Posted on 05/19/2015 10:33:26 PM PDT by iowamark
Even while the Civil War raged, slaves in Cuba could be heard singing, “Avanza, Lincoln, avanza! Tu eres nuestra esperanza!” (Onward, Lincoln, Onward! You are our hope!) – as if they knew, even before the soldiers fighting the war far to the North and long before most politicians understood, that the war in America would change their lives, and the world.
The secession crisis of 1860-1861 threatened to be a major setback to the world antislavery movement, and it imperiled the whole experiment in democracy. If slavery was allowed to exist, and if the world’s leading democracy could fall apart over the issue, what hope did freedom have? European powers wasted no time in taking advantage of the debacle. France and Britain immediately each sent fleets of warships with the official purpose of observing the imminent war in America. In Paris, A New York Times correspondent who went by the byline “Malakoff” thought that the French and British observers “may be intended as a sort of escort of honor for the funeral of the Great Republic.”
...the French forced Benito Juárez, the republican leader, to flee the capital and eventually installed the Austrian archduke Maximilian as emperor of Mexico.
European conservatives welcomed the dismemberment of the “once United States” and the bursting of the “republican bubble” that, beginning with the French Revolution, had inspired revolution and unrest in Europe. Republicanism had been in retreat in Europe since the failed revolutions of 1848, and some predicted that all the wayward American republics would eventually find their way back to some form of monarchy, or seek protection under European imperial rule. When Lincoln, in the darkest days of the war, referred to America as the “last best hope of earth,” he was hardly boasting...
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Correct title is: “How the Civil War Changed the World”
Sorry for the error.
I wished the South won.
Ping
That's an excellent summary and linkage of international events in the 1860’s that I knew very little about.
Always exciting, even in my old age, to suddenly have a more coherent understanding of a historical period.
A while back someone at Free Republic - perhaps you - posted a long essay on the regional events surrounding the Armenian genocide during World War One.
That had the same impact on me, when a dozen things I knew in isolation suddenly combined into a clear and coherent image.
Slavery had always been unpopular....the anti-slavery movement had nothing to do with The War Between The States...that came much later when Lincoln faced a war weary North and needed a better reason to continue his tariff war.
The US has always been a small percentage of the world population, so we forget how influential the US has been.
The shot at the Concord Bridge truly was “the shot heard round the world.” The US victory in the War of 1812 over the British Empire was similarly decisive. The US Civil War seemed at the time as if it could have meant the end of republican government.
The US made the difference in two world wars and a cold war in the 20th century. Today, the US leads the war on Islamic terror.
You would not were you born a slave.
Many decades ago I read what was then considered the “best” biography of U.S. Grant.
I can’t recall the title or the author.
What stunned me and always stuck with me after reading that book was that, in the aftermath of the Civil War, U.S. Grant became the most admired celebrity in the world.
He was not a man who impressed me as having any exemplary skills - just a man with good common sense, a good work ethic, and above average leadership skills and perseverance.
After reading your post, his celebrity makes a lot more sense now.
I understand your sentiment. However, and I believe Gen. Jackson, from heaven, would agree with me that what the Northern Aggressors meant for evil, God meant for good and we ought to thank His benevolent Providence that history is precisely the way it is.
Well said.
... The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. ...
The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
... We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.
Adopted December 24, 1860
doesn’t deserve a response....
you either think things like the KKK and lynchings and treating people as less than human are a good thing or you are ignorant. Democrats (particularly in the South) are direct descendants of the confederacy. Huey Long, Robert Byrd, Jimmy Carter each and every big government loving rat is a son of dixie. On that basis perhaps they did win after all O is destroying the union
bing
After every war, freedom never quite returns to prewar levels.
The eventually 450 year old Roman Republic made use of dictators to deal with emergencies. Our Framing generation made use of them. It is a pity our constitution did not make provision for the occasional dictator.
There are disturbing parallels between their time and ours. Hopefully, the Republic will once again rise and confound its enemies.
The reference to Spain reconquering the DR is kind of ignorant.
DR has a complex history. They had a leader named Santana who, much like the Mexican guy with the similar name, was in and out of power for decades. Elected, deposed, back in power by coup or civil war, etc.
At one point the country was in such horrific shape he tried to get it annexed by US or France, who both turned him down. He then negotiated a treaty of reannexation by Spain.
The only real truth in the article in this regard is that it probably wouldn’t have happened had the US not been “busy.”
In 1869 a treaty of annexation was signed between the US and DR, but the US Senate rejected it.
Charles Dickens hated America and Americans and always assigned the worst possible motives to them.
His words are simply his opinion, not “the truth.”
The process of emancipation was somewhat gradual, but started literally within weeks of the outbreak of war and continued steadily till the last slave was freed in December 1865.
Emancipation was Proclaimed in September, 1862. That was 17 months after the war started.
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