You said to look at the fire-eater's speeches and named some of them along side Stephens as if there were no distinction between the two.
One reason for the fire-eaters' success was that they didn't simply parrot one line of argument.
Most rational persons would take this as clear evidence of the complex variety of issues involved - a clear slap in the face to the "it was all slavery and nothing else" line of argument.
We are justified in viewing slavery and the anxieties surrounding its expansion or extinction as the major factors in the coming of war, because other sectional conflicts in American were generally resolved peacefully through the political process
You are retreating back to your earlier circular argument of slavery-by-default. Besides, slavery had been resolved peacefully and through the political process as well, just as the tariff nearly led to secession and military deployment in the 1830's.
but that doesn't mean slavery was the only topic of conversation or that there weren't other questions at issue.
And that's a fair statement. Some, including some here, would deny it though.
Racial politics would grow more pronounced after the war and the abolition of slavery, once the chains of bondage had been broken and new means of segregation were sought.
Yes, and history tends to evidence the emergence of this segregation was severely exacerbated by the actions of northern radicals during reconstruction.
At the time of your quote, Wigfall saluted the new prosperous King Cotton, and spoke of economic obstacles that the North put in the way of Southern economic development.
Again, evidencing the complex and wide array of issues at stake.
In the same period he talked on several occasions about a state's right to leave the union for any reason or no reason.
Yes. He was tasked with making the legal and political argument for secession's validity before the Senate and enjoyed a unique position to do so, seeing as his state's secession was not formalized until almost a month after the other deep south senators had already left.
He also spoke of secret abolitionist societies allegedly stirring up trouble in Texas.
On a side note, that would be an interesting area to study - what groups existed, where they existed, and to what extent. There is obviously well known historical grounding in the fear of abolitionist terrorism that dominated the period, thanks heavily to John Brown.
He refered to the Republicans -- always the "Black Republicans" -- as a party of the "non-slaveholding states," whose principles were offensive and dangerous to the slaveholding states. If he said North and South or agricultural and industrial one might claim that slavery wasn't on his mind
If I recall correctly, he did say that, proclaiming "We are an agricultural people" or something of the sort.
but to frame the dissention as being one between slaveholding and non-slaveholding states, suggests that he wasn't indifferent or unconcerned about slavery.
I don't hold him to be apathetic to the issue, but rather simply note that it was far from the only thing on his mind or a sole driving cause for his secessionist views. As his speeches evidence, economics weighed in heavily on his position.
Latter-day Rockwellite free marketeers want to keep secessionist agitation against the tariff and throw away the even more passionate anger at the violations of the Fugitive Slave Law and the demand for still stricter enforcement of slavery.
By and large, I don't believe this to be so. Yes, there are probably some. But most of us who take the confederate side simply desire the accurate historical reflection of the complex plethora of issues at hand beyond slavery. There is a crowd out there, including among it some very prominent historians, who spread the line that it was all slavery, only slavery, and nothing other than slavery. This permits the demonization of the South, both then and now, while the North is simultaneously elevated to an idealistic moral good that it is not and never was. At its root such a view is fundamentally dishonest and willfully ignorant of history.
But that can't be done cleanly. The same people were passionate about both questions at the same time and regarded the refusal to return runaways as every bit as much a theft as wholly Constitutional protective tariffs.
And that's fair enough. My issue is with those who purport it to have been all about fugitive slaves and nothing about the tariff.
Even if one gives Wigfall the benefit of the benefit of the doubt, that subjectively slavery wasn't important to him personally -- which is unlikely -- there's still the objective question of just why secession and war came at that moment and not any other time.
Why do you think it came at that time then?
Our views of the causes of wars tend to be idealistic and rational: our own side fights for ideals, the other for rational calculations of gain.
That is often the choice presented, though I'll happily concede that strong rational elements drove both sides in the war.
Were Wigfall truly a leader in Congress
I said that he was a leader of the secessionist faction in Congress. That distinction is key.
there would have been much more written about him by now.
