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.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "It's important to make sure everyone knows who was making the money, and who was about to lose it.
This clarifies the motives for why people launched a war."

Right, for example, these people:

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.
Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth."
Mississippi Reasons for Secession, January 1861

Clearly, the economics of slavery was first & foremost on Mississippi's mind in January 1861.
But what about Northerners, say, Doughfaced Democrat President Buchanan?

Buchanan wrote colleagues in 1861: "the assault upon Sumter was the commencement of war by the Confederate states, and no alternative was left but to prosecute it with vigor on our part".[82]
He also wrote a letter to his fellow Pennsylvania Democrats, urging them to: "join the many thousands of brave & patriotic volunteers who are already in the field".[82]"

Former Democrat President Buchanan was motivated by Fort Sumter, regardless of economics or slavery.
What about Deep South slaveholding planters?

"The South is invaded [by John Brown].
It is time for all patriots to be united, to be under military organization, to be advancing to the conflict determined to live or die in defence of the God given right to own the African"
--- Richard Thompson Archer (Mississippi planter), letter to the Vicksburg Sun, Dec. 8, 1859."

Not "all about" slavery?
What about the Confederate leadership?

"Mr. President [Davis], at this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North.
You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountain to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death.
It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal."[19]"
CSA Secretary of State, Robert Toombs to Jefferson Davis just prior to Davis' order to "reduce" Fort Sumter.

Not "all about" slavery or economics, but why start war at Fort Sumter?
And what about President Lincoln?

"Whereas the laws of the United States have been for some time past, and now are opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed, in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the Marshals by law..."
Lincoln, April 15, 1861, calling up 75,000 militia.

Not slaves, not economics, but combinations too powerful".
What about those "Northeastern power brokers" and their "money flows from Europe"?

"The next day action in the [New York state] Assembly...
Speaker of the House Dewitt C. Littlejohn opened the day's session by presenting a set of resolutions that... openly declared Southern seizures of federal property to be 'treasonable' and charged that with the attack on the Star of the West 'the insurgent State of South Carolina' had 'virtually declared war'.
The resolution directed the governor to offer the president 'whatever aid in men and money he may require to enable him to enforce the laws and uphold the authority of the Federal Government.' "

Not about slavery, not about economics, but rather about Confederates' "virtually declared war" against the United States."
And what did Northern commercial interests say?

"Slavery is not the cause of the rebellion ....
Slavery is the pretext on which the leaders of the rebellion rely, 'to fire the Southern Heart' and through which the greatest degree of unanimity can be produced....
Mr. Calhoun, after finding that the South could not be brought into sufficient unanimity by a clamor about the tariff, selected slavery as the better subject for agitation North American Review "
-- said to be from the 18 March 1861, Boston Transcript.

So how was slavery just "pretext", even though protecting slavery was the only possible motivation for the vast majority of Confederates?
No, slavery was the real reason for all but possibly the top 1% of 1% of Southern leaders.
That 1% may have hoped to leverage slavery to increase their own commercial & political powers, but the vast majority of Southerners didn't care about commerce or manufacturing, for example:

"We are a peculiar people, Sir! . . .
We are an agricultural people. . . .
We have no cities—we don’t want them. . . .
We want no manufactures: we desire no trading, no mechanical or manufacturing classes. . . ..
As long as we have our rice, our sugar, our tobacco, and our cotton, we can command wealth to purchase all we want. . . .
But with the Yankees we will never trade—never.
Not one pound of cotton shall ever go from the South to their accursed cities.”(1)
Texas Senator & Fire Eater Louis Wigfall to William Howard Russell, March 1861

Not so much about either slavery or "money flows from Europe" in early 1861.
And how did Jefferson Davis feel about all this?

