Posted on 08/28/2019 7:21:47 PM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
In his 1861 "Cornerstone Speech", Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander H. Stephens said the following:
But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other — though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition.
Now you know that if the VICE PRESIDENT of the Confederacy was saying this about the Founding Fathers rejection of slavery, he had plenty of agreement on it. In other more detailed(line by line) words, Abraham Lincoln agreed that the Founders rejected slavery. In his Peoria Speech, Lincoln said the following:
AT the framing and adoption of the constitution, they forbore to so much as mention the word "slave" or "slavery" in the whole instrument. In the provision for the recovery of fugitives, the slave is spoken of as a "PERSON HELD TO SERVICE OR LABOR." In that prohibiting the abolition of the African slave trade for twenty years, that trade is spoken of as "The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States NOW EXISTING, shall think proper to admit," &c. These are the only provisions alluding to slavery. Thus, the thing is hid away, in the constitution, just as an afflicted man hides away a wen or a cancer, which he dares not cut out at once, lest he bleed to death; with the promise, nevertheless, that the cutting may begin at the end of a given time. Less than this our fathers COULD not do; and NOW [MORE?] they WOULD not do. Necessity drove them so far, and farther, they would not go. But this is not all. The earliest Congress, under the constitution, took the same view of slavery. They hedged and hemmed it in to the narrowest limits of necessity.
In 1794, they prohibited an out-going slave-trade---that is, the taking of slaves FROM the United States to sell.
In 1798, they prohibited the bringing of slaves from Africa, INTO the Mississippi Territory---this territory then comprising what are now the States of Mississippi and Alabama. This was TEN YEARS before they had the authority to do the same thing as to the States existing at the adoption of the constitution.
In 1800 they prohibited AMERICAN CITIZENS from trading in slaves between foreign countries---as, for instance, from Africa to Brazil.
In 1803 they passed a law in aid of one or two State laws, in restraint of the internal slave trade.
In 1807, in apparent hot haste, they passed the law, nearly a year in advance to take effect the first day of 1808---the very first day the constitution would permit---prohibiting the African slave trade by heavy pecuniary and corporal penalties.
In 1820, finding these provisions ineffectual, they declared the trade piracy, and annexed to it, the extreme penalty of death. While all this was passing in the general government, five or six of the original slave States had adopted systems of gradual emancipation; and by which the institution was rapidly becoming extinct within these limits.
Thus we see, the plain unmistakable spirit of that age, towards slavery, was hostility to the PRINCIPLE, and toleration, ONLY BY NECESSITY.
Now isn't it interesting that the New York Times in its 1619 project disagrees with both the Confederates and Lincoln? What must it be like to have such a low quantity of shame?
This "Cornerstone Speech" does many things, but most importantly, it shows quite distinctly that there is a lineage break from the Constitution to the Confederacy. Not that the New York Times cares for facts, anyways. But I know that you do.
There are two parts to the Emancipation Proclamation. In the first part, the slaves in the states in rebellion were freed (without compensation). In the second part, the slaves in the states loyal to the union were able to join the army with the enlistment bonus going to the owner as a form of compensation. The second part effectively ended slavery in the remainder of the country. Kentucky proceeded forthwith to emancipation through legislation, as did Maryland through a state constitutional amendment. In Delaware, there were only a few slaves, almost all of them elderly, and the legislature was concerned about the cost to the taxpayer of their emancipation when, under the slave system they were to be taken care of by their masters. I don’t know, off hand, what was going on in Missouri, or in the provisional (Yankee) state governments in Virginia or Louisiana. Regarding the 13th Amendment, there was never a debate about ending slavery through it, only about whether there should be compensation in the states loyal to the union. I loved Daniel Day Lewis’ Lincoln, but the movie was fake.
Well said.
I’ve already posted what Davis said about it at least a dozen times - as you well know.
As for 2 slave ships per month from NYC, read Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged and Profited from Slavery. It was a best seller a few years ago.
There have been a lot of wars. Most of them, I'm guessing, were not about slavery.
Tensions in this country, right now, are near the breaking point. And it's not about slavery today - although liberals say it is.
Saying the War Between the States was “all about slavery” is just another unspoken claim of virtue by the victors. It kind-of freights the murder with meaning.
The better question would be: if there was no slavery in the U.S. would there be a Democrat Party in the U.S.?
The highest priority of the Democrat Party was to promote and expand the slave system.
The Civil War was not caused by slavery, it was caused by secession.
Americans, including Lincoln, did not want a war over slavery.
Democrats wanted to create a slave based economy in the Midwest and the West. This led to the creation of the Republican Party in Wisconsin in 1854.
The plan for secession was in place since about 1850.
Lincoln tried to get the Corwin Amendment passed, which would protect slavery indefinitely.
Lincoln might have been against slavery, but not as much as he was in favor of controlling the economic output of the South.
He was completely willing to keep slavery so long as it left Washington DC in control of the 230 million dollars per year the South was producing, and which was funding 73% of all Federal taxes.
Secession wasn't rebellion. Lincoln merely proclaimed it to be "rebellion" because this unlocked vast powers for him to use, but in point of fact, the Southern states were not "Rebelling" by leaving the Union.
The Declaration of Independence gave them the right to do so, because it was this very same natural law principle upon which our own government was founded.
And for what it's worth, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Salmon P Chase explicitly said that "Secession is not Rebellion."
