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 ...
The hilarity is watching people fight a war over, and over, and over again.
All with the same result.
The debate centers upon so much conventional wisdom regarding that war that just isn’t so. The war wasn’t fought over slavery, not for the majority of the southern states that seceded and certainly not on the part of the northern Union states, which had four slave states themselves. People want to see everything in black and white, good versus evil. That template doesn’t fit, never did. That doesn’t stop anybody though, so on it goes, round and round.
And you seem completely oblivious to the point. The MONEY WAS PRODUCED IN THE SOUTH, but COLLECTED IN NEW YORK.
The south was paying virtually *ALL* of the tariffs and New York and Washington DC were getting rich off of slurping at that slavery trough.
Where slavery couldn't actually make a profit.
The south's position was that, over the years, as the west was settled and incorporated into the union, they would eventually be outvoted and slavery would die as an institution and a way of life.
Let's see. 1860. 16 slave states, 19 "free" states. Constitutional amendments require a 3/4ths ratio, so 16 states opposed would require 48 states in favor, which would require the Union to have 64 states.
So how were the slave states going to get outvoted?
Someone should have told the Southerners who started the war.
"African slavery is the cornerstone of the industrial, social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of African slavery and you reduce the South to depoulation and barbarism." - South Carolina Congressman Lawrence Keitt, 1860
"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." - Lawrence Keitt "The triumphs of Christianity rest this very hour upon slavery; and slavery depends on the triumphs of the South... This war is the servant of slavery." - Rev John Wrightman, South Carolina, 1861.
"[Recruiting slaves into the army] is abolition doctrine ... the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down." - Editorial, Jan 1865, North Carolina Standard
"What did we go to war for, if not to protect our [slave] property?" - CSA senator from Virgina, Robert Hunter, 1865
"I am not ashamed of having fought on the side of slavery—a soldier fights for his country—right or wrong—he is not responsible for the political merits of the course he fights in ... The South was my country." - John Singleton Mosby
"The South had always been solid for slavery and when the quarrel about it resulted in a conflict of arms, those who had approved the policy of disunion took the pro-slavery side. It was perfectly logical to fight for slavery, if it was right to own slaves." - John S. Mosby
'We have dissolved the Union chiefly because of the negro quarrel. Now, is there any man who wished to reproduce that strife among ourselves? And yet does not he, who wished the slave trade left for the action of Congress, see that he proposed to open a Pandora's box among us and to cause our political arena again to resound with this discussion. Had we left the question unsettled, we should, in my opinion, have sown broadcast the seeds of discord and death in our Constitution. I congratulate the country that the strife has been put to rest forever, and that American slavery is to stand before the world as it is, and on its own merits. We have now placed our domestic institution, and secured its rights unmistakably, in the Constitution; we have sought by no euphony to hide its name - we have called our negroes "slaves," and we have recognized and protected them as persons and our rights to them as property.' - Alabama Congressman Robert H. Smith
As the last and crowning act of insult and outrage upon the people of the South, the citizens of the Northern States, by overwhelming majorities, on the 6th day of November last, elected Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, President and Vice President of the United States. Whilst it may be admitted that the mere election of any man to the Presidency, is not, per se, a sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union; yet, when the issues upon, and circumstances under which he was elected, are properly appreciated and understood, the question arises whether a due regard to the interest, honor, and safety of their citizens, in view of this and all the other antecedent wrongs and outrages, do not render it the imperative duty of the Southern States to resume the powers they have delegated to the Federal Government, and interpose their sovereignty for the protection of their citizens.
