Posted on 08/01/2022 9:00:05 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp
For some time I have wondered how to explain the cause of the Civil War in simple terms that are easy to understand. I now see that Ayn Rand did it years ago. Laws passed by a Northern controlled Congress routed all the money produced by the South into Northern "elite" pockets.
Women didn’t vote either while you’re at it
Thanks for posting
If you want to know the causes of the civil war, you just have to read the various articles of secession. They are quite open about their motives.
You can find them on the internet with just a few clicks.
I still see it. I view the climate alarmism re: cow farts and petroleum as useful for the throttling of those uppity conservative regions of the US. It’s just a shame that our fellow countrymen would abuse power like that.
"They [the South] know that it is their import trade that draws from the people's pockets sixty to seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interests. These are the reasons why these people do not wish the South to secede from the Union. They, the North, are enraged at the prospect of being despoiled of the rich feast upon which they have so long fed and fattened, and which they were just getting ready to enjoy with still greater gout and gusto. They are mad as hornets because the prize slips them just as they are ready to grasp it. These are the reasons why these people [the North] do not wish the South to secede from the Union." The New Orleans Daily Crescent 21 January 1861
On November 19, 1860 Senator Robert Toombs gave a speech to the Georgia convention in which he denounced the "infamous Morrill bill." The tariff legislation, he argued, was the product of a coalition between abolitionists and protectionists in which "the free-trade abolitionists became protectionists; the non-abolition protectionists became abolitionists." Toombs described this coalition as "the robber and the incendiary... united in joint raid against the South."
"Before... the revolution [the South] was the seat of wealth, as well as hospitality....Wealth has fled from the South, and settled in regions north of the Potomac: and this in the face of the fact, that the South, in four staples alone, has exported produce, since the Revolution, to the value of eight hundred millions of dollars; and the North has exported comparatively nothing. Such an export would indicate unparalleled wealth, but what is the fact? ... Under Federal legislation, the exports of the South have been the basis of the Federal revenue.....Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia, may be said to defray three-fourths of the annual expense of supporting the Federal Government; and of this great sum, annually furnished by them, nothing or next to nothing is returned to them, in the shape of Government expenditures. That expenditure flows in an opposite direction - it flows northwardly, in one uniform, uninterrupted, and perennial stream. This is the reason why wealth disappears from the South and rises up in the North. Federal legislation does all this." ----Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton
[To a Northern Congressman] "You are not content with the vast millions of tribute we pay you annually under the operation of our revenue laws, our navigation laws, your fishing bounties, and by making your people our manufacturers, our merchants, our shippers. You are not satisfied with the vast tribute we pay you to build up your great cities, your railroads, your canals. You are not satisfied with the millions of tribute we have been paying you on account of the balance of exchange, which you hold against us. You are not satisfied that we of the South are almost reduced to the condition of overseers of Northern Capitalist. You are not satisfied with all this; but you must wage a relentless crusade against our rights and our institutions." Rep. John H. Reagan of Texas
"Northerners are the fount of most troubles in the new Union. Connecticut and Massachusetts exhaust our strength and substance and its inhabitants are marked by such a perversity of character they have divided themselves from the rest of America - Thomas Jefferson in an 1820 letter
"I tried all in my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, for twelve years I worked night and day to prevent it, but I could not. The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came, and now it must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks, and his children seize the musket and fight our battle, unless you acknowledge our right to self government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence, and that, or extermination." - President Jefferson Davis The Atlantic Monthly Volume 14, Number 83
“And slavery, you say, is no longer an element in the contest.” Union Colonel James Jaquess
“No, it is not, it never was an essential element. It was only a means of bringing other conflicting elements to an earlier culmination. It fired the musket which was already capped and loaded. There are essential differences between the North and the South that will, however this war may end, make them two nations.” Jefferson Davis
Davis rejects peace with reunion https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2013/03/03/jefferson-davis-rejects-peace-with-reunion-1864/
It’s strange and quite sad to see so many folks here pretend that the cause of the War of Northern Aggression was something other than what the President of the Confederacy actually stated at the time.
And miss the regular updates on neo-confederate ‘thought’ ?
