder the enforcement of the fugitive slave laws, the courts struck them down.
And if the issue was Northern state interference with the enforcement of the fugitive slave laws then why didn't the states rebel in the 1840's or 1850's? Why did it take the election of a president opposed to the expansion of slavery to cause their actions?
That is verified in the secession documents.
The fact that the South rebelled to protect slavery is also verified in the secession documents, as well as speeches and writings of Southern leaders of the time.
Patently and demonstrably false.
Before the Confederacy attacked Fort Sumter, Confederate soldiers were already marching through Texas to seize the federal territory of New Mexico.
Source please.
You're winging this, aren't you? So it would have been OK for the Democrats to manipulate but not the Republicans? If that was an issue then why didn't the South rebel when the Whigs were in power? Why did it take the election of a party dedicated to halting the spread of slavery?
The laws may have been struck down, but the interference continued until fourteen northern states became nullifiers of Federal law. That situation was not about to change and it was the failure of constitutional protections as mentioned above.
Hardly.
When in time it became necessary to react to these actions is borne out by history, not your speculative questioning. That is a diversion from the facts.
The South launched its rebellion to protect its institution of slavery from what it saw as the threat of a Republican administration and its opposition to slavery's expansion. That't the only state's right they were concerned with. And a right which may not have been a right at all.
That is not true. None of the formal declarations of secession mention that.
None of the formal declarations mention any reason for their actions. But all four declarations of the causes of secession mention slavery more than any other reason, and the various speeches by the leaders of the period focus on slavery more than all other reasons combined.
Dade County claimed fraud at the time.
The GHS estimates the legitimate vote to have been 50.7% for Union and 49.3% for secession.
Democrats are well known for stealing elections. The Confederates were true Democrats, the natural ancestors of Landslide Lyndon Johnson. Stolen secessions and shallow enthusiasm got the Confederacy off to a start, but were no substitute for real conviction in 1864-65 when the going got really tough for the CSA. Thus the total collapse.
If we didn't then Robert Lee, Jeff Davis, and all the rest of the rebel leadership would have been hung after the war.
A strict constructionist.
A constitutionalist.
A conservative.
An unreconstructed Reb.
A Southron.
Take your pick.
And you won't find a 'liberal' in the bunch, unlike you and your ilk.
Under the US Constitution there never was and never could be such a thing as "state sovereignty."
Essential elements of sovereignty - like the ability to conduct diplomacy and declare war - were reserved to the federal government from day one. Moreover, the Constitution explicitly says that it is the supreme law of the land, not state law, and that the federal judiciary is the sole interpreter of that supreme law.
The notion of "state sovereignty" was a rhetorical chimera - politicians' guff and nothing more.
The position held was that the Constitution would be equally enforced, and it was not being done due to the nullification actions of northern states.
It was indeed being done. The Buchanan administration was, as I pointed out above, sending in armed marshals to enforce the law. The federal government was doing precisely what it was Constitutionally obligated to do.
And the issue of fugitive slaves was largely a red herring. When the federal government started sending in the marshals, almost every fugitive in the north headed for Canada, anyway. And the number of fugitive slaves as a percentage of the slave population was minuscule - the whole controversy amounted to little more than grandstanding on either side.
Your comments are your opinion and do not reflect the reality of the time.
Amusing assertion. Presumably you are 170 years old and have a perfect knowledge of "the reality of the time"? Or is your version of events simply your opinion?
Your statement about a “pro-slavery” court is particularly invalid .
Five of the justices on the Taney court had been slaveholders, had close relations who were slaveholders or were still slaveholders themselves at the time of the decision.
The Justices were bound by the fact that slavery was not illegal, and ruled so.
It's amusing that you make an argument about fictitious "state sovereignty" and then defend a court decision which says that the states had no authority to regulate slavery within their own borders. The authentic Constitutional position, of course, is neither state sovereignty or absolute federal power over the states but the Tenth Amendment. The federal government did not have Constitutional authority in 1857 to regulate slavery within the borders of a state: that was a power reserved to the states. The only powers the federal government had, Constitutionally, was to regulate interstate trade in slaves and to compel the return of escaped slaves. It had no authority to prevent the states from banning slaveholding within their own borders.
