Why The War Was Not About Slavery

Because due to the power of Eminent Domain, South Carolina claims it. So it wasn’t federal any more nor was any other federal installation in a sovereign state which had seceded.

You just make crap up as you go along, don't you? Eminent domain doesn't allow states to seize federal property any more than it allows the federal government to seize state property.

So.. General Omar Bradley was a’’kook’’? I'm a ‘’revisionist’’? Really? What’d I miss General? What are you saying the South won the war? Don't you EVER get tired of being a loser?

Jesus Christ on a cross. You and The Little General, aka ‘’central va’’. Dopn’t you idiots ever get tired of being losers? Your side started the shooting. It started doing that in “Bleeding Kansas’’.

Of course it does. You’re the one making up crap here. The government can seize whatever property they deem fit for public purposes. That most certainly includes military defense. The owners will be compensated at fair market value but a sovereign government can certainly seize it. I suggest you actually study eminent domain.

The Southern states did not secede to preserve slavery. Slavery was not threatened in the US. If anybody thought it was, the North made it perfectly clear that they were willing to go to great lengths - including passing a constitutional amendment - to ensure slavery would be protected.

The Northern states’ violation of the fugitive slave clause of the US constitution did provide Southern states the argument that it was Northern states which had violated the compact. They did. There’s no doubt about that.

Yet when offered slavery effectively forever, they refused to accept it and insisted on independence. Obviously the North’s violation of the fugitive slave clause of the constitution was a pretext for the Southern states, not their real concern.

Yes they would. President Davis promised tariffs as low as their necessities would permit.

Which could well have been as high as Virginia wanted it to be, if that was what was necessary to bring Virginia into the fold. That's what Henry Benning told the Virginia Secession Commission.

The Confederate Constitution had a maximum 10% revenue tariff.

Oh crap. No where in the Confederate Constitution does it say any such thing. In fact, when the Confederate Congress set tariffs in May 1861 some of them were as high as 25 percent.

That industry had already concentrated in the Northeast. The most efficient investment for the Southern states at that time was in producing more cash crops.

Wouldn't the same be true post independence? Wouldn't it still be financially beneficial to hire other people to ship their goods? Louis Wigfall told William Howard Russell, "We are an agrarian people; we are a primitive people. We have no cities - we don't want them. We have no literature - we don't need any yet. We have no press - we are glad of it…We have no commercial marine - no navy - we don't want them. We are better without them. Your ships carry our produce and you can protect your own vessels. As long as we have our rice, our sugar, our tobacco, and our cotton, we can command wealth to purchase all we want from those nations with which we are in amity, and to lay up money besides." So why wouldn't they continue to contract with Northern shippers if the price was right?

Of course had the North not been draining their pockets for generations with sectional partisan legislation, they'd have had more money to build up their industries.

Oh barf.

Read Rhett's address on the subject.

Read Alexander Stephens on the subject. According to him the North was subsidizing postal deliveries in the South alone to the tune of over $6 million a year. He also said that the North was responsible for over 75% of federal tariff revenue, regardless of what you and your buddy DiogenesLamp say.

It would have been much harder and would have required a much greater enforcement effort.

Again, complete crap. Goods travelling up the rivers could easily be identified and taxed the moment the boat hit U.S. territory.

And as has been pointed out many times, it wasn't going to expand to any significant degree anywhere else anyways.

Probably not.

Sensible people of that era knew slavery would be functionally confined to the areas where it already existed simply because it was not economically plausible to "expand" it to be anywhere else.

The 1860 Democrat platform called for the acquisition of Cuba so that could well have been one or more slave states.

Which is arguably the same thing the US Constitution did.

Nonsense. Nothing in the U.S. Constitution prevented a state from ending slavery within its borders. The Confederate constitution specifically protected it.

How again were they fighting for something they already had while in the Union?

Only by leaving could then ensure the continued expansion of slavery and the political power of slave holders.

King George owned all the land of the Colonies. Independence invalidated all of that.

Actually the Treaty of Paris did. What treaty invalidated federal ownership of property in the South?

It was reported that Confederate tariffs were going to be around 10%.

And when the Confederate Congress actually passed their tariff legislation two months later some tariffs were as high as 25%. So much for newspaper editorials.

You cannot explain something to someone who doesn't wish to understand it.

Oh go ahead and try. This should be quite amusing.

One reason is Washington DC subsidies for the existing packet trade in the United States.

