Civil War weekend to include author (Book: Burning Rails As We Pleased)

Just because Richard Cobden, M.P. thought the war was about slavery, doesn't make it so.

The secessionists made their motives plain:

"We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States... They have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

(from South Carolina Decl. of Secession)

"...[the Northern States] have united in the election of a man to high office of the President of the United States, whose opinions and purpose are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that the `Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,' and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction."

And here is what Texans thought of the Republican party:

"They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States."

--Texas Declaration of Secession.

The Mississippi secession convention began their declaration of causes with the statement, "Our cause is thoroughly identified with the institution of African slavery."

Soon to be CSA congressman Lawrence Keitt, speaking in the South Carolina secession convention, said, "Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it."

"As soon, however, as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in the Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves. . . . Emboldened by success' the theatre of agitation and aggression against the clearly expressed constitutional rights of the Southern States was transferred to the Congress. . . . Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government' with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by al1 the States in common' whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of those rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless' and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party' thus organized' succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States... the productions in the South of cotton' rice' sugar' and tobacco' for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable.'

--Jefferson Davis

From the Confederate Constitution: Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4: "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."

Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 3: "The Confederate States may acquire new territory . . . In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the territorial government."

From the Georgia Constitution of 1861:"The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves." (This is the entire text of Article 2, Sec. VII, Paragraph 3.)

From the Alabama Constitution of 1861: "No slave in this State shall be emancipated by any act done to take effect in this State, or any other country." (This is the entire text of Article IV, Section 1 (on slavery).)

Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, referring to the Confederate government: "Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition." [Augusta, Georgia, Daily Constitutionalist, March 30, 1861.]

On the formation of black regiments in the Confederate army, by promising the troops their freedom: Howell Cobb, former general in Lee's army, and prominent pre-war Georgia politician: "If slaves will make good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong." [Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]

A North Carolina newspaper editorial: "it is abolition doctrine . . . the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down." [North Carolina Standard, Jan. 17, 1865; cited in Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]

Robert M.T. Hunter, Senator from Virginia, "What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?"

Alfred P. Aldrich, South Carolina legislator from Barnwell: "If the Republican party with its platform of principles, the main feature of which is the abolition of slavery and, therefore, the destruction of the South, carries the country at the next Presidential election, shall we remain in the Union, or form a separate Confederacy? This is the great, grave issue. It is not who shall be President, it is not which party shall rule -- it is a question of political and social existence." [Steven Channing, Crisis of Fear, pp. 141-142.]

Senator Hunter of VA. During the Negro Soldier Bill debate on March 7, 1865, the SOUTHERN HISTORICAL SOCIETY PAPERS notes him as stating his opinion of the Bill as follows:

"When we had left the old Government he had thought we had gotten rid forever of the slavery agitation....But to his surprise he finds that this Government assumes the power to arm the slaves, which involves also the power of enamcipation....It was regarded as a confession of despair and an abandonment of the ground upon which we had seceded from the old Union. We had insisted that Congress had no right to interfere with slavery, and upon the coming into power of the party who it was known would assume and exercise that power, we seceded....and we vindicated ourselves against the accusations of the abolitionists by asserting that slavery was the best and happiest condition of the negro. Now what does this proposition admit? The right of the central Government to put slaves into the militia, and to emancipate at least so many as shall be placed in the military service. It is a clear claim of the central Government to emancipate the slaves."

"If we are right in passing this measure we were wrong in denying to the old government the right to interfere with the institution of slavery and to emancipate the slaves."

"He now believed....that arming and emancipating the slaves was an abandonment of this contest - an abandonment of the grounds upon which it had been undertaken."

Walt

Compare and contrast these statements:

"Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition." --Alexander Stephens

"When you give the Negro these rights, when you put a gun in his hands, it prophesies something more: it foretells that he is to have the full enjoyment of his liberty and his manhood."

-- A. Lincoln

Walt

No other factor could have caused a breach.

In your non-humbled, narrow opinion it would seem so obvious. Besides, it's what all the chil'ren are told at skrool.