What, then are the circumstances under which, and the issues upon which he was elected? His own declarations, and the current history of the times, but too plainly indicate he was elected by a Northern sectional vote, against the most solemn warnings and protestations of the whole South. He stands forth as the representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions, and her interests; as the representative of that party which overrides all Constitutional barriers, ignores the obligations of official oaths, and acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down the sovereignty and equality of the States, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma, the Equality of the Races, white and black." -- Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama to the State of Kentucky, to Gov. Magoffin of Kentucky
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material interest of the world. --Mississppi Declaration of the Causes of Secession
SIR: In obedience to your instructions I repaired to the seat of government of the State of Louisiana to confer with the Governor of that State and with the legislative department on the grave and important state of our political relations with the Federal Government, and the duty of the slave-holding States in the matter of their rights and honor, so menacingly involved in matters connected with the institution of African slavery. --Report from John Winston, Alabama's Secession Commissioner to Louisiana
This was the ground taken, gentlemen, not only by Mississippi, but by other slaveholding States, in view of the then threatened purpose, of a party founded upon the idea of unrelenting and eternal hostility to the institution of slavery, to take possession of the power of the Government and use it to our destruction. It cannot, therefore, be pretended that the Northern people did not have ample warning of the disastrous and fatal consequences that would follow the success of that party in the election, and impartial history will emblazon it to future generations, that it was their folly, their recklessness and their ambition, not ours, which shattered into pieces this great confederated Government, and destroyed this great temple of constitutional liberty which their ancestors and ours erected, in the hope that their descendants might together worship beneath its roof as long as time should last. -- Speech of Fulton Anderson to the Virginia Convention
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. -- Texas Declaration of the causes of secession
What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. -- Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Convention
Gentlemen, I see before me men who have observed all the records of human life, and many, perhaps, who have been chief actors in many of its gravest scenes, and I ask such men if in all their lore of human society they can offer an example like this? South Carolina has 300,000 whites, and 400,000 slaves. These 300,000 whites depend for their whole system of civilization on these 400,000 slaves. Twenty millions of people, with one of the strongest Governments on the face of the earth, decree the extermination of these 400,000 slaves, and then ask, is honor, is interest, is liberty, is right, is justice, is life, worth the struggle?
Gentlemen, I have thus very rapidly endeavored to group before you the causes which have produced the action of the people of South Carolina. -- Speech of John Preston to the Virginia Convention
This new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free negroes, without slavery, or, slavery under our old constitutional bond of union, without Lincoln Black Republicans, or free negroes either, to molest us.
If we take the former, then submission to negro equality is our fate. if the latter, then secession is inevitable --- -- Address of William L. Harris of Mississippi
But I trust I may not be intrusive if I refer for a moment to the circumstances which prompted South Carolina in the act of her own immediate secession, in which some have charged a want of courtesy and respect for her Southern sister States. She had not been disturbed by discord or conflict in the recent canvass for president or vice-president of the United States. She had waited for the result in the calm apprehension that the Black Republican party would succeed. She had, within a year, invited her sister Southern States to a conference with her on our mutual impending danger. Her legislature was called in extra session to cast her vote for president and vice-president, through electors, of the United States and before they adjourned the telegraphic wires conveyed the intelligence that Lincoln was elected by a sectional vote, whose platform was that of the Black Republican party and whose policy was to be the abolition of slavery upon this continent and the elevation of our own slaves to equality with ourselves and our children, and coupled with all this was the act that, from our friends in our sister Southern States, we were urged in the most earnest terms to secede at once, and prepared as we were, with not a dissenting voice in the State, South Carolina struck the blow and we are now satisfied that none have struck too soon, for when we are now threatened with the sword and the bayonet by a Democratic administration for the exercise of this high and inalienable right, what might we meet under the dominion of such a party and such a president as Lincoln and his minions. -- Speech of John McQueen, the Secession Commissioner from South Carolina to Texas
History affords no example of a people who changed their government for more just or substantial reasons. Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity. -- Address of George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention
If one state can leave the union at any time, for any reason, without any discussion with the other states then can the other states expel one state at any time, for any reason, without any discussions with the expelled state? If not, why not?
How was slavery going to be abolished? As it stood in 1860, there were 16 slave states and 19 "free" states. To abolish slavery would require a constitutional amendment which needs 3/4ths of the states to agree. If 16 states represent 1/4th who disagree, it takes 48 states to be in favor.
This requires a Union of 64 states, and we have yet to reach 64 states in the Union.
This doesn't even address what would have happened had Lincoln been successful in passing the Corwin amendment. If that effort had worked, slavery would have continued indefinitely.
You are considered a racist.
And accurate.
So what do you think of a man who attempted to provide greater legal protection for slavery?
The South was not paying all the tariffs, for the simple reason that tariffs aren't paid by the producers of exports. They are paid, ultimately, by the consumers of imports, and there were way more consumers in the North than in the South.
Let me see if I understand your argument here. Slavery could never be abolished because it would require too many states to ratify an amendment than would ever pass it, but if the Corwin Amendment had passed...slavery could never be abolished. Is that about right?
