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.

stinkerpot65: "So what?
Buying and selling human beings like cattle is evil.
Anyone who practices, supports, benefits from, or excuses slavery is evil.
The Confederacy was evil because it practiced and profited from slavery."

DiogenesLamp: "Nope.
You don't get to excuse the Union.
Slavery remained legal in the USA longer than it did in the CSA.
Slavery was actually protected by the United States Constitution. See Article IV, section 2."

And still more nonsense from DiogenesLamp!

In fact, after the 1776 Declaration of Independence Northern states began immediately to abolish slavery such that by the 1787 Constitution Convention, only two had not yet started -- New York & New Jersey, and they soon did.
So, slavery exists in the Constitution only because some Southern states demanded it, would not have a United States without it.
Northern states submitted to Southern demands and kept submitting continuously until secession in 1861.

DiogenesLamp: "Lincoln was going to make slavery permanent in exchange for the Southern states remaining in the Union."

And the hits just keep on coming -- another Big Lie.
Corwin was one of many Democrat "compromise" proposals to keep Southern states from secession.
It was the only one not strongly opposed by Lincoln and that only because it made no real change to the status quo.
Even so, Corwin was supported by 100% of Democrats and opposed by a majority of Republicans in Congress.
Corwin was signed, not by Lincoln, but by Democrat President Buchanan.

DiogenesLamp: "And anyone who thinks slavery is what caused the war is a fool."

DiogenesLamp is both a fool and a liar.
Civil War began at Fort Sumter when Jefferson Davis ordered it "reduced".
But slavery soon became an issue in the form of "contraband of war" and by war's end Union troops were singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic:

Yes, Virginia, it was all about slavery, no matter what they tell you.

DiogenesLamp: "What caused the war was the Southern states leaving with their money, and no longer letting New York and Washington get their share of it."

What caused Civil War was Jefferson Davis' order to "reduce" Fort Sumter.
That, says DiogenesLamp, was caused by Lincoln's "war fleet" to Charleston SC.
But Davis had much more important "other considerations" which would have launched war against Fort Sumter, regardless of Lincoln's actions.
And those "other considerations" were?

First & foremost, Virginia.
Also North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, then potentially Kentucky, Missouri & Maryland too -- all of which refused to join Davis' Confederacy absent war against the United States.

NELSON111: "Who knows better?-the Vice President of the Confederacy or some people on a blog site 150 years later?"

DiogenesLamp: "Clearly it is informed people on a blog site 150 years later.
Alexander Stephens was a politician, and so what he says isn't necessarily the truth."

But what DiogenesLamp posts here is never the truth, indeed, you can usually find the truth just by taking the opposite side of DiogenesLamp's posts.

Alexander Stephens was an important Confederate political figure in 1861, selected as Vice President, he expressed Reasons for Secession in terms average citizens of those states could understand & relate to.
Now DiogenesLamp wants us to fantasize with him that those were not the "real reasons", that really, Stephens and other Confederate leaders hid their "real reasons" which had to do more with "Northeastern power brokers" and "money flows from Europe".

But no Confederate leader ever expressed themselves that way, and so we have to tell DiogenesLamp, as politely as possible under the circumstances to, ahem, "go jump in a lake".

DiogenesLamp: "I think they wanted Independence. Virginia certainly didn't go to war over slavery, and I dare say none of the other states contributed as much to the cause as did the Virginians."

Virginia was the first state for whom their declaration of secession was simultaneously effectively a declaration of war on the United States.
The war did not start over slavery, but over Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops to suppress rebellion.
But slavery was behind secession and abolition soon enough became the Union's rallying cry.

"...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."

Lots of fools & liars here.

DiogenesLamp: "I point out that the Philippines was given independence.
Cuba was given independence, and Puerto Rico has a standing offer to have independence if at any time it should wish it..."

None of those were ever states under the Constitution.

DiogenesLamp: "...but if you are producing 73-85% of all the European trade in your country, everyone wants you to remain under their control and continue being their milk cow."

Only a devoted, committed & trained Marxist will insist that "real reasons" were entirely different from what people said at the time.

DiogenesLamp: "Also John Brown was a wool merchant, and as such his product directly competed with cotton.
He went bankrupt twice, and he was financed by wool merchants in Massachusetts who stood to make a huge amount of money if the cotton industry suddenly blew up for some reason."

