Posted on 01/10/2011 8:57:06 AM PST by cowboyway
Your claims here notwithstanding, the Federal government did uphold the Constitution entirely to the satisfaction of every Southern state up until November 1860.
The proof of it is: none had yet seceded, or even seriously threatened to, over just the Fugitive Slave Laws.
And what changed in November 1860?
Absolutely nothing, except the election of Abolitionist Republicans, who had not yet even taken office, but were seen as a clear and present danger to the future and expansion of slavery.
So the alleged past lack of enforcement of Fugitive Slave Laws in a few Far North states had nothing really to do with the Deep South slave-holders declarations of secession.
The election of Abolitionist Republicans in November 1860 had everything to do with Deep South slave-holders declarations of secession.
cowboyway: "You've also stated that the Deep South had no reason to secede because very few slaves from the Deep South escaped.
Based on this flimsy argument, people in Minnesota and Wisconsin shouldn't be concerned about border jumpers crossing into Arizona and Texas, or the Constitution not being upheld, since it hardly affects them. Right?"
The estimates of numbers of illegal aliens in the US range from 12 million to over 20 million and growing.
It's a matter of deep concern to every American because it demonstrates that our Federal Government is out of control -- while attempting to take over totally unconstitutional activities like Obamacare, it is ignoring it's Constitutional responsibilities, like defending our borders.
Nevertheless, no state that I know of has threatened to secede over the issue. Most Americans still believe the Federal government can yet be forced to do what it's supposed to do, Constitutionally.
In 1860, by all accounts we've seen, the numbers of Deep South slaves escaping to freedom in Far-North sanctuary states like Massachusetts and Michigan was in the range of a few hundred or thousand -- out of about 4 million total slaves.
So the issue of Deep South slaves escaping to the Far North was minuscule compared to today's illegal alien numbers.
And secession is not the appropriate answer for illegal aliens today, any more than it was for runaway slaves in 1860.
cowboyway: "Answers to 1-5:"
All of those statements are true.
The question is: did the Deep South slave-holders act Constitutionally, lawfully and appropriately?
Answer: no.
No matter how often you post this statement, it's still not true, and never will be.
I'll say it again: the reason your statement is untrue is that no Founder who voted for ratification of the Constitution expressed that as his original intent.
Your claim above was made up long after the fact by secessionists -- not our Founders -- secessionists wishing to justify their actions, regardless of legalities and consequences.
No they didn't.
The Deep South slave-holders of South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, etc., declared themselves seceded.
None of those Deep South states had referendums of voters (such as Virginia and Tennessee later did).
Most began raising military forces before they even declared secession.
So they expected war, indeed, I argue they wanted war, since it was much easier to just shoot it out, versus working in Congress to achieve "mutual consent" to secession.
"On the 4th day of March next, this party [Abolitionist Republicans] will take possession of the Government.
It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States."
What we need to understand about this statement is:
1. The charge is false.
2. It is all about slavery.
3. It's all about protecting the future expansion of slavery.
4. It assumes from Day One that "war must be waged."
So, in a nutshell, that's my argument.
Now, what do you present that might break it?
Here are my responses:
[1. Republicans taking control of government]: They didn't do that? I thought Texas Senator Wigfall counted votes in the incoming Senate and said the Morrill Tariff would be passed. It seems like the Republicans had effective control of the Senate about the Tariff at least, even though they didn't quite have a majority.
[2. South shall be excluded from the common territory]: You are right -- it was about slavery. The North wanted no slaves in the territories (despite the Dred Scott ruling); the South wanted the territories open to slaveholders and their slaves. It was basically aggression by the North against Southerners.
The February 13, 1861 issue of the Gate City Guardian of Atlanta pointed out the disparity between those volunteering from the North and South for the Mexican War that won the Southwestern territory. The paper presented a state-by-state analysis of the volunteers for that war. Slaveholding states furnished 45,680 volunteers; non-slaveholding states furnished 23,084. Didn’t Southerners earn some right to the Southwestern territory?