In the effort to Try Jefferson Davis for Treason, Salmon P Chase also advised Federal prosecutors to drop the charges against Davis. He informed them that "they would lose everything in court that they had won on the battlefield."
Most people think that Northerners opposed slavery because they thought it was immoral and that they cared about black people. After much research on the subject, it becomes clear that Northerners did not give a crap about black people, and only hated slavery because they saw it as a threat to white men earning wages.
They hated slavery because it undermined efforts of people to sell their labor for income, but people telling the story nowadays would have us believe most Northerners were motivated by morality, and this is simply not true at all.
Some were, but they were a small minority, and at the time regarded as liberal kooks, while the vast majority of the population simply ignored them.
“The plan for secession was in place since about 1850.”
At least as far back as 1776.
Since the war was fought over the money and trade that was produced through slavery, then no, without the slavery, there would have been no money for Northern powers to fight over, but then also, the Northern powers would have never gotten so strong without that same slavery.
Slavery was funneling 200-230 million dollars per year through the port of New York in 1860 dollars. It created about 73% of all US Trade with Europe, and it was by far the number one employer of North Eastern based shipping companies, and it's effects were felt in banking, insurance, warehousing, and many other industries in the North East.
The threat posed to the North East robber barons was that of taking away the vast majority of the European trade from New York, and sending it South. It would have resulted in the shifting of that 230 million that New York was receiving from Southern trade (With Washington getting it's 65 million or so per year cut) to Southern ports.
To make it simple, the 1860 counterparts of the same class of very powerful northern elites who control the media and Washington DC today, would have been economically ruined by Southern states taking over control of their own export/import economy.
These same Northern elites would have been further damaged economically by the Southern states allowing superior and cheaper European goods to be landed in the South, and distributed among all avenues of commerce (such as the Mississippi river) to other states, thereby displacing their own products in the markets they were currently serving in the Midwest and border states.
Southern independence was a *HUGE* threat to the existing monied classes which had gained control of Washington DC.
People nowadays are simply unaware of the massive economic threat an independent South posed to the wealthy northern elite of the 1860s.
This is why supposed anti-slavery crusader Abraham Lincoln was urging the passage of the Corwin Amendment, which would have made it virtually impossible to abolish slavery. They believed that slavery was the cause of separation, and were willing to give the Southern states every conceivable assurance that the slavery economy of the South would not be undermined by Washington DC, so long as the economic control of the Southern export engine would remain in the hands of New York and Washington DC.
The war was all about protecting the economic interests of the wealthy influence cartel then controlling Washington DC, and who are still effectively the main force Conservative America is fighting today.
This is completely incorrect. Jefferson wanted anti-slavery commentary put into the Declaration of Independence, but he was outvoted by the committee, and they stripped out the vast bulk of his anti-slavery language.
They did leave in his "all men are created equal" statement, but they did not in any way at that time endorse the idea that this was intended to apply to slaves. In 1776, they intended those words to only refer to white people, though later people started to assert that this principle should also apply to slaves.
In 1776, all the states were slave states. There were no "free states" at that time. The idea of making states into "free states" came later, and in my opinion, greatly as a consequence of Jefferson's words, and the acquiescence of the continental congress in leaving them in the document.
But to assert that getting rid of slavery was intended by the Declaration of Independence is just incorrect. It was not at all intended at that time. This was a later, "creative" interpretation of the document.
The sole purpose of the document was to assert a natural law justification for breaking away from England, and there was absolutely no intention to speak on the issue of slavery by the Continental congress or the states which they represented.
That is a later created claim which is in fact incorrect.
Having the right to leave does not require any justification to assert that right.
It was caused by the secession of states that produced a great sum of money which flowed through the pockets of powerful Washington DC and New York interests.
When Cuba wanted independence, there were few to none opposed, because it was not making the Northern elite a great deal of money. Same with the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, of course, has an open invitation to leave at any time they so desire.
Again, none of them have major amounts of production which would cause great losses to the power blocks currently in control of our government.
But the South did. The South produced 73% of all the taxes flowing into Washington DC in 1860. It produced the vast bulk of American trade with Europe in 1860, with virtually all of that money flowing through the pockets of New York shippers, bankers, insurance agents, distributors and so forth.
The South was a huge economic cash cow for the Northern powerful.
So to be clear, it wasn't secession that cause the war. It was the secession of states producing great sums of money for the powerful interests in the North, that caused the war.
In other words, it was about who was going to control that monetary output of the southern States.
Beyond that, the Declaration of Independence asserts the right of all states to leave whenever they come to believe a government no longer serves their interests, and so therefore the Southern states had a moral and legal right to leave the Union when they came to believe it no longer served their interests.
Exactly.
Morality, obviously, had nothing to do with northern views. Heck, New York City was the biggest profiteer of slavery.
Yup. New York City is still the dominant factor in controlling Washington DC today. The vast bulk of the news media are located there for a reason.
Here we go again.
Excellent treatise. These are the very points I have made to my fellow reenactors in the past.
I wounder subsequently if the Americas would have had the will or power to execute the revolution and decouple from England without the wealth that slavery provided the North and the South?
Still doesn't answer my core question re if there had been no institution of slavery, would there have been a Civil War. To take it even a step further, would America have been able to decouple from England and have the wealth and will to win a revolution. A broader guess by me is that we would still be in the orbit of England like Canada and Australia. Even may have fractured into more than 1 country. Moot but interesting to surmise.
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