John Brown's competition was not cotton, it was other global wool producers from the US to Scotland to Spain & New Zealand.
Brown's second bankruptcy came from his trip to England where he learned those buyers would not pay him extra for wool they could get in better quality at lower prices elsewhere.
It was not about cotton.

And none of Brown's "Secret Six" supporters came from the wool industry.

DiogenesLamp: "So John Brown and his backers had a vested financial interest in disrupting the cotton industry, though you never hear anyone mention this bit."

They don't mention it because it's ludicrous.
None of Brown's "Secret Six" came from wool.
And many years before Brown got into wool, he was an abolitionist with a "station" on the Underground Railroad in Northwestern Pennsylvania.
Brown's abolitionism predates his wool employment and when wool failed him, he simply returned to his roots & first love -- abolition.

democrats have been notorious liars for a long, long time.

Breckinridge’s legal talents also embroiled him in a political conspiracy.

When General Winfield Scott seized the port of Veracruz and captured Mexico City, he became a national hero. Scott made no secret of his presidential ambitions.

Major General Gideon J. Pillow, a Democrat and Polk’s former law partner, feared that Scott’s popularity would lead to Polk’s defeat in the next election.

To poison Scott’s record, Pillow manufactured letters and reports, giving himself credit for Scott’s victories.

When Scott brought charges in early 1848, Breckinridge agreed to defend Pillow.

The trial became a newspaper sensation, making Breckinridge a national figure as journalists chronicled his monthlong cross-examination of witnesses.

The court-martial concluded without reaching a verdict.

DiogenesLamp: "Where did they get the money to buy European goods?
Only 27% (at most) could have come from their own sales to Europe.
Didn't the other 73% (at least) have to somehow come from Southern production?"

You repeat that endlessly, but it's still a lie, always will be.
The Cotton Confederacy produced 50% of US exports in 1860, the other 50% came from Union states & regions.
And for every dollar Southerners exported, they "imported" a dollar of Northern goods.
That's where the money came from to pay for those huge New York import numbers.

DiogenesLamp: "How much of that value was the consequence of protectionist laws that caused the South to have to buy those products at the inflated prices at which they were sold?
What would have been the value of those products if European machinery had been purchased in their stead?"

I've long said DiogenesLamp is a Marxist, but the truth here is he's worse than just Marxist, he's a globalist Democrat -- let's rip the manufacturing jobs off Americans and send them around the world to who knows where, right?

Really, why wouldn't DiogenesLamp work to elect Hillary?
That was her plan exactly -- typical Democrat.

Republicans, like our Whig & Federalist predecessors, want to put Americans first and Make America Great with our own manufacturing.

DiogenesLamp: "What would have been the consequences to these manufacturers if the South had opened up the doors to European versions of similar products to the entire Midwest regions?
You want to talk about a powerful incentive for Northern manufacturers to go to war?
There it is."

Pure fantasy, though at least expressed by some at the time.
But it could never happen unless Confederates eliminated all tariffs on imports arriving in, say, New Orleans -- and that no Confederate ever even imagined.

What Confederates needed was tariffs high enough to pay their bills, and so they started off with the old US Tariff of 1856 rates.
By the time they revised those rates in late 1861 the Union blockade had begun to take hold and so it's impossible to say what those revised rates averaged.
For certain, it was not zero, which would have been required to unleash the nightmare scenario, fantasized by DiogenesLamp, of Confederate "free trade".

But what DiogenesLamp posts here is never the truth

What people believe they went to war for is not necessarily the reason they went to war. An enemy has to be defined in terms the people can define. We went to war with Germany because Japan bombed Pearl Harbor right? Why did we Attack Iraq for the Trade Center Buildings when there wasn't a single Iraqi involved? Wars are often fought under pretexts that have no basis in fact but the people are manipulated to believe them else they may refuse to enter. Generals or politicians may have stated reasons for what they do or don't do, one version is too rouse the people, the other may be to secure their position or fortune.

Heck as I recall WW II was fought for God and Apple Pie.

DiogenesLamp: "According to the Declaration of Independence, they had a right to independence for any reason they saw fit.
They don't have to justify why they wanted to leave."

Sphinx: "I will buy that as long as you will also acknowledge that the self-same Declaration of Independence proclaims "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as inalienable, God-given rights of men..."

