I think you're likely correct about that, as Taylor (below) mentions 12 yrs, which may have been about the number of years after the war when he penned his account, IIRC.
Posted on 09/09/2019 9:42:11 AM PDT by NKP_Vet
Nearly all modern historians agree with Professor James McPherson’s conclusion that the Civil War was caused by Southern objections to the 1860 Republican Party’s resolve to prohibit slavery’s extension into any of the federal territories that had not yet been organized as states. The resolution originated with the Wilmot Proviso fourteen years earlier before the infant GOP had even been formed. In 1846 Pennsylvania Congressman David Wilmot introduced a rider to a $2 million appropriation intended for use in a negotiated settlement to end the Mexican War. The rider stipulated that the money could not be used to purchase land that might be acquired in the treaty if slavery was allowed in such territories. After considerable wrangling, the bill passed without the rider.
Contrary to first impressions, the Proviso had little to do with sympathy for black slaves. Its purpose was to keep blacks out of the new territories so that the lands might be reserved for free whites. As Wilmot put it, “The negro race already occupy enough of this fair continent . . . I would preserve for free white labor a fair country . . . where the sons of toil, of my own race and color, can live without the disgrace which association with negro slavery brings upon free labor.”
The same attitude prevailed during the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln readily admitted that his September 1862 Emancipation Proclamation was a necessity of war. Major General George McClellan, who then commanded the North’s biggest army and would become Lincoln’s opponent in the 1864 presidential elections, believed it was a deliberate attempt to incite Southern slave rebellions. Lincoln was himself aware that such uprisings might result.
(Excerpt) Read more at civilwarchat.wordpress.com ...
When the Southern states left they made no claims to US territories.
The South did not fight for slavery. Nobody was fighting against it. To say they fought for it would be like saying you are fighting for your right to wear blue jeans. O.......K????? Nobody fighting against your right to do so. Ergo you can’t possibly fight for something nobody is threatening. It’s like trying to push against an open door.
The Southern states did not rebel.
Yes, yours is the Revisionist school of thought. You obviously are completely unfamiliar with the historiography. Try reading what the majority even in Academia were saying about it prior to the 1980s.
Well there was that whole "bombard the crap out of Fort Sumter" thing.
The South did not fight for slavery.
According to many of those doing the fighting and the seceding, yes they did.
The Southern states did not rebel.
If one accepts the definition of rebellion as being "open, armed, and usually unsuccessful opposition of or resistance to an established government" then the Southern actions certainly met that definition. Especially the "unsuccessful" part.
Yes, yours is the Revisionist school of thought.
You keep telling yourself that.
No child, that was going for the desired end goal since the price for that goal had already been paid.
As I said, the Southern states made no claim to any territory outside their sovereign borders. Obviously they were not concerned with the spread of slavery.
The Southern states did not fight for slavery because slavery was never threatened - as the article lays out and they did not even mention the Corwin Amendment.
Secession is not rebellion. Even Chase admitted that.
Yours is the Revisionist school of thought. Read earlier historians.
Man, you got that right!
Yep. Slavery was wiped out everywhere in the Western world over the course of about 75 years in the 19th century. Industrialization killed it off. By 1882-1883 it had died out even in Cuba and Brazil - its last holdouts. There is simply no reason to think it would not have died out in the Southern states just as it did elsewhere due to the same economic forces. Those who would claim otherwise are ideologically committed to that belief - because to admit that the Southern states were not immune to the laws of economics would blow up their entire "all about slavery" myth.
I think you're likely correct about that, as Taylor (below) mentions 12 yrs, which may have been about the number of years after the war when he penned his account, IIRC.
The North although it wasn’t Lincolns original intention to do so. He fought to preserve the Union and with the Emancipation Proclamation declared those slaves in territories under Union control to be free.
After the war was over, some slaveholders in Kentucky tried to hold on to their slaves...the slaves in the loyal states were not legally freed until the ratification of the 13th amendment.
At the beginning of the war, Lincoln did not want to take any steps which might induce the loyal slave states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware) to secede, and he did not believe that he had the legal authority to set slaves free. But when slaves escaped to Union lines they were generally not sent back but were termed "contraband of war."
Wilmot started out as a Democrat (he joined the Free Soil party and - years later - the Republicans).
If you wanted to get rid of slavery, you might have to work with people like him.
As more free states were admitted, the senators from the slave states faced becoming a smaller minority of the total (from 1850 on there were more free state senators than slave state senators), but their efforts to create more slave states failed (that's why there was fighting in Kansas in the 1850s). South Carolina and the other Deep South states overreacted to Lincoln's election--there was nothing he could do to hurt slavery in the slave states in the short run.
The political leadership of the Southern states were large plantation owners who owned many slaves. The great majority of white Southerners owned no slaves...but most of them went along with their state's decision to secede. Slavery did not benefit them. Perhaps a few hoped to get rich someday and own slaves. I think a lot of them by 1861 were just fed up with the sanctimonious virtue-signalling Yankees. But others have studied this question more closely than I have.
Slavery was enshrined in the United States Constitution. If at any point, before or after the Fort Sumter incident, Lincoln decided to “fight to free the slaves” then he was fighting to do what the Constitution forbids - using the military to violently overthrow the United States Constitution.
Some say he did just that and rejoice in the overthrow.
Perhaps you intended to say Lincoln fought because he determined it was in the economic and political best self interest of his northern political supporters.
“using the military to violently overthrow the United States Constitution”
Exactly how did Lincoln use the military to overthrow the Constitution.
Lincoln fought to preserve the Union and won. The South went to war to preserve it and lost. Why the hell don’t you Rebs get that. You lost. Deal with it.
In that respect, Dred Scott is very similar to Roe v. Wade, another case where the Court (or at least some on the Court) thought the Court could settle the political question of abortion once and for all by claiming to resolve it in a judicial decision.
“Deal with it.” The are. for the last 150 year or so they have expended millions of words defending the “lost Cause”. The major tenant of the Lost Cause Cult is that any reason for Civil War is acceptable as long is it not slavery. Tariffs, States Rights, Federal abuse of the Constitution are the causes of Civil War. Slavery had absolutely nothing to do with secession or Civil War.
In their fevered brains perhaps...
No it wasn't.
“Lincoln fought to preserve the Union and won. The South went to war to preserve it and lost.”
Are you saying what I think you are saying or something entirely different?
“No it wasn’t (enshrined in the United States Constitution).
Yes it was. But not until you get to Article I.
Read it again. For the first time.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.