Which, I assume, included the few lines that did exist between Southern ports? So if they were subsidized then other ones would have been had they been established. Yet only a handful were created by Southerners. Why, do you think?

Only if you have the means to collect it along every waterway or potential border crossing, which would have been effectively impossible, and the impracticality of which was also noted by Northern Newspapers.

Oh crap. Goods traveled by boat or train and that's about it. Monitoring tariffs along the Mississippi would be easy enough. So would monitoring the few rail lines that went between the South and the North. Your "series of custom houses" would have been a handful.

The government can seize whatever property they deem fit for public purposes. That most certainly includes military defense.

Private property, yes.

I suggest you actually study eminent domain.

If you have done so then certainly you can provide an example where the federal government used eminent domain to take state property without the approval of the state legislature. I'm looking forward to your examples.

Which could well have been as high as Virginia wanted it to be, if that was what was necessary to bring Virginia into the fold. That's what Henry Benning told the Virginia Secession Commission. This is not consistent with the Confederate Constitution. Ergo, I doubt your account. Oh crap. No where in the Confederate Constitution does it say any such thing. In fact, when the Confederate Congress set tariffs in May 1861 some of them were as high as 25 percent. Oh yes it does. Tariff for Revenue. That means a maximum of 10%. Only the exigencies of war caused them to raise tariffs above that rate. Wouldn't the same be true post independence? Wouldn't it still be financially beneficial to hire other people to ship their goods? No. The whole reason for the Navigation acts was to ensure a large enough merchant marine to have that available in case of war. Had it been pure economic considerations, the 13 colonies would have just relied on British shipping. The CSA would have adopted its own navigation acts for the same reason and that industry would have grown up in the South to support the need for shipping. Louis Wigfall told William Howard Russell, "We are an agrarian people; we are a primitive people. We have no cities - we don't want them. We have no literature - we don't need any yet. We have no press - we are glad of it…We have no commercial marine - no navy - we don't want them. We are better without them. Your ships carry our produce and you can protect your own vessels. As long as we have our rice, our sugar, our tobacco, and our cotton, we can command wealth to purchase all we want from those nations with which we are in amity, and to lay up money besides." So why wouldn't they continue to contract with Northern shippers if the price was right? For the reasons I outlined above and Wigfall was just just one guy. Many people who were far more influential including Rhett had very different views. Oh barf. I know the truth hurts you. Read Alexander Stephens on the subject. According to him the North was subsidizing postal deliveries in the South alone to the tune of over $6 million a year. He also said that the North was responsible for over 75% of federal tariff revenue, regardless of what you and your buddy DiogenesLamp say. Why? Stephens was not influential and was powerless. Rhett was the Father of Secession and was far more influential. Several others agreed with Rhett. Almost all of the tax experts who have looked at this say the South was furnishing the vast majority of the exports and the Northern Newspapers and the Foreign Newspapers as well as Southern newspapers all said so too. Again, complete crap. Goods travelling up the rivers could easily be identified and taxed the moment the boat hit U.S. territory. Again BS. The predicament in which both the government and the commerce of the country are placed, through the non-enforcement of our revenue laws, is now thoroughly understood the world over....If the manufacturer at Manchester (England) can send his goods into the Western States through New Orleans at less cost than through New York, he is a fool for not availing himself of his advantage....if the importations of the country are made through Southern ports, its exports will go through the same channel. The produce of the West, instead of coming to our own port by millions of tons to be transported abroad by the same ships through which we received our importations, will seek other routes and other outlets. With the loss of our foreign trade, what is to become of our public works, conducted at the cost of many hundred millions of dollars, to turn into our harbor the products of the interior? They share in the common ruin. So do our manufacturers. Once at New Orleans, goods may be distributed over the whole country duty free. The process is perfectly simple. The commercial bearing of the question has acted upon the North. We now see whither our tending, and the policy we must adopt. With us it is no longer an abstract question of Constitutional construction, or of the reserved or delegated power of the State or Federal Government, but of material existence and moral position both at home and abroad. We were divided and confused till our pockets were touched." New York Times March 30, 1861 That either revenue from these duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the ports must be closed to importations from abroad. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed, the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up. We shall have no money to carry on the government, the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe....allow railroad iron to be entered at Savannah with the low duty of ten percent which is all that the Southern Confederacy think of laying on imported goods, and not an ounce more would be imported at New York. The Railways would be supplied from the southern ports." New York Evening Post March 12, 1861 article "What Shall be Done for a Revenue?" …To Northern manufacturers a free-trade South spelled ruin. Imports would be diverted from Baltimore, New York, and Boston where they faced the Morrill Tariff to Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans where they would enter duty-free. Western states would use tariff-free Southern ports to bring in goods from Europe. So would many Northerners. On the very eve of war, March 18, 1861, the Boston Transcript wrote: 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. [demanding a blockade of Southern ports, because, if not] "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." The Philadelphia Press 18 March 1861 On 18 March 1861, the Boston Transcript noted that while the Southern states had claimed to secede over the slavery issue, 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 North relied on money from tariffs] “so even if the Southern states be allowed to depart in peace, the first question will be revenue. Now if the South have free trade, how can you collect revenues in eastern cities? Freight from New Orleans, to St. Louis, Chicago, Louisville, Cincinnati and even Pittsburgh, would be about the same as by rail from New York and imported at New Orleans having no duties to pay, would undersell the East if they had to pay duties. Therefore if the South make good their confederation and their plan, The Northern Confederacy must do likewise or blockade. Then comes the question of foreign nations. So look on it in any view, I see no result but war and consequent change in the form of government. William Tecumseh Sherman in a letter to his brother Senator John Sherman 1861. This goes on and on. They all disagree with you.