Dred Scott was bad law made by an activist court.
Your additional commentaries are factually deficient and need little address
In other words, you have no coherent argument to make.
except to say that the threat of loss of balance of power in Congress had not only South Carolina threatening to secede in 1859, but you also remember that Massachusetts threatened the same a few years earlier over the admission of Texas.
Losing elections is not a violation of Constitutional rights, whether the crybabies hail from Massachusetts or South Carolina. Threatening to secede over an electoral "balance of power" is immoral and unconstitutional.
Nevertheless, your assertions on reapportionment and GOP dominance are irrelevant.
You brought up reapportionment and you brought up alleged GOP "dominance" - so if they are irrelevant topics you have only yourself to blame.
I repeat: reapportionment was completely constitutional and violated no constitutional rights and impinged on no state powers. It was no grounds for rebellion.
Moreover, the fact that the GOP was well-organized in the 1858 and 1860 elections and the Democrats were disorganized and sloppy in those elections are not grounds for rebellion either. Essentially you're arguing that the South was justified in launching an insurrection because of their own terrible electoral job.
The comment about expansionism is also irrelevant since if the efficacy of slave ownership in the territories was valid, it would have already occurred , which it had not.
Again, you were the one who brought up expansionism, as if expansionism was somehow unconstitutional (when the opposite is the case) and as if expansionism was a purely Northern phenomenon - which it manifestly was not, as the Southern Congressional delegation had been the most fervent supporters of the Mexican War and subsequent annexation and continued to support such ventures as a purchase of Cuba, etc.
If expansionism was a legitimate cause for insurrection - which it could never be - then the South were provocateurs and not an injured party.
The commentary on Cuba and central America is smoke if anything.
You brought up expansionism. If expansionism is the question, then Cuba and Nicaragua are not smoke, but fire.
And your audacious commentary about the South being able to block new tariffs is widely known as being false. The Morrill tariff passed the House in May of 1860, with all but one Southern vote against it. It still passed. If you can't be truthful, why post, unless you like to deal in misrepresentations.
I assume the humor in your comments is purely unintentional.
First, there were seven Southern House votes for the tariff - there was only one vote for it from the future Confederacy. If the Southern Democrats had been able to bring in their own border state colleagues and a couple more Northern Democrats than the handful they had, it would have been defeated.
It was a narrowly contested vote and only indiscipline among Democrats carried the day for the GOP, who did not have a majority in the House.
And that was merely the House vote.
There was still a Senate vote, and the Morrill tariff was approved by the Senate in a 25-14 vote - not in May of 1860, but February 28, 1861.
If the seven states of the Deep South had not seceded, their 14 senators would easily have blocked the Morrill Tariff - just as I said.
So don't misrepresent the historical facts: the Southern bloc was strong enough to defeat the tariff, had they not taken their marbles and gone home.
It may seem to you that northern nullification seemed justified; that it did not represent unequal enforcement of the Constitution, but in reality is was de facto misapplication of constitutional protections.
Whether the Northern state legislation was morally justified (it was, of course) or not has no bearing on the Constitutional question: if Southern slaveholders were injured by laws in Northern states they had recourse to the federal courts to challenge those laws, which up to the time of secession had ruled consistently in their favor.
The fact is, the various so-called "Constitutional" arguments for the rebellion are all vanities, invented for the purpose, that have no Constitutional grounds upon any examination.
The real reason for rebellion was the frustrated desire to expand slavery.
Knock off the personal attacks! Debate the issues, don’t attack each other.
You guys never mention that the South was trying to establish and organize a government while being attacked on multiple fronts by hundreds of thousands of troops.
A modern day example would be Iraq and they have the help of the most powerful army on earth and are being attacked by only a handful of insurgents.
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