[3. Protecting future expansion of slavery]: Correct. Another case of an attack on the South. South Carolina was responding to the Northern threat to block the future expansion of slavery by packing the Supreme Court, a la FDR. From the November 17, 1860 State Gazette of Austin, Texas, reporting an article from the New York Tribune:
According to Mr. Stanton, the present organization of the Supreme Court is to be changed under the Lincoln Administration, and New England, New York, and the Middle States, Missouri, the Northwest, and the Pacific Coast are to have six or eight additional Judges.
"Then," says the Lincoln orator, "repudiating the novel and dangerous heresies of Taney and Catron, and returning to the faith of Jay and Marshall, it would embrace the earliest opportunity to entomb the political nunciamento uttered in the Dred Scott case, [loud cheers,] and pile upon it an imperishable monument, inscribing thereon, as an appropriate epitaph, "Died of the will of the American people.' [Applause.]"Such a quote was sure to make the South feel happy and not threatened. (/sarc) The Republicans did end up adding a tenth Justice (for California) to the Supreme Court, basically keeping the Court from embarrassing Lincoln by ruling against him.
[4. SC's secession document assumes war must be waged from Day One] Actually they were talking about the Northern war on slavery, which was already underway. The Republican Congressmens' endorsement of Helper's book, with its pledges to wipe out slavery was effectively a war on slavery. But there were other aspects of a war.
Remember John Brown's attack at Harper's Ferry? Here's how a couple of Northern governors treated extradition requests for members of John Brown's force (Brown’s son Owen and Barclay Coppoc) that attacked and killed Virginians. From the November 13, 1860 speech of Senator Toombs of Georgia [my bold]:
Last year John Brown made a raid on Virginia. He went with torch and rifle, with the purpose of subverting her government, exciting insurrection among her slaves, and murdering her peaceable inhabitants; he succeeded only in committing murder and arson and treason. One of his accomplices (a son) escaped to Ohio, was demanded, and the Governor of Ohio refused to give him up; another fled to Iowa; he, too, was demanded, and refused.Those weren't the only extradition refusals by Northern governors. I reported one in my post 346. Senator Toombs in his speech mentions other cases:
But as early as 1837 or 1838 two citizens of Maine came to Savannah, stole a slave, fled to Maine, and two successive Governors refused to deliver up the culprits, the real grievance being that they had only stolen slaves - a pious work, rather to be encouraged than punished. Georgia demanded, remonstrated, threatened, and submitted to the wrong.
It is true the Legislature authorized the Governor to call a convention of the people to take into consideration the mode of redress. But what are called moderate, wise counsels prevailed. Excellent conservative ay, that's the word - conservative men advised us not to disturb the glorious Union about so small a matter; we submitted, and submission brought its legitimate fruits. Within a year or two after, a similar case occurred with New-York, while Seward was Governor. He refused, and attempted to cover himself under the idea that there could be no property in slaves. Virginia made the same demand on him, with like results and like submission; and from that day to this that constitutional right has been practically surrendered in the case of negro-stealing.Speaking of your mention of "Day One," the person waging war from Day One (Day Two actually if you don't count his inaugural speech) was Abraham Lincoln. From Link:
On the day after his inauguration, Lincoln gave a verbal order to land the troops aboard the Brooklyn, only to discover, like many another president, that it was one thing to give an order and quite another to have it obeyed. On March 11 he renewed the order in writing ...This would have broken the truce at Fort Pickens that had been agreed to by the US Secretaries of War and the Navy with the obvious approval of Buchanan. The agreement was that North would not reinforce Fort Pickens if the South did not attack the fort. Breaking such a truce without notifying the other side would have been an act of war. Lincoln seemed bound and determined to provoke the South into shooting.
It's interesting that you automatically go to Southern=Slaveowner. Of course the fact is that southerners were just as welcome in the territories as anyone else. It was simply that slavery was banned (or was going to be).
We often hear on these threads that only a minority of southerners owned slaves, so right there most southerners would have no problem settling in the territories. And slaveowners were also welcome to settle. They just couldn't bring their slaves with them. Tens of thousands of southerners settled the western lands at a time when the South Carolina declaration would say they were being systematically excluded.
On Mackinac Island, off Michigan, cars are banned. But would you honestly make a case that the rule means that car owners, or people who don't own cars but who come from car-owning regions, are excluded from the island? It would be absurd.
The government of the United States does not maintain, and never has maintained, the doctrine of the perpetuity of natural allegiance.
