Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Why The War Was Not About Slavery
https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org ^ | March 9, 2016 | Clyde Wilson

Posted on 05/03/2019 7:54:25 AM PDT by NKP_Vet

Conventional wisdom of the moment tells us that the great war of 1861—1865 was “about” slavery or was “caused by” slavery. I submit that this is not a historical judgment but a political slogan. What a war is about has many answers according to the varied perspectives of different participants and of those who come after. To limit so vast an event as that war to one cause is to show contempt for the complexities of history as a quest for the understanding of human action.

Two generations ago, most perceptive historians, much more learned than the current crop, said that the war was “about” economics and was “caused by” economic rivalry. The war has not changed one bit since then. The perspective has changed. It can change again as long as people have the freedom to think about the past. History is not a mathematical calculation or scientific experiment but a vast drama of which there is always more to be learned.

I was much struck by Barbara Marthal’s insistence in her Stone Mountain talk on the importance of stories in understanding history. I entirely concur. History is the experience of human beings. History is a story and a story is somebody’s story. It tells us about who people are. History is not a political ideological slogan like “about slavery.” Ideological slogans are accusations and instruments of conflict and domination. Stories are instruments of understanding and peace.

Let’s consider the war and slavery. Again and again I encounter people who say that the South Carolina secession ordinance mentions the defense of slavery and that one fact proves beyond argument that the war was caused by slavery. The first States to secede did mention a threat to slavery as a motive for secession. They also mentioned decades of economic exploitation.

(Excerpt) Read more at abbevilleinstitute.org ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; US: Georgia; US: South Carolina; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: agitprop; americanhistory; civilwar; dixie; history; idiocy; letsfightithere; notaboutslavery; ofcourseitwas; revisionistnonsense; slavery
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 81-100101-120121-140 ... 1,581-1,597 next last
To: marron

I never understood how Christianity and slavery were compatible or justified.


101 posted on 05/03/2019 10:42:39 AM PDT by jmacusa ("The more numerous the laws the more corrupt the government''.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 97 | View Replies]

To: malach
Northerners held the South is much like the contempt much of the tech community has for ordinary people who do not build their lives and values around technology.

It is exactly the same, and from the same descendents and geographical areas of the country as it was in the Civil War.

Big City folk, the Industrialized areas, and the tech hubs all hate "Deplorables", and treat them like scum.

102 posted on 05/03/2019 10:43:35 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 47 | View Replies]

To: aquila48
I think History is taught very poorly (on purpose). Not poorly, but with a self-serving purpose in mind.

This.

103 posted on 05/03/2019 10:44:13 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 48 | View Replies]

To: DiogenesLamp
"Why did Virginia leave? What did they have to say about it?"

"The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States."

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states#virginia

104 posted on 05/03/2019 10:45:59 AM PDT by Mr Rogers (Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 94 | View Replies]

To: NKP_Vet

bkmk


105 posted on 05/03/2019 10:51:37 AM PDT by Sergio (An object at rest cannot be stopped! - The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jmacusa

People are complicated, and have blind spots. Evil people you can spot a mile off, and you can protect yourself. Good people with blind spots are capable of great evil, because they simply do not see it.

What happens even in our own time is that inevitably our consciences are in part shaped by the culture we are born into. For most people, the culture provides the moral compass, which means they are unable to see when the culture itself has gone off the rails.

But some people are able to do it, some people do see sooner than do their neighbors. GOP was born precisely because Christians were fed up with the Whig party’s unwillingness to take a moral stand and formed a minority party in 1854. A decade later slavery was dead and gone at least in its overt and legal form. When Christians wake up and take a stand, things change. After the war, Christians went back to sleep and the old evils reasserted themselves for another couple of generations.


106 posted on 05/03/2019 10:53:49 AM PDT by marron
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 101 | View Replies]

To: marron

True indeed. Evil slumbers but always keeps one eye open.


107 posted on 05/03/2019 10:56:07 AM PDT by jmacusa ("The more numerous the laws the more corrupt the government''.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 106 | View Replies]

To: Wuli

What you say is no doubt true. But something else is just as true: The unconstitutionally all-powerful federal government was also the key result of the civil war. Before the war, states held a constitutionally-supported check and balance against the feds. Not so anymore.


108 posted on 05/03/2019 11:04:03 AM PDT by afsnco (18 of 20 in AF JAG)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 80 | View Replies]

To: Bull Snipe
pipe dream on your part, totally unsubstantiated by anything, other than your imagination.

If it's a pipe dream, it seems to have been shared by Northern newspaper editors, but in their case I think they saw it as a nightmare.

March 18, 1861, the Boston Transcript

"If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out a policy by which only a nominal duty is laid upon the imports, no doubt the business of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured thereby. The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederated States, that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than New York. In addition to this, the manufacturing interest of the country will suffer from the increased importations resulting from low duties….The…[government] would be false to all its obligations, if this state of things were not provided against.

.

.

The Philadelphia Press 18 March 1861

"a series of customs houses will be required on the vast inland border from the Atlantic to West Texas. Worse still, with no protective tariff, European goods will under-price Northern goods in Southern markets. Cotton for Northern mills will be charged an export tax. This will cripple the clothing industries and make British mills prosper. Finally, the great inland waterways, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers, will be subject to Southern tolls."