“The south was paying virtually *ALL* of the tariffs and New York and Washington DC were getting rich off of slurping at that slavery trough”
You are saying that 100% of all imports into the United States were bought and paid for by southern citizens. Not one single item was imported into the United States was going to a northern customer
He talks about the nullification of the law, the misconstruing of the Declaration of Independence, the Right of states to secede or remain, talks about the history of their fathers, assures them there is no ill will directed at the other states, looks forward to peaceful relations with them, and ends with
"Whatever offense I have given which has not been redressed, or for which satisfaction has not been demanded, I have, Senators, in this hour of our parting, to offer you my apology for any pain which, in heat of discussion, I have inflicted. I go hence unencumbered of the remembrance of any injury received, and having discharged the duty of making the only reparation in my power for any injury offered.Mr. President, and Senators, having made the announcement which the occasion seemed to me to require, it only remains to me to bid you a final adieu."
And you characterize it as being about nothing but slavery? The word "slave" is mentioned three times in the entire long speech, and none of it is in the context you suggest.
People construe things as they wish to see them construed.
They were already outvoted in the Congress. This resulted in the vast bulk of their economic output flowing through the hands of New York and Washington DC, while they themselves were left with whatever remained. So long as the Northern coalition controlled congress, they could do nothing about the situation. When it was no longer possible to get newly created allied states to join the Southern voting bloc, they realized they would be forever relegated to being the milk cow for Northern interests.
They decided they wanted out. The deal wasn't working for them.
They were paying almost all the taxes funding Washington DC.
In light of the fact that Lincoln was trying to pass an amendment to make slavery permanent, it is naive and condescending to claim that slavery was in any way the issue over which the war was fought.
You don't claim a war was fought over something you offered to give away before the war even started.
Exactly! The Northern coalition had control of congress, and any attempts to add "slave" states to the Union would threaten that control! The "Navigation act of 1817" could be repealed, and that would have seriously damaged Northern shipping industry, the "Warehousing act of 1846" could have been repealed, and that would have damaged New York port value, the Tariffs could have been lowered and the Southern states could have purchased more inexpensive European products.
There was a *LOT* of money riding on the control of Congress, and slavery was just a proxy fight for this control.
Such as? What would you do with them in Kansas, Nebraska or New Mexico? According to this article, there were only 12 slaves in New Mexico.
There were millions in the Southern states. It seems to me that if they were valuable in exploiting the west, they would have had more that 12 in all of New Mexico territory when it happened to look like this.
Yes, the claim that secession was illegal has not any significant evidence to support it. The New England states believed secession was legal in 1814, but by 1860, they claimed to believe otherwise.
If the Southern plantation owner sold his crop to a Northern cotton broker who financed the purchase from a Northern bank, insured it with a Northern insurance firm, then exported it from Charleston on a British ship who paid the tariff? The Northerner or the Southerner?
Amazing how that works:
"The Union is in danger. Turn to the convention in Hartford, and learn to tremble at the madness of its authors. How far will those madmen advance? Though they may conceal from you the project of disunion, though a few of them may have even concealed if from themselves, yet who will pretend to set the bounds to the rage of disaffection? Once false step after another may lead them to resistance to the laws, to a treasonable neutrality, to a war against the Government of the United States. In truth, the first act of resistance to the law is treason to the United States. Are you ready for this state of things? Will you support the men who would plunge you into this ruin? No man, no association of men, no state or set of states has a right to withdraw itself from this Union, of its own accord. The same power which knit us together, can only unknit. The same formality, which forged the links of the Union, is necessary to dissolve it. The majority of States which form the Union must consent to the withdrawal of any one branch of it. Until that consent has been obtained, any attempt to dissolve the Union, or obstruct the efficacy of its constitutional laws, is Treason--Treason to all intents and purposes.
Any other doctrine, such as that which has been lately held forth by the ‘Federal Republican’ that any one State may withdraw itself from the Union, is abominable heresy – which strips its author of every possible pretension to the name or character of Federalist.
We call, therefore, upon the government of the Union to exert its energies, when the season shall demand it – and seize the first traitor who shall spring out of the hotbed of the convention of Harford. This illustrious Union, which has been cemented by the blood of our forefathers, the pride of America and the wonder of the world must not be tamely sacrificed to the heated brains or the aspiring hearts of a few malcontents. The Union must be saved, when any one shall dare to assail it.
Countrymen of the East! We call upon you to keep a vigilant eye upon those wretched men who would plunge us into civil war and irretrievable disgrace. Whatever be the temporary calamities which may assail us, let us swear, upon the altar of our country, to SAVE THE UNION." - Richmond Enquirer, November 1, 1814
So then did the South believe secession was illegal in 1814, but by 1860 claimed to believe otherwise?
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