oops. screwed up the formatting.

the plot was to stop a free stater ou ignore the south’s willingness to keep their economic asset

Private property, yes. Any property

If you have done so then certainly you can provide an example where the federal government used eminent domain to take state property without the approval of the state legislature. I'm looking forward to your examples. Gosh, when the colonies became independent, did they seize any property owned by the British crown....like forts for example?

The issue of slavery was divisive among the Founders. It delayed and threatened a strong Constitution.

So you are telling me that in April of 1861, the Fort needed the Warship Powhatan, the Warship Pocahontas, The Warship Pawnee, The Armed cutter Harriet Lane, A Ocean transport carrying several hundred riflemen and munitions called the “Baltic”, a possibly armed Tug “Yankee”, and another possibly armed Tug “Thomas Freeborn”, and one possibly unarmed tug “Uncle Ben”, to deliver the same “supplies” that were previously manageable by the single ship “Star of the West”?

the tugs were not armed, they were civilian charters. Maybe warships were sent along incase the same thing that happened to “Star of the West” (it was fired on) happened to the resupply ships.

Here is a photo of one of your “supply ships.”
How about a photo of the Baltic, is was a commercial ship, not a ship of the United States Navy.

Let's try this again.

Which could well have been as high as Virginia wanted it to be, if that was what was necessary to bring Virginia into the fold. That's what Henry Benning told the Virginia Secession Commission. This is not consistent with the Confederate Constitution. Ergo, I doubt your account.

Oh crap. No where in the Confederate Constitution does it say any such thing. In fact, when the Confederate Congress set tariffs in May 1861 some of them were as high as 25 percent. Oh yes it does. Tariff for Revenue. That means a maximum of 10%. Only the exigencies of war caused them to raise tariffs above that rate.

Wouldn't the same be true post independence? Wouldn't it still be financially beneficial to hire other people to ship their goods? No. The whole reason for the Navigation acts was to ensure a large enough merchant marine to have that available in case of war. Had it been pure economic considerations, the 13 colonies would have just relied on British shipping. The CSA would have adopted its own navigation acts for the same reason and that industry would have grown up in the South to support the need for shipping.

Louis Wigfall told William Howard Russell, "We are an agrarian people; we are a primitive people. We have no cities - we don't want them. We have no literature - we don't need any yet. We have no press - we are glad of it…We have no commercial marine - no navy - we don't want them. We are better without them. Your ships carry our produce and you can protect your own vessels. As long as we have our rice, our sugar, our tobacco, and our cotton, we can command wealth to purchase all we want from those nations with which we are in amity, and to lay up money besides." So why wouldn't they continue to contract with Northern shippers if the price was right? For the reasons I outlined above and Wigfall was just just one guy. Many people who were far more influential including Rhett had very different views.

Oh barf. I know the truth hurts you.

Read Alexander Stephens on the subject. According to him the North was subsidizing postal deliveries in the South alone to the tune of over $6 million a year. He also said that the North was responsible for over 75% of federal tariff revenue, regardless of what you and your buddy DiogenesLamp say.