What...is this a Walt history test?

No... I won't compare and contrast these statements. They were picked to prove that you are correct. As do all the statements you selectively choose and post.

There are just as many statements that say the contrary.

Why don't you employ some even-handedness and post some of those?

In your non-humbled, narrow opinion it would seem so obvious.

Bump...

You post them. Piece of cake, right?

Walt

Actually, it is...

But...

I have read enough of your posts to know that it won't make one bit of difference.

I refuse to post to someone as narrow minded as you. There is nothing I could post that you would be open to receive.

Around here, we call that a waste of time. And I don't have enough of it to waste on having you lead me down your narrow constricted rabbit trail of history.

Now... you will take that I can't find the quotes. I can live with that.

"First, let me congratulate you on avoiding the question so well. Nicely done."

First, let me congratulate you on avoiding my answers. I addressed your four assertions. You may not have liked the answers.

"So you have explained how the coastal traffic was, by law, almost entirely in the hands of U.S. lines. No big surprise there,.."

Glad you finally admit that. You haven't for years (for our lurker friends out there). Don't forget to tell your pal Ditto about your new admission.

"But that doesn't explain exports. In your scenario, the coastal packets aren't really coastal packets."

That is not 'my scenario', it is exactly the way it happened.

As you know from reading your favorite book, 'Lifeline of the Confederacy' there were all sorts of ships used in the coastal trade. And I am not inclined to give you the time reexplaining the different characteristics of the boats in the trade. They conducted the trade the way that made financial sense.

"why not cut out the middle man and send the goods directly south on the same ships that took the cotton to Europe"

That was answered in my post. Perhaps you think I did not answer your questions, but more likely you did not read them.

"After all, almost none of that cotton passed through New York. In the year prior to the rebellion only 248,000 bales of cotton were exported from New York, 8% of the total exports. This compared to exports of 1,784,000 bales from New Orleans alone. So all easbound cotton did not flow through New York."

Two things. There was no rebellion.

Second, you are drawing a conclusion from a chart in your book that is openly labeled "Foreign Export of Cotton from US Ports September 1860-August 1861". That data can't be used for any purposes because South Carolina seceded 90 days after where the chart begins measurement. I don't think many Southern harbors shipped cotton to New York after January 1861.

"You claim that the European ships were excluded from the domestic leg. Fine, that makes sense. So why not cut out the domestic leg altogether and ship direct?"

You seem to really like that question. You keep asking it over and over. Asking the same question does not mean it wasn't answered before.

Let's try again.

On the surface that might make some sense, but it is assuming that all the goods on board were destined to one distribution point. I don't think hat manufacturers in England made hats for just Southerners.

Often times they needed to send to a terminal where shipments were divided, like 'break bulk' trucking company terminals. Hats to Charleston by flat bottom, hats to Boston by rail. Hats to Chicago by canal.

Another assumption you would be making is that time was not urgent. From London to New York took half the time to ship as from London to Charleston. Coastal packet shipment then took 3-5 days, or railroad shipment took 2-3. That second leg was still less time than direct from London to Charleston.

Another factor was the warehousing. Europeans could ship to New York and store their commodities until favorable prices occurred, or the weather changed, or the time of year was right.

So, Non, all these red herring questions have answers.

"It also begs the question, yet again, of why the southern ports would magically become major warehousing centers after southern independence when they couldn't be bothered to become major warehousing centers before the war?"

You form a business to make money. Before secession, government regulations established the system, and relied upon established New York businessmen for the warehousing space.
On secession, all of a sudden there was no warehousing competition for the South, and it was about to become very profitable.

"Why not cut out the middle man and bring them to Charleston and Mobile and New Orleans if there was so much in the way of imports?"

You keep asking the same question. Go back to your book and look on page 228, and you will see that some of that was occurring.

And since Charleston had just completed a major dredging project in 1860, its ability to accept deep draft transoceanic vessels was about to begin.

