Posted on 06/17/2017 6:14:26 PM PDT by plain talk
The United States government sent troops to suppress a rebellion. A rebellion caused by several southern states not liking the outcome of an election. These states sent envoys to other states to attempt to get them to join the rebellion. They also captured federal arsenals and other federal properties, before the new president had even been inaugurated. They then fired upon US ships and their rebellion declared war against the US.
Now during the course of this conflict the US government also adopted the goal of ending slavery as a war aim.
Lincoln did say in his first inaugural that he supported the Corwin Amendment. But you are very much mistaken when you say the Corwin Amendment "would have made slavery permanent and irrevocable". That is not at all what the Corwin Amendment was about. You should double check your internet source for that, or old newspaper, or whatever. That is now a common trope of the lost cause mythology. You must all have a common source of misinformation.
They could not have passed the original 13th amendment if the Southern states weren't forced to vote for it. If you add the 11 Confederate states to the 5 Union slave states, you have 16 slave states that would not have voted for such an amendment absent the war. That meant there would have to be 64 states in the Union to achieve a 3/4ths majority against the 16 slave states. For just the 11 states to remain in opposition, there would have had to be 44 states in the Union before they could have passed such an amendment. That was many years in the future.
That wasn't a realistic possibility at the time.
As for the economic argument, slavery was key to the antebellum South's economy.
It also provided 3/4ths of the revenue to fund the Federal Government. Also 40% of it's slave earned income was siphoned off by New York.
To abolish slavery was to collapse the Southern economy. So when it came to the antebellum South, the economy and slavery were fundamentally linked.
Yes, but Washington D.C. and New York were okay with this so long as the money kept flowing into their control. What drew the ire of Washington was not only the cessation of this slave earned money, but the possibility the South would capture the European trade instead of New York dominating it. 3/4ths of all European money was earned by Southern exports, but the way the laws were jiggered, almost all the returning imports came back through New York. (Tariffs were just as high in Charleston, and it was 800 miles further South. No reason to go there without some economic incentive such as higher profits.)
Also, remember the Southern States cited slavery as their principal reason for seceding.
Some of them did. Most of them did not. Some of them cited economic arguments and the unfair manner they felt they were being treated by the North East and Washington.
But that is exactly how he did it. To count the Southern States voting for the 13th amendment as expressing their own will is just nonsense. Of course they voted for it, because they had Federal troops occupying their states who would not leave until they did vote for it.
But consensual it was not. It was a forced down their throat at the point of a gun position. You know, such as a Dictator would have done. A Fake vote with a preordained position put upon them by the man who controlled the guns.
The United States sent warships to stop the Southern States effort to be independent of their economic control. Troops came later.
Get it right.
Now during the course of this conflict the US government also adopted the goal of ending slavery as a war aim.
Half way through it. Not at the beginning, where you could rightfully claim it was a matter of principle, but in the middle when it was useful to the effort of suppressing their independence.
Lost in the discussion is the fact that Abraham Lincoln intended very much to keep slavery for the first two years of the war.
Thank you witness. No further questions.
No you get it right. No one is buying the bullshit your pushing here. Your less credible than a flat earther. Numerous people have disproved your asinine theory that the civil war was about tariffs or shipping. Here is the South Carolina declaration of succession, they mention slaves, slavery, and anti-slavery 12 times, tariffs zero. Hell, they even say they are secceding because some states have made blacks citizens. So much for state rights.
Confederate States of America - Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union
The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
And now the State of South Carolina having resumed her separate and equal place among nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining United States of America, and to the nations of the world, that she should declare the immediate causes which have led to this act.
In the year 1765, that portion of the British Empire embracing Great Britain, undertook to make laws for the government of that portion composed of the thirteen American Colonies. A struggle for the right of self-government ensued, which resulted, on the 4th of July, 1776, in a Declaration, by the Colonies, “that they are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.”
They further solemnly declared that whenever any “form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government.” Deeming the Government of Great Britain to have become destructive of these ends, they declared that the Colonies “are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”
In pursuance of this Declaration of Independence, each of the thirteen States proceeded to exercise its separate sovereignty; adopted for itself a Constitution, and appointed officers for the administration of government in all its departments— Legislative, Executive and Judicial. For purposes of defense, they united their arms and their counsels; and, in 1778, they entered into a League known as the Articles of Confederation, whereby they agreed to entrust the administration of their external relations to a common agent, known as the Congress of the United States, expressly declaring, in the first Article “that each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right which is not, by this Confederation, expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.”
Under this Confederation the war of the Revolution was carried on, and on the 3rd of September, 1783, the contest ended, and a definite Treaty was signed by Great Britain, in which she acknowledged the independence of the Colonies in the following terms: “ARTICLE 1— His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz: New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that he treats with them as such; and for himself, his heirs and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.”