And surely Mexico maintains no such doctrine; because her actually existing government, like that of the United States, is founded in the principle that men may throw off the obligation of that allegiance to which they are born.
Daniel Webster
Works: with a biographical memoir, Volume 6 By Daniel Webster, Edward Everett
pages 452-456 google books
And surely Mexico maintains no such doctrine; because her actually existing government, like that of the United States, is founded in the principle that men may throw off the obligation of allegiance to which they are born. The government of the United States, from its origin, has maintained legal provisions for the naturalization of such subjects of foreign states as may choose to come hither, make their home in the country, and, renouncing their former allegiance, and complying with certain stated requisitions, to take upon themselves the character of citizens of this government. Mexico herself has laws granting equal facilities to the naturalization of foreigner. On the other hand, the United States have not passed any law restraining their own citizens, native or naturalized, from leaving the country and forming political relations elsewhere.Webster is talking about emigration and naturalization, not secession.
Even non-slaveholding Southerners felt resentment about this and opted for secession. In Texas the voters confirmed their secession convention's action 46,129 for secession to 14,697 against. (My numbers come from Lone Star by T. R. Fehrenbach.) If it were all about slavery as some on these threads allege, then the majority of Texans who did not own slaves felt strongly enough about slavery that they voted to secede.
We often hear on these threads that only a minority of southerners owned slaves, so right there most southerners would have no problem settling in the territories. And slaveowners were also welcome to settle. They just couldn't bring their slaves with them.
So, it was only slaveowners who wanted to bring their slaves with them who were discriminated against? Where is that in the Constitution? What about Taney's Supreme Court ruling that basically protected the property rights of slave owners? (Not that I think it was such a great ruling, but it was the law of the land.)
On Mackinac Island, off Michigan, cars are banned. But would you honestly make a case that the rule means that car owners, or people who don't own cars but who come from car-owning regions, are excluded from the island? It would be absurd.
Now you've done it, Bubba. Now I'll have to go picket all the "No Parking" signs here in town.
Texas had the fastest growing slave population in the south, more than tripling in just ten years from 1850 to 1860, with 182,566 slaves in the 1860 census. I would submit that Texans' concern over the Republican election had little to do with the territories. The subject of slavery being excluded from the territories isn't even explicitly mentioned in the Texas Declaration of Causes.
If it were all about slavery as some on these threads allege, then the majority of Texans who did not own slaves felt strongly enough about slavery that they voted to secede.
The white male population of Texas in 1860 was about 210,000. It would be hard to make an argument that a majority of Texans, or even of eligible Texas voters, opted for secession.
So, it was only slaveowners who wanted to bring their slaves with them who were discriminated against? Where is that in the Constitution?
Article IV, Sec. 3 :"The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States."
What? You're counting white male children as being eligible to vote in Texas in 1860? That might be how elections are run in the North, but not in Texas. I knew about the dead people voting in Illinois, but not children.
The book "The shattering of Texas unionism" [Link, page 13] calculates that there were 96,948 potentially eligible voters in Texas in 1859 and the number was increasing at about 6,000 per year. The book also states: "... the votes cast by nonslaveholders were critical in deciding the outcomes of late antebellum elections."
For comparison, in the November 1860 presidential election Texas cast 47,548 votes for Breckenridge versus 15,463 for Bell and Bell's Constitutional Union Party ("the Southern Unionist vote" as Fehrenbach calls it). This proportion was reflected in the later secession vote where 46,129 voted to secede and 14,697 to stay.
Article IV, Sec. 3 :"The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States."
Didn't the Supreme Court declare the Missouri Compromise (which forbid slavery in the Northern part of the Louisiana Territory) unconstitutional and that slavery was permitted in the territories? Even the 10-man Lincoln Supreme Court didn't overturn that ruling. It took an amendment to the Constitution to make the Dred Scott ruling a dead letter.
But only about a tenth as many as were landed in the Carolinas and Georgia, so there's no need to wonder how all those southern plantation houses were built. But just FYI, most of the grand mansions in Newport were built in the Gilded Age, decades after slavery ended.
Not at all, but I didn't have the facts regarding the actual voting population of Texas at my fingertips as you do. The point remains that something like 600,00 people slave and free, male and female, voting age and non-voting age, lived in Texas, so the votes of 46 thousand or so don't really support the statement that Texans overwhelmingly supported secession.