With a much lower tariff system, the South was putting the North on the ropes.

No other factor?

Well, here are the words of the new President:

On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated 16th President of the US.

In his inaugural address Lincoln was conciliatory about maintaining slavery;
“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so”.

He took a hard-line approach in the speech about the South with his insistence on collecting all the customs tariffs in that region. As Lincoln put it, the federal government would hold Union forts in Confederate states.

He said,

“The power confided in me will be used to hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and impost but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion—no using force against or among the people anywhere”.

Political leaders in the Confederacy recognized that Lincoln was pledging to hold Ft. Sumter, and use the military to do so. A new order was being reached. This President was prepared to use coercive military action on states that left the Union.

“…no state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union…”

Although not referring to it by name, he stated that he would support the Corwin Amendment to the US Constitution. (It said, “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.")

He said,

“I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service.

“To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable."

Your assertions are as usual wrong.

"Unless Lincoln was willing to accept the rebellion as legitimate"

There was no rebellion at that time. The Comissioners were following the only legal course that they knew of.

Very late in 1860, the United States House of Representatives proposed the following Constitutional Amendment:

”Whenever a convention of delegates, chosen in any State by the people thereof, under the recommendation of its legislature, shall rescind and annul its ratification of this Constitution, the President shall nominate and, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint commissioners, not exceeding three, to confer with the duly appointed agents of such State, and agree upon the disposition of the public property and territory belonging to the United States lying within such State, and upon the proportion of the public debt to be assumed and paid by such State....it passed.

That is exactly what the states did on several occasions.

Since Walt fails to meet any standard of intellectual honesty, I will help.

Ordinances of Secession

With each state’s voting on the massive question of secession from the Union, their legislatures determined that a document should be published, outlining the reasoning and causes of their disunion. None of the original 7 and eventual 11 ordinances mentioned either the tariffs or slavery as a cause of their decision to leave the Union.

However, four states published their reasoning in individual state decrees.

From these documents, it can be concluded that many different reasons brought these seven states to the same conclusion and action.

Although slavery was mentioned in all four documents as one cause, the following are excerpts from some of these secession documents, and show the diversity of motivations.

Georgia Secession Decree (January, 1861):

“(The Northern States) have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and refused to comply with their constitutional obligations to us in reference to our property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic.

“The people of Georgia, after a full and fair and deliberate hearing of the case, have declared with firmness that (the Northern States) shall not rule over them.”

Mississippi Secession Decree (January, 1861):

“(The North) has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.

“Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity (to secede).”

Texas Secession Document (February, 1861)

“The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.”

Louisiana Secession Document (January, 1861):

“The people of Louisiana are unwilling to endanger their liberties and property by submission to the despotism of a single tyrant, or the canting tyranny of pharisaical majorities (in the North).”
Mississippi Secession Document (January, 1861):

"That they have elected a majority of electors for President and Vice-President on the ground that there exists an irreconcilable conflict between the two sections of the Confederacy in reference to their respective systems of labor and in pursuance of their hostility to us and our institutions, thus declaring to the civilized world that the powers of this government are to be used for the dishonor and overthrow of the Southern section of this great Confederacy."

South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession:

"We affirm that these ends for which this government was instituted have been defeated, and the government itself has been destructive of them by the action of the (North).”

Georgia’s document further stated:
“The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the the South not at all.

“In the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests of the North began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests. Even the owners of fishing smacks sought and obtained bounties for pursuing their own business (which yet continue), and $500,000 is now paid them annually out of the Treasury. The navigating interests begged for protection against foreign shipbuilders and against competition in the coasting trade. Congress granted both requests, and by prohibitory acts gave an absolute monopoly of this business to each of their interests, which they enjoy without diminution to this day.

“Not content with these great and unjust advantages, they have sought to throw the legitimate burden of their business as much as possible upon the public; they have succeeded in throwing the cost of light-houses, buoys, and the maintenance of their seamen upon the Treasury, and the Government now pays above $2,000,000 annually for the support of these objects.

