Why The War Was Not About Slavery

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org ^ | March 9, 2016 | Clyde Wilson

[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.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Imports are like a black hole. A country sucks them in endlessly, and nothing comes out to balance them.

Money goes out to balance them. The imports are paid for with money generated by the people who buy them. You seem to believe that trade in this period was just British goods being directly traded on docks for bales of cotton. The United States economy generated wealth outside of cotton, and the opening of the west had brought vast amounts of gold and silver into the economy. You've been shown that specie traveled both ways in large amounts but it doesn't see to register with you.

[Bull Snipe]

The Corwin amendment is the ultimate in “States Rights”
It prohibited the Federal Government from amending the Constitution to interfere with slavery where the institution was legal. It left the decision to the states.
States could outlaw slavery.

[DiogenesLamp]

Why can’t you just admit the obvious: The South WANTED slavery.

What the South wanted is irrelevant to the war. Why did the North invade?

...and they realized they were losing political power since slavery was not being allowed to expand into new states.

Duh. They were paying almost all the bills, getting called "deplorables" by the obnoxious elite of the North East, and could do nothing to stop the money flowing out of their pockets and into those of the people who controlled Washington DC.

I've already shown that slavery couldn't actually expand into new states, so that was a phoney argument just meant to scare people into opposing the creation of allied states that would vote in the South's interests.

It really was all about who controlled Washington DC. You are almost there, but you still think slavery had something to do with it.

It was really just political alliances using the power of government to acquire and keep money streams.

Would North Carolina have supported Utah’s “state right” to legalize polygamy?

It was a condition to be admitted as a state that Utah couldn't have polygamy. But let's say for the sake of this goofy attempt at analogy that Utah was admitted with polygamy intact, and then it got frightened that the Federal government would take it's polygamy away, and so it decides to leave the Union, and then the Federal government decided to launch a war against it to force it back into the Union.

Would North Carolina side with Utah? Based on their secession statement, I would think "Yes they would!", but it's a lot less practical to do so without some sort of contiguous border on which they could share defense.

The only “state right” that united the Confederacy was the right to own slaves and to take them with you anywhere you traveled in the USA.

So we have constantly been told ever since I first heard of the Civil War, but in point of fact, had they seceded, they wouldn't have been able to take their slaves anywhere in the USA, so how does that fact fit into your theory?

You say they only wanted to own slaves. Didn't they own them? What did the United States do to bother them over that?

What is different about them owning the slaves in the USA, versus owning the slaves in the CSA?

What's different?

When secession was announced in Charleston, the city went through a massive building boom. Ships were lining up at their docks, all hotels and boarding houses were filled to capacity, construction of new warehouses and docking facilities were commenced, and the entire city was booming with fresh money.

So what changed? Same slaves remained slaves as would have remained slaves in the USA.

What changed was all the laws hamstringing their trade.

*THAT* is what changed. Nothing else changed except the Laws passed by Congress which were holding back their economic development for the benefit of the Northern political block that had more power in Congress.

[DiogenesLamp]

Why did the south want to secede?

Money. Same reason the North didn't want them to secede.

[DiogenesLamp]

Yes, slavery is evil.

I am glad you relinqish your Social Security benefits which takes the direct labor of another,

self righteous hypocrite.

Major point I often make. Most people are just fine with slavery so long as they are the beneficiary of it.

The Civil War didn't eliminate slavery. It just thinned it out and spread it over the entire nation's populace.

[DiogenesLamp]

Who fired first?

Lincoln. He launched a fleet of warships with orders to attack them on April 8th.

Most people are just unaware that Lincoln fired first.

[FLT-bird]

They have an amazing ability to see how the federal government lines the pockets of the politician’s cronies today, how special interests exercise political influence funding campaigns and lining the pockets of certain politicians, how politicians pork barrel for their districts, how the federal government doles out specific tax breaks and subsidies to favored corporations........yet cannot see any of that before. Newsflash! Political corruption and crony capitalism were not invented in the last generation. The same things happened then.

Obama favoring blue states, lavishing subsidies on car companies where the UAW had its members, lavishing subsidies on “green energy” companies yet at the same time running “Operation Chokepoint” to discriminate against and try to shut down industries it didn’t like (vaping, payday loans, guns, fireworks, etc). The richest counties in America being the ones where federal government leeches gorge on taxpayer money?

