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 ...
You may want to check your figures on black slave ownership.
the 1860 census identifies 250,787 free blacks in the slave holding states. Using your 24% figure, that equals 60,188
“slave owning blacks”. The same census shows about 20,000 slaves as being owned by black people.
With a total slave population in the slave holding states of 3.9 million slaves, that 20,000 slaves represents 1/2 of 1 percent. Black slave owners make up a miniscule fraction of the slave owners in states were slavery is legal.
The vast majority of Slave owners in the slave states were white men.
But a Democrat-dominated Senate would have continued to block passage, had the Southern states not gone off and rebelled.
Even after Lincoln started the war, the Northern dominated Congress passed a resolution clearly stating they were not fighting over slavery.
After they started the war did the Confederate Congress pass a similar resolution?
The speech of this or that odd delegate at a secession convention does not come close to addressing these facts.
But they do give a good view of the Southern side. Which you keep ignoring.
Why did the Deep South slave states wait until just after the 1860 election to secede?
Could it have been because there was going to be a Republican controlled House, A Republican controlled Senate and a Republican President.
Ok, got it.
Nice when you can make up your own history, isn’t it?
The South went to war to preserve slavery and lost. Get over over it Reb.
I had a great-great-grandfather who was a Confederate POW. Another great-great-grandfather was a Southern Unionist (in the army for 6 months but not in any battles) whose brother was a Confederate soldier and whose first cousin died as a prisoner of war at Camp Chase, Ohio. Another cousin died on the Confederate side at the battle of Five Forks.
A couple of my relatives were among the women killed in Kansas City when they were being held on suspicion of aiding the Confederates and the building collapsed. That incident sparked Quantrill's famous raid on Lawrence, Kansas.
I'm glad that slavery was ended and think it was a great misfortune for the country that Lincoln was assassinated (since he would undoubtedly handled the difficult issues of Reconstruction more adeptly than Andrew Johnson) but I believe that the states had the right to secede. Otherwise the Founding Fathers were wrong to declare independence from Great Britain.
This is simply false. Lincoln waged a war of aggression for money and empire. The rest of the world sees it even if you don’t want to admit it.
Why wait til 1860 to secede? Because THE central plank of the Republican Party was to jack up tariffs which Southerners knew from experience would be economically ruinous to them. The Morril tariff was sure to pass. That ended up TRIPLING tariff rates.
But the Republicans only needed to pick off one or two Senators to pass the Morril tariff. All it would take would be some good old fashioned log rolling. A payoff here or there to a key constituency in this or that Senator’s state and they’d have had the votes they needed. The Tariff was going to pass. Everybody knew it.
The key point with slavery was that even after Lincoln started the war for money and empire, the Northern dominated Congress still went out of their way to say they were not fighting over slavery. Slavery simply was not threatened in the US.
Once the North made it clear that slavery was not threatened, the argument that anybody was leaving or fighting to protect something that was not threatened falls apart.
Oh for Christ sake you Rebs have been going on with this stupid ass “War Of Northern Aggression’’ clap trap for as long as the war has been over. The Confederacy opened fire on Ft. Sumter and the rest is history. You lost the war.
And the Democrats only needed to pick off one or two Republicans to keep it. They voted it down in 1860. They could have voted it down in 1861 had they not rebelled and left.
The key point with slavery was that even after Lincoln started the war for money and empire, the Northern dominated Congress still went out of their way to say they were not fighting over slavery. Slavery simply was not threatened in the US.
Expansion of slavery was. Which is why the South launched their rebellion to protect their slaves.
Once the North made it clear that slavery was not threatened, the argument that anybody was leaving or fighting to protect something that was not threatened falls apart.
Only if you continue to ignore the facts.
“but I believe that the states had the right to secede. Otherwise the Founding Fathers were wrong to declare independence from Great Britain.”
The 13 original states formed a VOLUNTARY union of states, with the right to leave that union if they so desired. The Constitution does not mention secession for that very reason. It’s common sense.
The Morrell tariff passed because the Southern Senators left Congress. Had they remained in Congress, The 14 senators from the seceding states would have made the vote on the tariff 25 for and 29 against That would have kept the Morrell Tariff from becoming law.
Lincoln sent a heavily armed flotilla into South Carolina’s territory. That’s an invasion. He started it - knowingly.
The Southerners did not shoot at the “heavily armed flotilla”. The shot at Fort Sumter.
Everybody knew it would pass. What could the Southern states offer a Senator? They were in the minority. They were in no position to get legislation passed.
If concern for the expansion of slavery had been the motivation, Southern states would hardly have seceded with only their own sovereign territory. By doing so, they gave up any chance to expand slavery to new territory.
Ignoring the facts is claiming expansion of slavery was the motivation when they were content to leave with no claim upon the western territories and claiming they were leaving to protect something that wasn’t threatened anyway. Your arguments just don’t stand up.
They shot at the fort which was aiming its guns at them after realizing they could not drive off the heavily armed fleet. They had previously fired across the bow of another ship Lincoln sent into their territory to drive it away.
All they needed to do was pick off one or two Senators with various inducements. Remember how Obamacare got passed? They exempted an entire state from it to get a senator from that state to vote for it. It would’ve been the same here. They could have offered all sorts of inducements threatening that if one Senator didn’t accept the offers made to his state, another would accept the offers made to his different state. This is how the game is played.
If the seceding states senators there, it would not have passed. What might of been is “what if” history.
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