Davis to CSA Gen. Bragg, April 3, 1861: "It is scarcely to be doubted that for political reasons the U.S. govt. will avoid making an attack so long as the hope of retaining the border states remains.
There would be to us an advantage in so placing them that an attack by them would be a necessity, but when we are ready to relieve our territory and jurisdiction of the presence of a foreign garrison that advantage is overbalanced by other considerations."

Well before the Battle of Fort Sumter, Davis didn't care if he started war, because that was "overbalanced by other considerations", namely, the need for war to trigger Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas & other Border States to flip from Union to Confederacy.

So... for Davis, not so much about slavery.
Not so much about economics or "money flows from Europe".
Much more about how best to destroy the United States by getting more & more states to join his Confederacy.
And that project DiogenesLamp well acknowledges & supports, though considers of lesser importance than all-powerful "money flows from Europe".
You see, to a trained Marxist, economic self interest defeats mere morals & politics, every single time.

[DiogenesLamp]

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.

Am quite aware of that, but what you do not seem to grasp is that one way or the other, 73-85% of that money had to come from the Southerners. If the Northerners sell something to the South, they get some of that money. They cannot get any more of that money than 15-27% of it directly from their own exports. All the rest has to be a consequence of Southern exports.

The United States economy generated wealth outside of cotton

Not for European goods it didn't. And you are ignoring the fact that the reason the protectionist laws existed was to drive up the costs of domestic goods so they could make more profit. These artificially increased prices were passed onto anyone buying Northern produced goods, and most especially the people of the South.

You've been shown that specie traveled both ways in large amounts but it doesn't see to register with you.

Specie isn't trade. It should be looked at as a completely separate category, which I do recall doing a year or so ago, and even using the information that BroJoeK provided.

[DiogenesLamp]

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.

I don't think Lincoln was supporting it because he was a big proponent of states rights. I think he was supporting it because he thought it might be sufficient to get the South to remain in the Union without a fight.

It would have done nothing to have corrected the North Eastern control of their trade, the gouging of Shippers and the excessive taxation from Washington DC. There is simply no way these problems could be addressed so long as the Northern states held the majority of seats in Congress.

The fight about "expansion of slavery" was really just a fight for control of Congress. The laws as they then stood robbed the South, and the North who had the advantages in representation liked things that way.

[DiogenesLamp]

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.

I make this point all the time. Does anyone think the Democrats give a crap about Women or @ueers, or Blacks, or Muslims? It's all a show to keep these coalitions voting for Democrats!

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?

A perfect example of how "Mercantilism" would have worked in Lincoln's government. It is no coincidence that the biggest Federal giveaway of that era was to the railroads, for whom Lincoln had been a corporate lawyer.

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.

They cannot see the parallels because they don't want to see the parallels. They have been taught a version of history, and they want to believe it. They don't want to look at information that shows them the history they have been led to believe is incorrect.

[DiogenesLamp]

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.

You are clearly leaving out the five Northern slave states. Slavery didn't end in the North until December of 1865, approximately 8 months after it was already forceably ended in the South. (In violation of the US Constitution.)

[DiogenesLamp]

DL has been posting this graphic ever since he first saw it. But he can’t quite figure out what it represents.

I know very well what it represents. The man who created it did so to prove the South wasn't paying any tariffs, and therefore the "tariff" argument was just a bunch of bullsh*t.

What the guy didn't know was this:

The South was producing the vast majority of export value, and imports are payment for exports. Anyone who grasps this concept called "trade", realizes immediately that this map shows something very wrong.

The records prove the money was generated in the South, but the tariff map shows almost all the taxes were collected in New York.

For those with the wit to understand, it clearly demonstrates New York had somehow managed to acquire control of all wealth generated from Southern exports.

Again, those with wit to understand immediately realize that if the South took control of it's own trade, that huge amount of money (230 million per year) would move from the control of New York, to the Port cities in the South.

Very powerful motive to launch a war to stop it.

He appears to believe that New York simply pocketed that $35,155,453!

No, that went straight to Washington DC, which was the other major player which had a very strong motive to stop the South from taking over that trade themselves.