Why? Stephens was not influential and was powerless. Rhett was the Father of Secession and was far more influential. Several others agreed with Rhett. Almost all of the tax experts who have looked at this say the South was furnishing the vast majority of the exports and the Northern Newspapers and the Foreign Newspapers as well as Southern newspapers all said so too.

Again, complete crap. Goods travelling up the rivers could easily be identified and taxed the moment the boat hit U.S. territory.

Again BS.

The predicament in which both the government and the commerce of the country are placed, through the non-enforcement of our revenue laws, is now thoroughly understood the world over....If the manufacturer at Manchester (England) can send his goods into the Western States through New Orleans at less cost than through New York, he is a fool for not availing himself of his advantage....if the importations of the country are made through Southern ports, its exports will go through the same channel. The produce of the West, instead of coming to our own port by millions of tons to be transported abroad by the same ships through which we received our importations, will seek other routes and other outlets. With the loss of our foreign trade, what is to become of our public works, conducted at the cost of many hundred millions of dollars, to turn into our harbor the products of the interior? They share in the common ruin. So do our manufacturers. Once at New Orleans, goods may be distributed over the whole country duty free. The process is perfectly simple. The commercial bearing of the question has acted upon the North. We now see whither our tending, and the policy we must adopt. With us it is no longer an abstract question of Constitutional construction, or of the reserved or delegated power of the State or Federal Government, but of material existence and moral position both at home and abroad. We were divided and confused till our pockets were touched." New York Times March 30, 1861

That either revenue from these duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the ports must be closed to importations from abroad. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed, the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up. We shall have no money to carry on the government, the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe....allow railroad iron to be entered at Savannah with the low duty of ten percent which is all that the Southern Confederacy think of laying on imported goods, and not an ounce more would be imported at New York. The Railways would be supplied from the southern ports." New York Evening Post March 12, 1861 article "What Shall be Done for a Revenue?"

…To Northern manufacturers a free-trade South spelled ruin. Imports would be diverted from Baltimore, New York, and Boston where they faced the Morrill Tariff to Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans where they would enter duty-free. Western states would use tariff-free Southern ports to bring in goods from Europe. So would many Northerners. On the very eve of war, March 18, 1861, the Boston Transcript wrote: 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.

[demanding a blockade of Southern ports, because, if not] "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." The Philadelphia Press 18 March 1861

On 18 March 1861, the Boston Transcript noted that while the Southern states had claimed to secede over the slavery issue, 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 North relied on money from tariffs] “so even if the Southern states be allowed to depart in peace, the first question will be revenue. Now if the South have free trade, how can you collect revenues in eastern cities? Freight from New Orleans, to St. Louis, Chicago, Louisville, Cincinnati and even Pittsburgh, would be about the same as by rail from New York and imported at New Orleans having no duties to pay, would undersell the East if they had to pay duties. Therefore if the South make good their confederation and their plan, The Northern Confederacy must do likewise or blockade. Then comes the question of foreign nations. So look on it in any view, I see no result but war and consequent change in the form of government. William Tecumseh Sherman in a letter to his brother Senator John Sherman 1861. This goes on and on. They all disagree with you.

“What were those ships going to do with those cannons?”

Use them, incase the Baltic, tugs and supply boats met the same reception as Star of the West. That was there mission. Those cannon were to be used if the Charleston authorities opposed the landing of supplies at Sumter. The did not have orders to attack the Confederate facilities in Charleston unless they met resistance to the resupply effort.

"What were those ships going to do with those cannons? Hmmmm?"

What they were ORDERED to do:

"Should the authorities at Charleston, however, refuse to permit or attempt to prevent the vessel or vessels having supplies on board from entering the harbor, or from peaceably proceeding to Fort Sumter, you will protect the transports or boats of the expedition in the object of their mission -disposing of your force in such manner as to open the way for their ingress and afford, so far as practicable, security to the men and boats, and repelling by force, if necessary, all obstructions towards provisioning the fort and re-enforcing it..."

IOW, IF ATTACKED by shore batteries, do whatever is needed to defend the resupply efforts. Which would then require using cannons on the Charleston forts. But the Union deliberately refrained from sending genuine warships, nor did they carry the thousands of troops needed to land there! The Pocahontas carried a whopping SIX guns. The Pawnee had 11 guns, but they were smaller. The Powhatan had 16 guns, mostly small. The Constitution, in contrast, carried over 50 guns. The sloops sent with the resupply mission were barely adequate to provide brief cover to the supply ships but ridiculous as an invading force!

The Confederates had already made it clear they would attack an unprotected ship. So the next resupply attempt was going to be made WITH SUPPORT. Just as we sometimes did when working resupply missions in Afghanistan. Supplies, plus force capable of screening the resupply effort if needed. If you know nothing of military tactics, please refrain from idle speculation.

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.

Spare me, Clyde. You never was that complex. It was fun finding the mistakes in your earlier article a few years back. And this one is just making a straw man argument and torturing and publicly burning the straw man ("an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument") of his own making .

Of course, there are different reasons why wars break out - grievances always travel in flocks or herds - but if you're looking for one chief reason why North and South drew apart, a seven-letter word beginning with "s" is a good place to start (and finish)

That was the opinion of Horatio Seymour, Democratic governor of New York. In a public address he pointed to the enormity of making war on Southern fellow citizens who had always been exceptionally loyal Americans, but who had been driven to secession by New England fanaticism.

Seymour was pretty clear that the "fanaticism" he disapproved of was about the abolition of slavery. Seymour blamed the North for rejecting the Crittenden Compromise. In other words, the North had been offered a chance at saving the Union if it caved on slavery, and Northern Republicans rejected it. So by the logic familiar to us here, the war must have been about slavery after all.

A statement in which Lincoln is said to favour voting rights for black men who were educated or had been soldiers has been shown to be fraudulent.

By whom? What's your reference Clyde? Whether John Wilkes Booth was in the audience is questionable but so far as I know the statement was legitimate.

Within a few days of his death he was still speaking of colonization outside the U.S.

That is Ben Butler's version, recounted years after Lincoln's death. It has long been regarded as spurious. We'll never know for sure, but it shouldn't be cited as a proven fact.

The South, supposedly fighting for slavery, did not respond to any of these offers for the continuance of slavery. In fact, wise Southerners like Jefferson Davis realized that if war came it would likely disrupt slavery as it had during the first war of independence.

Where's the evidence? A quote from Davis would be nice here. Of course, war would "disrupt" many things, but Davis was willing to risk war and started one. He felt that continued union with the North would "disrupt" slavery more than secession and war would.

As the war began, the famous abolitionist Theodore Weld declared that the South had to be wiped out because it is “the foe to Northern industry—to our mines, our manufactures, our commerce.” Nothing said about benefit to the slaves.

That is the problem with cut-and-paste history. Weld was indeed a famous abolitionist who had written whole books about slavery. To know just what he was thinking in 1861, one would have to do more than cite one sentence that doesn't mention slavery and conclude that a man who'd been speaking out against slavery for decades didn't care about slavery.

Ditto with his other quotes. Clyde recirculates the fiery quotes somebody picked out of the letters of Northern officers and their wives without really thinking about what else there is in the letters or what Southern officers and their wives were writing at the same time.

How about these curiosities from the greatest of Northern intellectuals, Emerson. He records in his journals: “But the secret, the esoteric of abolition—a secret, too, from the abolitionist—is, that the negro and the negro-holder are really of one party.” And again, “The abolitionist wishes to abolish slavery, but because he wishes to abolish the black man.”

Emerson had a rich sense of irony and paradox. And he wasn't very much in favor of the abolitionist cause when he wrote that in his journals. I do notice that his attitude here points to deeper complexities in Northern attitudes. Emerson was not above examining his own motives and those of his peers. Clyde likes to repeat things like this but apparently thinks he is above (or below) questioning attitudes in his own region.

A historian quotes a Northern observer of U.S. Army activities in occupied coastal Carolina in 1864. Generals declared their intention to recruit “every able-bodied male in the department.” Writes the Northern observer: “The atrocious impressments of boys of fourteen and responsible men with large dependent families, and the shooting down of negroes who resisted, were common occurrences.”

A name and a title would help here. Otherwise this is just a wild rumor. Where are the other accounts of such incidents?

Howard White and I recently put out a book about the war. Careful, well-supported essays, by 16 serious people. Immediately it appeared on amazon, someone wrote in: “I’m so tired of the Lost Cause writing. Don’t believe the bullshit in this useless pamphlet.” He could not have had time to actually read the book. It can be dismissed unread because he has the righteous cause and we do not. This is not historical debate.

This is the strawman technique. Clyde picks a particularly unrevealing comment and tries to make it look like the typical response of those who disagree him to his useless pamphlet -- or like it's not a typical comment people make to everything on Amazon.com. There are more intelligent critiques that one could make of Clyde's dismal pamphlet. But it seems like nobody bothered to read it.