I'd say to you: one man's "pretext" is another man's "real reason" and you don't know who considered slavery the "reason" and who just a "pretext".
The fact is that few Southerners had direct contact with tariffs or "Northeastern power brokers" or "money flows from Europe", and so would not respond to calls for secession over such matters.
But every Southerner knew about slavery directly & personally, even if they "owned" no slaves.
A threat to slavery was a threat to all and so that was the appeal by Deep South Fire Eaters to convince their fellow Southerners secession was necessary.
That the threat from "Ape" Lincoln's Black Republicans was exaggerated & distorted didn't matter, it did its job in winning Deep South secession.
By the way, the Corwin amendment was passed after the last Deep South state declared secession, so was a useless exercise in closing the barn door after the horse was gone.
It did seem to have some effect in Border States so was not entirely wasted.
Flt-bird: "...pretext for the Southern states to get out from under the partisan sectional legislation of the federal government that was draining their pockets."
This is one of the weaker arguments in the Lost Cause quiver, and it was surprisingly made by none other that Robert Rhett himself, in December 1860, when Democrats had ruled Washington, DC, for nearly 60 years, with Southern Democrats the majority of Democrats and making 1860 Washington, DC, just what those Southerners wanted.
So all their complaints about Washington are simply complaints about what they themselves did there for 60 years, which makes no sense.
What does make absolute sense is Southern fears, horrors, terror, fright & panic at the thought that "Ape" Lincoln's Black Republicans were soon to take over the "consolidated" Washington they themselves created!
Flt-bird: "I am accusing Southern Political leaders of being just as duplicitious as all politicians are and have always been.
Of course they were only too happy to lie if it would get them what they really wanted."
Then we agree more than I had suspected.
But I also think that "cynical" reasons for some were seen as sincere and "real" reasons by many others.
We're talking about human nature here, often a mixture of noble and not-so-noble motives.
Flt-bird: "The Northern political leaders for their part were equally cynical.
They didn’t really give a damn about slavery.
What they really cared about was the huge amounts of tax revenue for corporate subsidies and infrastructure projects in the North that the South provided as well as the huge captive market that would fuel the growth of their manufacturing industry."
So our Lost Causers keep telling us, but the evidence on Lincoln's motives suggests far less his financial interests and far more his constitutional & legal obligations.
That's because rebellion has been recognized since time immemorial as a casus belli, for example the Whiskey Rebellion against President Washington in 1793.
Washington raised up an army of 13,000 to defeat it and the rebels quickly retreated.
But in the American tradition secession alone was not defined as "rebellion", so neither Presidents Buchanan nor Lincoln could move militarily against Confederates.
Lincoln needed an actual military attack against the Union before he could respond and that Jefferson Davis was only too happy to give him.
Why did Jefferson Davis seize Fort Sumter by military force?
Because he wanted to, reason one, and because it would bring the Upper South states into the Confederacy, reason two.
Notice that none of this makes reference to "other reasons" which seem to play such a big role in our Lost Causers' imaginations.
All of it is just straight history, no revisionism required.
I’d say to you: one man’s “pretext” is another man’s “real reason” and you don’t know who considered slavery the “reason” and who just a “pretext”.
The fact is that few Southerners had direct contact with tariffs or “Northeastern power brokers” or “money flows from Europe”, and so would not respond to calls for secession over such matters.
Here I would disagree. Tariffs touched every Southerners’ pocket. It did not matter whether you were a small farmer selling your cotton to the local plantation for a percentage (since only the larger producers had the volume necessary to arrange shipment and thus they bought from all the small farms around them acting as a wholesaler). The tariff meant you would get a lower rate for your cotton or other cash crop.
In addition, the manufactured goods you could not produce yourself and thus needed to buy would be more expensive as the tariff drove up the cost of those goods and Northern manufacturers were able to raise their prices while still undercutting foreign competitors on price. Thus even you, the small non slave owning family farmer were hit twice by the tariff.
But every Southerner knew about slavery directly & personally, even if they “owned” no slaves.