Money money money.

[DiogenesLamp]

It seems that resisting efforts to supplying the fort, initiates the conflict, by your above statement.

They had a right to demand foreign troops evacuate their land at the entrance to their harbor. Union Secretary of War John Floyd had told the people of South Carolina in November of 1860 that all the forts at the entrance to their harbor would be turned over to them.

You also forget that Lincoln offered to let the 7 original Confederate states secede if Virginia would give him assurances that they would remain in the Union.

So it was all Lincoln's choice to start a war. He chose to do so.

[DiogenesLamp]

You will have to elaborate on that.

The South produced 230 million dollars per year in export value in 1860. The laws of the United States (Navigation act of 1817, Warehousing act of 1846, and others) had been rigged such that virtually all this money was funneling through New York.

The South no longer had a majority in Congress, and so they could not stop this system where the vast bulk of their production was eaten up by New York and Washington DC. See this map.

The South was actually making less money from their production than were New York and Washington DC. They didn't like it.

Independence for the South would result in those 230 million dollars per year no longer going through New York and Washington DC, but instead the money would be going into their own industries and people.

Needless to say, Washington DC and New York very much did not like that. Some of the Northern newspapers actually saw what was happening.

Boston TranscriptMarch 18, 1861

now the mask has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports . . . by a revenue system verging on free trade. . . . The government would be false to its obligations if this state of things were not provided against.

There are plenty of others, but this one conveys the point.

[DiogenesLamp]

Bullshot The south was sweating bullets for 30 years about the addition of more free states than slave in the western territories.

Why?

And let me ask you another question. Who was producing the vast majority of the revenue (taxes) for Washington DC to run the Federal government?

[DiogenesLamp]

You probably better pack a sack lunch because DL has reams of propaganda on the “It’s all because of money” angle.

You call it propaganda when I post information that clearly shows the South was producing the vast majority of European currency and European trade products which were then routed through New York and taxed for the benefit of Washington DC?

You think it's propaganda when I point out that this means the Southern states were paying for ~75% of all the taxes?

You just don't like it. It's the truth, and you cannot refute it, but you just want to believe what you have always believed, and have no interest in seeing the financial reality of what was happening in the USA in 1860.

[DiogenesLamp]

OK. You can think or feel what you want, but the first shots were NOT fired by Lincoln! Every once in a while, facts matter.

Sending warships to attack was what *CAUSED* the war. I know you don't want to believe this, but it is true even if you don't like it.

The Confederates had copy of the ships orders and knew they were coming. There had been no intention of attacking the fort until they got word that the ships were arriving. (USS Harriet Lane immediately fired at the "Nashville" upon arriving at the entrance to Charleston Harbor.)

Lincoln could not have made it any more clear that a military attack was about to hit Beauregard's forces in Charleston.

You just want to believe what you find comforting to believe.

[DiogenesLamp]

Your problem, in that analysis, is that legally, the US government is not invading another’s home. It is resupplying it’s own legal property.

When South Carolina withdrew from the Union, which the Declaration of Independence said it had every right to do, that property ceased to be the property of the US.

As Lincoln said:

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right—a right which, we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. "

[DiogenesLamp]

Who was buying those imports?

That question can be answered by asking "Who had the money to buy imports?"

With the Southern export value being 73% of the total, and the Northern export value being 27% of the total, it would be reasonable to assume that the Southerners were somehow paying for 73% of the imports.

Of course that's not how it actually worked. In reality the Northern congressional representation had gamed the laws to favor Northern interests at the expense of Southern interests, so New York and Washington DC were actually grabbing most of that export value.

New York was getting profits on the front end of the horse with shipping, banking, insurance, warehousing, packet shipping, etc. New York was also getting a lot of profit off of the back end of the Horse, through the same methods.

Washington DC was getting all their percentage of the Southern production off of the back end of the Horse, when European products arrived in payment for the mostly Southern produced trade.