Not necessarily. That he was a vocal advocate of the southern position - the side that eventually lost the war - tends to work against him in the history books as it does any figure of a similar affiliation. Few know much of anything about the southern leaders in Congress at the time of the war beyond Davis. Judah Benjamin pops up from time to time, mostly based on his importance in the confederate government. Toombs is in there on rare occasions. By and large the others are neglected, due largely to the side they were on. But back in 1860, they were in the heat of the ideological battle shaping the course their respective sides took from there on out. Wigfall was at the center of this, being one of the first southerners to put forth the secession call as well as the originator of the Dec. 14th petition of the southern delegation, calling for secession. That Texas had a resolution on secession that didn't take effect until March also kept him in Washington for about a month longer than the rest. This allowed him to weigh in on the late-session debates as what was really the only remaining heavy secessionist view.
Most of the existing record suggests that Wigfall was too emotional and erratic to play much of a role in government.
...except in the heat of battle and controversy. Floor debate was his strength - both oratory and tactical. Many on both sides of the aisle considered him one of the most effective advocates of the Southern cause from the floor. His style certainly didn't make him well situated for hammering out every day legislative amendments, but it did make him well situated for a session that was solidly divided into two hostile sides from day one. When the whole session's a floor fight, you typically want your best debators and procedural tacticians out on the front lines, and that is where Wigfall served.
it may be because his role at the time was rather peripheral
I don't believe that to be the case or a supportable position. His participation in that debate alone placed him in the center of things. His petition of the southern delegations shaped to a good deal the way secession played out. And on top of all that, he made his way down to Charleston after the inauguration just in time to sale out to Sumter and negotiate its surrender during the battle.
and his paper trail more limited than that of his associates.
His papers are all there with plenty to be read...only not electronically. The one exception is his daughter's autobiography about the war, which is online in its entirity.
Academic historians rarely maintain that any event has only one cause or can be explained in a word. We laypeople know what caused the American revolution and who started WWII, yet any professional historian worth his or her salt can write hundreds of pages on these topics and count it as a failure if it doesn't include something new or challenging or unorthodox. Your Great Satan McPherson has written 230 pages on "why men fought in the Civil War," that apparently disproves that any one word answer can be given for the genesis of the war.
But the last two generations of historians have themselves been in reaction against earlier ideas that the war was the unwanted and accidental result of a political breakdown, or of the split between agricultural and industrial America. They are looking for one important answer that won't explain everything or displace other factors, but that will account for the most.
Slavery, and the conflict over its expansion and survival, does seem to go much more than tariffs, or industrial-agricultural conflict, or subsidies to industry. I suspect it has something to do with the context of our own times. If slavery had survived and industrialism died, we would doubtless view things in a different light.
The political breakdown theory does have lot to recommend it. So does a study of the political ideas prevalent in the North and in the South. But one senses that in this case there is something more fundamental behind the developments of political and shaping them. The conflict over slavery does seem to have been the essential catalyst that produced that kind of war at that time and place, though other factors clearly fanned the flames and inclined individuals to support one side or the other.
But it's also clearly the case that the kind of culture that we have shapes our responses towards institutions like slavery, and turns passive acceptance to rejection or defiant affirmation. I don't think one can say, "This caused this or that war." And one does have to take into account the explanations people themselves gave for playing the roles that they came to play. But you can rate various explanations in terms of how much they explain and how much they leave unexplained.
The line about the success of the Fire-eaters being due to the fact that they didn't all represent one set of views comes from Eric Walther's book, "The Fire Eaters" and the reviews of it. It's not a dig at the southern extremists, just a matter-of-fact description accounting for their appeal.
I suppose you're right that Wigfall played an important role in that last session. Apparently he played an important role in killing compromise measures. But at that point Congress seems to have become relatively useless, a place for jousting and sparring, rather than the source of practical wisdom or effective solutions.
Reading Walther's account, I don't see Wigfall as motivated primarily by race-hatred. That wasn't so much of a factor as we might think. Slavery was the topic of the day, not race. But Wigfall definitely does seem to be driven by demons, though. Mary Chestnut recounted the assessment of a friend of Wigfall's about the Senator's conduct in the day's leading up to the war: "Wigfall chafes at the restraints of civilized life. He likes to be where he can be as rude as he pleases and he is indulging himself now to the fullest extent, apparently."
So much of the debate here is about rational positions and it's conducted with a desire to prove one set of positions right and the other wrong. But emotional "irrational" factors, questions of honor, insult, fear, "saving face," and group identity and affirmation played a far larger role than we give them credit for. Whether they truly were "irrational" is another question, but they do a lot to explain the situation our country found itself in during the Civil War era. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, a Southerner, has examined these questions in his books.