None of that is new. That’s exactly what was going on back then. Yet these so-called Conservatives have an amazing ability not to see it. The South then was treated like the “flyover states” under Obama only worse.

[DiogenesLamp]

Are you always this clueless ?!?

I'm the one telling *YOU* things you didn't know about the history of this war, so I would say you are the one who is clueless.

[rockrr]

But slavery wasn’t “alive and well” in northern states. Slavery had either been outlawed or a path to emancipation was in effect in EVERY northern state at the outbreak of the war.

[DiogenesLamp]

We all know that the war was about the democrats desire to spread slavery to every corner of the Union.

Yes you do. And you know it because it has been drilled into your head for your entire life.

Demonstrating with modern agriculture maps and historical accounts that it was impossible doesn't even make a dent in what you think you know.

Once again, nobody could have made any of the territories produce wealth from slaves, the entire fight was about controlling congress and changing existing laws which caused money created by the South to flow into the North.

Yes, the Northern people who collected this money spent quite a lot of effort spreading astroturf and propaganda about slavery, but the money numbers speak for themselves.

See this pile of money? Vast bulk of it was produced by slaves!

[NKP_Vet]

Lies about any war are written by those who won it. The winners are usually the ones who have more men and never run out of men to fight it. When the South lost a soldier no one replaced him. The union didn’t have that problem. Fresh recruits landed in NY and Boston harbors. The minute these immigrants set foot on land they were in the Army. The first two years of the war, when the Lee’s Army was outnumbered 3-1, making it a somewhat even fight, the Southern Forces regularly beat the hell out the union forces. By the 3rd and 4th year when the ratio was 10-1 the Union gained control. The South had the best officers and the best enlisted forces. All the Southerners grew up living off the land and all knew how to handle a weapon. The only thing they didn’t have was an unlimited number of men to fight, so they lost. You need men to fight wars.

[mrsmith]

(Can’t copy and paste now)

That’s a useful, and clever, point!
And would the South have seceded absent slavery?

Probably yes. They had developed almost independent economies. If that separation continued growing eventually a foreign power qould have allied with the South and gave them a better deal then the Union.

Or maybe the South would have acknowledged the superiority of commerce and industry and changed on it’s own.
(Probably not: it’s hell to upturn an establishment- as Trump’s difficulties show.)

[DiogenesLamp]

"Experience has proved that slave-holding States can not be safe in subjection to non-slaveholding States.

Did a word search to find that teeny tiny bit of the entire article?

Just ignored the other 99.7% of the article that talked about economic issues so you could find your little teeny tiny cherry picked nugget that allows you to rationalize what you want to believe?

This is actually a form of deceit.

[rockrr]

DL has been posting this graphic ever since he first saw it. But he can’t quite figure out what it represents. He appears to believe that New York simply pocketed that $35,155,453!

[DiogenesLamp]

There is that S word again.

Yes, "citizens of the slaveholding states of the United States" certainly includes the word "slave" in it.

So does citizens of the non-slaveholding states of the United States.

There's that S word again! Oh my!

As it happens, five slave holding states remained in the Union during the war. Were they fighting for slavery too?

[DiogenesLamp]

The only relevant opinion is that of those who started the war.

Which was Abraham Lincoln. When he launched that fleet of warships with orders to attack the Confederates if they resisted efforts to supply the fort, *THAT* started the war.

No other single act than that initiated the war. I've already posted what the members of his cabinet said about how if he did that, it would trigger a war, so if you want to read what they said, scroll up through my comments.

It was started by legislatures of the seceding states.

And how, pray tell did these legislatures start the war?

[mrsmith]

slavery has been the most common condition of Man from the beginning of civilization to at least WW! and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

There are degrees of “evil”. Peonage was little better than slavery.

[DiogenesLamp]

Obviously you don't keep up. My position is that Article IV, section 2 already required this, and that Dred Scott merely affirmed what the Constitution already required.

[DiogenesLamp]

This message from you doesn't even make enough sense for me to respond.

I'm sure what your wrote makes sense to you, but I don't have the time or the inclination to attempt to decipher it.

[DiogenesLamp]

Don't crack up on me dude. You may think these collections of disjointed commentary has some purpose or meaning, but I can't see it, and I doubt anyone else understands what you are trying to get at either.