Sorry, but you should never "buy" anything posted by DiogenesLamp because it's virtually all lies.
In this particular case DiogenesLamp claims the Declaration of Independence asserts an unlimited "right of secession" at pleasure -- meaning for any reasons whatever or indeed, for no particular reason.
That's false.

Instead, the 1776 Declaration is extraordinarily clear and consistent in saying it's driven by necessity from "a long chain of abuses and usurpations", which it itemizes in great detail.
So there was nothing at pleasure about the Declaration, and there was nothing necessary in the first 1860s declarations of secession.

DiogenesLamp pretends otherwise because he knows the truth would shut him right up.

DiogenesLamp: "A lot of people assert it is a "requirement" to list the causes, but the Declaration of Independence does not in fact say that.
It says "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
But not a requirement for exercising the right of independence."

But Confederates had no objections to listing their reasons, they did so frequently & openly in published documents.
Not one of those documents established the necessity asserted by Founders as their justification for Independence.

No Founder ever proposed or supported an unlimited "right of secession" at pleasure and yet that is just what 1860 Fire Eaters did, and DiogenesLamp attempts to defend, usually by lying about it.

You are right, and wrong in my opinion.

Everything in the development of ideas is building blocks, one on another.

No Lincoln was not what we’d call a “progressive”, though to achieve his aims he took unprecedented powers unto himself without consulting Congress, and only getting their acquiescence after the fact when he needed to.

But everything about a growing federal power is not demonstrated in dollars and sense (as you try to assume), and is often expressed most in governing philosophy.

Yes, for another thirty years after Lincoln presidents are more restrained than Lincoln as to federal power and ambition tied to it. It was also a time when much political attention as to federal powers was expended on reconstruction, most (not all) of the continental consolidation of the united states, native American issues, and foreign policy issues - mostly with Spain and Latin America. But it was during those thirty years and under the conditions during them that the leading lights of the progressives were born and came into their own.

You have to go back to wherefrom the progressives took their philosophy of the supremacy of the federal government in domestic affairs. Progressivism and the idea of government by the experts enters American politics officially in 1890, not 1936.

By the turn of the century it is a full blown movement in politics, law and education. Wilson - 1914 - thought there was no difference between socialism and democracy. That idea did not just spring into Wilson’s mind from nowhere in 1914.

The founder of progressive education, John Dewey was born in 1859, and by 1904 he is beginning his career in establishing his philosophy of “progressive” education. Olver Wendall Holmes fought in the Civil War and obtains most of his education afterwards. He was no intellectual stranger to Lincoln and his presidency. He was influenced during and after his education by thinkers who also influenced many progressives. Teddy Roosevelt, a Progressive, appoints Oliver Wendall Holmes to the Supreme Court. Holmes becomes one of FDRs defenders on the expansion of the regulatory state.

No Lincoln was no direct progenitor of progressivism.

But ideas are not merely the result of other ideas alone, but have some origins in the actions of others, events in which others played a major role, what those leaders in the events said, believed & wrote, conditions resulting from those events, and ideas born of thinking about those conditions. No it is not a straight line from Lincoln to FDR. And no we cannot say that Lincoln even foreshadowed FDR.

But we can see the philosophical trails and branches from the end of the civil war - and within the conditions that then prevailed - up to the opening of the 1900s, and they include - all along - trends leading to and eventually including progressivism.

Tejas Rob: "The biggest problem with the Civil War was that there was no plan in place afterwards concerning what to do with the freed slaves.

DiogenesLamp: "That's because they had never planned to free them in the first place.
That became a war tactic in 1863, and it was meant to damage Southern efforts to get recognition from other countries as well as provoke slave desertions and insurrections."

No, not 1863 -- "contraband of war" first became an issue early in war, spring of 1861.
During the war emancipation became an ever bigger issue which the Union responded to, in part, by hiring or enlisting hundreds of thousands of escaped slaves.
Hundreds of thousands more escaped slaves were sheltered in over 100 "Contraband camps".

Tejas Rob: "Thousands of people without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out were left to their own accord, which caused chaos for decade upon decade, and we are still paying for that today."

Certainly not "for decade upon decade" because all of the chaos, such as it may have been, ended abruptly in 1876, when Union troops were forced to withdraw from former Confederate states and Southern whites reestablished political & social control, effectively nullifying the 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments for the next nearly 100 years.

Compared to 1860 US cotton production rose 20% by 1870, 30% by 1880, 50% by 1890 and today is roughly five times greater.
So the Southern economy did not permanently collapse.