“These interests, in connection with the commercial and manufacturing classes, have also succeeded, by means of subventions to mail steamers and the reduction in postage, in relieving their business from the payment of about $7,000,000 annually, throwing it upon the public Treasury under the name of postal deficiency.

“The manufacturing interests entered into the same struggle early, and has clamored steadily for Government bounties and special favors. This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding States.

“Wielding these great States it held great power and influence, and its demands were in full proportion to its power. The manufacturers and miners wisely based their demands upon special facts and reasons rather than upon general principles, and thereby mollified much of the opposition of the opposing interest. They pleaded in their favor the infancy of their business in this country, the scarcity of labor and capital, the hostile legislation of other countries toward them, the great necessity of their fabrics in the time of war, and the necessity of high duties to pay the debt incurred in our war for independence.

“These reasons prevailed, and they received for many years enormous bounties by the general acquiescence of the whole country. But when these reasons ceased they were no less clamorous for Government protection, but their clamors were less heeded-- the country had put the principle of protection upon trial and condemned it.

“After having enjoyed protection to the extent of from 15 to 200 per cent. upon their entire business for above thirty years, the act of 1846 was passed. It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people.

“The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy. There was but small hope of its reversal; upon the direct issue, none at all. All these classes saw this and felt it and cast about for new allies."

Most of the things I would have posted would come from books written before political correctness bottom lined the war into good vs evil... emancipation vs slavery.

I think the writings of General McClellan are very revealing. He said he would resign if the President turned the fight into one about slavery.

In Stephen Sears books about Chancellorsville and Antietam, he uses soldiers letters, politician speeches, and leading newspaper editorials to show the reaction to Lincoln's emancipation proclamation. If the North was fighting to free the slaves, and the South to keep the slaves... why did these three groups (especially in the North) have such a strong dislike of Lincoln's proclamation.

Then there are the words of such leaders like Lee, Jackson, Stuart, etc. These men did not fight because of slavery, etc.

There were other factors that prompted the South to leave. There are some on Free Republic, who will not even allow that the South to wear any badge but that of villain. Southern men fought bravely for their homes, their sweethearts, and their lands. They don't deserve the villain tag. They were good and decent men!

A bird's eye view of the US Capitol shows that the Washington and Jefferson monuments are not as impressive, and may be by volume look smaller that the Lincoln memorial.

The bloodier the tyrant, the bigger the memorial?

The bigger the whitewashing, the bigger the memorial.

This President was prepared to use coercive military action on states that left the Union.

No state has ever been out of the Union.

Walt

They thought they were. You don't.

I will go with them.

I will go with them.

Eric Rudolph was on the lam longer than the so-called CSA.

Walt

A new order was being reached. This President was prepared to use coercive military action on states that left the Union.

There's not a nickel's worth of difference in the way that Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Jackson or Lincoln viewed the nature of the Union.

Walt

"Unless Lincoln was willing to accept the rebellion as legitimate"

There was no rebellion at that time.

The rebellion started when South Carolininian traitors published secession documents, well before Lincoln took office.

Walt

I will go with them.

"It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentiment to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride; how consoling in the depths of affliction! "And this, too, shall pass away." And yet, let us hope, it is not quite true. Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us, and the intellectual and moral worlds within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away."

A. Lincoln

9/30/59

The rebels fought that tooth and claw.

Walt

The book is a compilation of letters her great-grandfather wrote to his family during the Civil War.

Lucky her. If my great-great grandfather could have written letters home (and I doubt he could), I know for a fact my great-great grandmother wouldn't have been able to read them. She signed her Widow's Application for a Confederate Pension with an "X" in 1901. I had other great-great grandfathers and other relatives who were in the Confederate Army, but I don't know as much about them.

According to Smith, "nobody understood really what they were fighting for.

The stories my grandfather got from his grandmother and other relatives would tend to agree with this. I've always maintained that the regular dogface soldiers were very far removed from the national politics and large ideas we read about in the history books.