Extending the metaphor, if your daughter or son shot at you on their way out of the house, should they be surprised if you shot back? What if they weren't "venturing out" but moving into the guest house out back, again while shooting at you from the guest house? Is it your fault for "starting the war" by shooting back?
While Lincoln was still President-elect and touring through supposedly "neutral" but slave-supporting Delaware trying to calm the storm the Dims were brewing, the people of Delaware tried to kill Lincoln multiple times. Keep in mind that the state of Delaware surrounds DC on 3/4ths of the perimeter with confederate Virginia on the rest of the perimeter. That doesn't sound like "venturing" out to me.
It was still-in-office Dim president Buchanan who ordered federal troops to not leave federal forts that were in (or on the coast of) confederate land (most notably Fort Sumter at Charleston). It was Dim leaders of the new confederacy who ordered the attack on supply ships to Fort Sumter (Dim leaders of the confederacy sieging a fort that still had a Dim commander-in-chief). It was Dim President Jefferson Davis of the CSA who ordered an attack directly on Fort Sumter (ironically Dim Buchanan was still Prez of the USA at the time of the order, but by the time the attack was implemented Lincoln was Prez).
But, hey, call it "northern aggression" if it makes you feel better. I love my home state of Alabama, but the south started the civil war.
I disagree. You can just read the Corwin Amendment and Lincoln’s endorsement of it in his first inaugural address to see what was not the issue.
The concept she articulated applies to all human societies throughout history. She simply articulated the social dynamics occurring in the leadup to the Civil War.
In fact, new state admissions had to be split between free and slave, to keep this symmetry.
One of the laws which did the most damage to the South was the "Navigation act of 1817." This law was passed with the support of Southern states which at the time could not see how this law would hand a monopoly over to Northeastern interests. By 1860, the coalition of Northern states could do anything they wanted and leave the South paying the bill. (The South produced 72% of the total trade with Europe, and all taxes came from trade with Europe.)
The Republican Party was formed to end slavery:
“The final nail in the Whig coffin was the Kansas–Nebraska Act, passed by Democrats in 1854. It was also the spark that began the Republican Party, which would take in both Whigs and Free Soilers and create an anti-slavery party that the Whigs had always resisted becoming. The Act opened Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory to slavery and future admission as slave states, thus implicitly repealing the prohibition on slavery in territory north of 36° 30′ latitude that had been part of the Missouri Compromise. This change was viewed by anti-slavery Northerners as an aggressive, expansionist maneuver by the slave-owning South. Opponents of the Act were intensely motivated and began forming a new party. The Party began as a coalition of anti-slavery Conscience Whigs such as Zachariah Chandler and Free Soilers such as Salmon P. Chase.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Republican_Party_(United_States)
Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected President....
There were tariffs on everything imported from Europe, and the rates varied. The South produced 72% of all trade with Europe, and therefore they were responsible for creating 72% of the tax revenue stream funding the Federal government.
The four times larger Northern population was only creating 28% of the tax revenue for the entire nation.
I’ll take Lincoln’s own word for it. He said the recent unpleasantness was NOT about slavery.
On top of that, you left one big thing out. In his book Heyday: Britain and the Birth of the Modern World Ben Wilson relates that in the 1850s Britain invested over $1 billion dollars in the US. So there were plenty of pounds coming into the US for investment. They were changed into dollars to buy US stocks and bonds, and those pounds could be used to buy British goods. The case was similar with France and other European countries, though the numbers were smaller.
If you studied economics, you would know that investment flows are a big part of the balance of payments. But don't feel bad. I didn't remember that until now.
In this case, the South was producing most of the money funding the Federal government, and much of the money fueling Northern shipping, banking, warehousing, insurance and other interests.
Allowing the South to leave would have taken 200 million dollars per year out of the hands of the "elite" running Washington DC.
But yes, the South should have been allowed to leave without resistance.
So you agree the South wanted that status quo.
Thank you.
Amazing how 150 years after the Civil War, all the Northerners now want to move South. Now even the car companies are building factories down there while Detroit looks more and more like a war-ravaged ruin.
It was a “Perpetual Union.”
I will book mark it.
Interestingly enough, Lincoln felt the same way. He wanted Black people to leave the country, and he contemplated various schemes to make it happen.
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