A threat to slavery was a threat to all and so that was the appeal by Deep South Fire Eaters to convince their fellow Southerners secession was necessary.
Again, disagreed. The ending of slavery would be no threat to you as a non slave owner. High tariffs which meant lower profits for your cash crops and higher prices for the manufactured goods you needed to buy would harm you economically.
By the way, the Corwin amendment was passed after the last Deep South state declared secession, so was a useless exercise in closing the barn door after the horse was gone.
It did seem to have some effect in Border States so was not entirely wasted.
The passage of the Corwin amendment shows that slavery was not threatened and the Northern states were only too willing to compromise over the slavery issue - as everybody knew. What was really at stake was economic advantage be it for the Northern business interests in keeping the Southern states in or for the Southern states in becoming independent and setting economic policies more suited to their economic needs.
This is one of the weaker arguments in the Lost Cause quiver, and it was surprisingly made by none other that Robert Rhett himself, in December 1860, when Democrats had ruled Washington, DC, for nearly 60 years, with Southern Democrats the majority of Democrats and making 1860 Washington, DC, just what those Southerners wanted.
So all their complaints about Washington are simply complaints about what they themselves did there for 60 years, which makes no sense.
This is simply patently false. Rhett himself laid out how destructive to the South’s economy the tariffs and the unequal federal expenditures had been. The fact that the South had representation in the federal government does not mean that therefore federal policies couldn’t have been economically harmful to the South. That’s one of the weaker arguments the PC Revisionists put forth.
Then we agree more than I had suspected.
But I also think that “cynical” reasons for some were seen as sincere and “real” reasons by many others.
We’re talking about human nature here, often a mixture of noble and not-so-noble motives.
Agreed. The Southern states were democratic and had freedom of speech and a lively free press. They were not a monolith. I’m sure some truly were animated by protection of slavery. I’m sure many were not and just saw it as a useful pretext to advance their economic interests by getting out of a union that had become an increasingly bad deal for them as their power and influence within the US steadily eroded over time. We will never find one quote or piece of definitive “proof” that one reason was the “real” reason the two sides acted as they did. Opinions differed among them greatly then as it still does today. I hold no moonlight and magnolias romantic notions that the Southern states at that time did not have brutality, corruption, lying etc etc. They certainly did. So did the Northern states. If anything, things were much worse in those days than they are now. Corruption was higher, violence was higher, brutality toward slaves and industrial workers was far worse than anything that goes on today. Nobody is lily white here.
So our Lost Causers keep telling us, but the evidence on Lincoln’s motives suggests far less his financial interests and far more his constitutional & legal obligations.
That’s because rebellion has been recognized since time immemorial as a casus belli, for example the Whiskey Rebellion against President Washington in 1793.
Washington raised up an army of 13,000 to defeat it and the rebels quickly retreated.
I disagree with that. Lincoln was always hugely motivated by economics....he was one of the most highly paid corporate lobbyists in America after all. I also disagree that secession is rebellion. The union is voluntary. It was always intended to be so and had anybody said at the time of constitutional ratification that the union was not voluntary....that states were not free to leave it as they had just left the British Empire, the states would never have ratified the constitution.
But in the American tradition secession alone was not defined as “rebellion”, so neither Presidents Buchanan nor Lincoln could move militarily against Confederates.
Lincoln needed an actual military attack against the Union before he could respond and that Jefferson Davis was only too happy to give him.
Lincoln cleverly set things up so that the Southern States would either have to surrender without firing a shot OR he could claim that they had fired the first shot....which they did....but of course he failed to mention that he had been the aggressor by sending a fleet of warships into their territorial waters to reinforce a military garrison right in the middle of one of their principal harbors.
Why did Jefferson Davis seize Fort Sumter by military force?
Because he wanted to, reason one, and because it would bring the Upper South states into the Confederacy, reason two.
What else could he do? Could he allow a now foreign country to have a major fort right in the middle of one of the Southern states’ biggest harbors? Was he supposed to allow a foreign country to tax CSA commerce? To do so would be abject surrender. NO sovereign country would have allowed that.