I've read many accounts that assert New York made off with about 40% of all Southern export value, and Washington DC of course made off with whatever the tariff costs were, which were at least 15% in your example, but likely much more.

[morphing libertarian]

irrelevant to the issue of more free states.

[morphing libertarian]

more free states would have lead to the abolishment of slavery and in the eyes of the south wreck the basis of their economy.

[DiogenesLamp]

Such as to damaege the reputation of the site for his democrat masters ?

Desperately grasping at straws here I see. You wish. You would rather believe this is some sort of false flag effort to damage the credibility of this site than believe the information I am providing actually shows the North invaded the South, killed 750,000 people directly in the process, and who knows how many were killed indirectly, all for wealth and greed of New York and Washington DC, which incidentally happens to be the same f***ers we are still fighting today.

Some people want to cling to comforting narratives rather than embracing an ugly truth.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "...what you do not seem to grasp is that one way or the other, 73-85% of that money had to come from the Southerners.
If the Northerners sell something to the South, they get some of that money.
They cannot get any more of that money than 15-27% of it directly from their own exports.
All the rest has to be a consequence of Southern exports."

This is still complete nonsense which has been exposed here as such many times.
Confederate state exports were not your 73-85%, they were 50%, one crop: cotton.
All the rest of US exports came from Union states, territories or regions, especially including such items as specie (gold & silver) and tobacco.

And cotton was important, but when deleted in 1861 it reduced total Union exports by only 35%.
My point is: our Lost Causers' "economics uber alles" is simply projecting their own Marxist training onto historical figures who never themselves expressed such motives.

Bull Snipe: "The United States economy generated wealth outside of cotton.

DiogenesLamp: "Not for European goods it didn't."

In 1860, US citizen assets totaled around $20 billion, our GDP was around $4.4 billion, total exports $400 million and Deep South cotton exports $200 million.
When cotton was deleted in 1861, US exports fell, net-net, $140 million (35%) to around $260 million, while GDP rose to $4.6 billion.

Bottom line: sure, in 1860 cotton was important, but its absence in 1861 did not destroy the Union's total exports, much less it's now $4.6 billion GDP.

DiogenesLamp: "...you are ignoring the fact that the reason the protectionist laws existed was to drive up the costs of domestic goods so they could make more profit.
These artificially increased prices were passed onto anyone buying Northern produced goods, and most especially the people of the South."

It's absolutely true that since Day One our Founders like James Madison & Alexander Hamilton used protective tariffs to put Americans first and make America great by encouraging US domestic manufacturing.
These tariffs were not intended to help any specific region, and manufacturing also developed in the South, though not to the degree as western, northern & eastern regions which did not benefit from slave-grown cotton.

Bull Snipe: "You've been shown that specie traveled both ways in large amounts but it doesn't see to register with you."

DiogenesLamp: "Specie isn't trade.
It should be looked at as a completely separate category, which I do recall doing a year or so ago, and even using the information that BroJoeK provided."

Well, first, nothing outside the scope of his own Lost Cause propaganda ever registers on DiogenesLamp -- he is single minded in that respect.

Second, specie absolutely was trade, then more than today, because it was used to balance the books on exports & imports.
If imports exceeded exports, which they often did, specie made up the difference -- gold from Union California and silver from Union Nevada made its way to Union New York to pay for imports from Europe, China & the Caribbean.

Deep South slaveholders had nothing to do -- zero, zip, nada to do -- with US specie exports or imports.

[DiogenesLamp]

You are just a deranged democrat troll.

"Mommy, make the bad man go away! He's telling me things I don't want to hear!"

Adults can handle ugly truth. You just want it to go away.

[morphing libertarian]

why was there a plot to kill lincoln when he transferred trains in baltimore on his way to his first inauguration?

[rockrr]

Please identify the five states you are referring to. I believe that I know but I want to make sure that I am on the same page.