109 posted on 05/03/2019 11:11:42 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 52 | View Replies]

To: NKP_Vet

If you say it’s wasn’t ALL about slavery.

You are considered a racist.


110 posted on 05/03/2019 11:17:21 AM PDT by skinndogNN
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NKP_Vet

This needs to make it’s way into the national psyche.

Thank you for posting this.


111 posted on 05/03/2019 11:18:26 AM PDT by Paulie (America without Christ is like a Chemistry book without the periodic table.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: afsnco

No doubt.

It is an unfortunate circumstance that tied states rights to continuation of slavery. That tie in - which was real - has morally hurt the cause of states rights ever since. The end product of the war was the immorality of slavery was undone at the Constitutional loss of states rights.

But, truly unbridled federal power would not really come into its own until the “progressive” era, with progressive presidents from Wilson through two Roosevelts and their judges, along with their combined massive advancement of the regulatory state surrendered with the abdication of Congress’ power over the executive. The amendment that changed the election of Senators from election by the state legislators to “popular” election helped consolidate federal power as well.


112 posted on 05/03/2019 11:20:57 AM PDT by Wuli
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 108 | View Replies]

To: DiogenesLamp

Yes, it was about $1b more than all textile mills and rrs put together. The top 11 states by wealth, the Confederacy had 10 of them, all due to slaves & land. Had almost no patents coming out of the entire South for 30 years.

From the Union’s perspective it wasn’t. From the Southern perspective, that’s all it was about, especially SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES.

Lincoln could say this because if slavery was confined to the south, it would die. Like communism, it had to expand to survive. IT was all about the territories, because everyone knew, sooner or later, a human was either a human everywhere, or a human no where. If he was a piece of property, as Justice Taney correctly argued, he was not human.


113 posted on 05/03/2019 11:25:19 AM PDT by LS ("Castles made of sand, fall in the sea . . . eventually" (Hendrix))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 75 | View Replies]

To: stinkerpot65

The Bible is full of examples of slavery. It’s been around since the beginning of recorded history and is still be practiced. Jesus didn’t say a word about it.


114 posted on 05/03/2019 11:28:21 AM PDT by NKP_Vet ("Man without God descends into madness”)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: NKP_Vet
The Bible is full of examples of slavery. It’s been around since the beginning of recorded history and is still be practiced. Jesus didn’t say a word about it.

Well, then, I guess it's okay, right?

115 posted on 05/03/2019 11:43:10 AM PDT by Bubba Ho-Tep ("The rat always knows when he's in with weasels."--Tom Waits)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 114 | View Replies]

To: Mr Rogers

Slavery had nothing to do with the reason NC and other slave-holding border states left the VOLUNTARY union of states. They refused to kill their Southern neighbors. Here’s why the Tar Heel left.

**************

War Department Washington, April 15, 1861

When Fort Sumter fell to South Carolina troops on April 13, 1861, President Lincoln would immediately call for 75,000 troops to coerce and subdue the rebellion. On April 15, known as Lincoln’s Call For Troops, the president would demand that North Carolina furnish two regiments for this undertaking.

On April 15, North Carolina Governor John Ellis promptly replied to President Abraham Lincoln by stating, “Your dispatch is received, and if genuine, which its extraordinary character leads me to doubt, I have to say in reply, that I regard the levy of troops made by the administration for the purpose of subjugating the states of the South, as a violation of the Constitution, and as a gross usurption of power. I can be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of the country and to this war upon the liberties of a free people. You can get no troops from North Carolina.”

Prior to Civil War, the governor proposed a conference of Southern states with the objective of preparing for the conflict. When President Lincoln demanded troops for the Union, Governor Ellis reacted by calling a special session of the legislature, which would back Ellis and the idea for a convention to declare secession. On May 20, 1861, an ordinance for secession was passed for North Carolina to leave the Union. But due to poor health, Governor Ellis, aged 40, died less than two months later on July 7, 1861, and was buried at the Old English Cemetery in Salisbury. The Speaker of the North Carolina Senate, Henry T. Clark, completed his term.


116 posted on 05/03/2019 11:46:48 AM PDT by NKP_Vet ("Man without God descends into madness”)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 44 | View Replies]

To: DiogenesLamp

of course you can always believe what you read in newspapers.


117 posted on 05/03/2019 11:48:46 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 109 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin

Maybe! But the South, much to their detriment was stuck in the past based on the failed system of slavery. Slavery kept the South from investing in mechanization in many areas, especially agriculture. This retarded their economy and prevented them from reaching parity with the North. They were continually out produced by the North


118 posted on 05/03/2019 11:58:47 AM PDT by dirtymac (Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country! Now)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: NKP_Vet

“Slavery had nothing to do with the reason NC and other slave-holding border states left the VOLUNTARY union of states.”

If it were not for slavery, there would have been no “Confederacy” for NC and others to join.


119 posted on 05/03/2019 12:04:51 PM PDT by Mr Rogers (Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 116 | View Replies]

To: NKP_Vet

You know what? I think it would be good if the glib name-callers here would actually READ the treatise posted.

It often addresses their “facts”.


120 posted on 05/03/2019 12:19:25 PM PDT by the OlLine Rebel (Common sense is an uncommon virtue./Federal-run medical care is as good as state-run DMVs.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 81-100101-120121-140 ... 1,581-1,597 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson