Why The War Was Not About Slavery

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.

The Confederate constitution specifies tariff for revenue.

No, it doesn't. And even if it did it doesn't specify 10%. That figure is a figment of your vivid imagination.

So one guy in one state wanted the possibility of a higher tariff. Great.

Apparently a lot more than one guy since the Confederate tariff passed a few months later had rates as high as 25%.

Key words "For revenue". That means maximum 10%. That was the standard definition of a revenue tariff. A protective tariff was more than 10%.

And that is defined where?

I didn't say it did specifically.

Yet you referenced it. In 1861 there was one or two packet lines that serviced only southern ports and one trans-Atlantic line that made the trip from Charleston to England to New York to Charleston. What did the Navigation Act do to impede them?

Because being its own country it would have wanted navigation acts to have its own merchant marine for the same reason the USA implemented the Navigation Acts just like the British before them had done.

Why? Why not just continue to contract their business to existing lines, be they British or U.S.? Starting from scratch would only increase shipping costs, would they not? Especially if the necessary expertise wasn't available in the South.

Stephens was so influential he sat at home in Georgia and nobody listened to him. He knew he'd be wasting his time in Richmond since....nobody was going to listen to him.

Maybe they should have. His opposition to Davis's policies on suspending habeas corpus, conscription, taxes, crazy interference in the war, and on and on were the reason for his leaving Richmond, and had more people listened to him then maybe the Confederacy wouldn't have been the police state is approached during the war.

They and others and of course hordes of Newspapers from all sides at that time.

You guys are great at quoting newspaper editorials, which are nothing but opinion, and presenting them as fact. But then again the rest of posts y'all make aren't much different - opinion masquerading as fact.

I believe it specified "railroad iron". I don't think it made any claim of what other tariff's might be, but I very much doubt the average was as high as 25%.

You believe wrong, as usual. Railroad materials like rails, spikes, and fishing plates were taxed at 15%. The 25% tariff was applied to a lot of what appear to be luxury goods.

And I never said the average was 25%. The claim was that tariff rates over 10% were somehow prevented by the Confederate constitution. The claim is flat-out ridiculous.

I believe all of them were ran out of New York.

You believe wrong, as usual. Fraser, Trenholm and Company ran a line out of Charleston that made the circular run of taking cotton to Liverpool, imports to New York, before returning in ballast to Charleston to load again. Also there were at least two Southern owned packet companies operating, one mainly along the Gulf coast between Mobile and New Orleans and the other running ships along the whole Gulf between Key West and Texas, as well as some traffic between New Orleans and Havana, Cuba.

There go those newspaper editors not being as smart or knowledgeable as DoodleDawg.

And once again you present opinion as fact, this time newspaper writers rather than your own. There were few rivers other than the Mississippi where traffic could travel to the U.S., and not many more railroads. You would have us believe there were hundreds if not thousands of points that would have to be guarded.

It was already a slave state. Acquiring it would have simply increased US Territory, and otherwise changed nothing.

Cuba was a state? How did I miss that?

A state could end the creation of slaves by it's own laws, but it could do nothing about slaves created by the laws of other states. The US Constitution is quite specific on this point.

But if did allow states to prohibit slavery within their borders. Something the Confederate constitution specifically did not allow.

As you are aware, Washington flouted Pennsylvania anti-slavery laws routinely.

Not flout. Washington took advantage of a loophole in the law which said any slave kept in the state more than six months was emancipated, said law being enacted to allow congressmen and senators to bring their slaves when Congress was in session and take them home when out of session. That was a cost of being the Nation's capital. Every six months he sent his slaves out of state for a short period, thus resetting the clock. The Smithsonian had an article on it: Link

Okay, you just finished admitting that slavery wasn't going to "expand" anywhere, and now you are saying that it would? To where would it expand?

Cuba and points south. Mexico. Caribbean. Central America. The Confederate founders had big plans. That's why when the provisional constitution was presented to the convention in Montgomery in February 1861 one of the first objections was to the proposed name - Confederate States of North America. They thought that name was too limiting.

DiogenesLamp quoting link: " 'Regardless of its official status, slavery was rare in antebellum New Mexico.
Black slaves never numbered more than about a dozen.'
There appears to be no market in the territories for slaves, so this makes me wonder why people claimed that it would "expand" into the territories?"

Another article gives us a different picture:

"In 1859, New Mexico passed the Act for the Protection of Slave Property.
This was partially because Territorial Governor William Carr Lane and Chief Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court Grafton Baker owned black slaves.[11...
On June 19, 1862, Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.
New Mexico citizens petitioned the US Senate for compensation for 600 Indian slaves that were going to be set free.[14]...
...In his report, he estimated that there were 400 slaves in Santa Fe alone.[15] "

There were hundreds of slaves in New Mexico, thousands in California, especially working in its gold fields.
So slavery did not need either Africans or cotton.

DiogenesLamp: "I have what I believe is an explanation for what we were told, and it has nothing to do with the practicality of putting slaves in the territories to make profit.
It has to do with the balance of power in Congress in Washington DC, and what this would do to affect the existing money streams feeding New York and Washington DC."

Opposition to slavery was first & foremost a moral & religious issue which Northerners first learned in church, during the 2nd Great Awakening.
Nobody in, say, 1860 objected to slavery on economic grounds, since as you point out, the whole nation prospered from Southern exports.
So Northern abolitionism went against their own economic self interests.

Further, the Southern Slave Power was for decades politically allied to Northern Big City immigrant bosses -- i.e., Tammany Hall in NYC.
So there was no serious threat to slavery on pure economic grounds, rather abolitionism was counter-self interested economics.

Come on, DL, let's see some "cognitive dissonance" here!

DiogenesLamp: "It was unconstitutional for Lincoln to free them in any state that was part of the Union, rebellion or not."

And so the nonsense just never stops...

Freedom for slaves was declared by the Brits in America's successful rebellion and by the Union in Confederate's failed rebellion.
It didn't work for Brits because George Washington & others took effective counter-measures.
It did work for the Union because, among other reasons, Confederates refused to do what Washington did in the 1770s.

Legally the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in regions of Confederate states under Union Army control.
It did not free slaves in Union states or Unionist regions of Confederate states -- i.e., West Virginia.

So DiogenesLamp's claim here amounts to this: since some slave-holding citizens in Confederate states were still loyal to the Union, their slaves should not have been automatically freed!
How many slaveholding Confederates were loyal to the Union?

After the Civil War Congress paid $ millions in reparations to thousands of Confederate state Unionists who suffered losses during the war.
Can DiogenesLamp name for us how many of those Confederate Unionists were also slaveholders?
Can you name even one?

DiogenesLamp: "There was no 'except for rebellion clause' in article IV, section 2.
So long as a state was part of the United States, Article IV, section 2 should have been enforced."

Of course there is -- Article 1, sections 8 & 9 plus Article 3, section 3 & Article 4 Section 4 are full of provisions for rebellions, insurrections, invasions, domestic violence and treason.

DiogenesLamp: "No he didn't.
It wasn't a "war."
According to Lincoln it was a "rebellion".
A "war" is fought against a foreign power which is not entitled to Constitutional rights.
Anything seized from a foreign power is fair game, but there are actually constitutional laws that protect people who are under constitutional law."

The Constitution provides no specific protections for people in rebellion.
It does acknowledge the need for governments to defend themselves against rebellions, insurrections, treason, etc.

Congress acknowledged & compensated thousands of Southern Unionists after the war.

DiogenesLamp: "Lincoln simply ignored these, and decreed what he wanted.
He even locked up a congressman who said he was acting like a King."

Proportionately there were as many Southern Unionists suppressed & locked up by Jefferson Davis as Northern Copperheads by Lincoln.
But like all Democrats DiogenesLamp has no concerns for his own side's misdeeds, while his hair's-on-fire over alleged Republicans'.

“Wrong. It was all about slavery.”

I agree with SO much of what you say, that I “follow” you, i.e., I “bookmarked” your comments here on FR. You are the only FReeper whose comments I follow - and I don’t follow anyone on Twitter, FB or anywhere else.

The only other person I reserve such high praise for is my favorite economics professor from Temple Business school, where I got my MBA in 1980; Dr. Walter Williams. I guess he must have left for George Mason U a year or two after I graduated. I used to take my brothers and close friends to class with me - that’s how impressed I was - and those with whom I “shared” my discovery still thank me - almost 40 years later. By the way, it was not Dr Williams’ opinions on race that got my attention - it was his spellbinding genius for economic analysis - his artful way of exposing logical fallacies, his unique knack for parsing human behavior into basic cost/benefit supply/demand decisions. Yes, in retrospect, there were racial elements to many of his ideas, for example his critique of how a minimum wage disproportionately hurts blacks rather than helping them. But what attracted me to him had nothing to do with race - it was his method of reasoning - his scientific approach to analyzing human behavior.

Since I “discovered” you, I share you in the same way with my family and close friends - that’s how much I respect you and your political analysis.

Having said that, I find myself at a loss sometimes to reconcile the diverging opinions of my two respected “mentors” when it comes to the subject of the War between the States. Full disclosure: on my mother’s mother’s side, I have a great grandfather who was a Captain for the Confederacy. I have his memoirs and boxes of letters from him and his family, all of which drive home the point that they loved the South, owned a handful of slaves, loved them like family, treated them kindly, freed them to the extent that it was legal to do so, were loved in return by them, and were no lovers of slavery. They hated slavery but yet fought for the Confederacy. After the war my great grandfather moved North, near Philadelphia, and he became the pastor of a small congregation - all the other men were veterans of the Union side. All the other Civil War veterans in the graveyard are from the Northern side of the conflict. Judging by today’s tone, one might think there was hate and resentment, but all evidence points to the opposite. I’ve lived here all my life and never heard a single word of disrespect aimed at my GG. To this day, each Memorial Day, the ladies from the Theta Alpha women’s group place little flags on the graves of veterans, and on my Great Grandfather’s grave they place a little confederate flag. I’m sure that tradition is not long for this world.

It makes me sad that 150 years ago, with the horrible conflict still fresh, our ancestors of the two sides were able to muster some mutual respect and understanding, while today we cannot. I guess it’s possible we are more enlightened now after 150 years, and can see things more clearly than they could. More likely, we have forgotten some of the nuances. I can’t help but see a parallel between the rise of politically correct fake news and the rise of certain changes in the way we view our history.

Would you be so kind as to listen to the following video of Dr. Williams and tell me which part of it you disagree with, if any?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=egKcTYdrFvE

DHerion: "Slave owners, who were a wealthy but distinct minority, could never sell secession to the rest of the population on the premise of them keeping their slaves and their wealthy life style, so they sold it as ‘economic exploitation of the north’...politicians were charlatans back then too."

Except that's not what happened.

Despite what our revisionists tell you, secession was sold to Deep South citizens on the primary basis of the Black Republican threat to slavery, not other economic self interests.

This article gives a statistical breakdown on four "Reasons for Secession" documents produced before Fort Sumter.
There were three others, similar: Rhett's Address, Stevens' Cornerstone Speech and the Alabama secession declaration.

In all slavery was the major item mentioned, though some included other issues, like taxes.

None -- zero, zip, nada -- mentioned "Northeastern power brokers" or "money flows from Europe".
And yet, to hear our Lost Causers tell it, those were the only real Confederate concerns.

wardaddy on slaves: "They were arguably his biggest asset so like most small farmers they wanted them in good shape."

Right, the argument was made then and occasionally confirmed even today that, overall, slaves were treated better and lived longer than Northern Big City factory workers.

wardaddy: "Slavery was a primary issue of the War Between the States but it morphed into resisting an invasion in my opinion."

Exactly right from the Confederate point of view.

"...any man who pretends to believe that this is not a war for the emancipation of the blacks, and that the whole course of the Yankee government has not only been directed to the abolition of slavery, but even to a stirring up of servile insurrections, is either a fool or a liar."

Sadly there seems to be an inexhaustible supply of fools & liars here eager to rewrite history to defend their own Lost Cause fantasies.

wardaddy: "I’m unaware the South intended to occupy the north or defeat the north in a total victory sense which might explain why they didn’t move on DC the several times they could.
That proved to be a mistake."

Not certain if Davis is to blame for that, but am sure of this: in the war's first 12 months, Confederates fought more battles in Union states & territories and lost more soldiers killed there than in Confederate states.
All told, Confederate forces invaded Union Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma & New Mexico.

Combined, those states included over 1/3 of total Union population: threatened by Confederate forces.
Oh, some posters say, that was just "defensive".
But "offense" or "defense" a lot of people felt threatened.

DiogenesLamp: "Except it really was exploitation by the North.
Look at these figures for export trade value."

{sigh}
Here we go again...

Yet again DiogenesLamp posts numbers which disprove his arguments, while he insists they support him.
What DiogenesLamp's own numbers show is that cotton totaled 48% of US exports in 1850, add some rice and it's 50%.
Everything else classified as "Southern products" was actually produced in Union states & regions.

"If a tax be levied on exports, nearly all the money it raises will come out of the cotton planter, for, except sugar, which mounts up to a respectable figure, the Confederate States export nothing but cotton, worth speaking of.
The little rice, tobacco, naval stores and lumber we export amount to a very small sum."

Curiously, sugar exports were miniscule in 1860 and rice exports continued in some volume in 1861, unlike cotton.

DiogenesLamp: "Now look at where the money from Europe came back into the country. "

Notice that New Orleans was effectively tied with Philadelphia as the Nation's third largest import port.
Today, iirc, ports around New Orleans are number one.

The fact is that for every dollar of cotton exported by Confederate states, Southerners "imported" a dollar's worth of manufactured goods from the North.
That's how Northerners earned money to pay for European imports.
And this, claims DiogenesLamp, was a huge crime because Northern manufacturers were protected by too-high import tariffs.
In other words, from Day One, the United States put Americans first and wanted to Make America Great by encouraging our own manufacturing base.