DiogenesLamp: "I have read that huge numbers died of starvation, exposure and disease in the after math of the war. Others tell me these claims are made up, but it seems reasonable to me to believe that people tossed out of their existing lives might very well have had a hard time of it."

For certain, everyone had "a hard time of it", but there is no record of large numbers dying from starvation or abuse.
The simple reason is that while many did leave to find their relatives & friends sold away, most simply stayed where they were and continued life as it had been until different arrangements were made -- i.e., share cropping.

DiogenesLamp: "And this "expansion of slavery" theory is quite prominent among them.
I used to believe it until I looked at the facts."

No, DiogenesLamp has never read "the facts", he's only ever drank the Lost Cause Kool-Aid.
In fact, expanding slavery was a real live issue in the 1850s over which blood was spilled in Kansas and the Supreme Court weighed in with Dred Scott.

The fact is that many/most Northerners generally hated slavery and wanted to see it gradually abolished in states like Missouri & Maryland, and opposed slavery's expansion into Kansas, Nebraska or New Mexico.

That Southerners wanted to expand is also clear, hence the bloodshed in Kansas, and their failure in Kansas also enhanced the appeals of secessionist Fire Eaters for a new direction.

DiogenesLamp: "Now I recognize it is just propaganda to justify the real motivation for containing the Southern states representation in congress."

Northern Democrats were entirely sympathetic to Southern interests and until 1858 Democrats held majorities in both Houses of Congress, plus the Presidency & Supreme Court.
In 1858 they lost the House, but still dominated other branches.
So slavers were never totally dependent on just their own votes, they always had huge numbers of Northern allies.

DiogenesLamp: "Judges should not interpret law differently than it was intended when it was lawfully created, and Federal Marshals should be required to enforce Federal law, even if it is law they don't like."

No violations of Constitutional Law were required to overturn Crazy Roger Taney's Dred Scot opinions.
Just some normal human sanity would do that job.

As for Federal Marshalls and Fugitive Slaves, there were no "personal liberty laws" in Northern states closest to the South -- meaning New York west all the way to Iowa.
In those states Federal Marshalls continued to enforce the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, so far as we know, up until the Civil War.
And Judge Andrew Napolitano even claims Lincoln enforced the Fugitive Slave Act until the end of the Civil War!

It's not true, but what is certainly true is that Lincoln had no intentions in 1860 to stop Federal Marshalls from enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act.

I had never read Rhett’s address before. Thank you for recommending it. BTW, the full title is “The Address of the people of South Carolina, assembled in Convention, to the people of the Slaveholding States of the United States”. Not a great start for a document you claim proves that Secession wasn’t due to slavery.

It does address the taxation issue, after a couple of paragraphs of intro and background. However, by the time you get to paragraph 9, it rapidly becomes about the issue of slavery. From then on, for the rest of the document (roughly half of the total), the talk is mainly of slavery, with nary a mention of taxes and tariffs.

So, I hardly think that this document proves that secession was primarily about money, I think it rather proves that it was mainly about slavery.

Interestingly enough, this document was addressed to the other slaveholding (his word, not mine) states. When you look at the document South Carolina addressed to the North, and the rest of the world, they only mentioned slavery and not tariffs or taxes. Kind of tells you what they wanted the world to think their primary cause of secession was, doesn’t it?

In fact, when you read all of the Articles of Secession from the states, or those who actually mentioned a cause, 100% of them mentioned slavery.

So, I stand by my contention that the primary cause of secession was slavery.

DiogenesLamp quoting:

"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."

If the alleged quote is even real (I can't find it), it could represent exaggerated fears of Northern Democrats that their erstwhile political & economic Southern Democrat partners would gain an upper hand over them.

But such fears were never realistic because no Confederate ever considered making the Confederacy a "free trade" zone, and that would be required to create an economic advantage to importing through, for example, New Orleans.
That's because as soon as they put any tariffs on Confederate imports, the tariffs would eliminate all economic advantage of using the Mississippi River versus New York based transportation.

DiogenesLamp quoting:

"Finally, the great inland waterways, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers, will be subject to Southern tolls."

And any such tolls would make using Confederate ports for Union imports totally cost prohibitive.

Bottom line: these quotes in no way explain why Republicans wanted to preserve the Union, but they may help explain why Northern Democrats were willing, however reluctantly & hesitatingly, to support the Republican war efforts.

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