Didn't the Supreme Court declare the Missouri Compromise (which forbid slavery in the Northern part of the Louisiana Territory) unconstitutional and that slavery was permitted in the territories?
Yes it did. So what was the south's problem again?
“But only about a tenth as many as were landed in the Carolinas and Georgia, so there’s no need to wonder how all those southern plantation houses were built. But just FYI, most of the grand mansions in Newport were built in the Gilded Age, decades after slavery ended.”
This went over your head..New England became rich on the slave trade..which enabled them..to build their mansions..
The New England slave trade..contributed..to their wealth..look at the millions of Africans..shipped..many of them on Yankee built slave ships..and traded for the slaves with Yankee made rum.
There were 100’s of rum factories in New England...operating for one purpose..trade for slaves.
More slaves died during the Middle Passage than all the Southern plantations...
By that logic, the great bulk of Americans might not have supported the ratification of the Constitution, the election of Abraham Lincoln, and the elections of all the Congress critters and the laws they passed. Are we to throw out everything that voters supported over the years because the voters were restricted to free white males over 21 and in early years to just those free white males over 21 that owned property?
Several Confederate states went further than the ratifications of the Constitution and submitted the secession question directly to their voters. As far as I know, the only state of the original 13 to let the voters vote directly on ratification (Rhode Island) rejected the US Constitution by a vote of better than 10 to 1 [Source: Link]. It was later ratified by a small ratification convention, like those in the other original states.
Yes it did. So what was the south's problem again?
Protective tariffs that transferred many millions of dollars of Southern wealth to Northern manufacturers and provided jobs for Northern workers at the expense of the South, sectional aggrandizement and partial legislation, violation of the Constitution by some Northern states re the return of fugitive slaves, refusal by Northern governors to extradite thieves and murderers back to the South, invasions of the South and slave stealing by abolitionists, pledges by the majority of Republican congressmen to end slavery (the basis of the Southern economy and worth $4B to the South), promises to block slavery in the territories even though the South had contributed blood and money to obtain the territories, threats to pack the Supreme Court to overturn decisions of the Supreme Court favorable to the South, refusal to pay Texas' expenses for fighting invasions of Indians and Mexican bandits.
There were 100’s of rum factories in New England...operating for one purpose..trade for slaves.
Yankee slave traders were a minor part of the slave trade. Out of 12 and a half million slaves taken from Africa to the New World, a little over 300,000 were on American ships link. And of course, relatively few slaves were ever sold in the north, compared to the south. Your own map shows that. So I don't think it's a far reach to say that more slaves died on southern plantations than ever died on Yankee slave ships.
Concurring bump.
When you consider how primitive the Mississippi Gulf Coast was in the eighteenth century during the height of the international slave trade, and that the United States outlawed the practice in 1808 a scant five years after aquiring the territory, the fact that so few slaves 'disembarked' at the Gulf Coast is by itself unremarkable. We also know that between 1820 - 1860 close to 60% of the slaves in the upper South were sold at auction to the deep South.
Thanks for an extraordinarily interesting link.
It's worth summarizing:
So the argument that many Northerners ever got rich on the slave trade is just bogus.
Indeed, I'd suggest the opposite: the reason Southerners, especially Virginians, accepted Constitutional restriction on importing slaves was because a shortage of supply drove prices for existing slaves ever higher.
This benefited hugely the old plantation classes in states like Virginia.
“The separation took place, and from that moment the New England States assumed the position, in regard to slavery, which Great Britain had previously occupied.
The New England States owned the shipping, and enjoyed the slave-trade. They accumulated capital in both; and when the convention met to frame the Constitution, it was as a concession to New England interests that the trade was continued to 1808.
The Duke de Rochefoucault Liancourt, travelling in the United States in 1795, remarks:
“Nearly 20 vessels from the harbors of the northern States are employed in the importation of negroes to Georgia and the West India isles.
The merchants of Rhode Island are the conductors of this accursed traffic, which they are determined to persevere in until the year 1808, the period fixed for its final termination.
They ship one negro for every ton burden.”
Southern Wealth And Northern Profits, As Exhibited In Statistical Facts... By Thomas Prentice Kettell
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