Thus were established the two great principles asserted by the Colonies, namely: the right of a State to govern itself; and the right of a people to abolish a Government when it becomes destructive of the ends for which it was instituted. And concurrent with the establishment of these principles, was the fact, that each Colony became and was recognized by the mother Country a FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATE.
In 1787, Deputies were appointed by the States to revise the Articles of Confederation, and on 17th September, 1787, these Deputies recommended for the adoption of the States, the Articles of Union, known as the Constitution of the United States.
The parties to whom this Constitution was submitted, were the several sovereign States; they were to agree or disagree, and when nine of them agreed the compact was to take effect among those concurring; and the General Government, as the common agent, was then invested with their authority.
If only nine of the thirteen States had concurred, the other four would have remained as they then were— separate, sovereign States, independent of any of the provisions of the Constitution. In fact, two of the States did not accede to the Constitution until long after it had gone into operation among the other eleven; and during that interval, they each exercised the functions of an independent nation.
By this Constitution, certain duties were imposed upon the several States, and the exercise of certain of their powers was restrained, which necessarily implied their continued existence as sovereign States. But to remove all doubt, an amendment was added, which declared that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people. On the 23d May , 1788, South Carolina, by a Convention of her People, passed an Ordinance assenting to this Constitution, and afterwards altered her own Constitution, to conform herself to the obligations she had undertaken.
Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government with definite objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant. This limitation left the whole remaining mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or to the people, and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved rights.
We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely: the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences.
In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.
The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”
These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
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. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; 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.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “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.
This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.
We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.
Adopted December 24, 1860
Cheap tricks to hide deception? Tsk, tsk.
It isn't a deception. Everything else you said is either irrelevant or trivial.
It wasn't worthy of addressing it seriously.
Shorten it up, and more importantly, address the relevant points, and then perhaps I will respond with a well thought out rebuttal.
You maintained that the Corwin Amendment would have made slavery permanent and irrevocable in the Union. That is an outright lie. I think that you outright lying is relevant.
This is the sort of nonsense I always see from you, and this is one of the reasons I don't take you seriously.
For you to state that the Corwin Amendment would have made slavery permanent and irrevocable in the Union, demonstrates that you don’t take history seriously.
"History", as it has been told by Northeaster Publishing companies, is very kind to Lincoln because they left out all or most of the ugly information regarding what he did.
For example, did you know Lincoln sent a War fleet to Charleston with orders to attack? I just learned of it this last year. One would think that might be relevant in a history lesson on the topic of the Civil War.
It explains why the Southerners felt they needed to attack the Fort. When they sighted the War fleet off their shores, and already knowing what it's orders were, they decided if they didn't neutralize the fort they would be attacked from two different directions at the same time.
You see, that never made any sense to me before I discovered this. I always thought it was a hot headed mistake for them to attack that fort, but knowing what I know now, I see it was the only reasonable thing they could have done from the information they had.
But most people aren't aware Lincoln sent a war fleet with orders to attack.
And so you are saying it was their constitution that provoked an invasion?
So even if the "war" wasn't about slavery, the very existence of the Confedracy categorically was.
So it was before the secession as well. Apparently Washington was okay with that so long as they kept getting the benefits of that slave earned money.
He did in his original drafts, but the other founders thought better of it and had it removed. Left in was a "grievance" that the British were inciting rebellion in the slaves through Lord Dunmore's proclamation.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us,"
That part got left in.
Oddly enough, even though Jefferson decried slavery, his principles never motivated him to free his own slaves.
It was more than that. The Northern states had gotten laws passed such as "The Navigation Act of 1817" which made it either illegal or prohibitively expensive to use foreign ships or crew. They then used unfair trading practices, subsidies and monopolies to destroy the Southern shipping and ship building industries, and they then charged extremely high rates (just under the costs of using foreign ships or crew with penalties) to carry the Southern Cargo which created the vast bulk of all US export value to Europe.
According to various sources I have read, virtually all the import shipping from Europe came through New York, where 40% of the profits of Southern produced exports were siphoned off, and then the Federal tariff's were extracted.
The South was paying for 3/4ths of the costs of running the Federal government, and also contributing about 100 million dollars to the New York economy through shipping, insurance, banking and other charges. Roughly 40% of all their profits went to paying these middlemen in New York.
Had the South become independent, the bulk of all trade with North America would have shifted to the Southern ports. It would have cost the North East (and Washington DC) an enormous amount of money.
It was already acknowledged as a right by the Union for "four score and seven years." The US Constitution explicitly protected slavery. Just look at Article IV, section II.
As Secretary of State William Seward said when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued: "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free."
If it were a "righteous cause" for which they were fighting, why didn't they free their own slaves to demonstrate that this was indeed the cause for which they were fighting?
The actual cause for which they were fighting appears to be stopping those Southerners from trading with Europe without sending millions of dollars North to Washington DC and New York.
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