And there was nothing about US tariffs that restricted manufacturing to Northern states -- Southerners also had significant manufacturing in Virginia, Tennessee and Alabama -- all protected by US tariffs.
But for every one in the South there were ten in the North and for obvious reasons:

"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. . .”(1)

Of course Wigfall did not speak for all Southerners, but obviously for enough that manufacturing lagged far behind the North in 1860.

DiogenesLamp: "At least you acknowledge that Lincoln hatched the Federal Leviathan that has denied the states the rights they had under the original framework in which this system of governance was created.
Lincoln was the first to massively expand Federal power, followed by Teddy, Wilson, FDR, Johnson, Carter, Clinton and Obama."

Wuli: "Yes."

No! Like nearly everything DiogenesLamp posts, it's a total lie, a self-delusion & fantasy.
The truth is, unless you declare war on the 13th, 14th & 15th amendments, Lincoln had nothing to do with the huge expansion in Federal Big Government which did not really get rolling until FDR's New Deal, over 65 years after Lincoln's death.

By contrast to FDR's massive New Deal increases, Progressives like TR and Wilson weren't even blips on the radar screen of growing Big Government.

1858 Democrat Buchanan's non-debt spending was 2.6% of GDP.
1871 Republican Grant's non-debt spending was 2.5% of GDP
1906 Progressive Republican Teddy Roosevelt's non-debt spending was 2.4% of GDP.
1914 Progressive Democrat Wilson's non-debt spending was 2.7% of GDP (pre-WWI).
1927 Republican "Silent Cal" Coolidge non-debt spending was 2.5% of GDP.
1936 Democrat New Deal Franklin Roosevelt's non-debt spending reached 17% (pre-WWII) and has remained north of that ever since.

So, you can blame Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt all you wish, but the fact is it was Democrats under FDR who first spiraled the Federal Government out of control, and have never looked back since.

And no region of the country was more solid in its support of Democrat FDR's New Deal than the Democrat Solid South.
So, FRiends, don't blame Lincoln.
Just look in the mirror for your own ancestors.

Why did the North invade the South?

The North invaded the South in order to preserve the Union.

I’ve answered your question, now please answer mine. My question is: Why did the South secede. Please note that I’m not asking why YOU think they seceded, I’m asking what reason did they give (what did they state in the articles of secession (hint: don’t ignore Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, and Texas).

So, to respond to your comments point by point;
1) I’ll give you that the Declaration of Independence mentioned “domestic insurrections” and I will concede the point that this means slave rebellions.

2) I responded to a previous question that “We did not fight the British for our freedom for the purpose of maintaining slavery”. Your response was that was only because we won and that, had we lost, they would repeat for 150 years that we only sought Independence so we could continue slavery. I will remind you that slavery was legal in the British Empire until 1833. The British also did not fight the Revolutionary War because of slavery. Slavery was not an issue in the Revolutionary War on either side. So, if slavery was legal in the British Empire, and slavery was not an issue, by either side, in the Revolutionary War, why would they raise this if we lost? By the way, kudos for reading the minds of people of people dead for over 200 years, in an alternate universe where we lost the Revolutionary War.

3)You asked if I said that those Southern states had a right to freedom even though they had slaves. My answer is, yes of course. However, they already had freedom except for the right to own slaves. Please tell me what freedoms they did not have. Again, back to my original question, why did the South secede?

4)I still believe that calling states like Massachusetts and New Hampshire slave states when the number of slaved in those states in 1776 was minuscule is ridiculous, but you are technically correct.

5)You are right that they already had slavery as a member of the Union, and this was not a reason for seceding. I misspoke, and should have said “maintaining” slavery.

6)In terms of your discovering that the whole concept of southern secession being (partly) due to not being able to expand into the territories being a “lie”, I’m confused. When Mississippi, in their Declaration of Secession, stated “It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States has jurisdiction.” It follows that with the statement: “It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion”. It sure seems to me that expansion of slavery into the territories was an issue with at least some of the southern states, but I’m sure that you will explain to me how this is a “lie”.

7)You are correct in saying that the northern states were in violation of the compact in not returning escaped slaves to the South. What you are missing is the moral impact, however. The reason the populace in the Northern states opposed the Fugitive Slave Act was that a majority of the populations of those states considered it immoral. Are you suggesting that morality not be considered in administering the law?

So, I was nice enough to answer your question, and I have responded to each of your points (even conceding you were correct on a couple of them). I ask you to do me the courtesy of directly answering my question (somewhat rephrased since I can’t remember exactly what I asked previously). The question is:

Why did the South secede? Please note that I’m not asking why YOU think they seceded, I’m asking what reason did they give (what did they state in the articles of secession hint: don’t ignore Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, and Texas)

Unless, of course, the reason you’re avoiding answering the question is because you don’t have an answer to it?

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