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.

[Pikachu_Dad]

Interesting !

“Thomas struggled with the decision but opted to remain with the United States. His Northern-born wife probably helped influence his decision. In response, his family turned his picture against the wall, destroyed his letters, and never spoke to him again. (During the economic hard times in the South after the war, Thomas sent some money to his sisters, who angrily refused to accept it, declaring they had no brother.)[2”
...

On June 18, his former student and fellow Virginian, Confederate Col. J.E.B. Stuart, wrote to his wife, “Old George H. Thomas is in command of the cavalry of the enemy. I would like to hang, hang him as a traitor to his native state.”[25]

Nevertheless, as the Civil War carried on, he won the affection of Union soldiers serving under him as a “soldier’s soldier”, who took to affectionately referring to Thomas as “Pap Thomas”.[26]”

[BroJoeK]

itsahoot: "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."

Sure, but if you go searching for alleged "real reasons" you still have to begin with those expressed by people at the time.
You can't just fantasize according to your Marxist ideology and then impose your imaginings onto historical characters.

In the examples of "Reasons for Secession" documents, they all speak mainly of slavery, though some mention other complaints too, primarily taxes.
None say anything about "Northeastern power brokers" or "money flows from Europe" or unfair laws that route trade through New York -- that's all just nonsense.

You mentioned other wars -- WWII & Iraq -- and in each case you can make a list of logical reasons, but in both the obvious reasons are the most compelling.
In WWII we were attacked at Pearl Harbor and wanted to help out our British & French allies (among others) in Europe, especially after Hitler declared war on the US.
In Iraq II there seemed to be weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a brutal dictator who appeared to threaten their use on his own people, as well as others.
Sure, today everybody mocks that, but at the time it was totally bipartisan, including a Democrat Senator from New York named Clinton.

But one thing Iraq was not was over oil or money.
So far as we know, the US spent $ trillions on Iraq and seemingly got nothing for it.

That's why today we have a president who's promised to put an end to such foolishness.

[mrsmith]

My first sentence is misleading (though you enjoyed it so much LOL!)

Actually, as context in my reply shows, It’s futile to argue over a “cause”.
If slavery is not “the cause” other “causes” are mostly secondary or tertiary results from a slave economy.

Britains’s abolition efforts are a shining example of Man doing good. But it sure was hell on the US.

[itsahoot]

You can't just fantasize according to your Marxist ideology and then impose your imaginings onto historical characters.

You can't read people at all if you think I have Marxists views. I have been around long enough to know that the official version of events bares little resemblance to the truth.

The Principal's kid didn't really get involved he was just there, Ted Kennedy didn't really run away from Marry Joe, Sirhan Sirhan acted totally alone and so did Lee Harvey, and Jack Ruby was so overcome with grief, he couldn't help him self.

Get a Grip History is great if only it were true.

[HiTech RedNeck]

I believe it’s got to be time for confession by American Christendom that when they annexed a state philosophy to it, that philosophy fell short. Sins are corrected and forgiven in Christendom, but it is a unique private arrangement that transcends the state.

I am a very blue shade of sad about what happened. Now Christendom has the challenge of being the messenger to elevate the sights of modern American Negro population of slave ancestry. To try to undo the situation literally wouldn’t even mean a place like Liberia — it would be to replant populations in the various areas of Africa from which they came. Is this impractical? Yes. So is it possible to move forward to a promised land? Yes. But that land exists beyond our mortal world and can only be seen by faith from earth now.

[NKP_Vet]

“They’re not, they’re partisan political Democrat Lost Cause lies.”

No more reliable republicans voting states that the former Confederate states. You see Southerners were states rights, God-fearing conservatives in the middle of the 18th Century the same way they are today. YankeeLand was liberal land. Big government, bleeding heart liberals that thought Southerners were not as smart as a Yankee, and in that regard not much has changed in the last 150 years.

[nathanbedford]

https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/cotton-gin-patent

[nathanbedford]

Recently, professor Paul Finkleman argued in the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities that the common perception of slavery as a dying institution before the cotton gin’s invention is misguided. “Slaves were a profitable investment before the cotton gin and an even more profitable investment after its invention,” he wrote in 2013.

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-cotton-gin-a-game-changing-social-and-economic-invention

[wardaddy]

Nice shot NKP

Bro will need some iodine gauze and a lortab

[stinkerpot65]

All true, but it doesn’t matter whether the North had pure motives, or how the war started, or the politics, or the money.

Bottom line is that treating human beings like cattle is evil, and anyone who excuses it is equally evil.

[NKP_Vet]

We are in the middle of a culture war in the US. The socialists have pitted each culture against the other. It’s all they talk about , think about, report on. It fills their heads 24 hours a day. They tear down monuments , they vandalize them, they even desecrate sacred grave sites. They seek Chaos. Up to this point the Confederate things have been the target, but that’s changing. They are coming after our founding fathers now. They use PC and victimhood to get the different traditional American cultures fighting one another. America is a land of many cultures that combine for an American culture. The American wAy is for each to respect the other, and when the crap hits the fan we fight together. They want to prevent that by making us hate each other. The South as in 1861 just asks to be left alone. Respect our culture and our forefathers. Leave our symbols and monuments alone. That’s all we ask. They know that. They know we stand in their way to a Godless, Secular, Socialist Government for the elite. But they are mistaken if they think we will not fight for what we think they can not take from us. Our Rights are given by God not government. For our Individual liberty we will and always fight !

[DoodleDawg]

Lincoln's biggest political mistake was the emancipation proclamation. He turned a war that was seen (rightly) by most people as a fight to preserve the union into a conflict over the slavery issue. Most people in the north and a minority but not insignificant number in the south were willing to fight and die to preserve the union, or to send their sons to do the same. Not many, no matter how repugnant they found slavery, would do the same.

I think you are overstating that. In 1864 the three year enlistments ran out. They Union army could have melted away to nothing, and I have to believe that if the majority of the troops thought the war was about slavery then a good part of it would have. Instead the overwhelming majority of the troops reenlisted, those who were fighting to preserve the Union reenlisted for that reason and those who were fighting to end slavery reenlisted for that reason. And the army remained and went on to defeat the Confederacy.

[DoodleDawg]

Forcibly conscripted men going to war solely to end involuntary servitude has always struck me as an odd thing to believe anyway.

And forcibly conscripting men solely to preserve involuntary servitude makes more sense? The Confederacy enacted conscription in the spring of 1862. At the same time they forcibly extended the enlistment of all the current soldiers for the duration of the war. After that point literally every Confederate soldier who fought, fought because they had to. Union soldiers could leave at the end of their enlistment, an option denied rebel soldiers.

[DoodleDawg]

We went to war with Germany because Japan bombed Pearl Harbor right?

We went to war with Germany because Germany declared war on the U.S., December 11, 1941. Which, I believe, is the only time Germany declared war on another country through any means other than invasion.

[RegulatorCountry]

The cognitive dissonance of believing that recent immigrants forcibly conscripted went to war to end slavery remains. It’s a peculiar belief no matter what sort of deflection or smokescreen you throw up.

[DoodleDawg]

The cognitive dissonance of believing that recent immigrants forcibly conscripted went to war to end slavery remains.

The popular myth that the Union army was made up largely of immigrants conscripted right off the boat is the result of people accepting Gangs of New York as a work of history. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of foreign-born immigrant soldiers had been in the U.S. before the rebellion broke out, and the fought for the same reason that native born Americans fought. Because they believed that this was their country too.

[RegulatorCountry]

Oh, they didn’t get forcibly conscripted, which later led to draft riots? That’s all fake news? Come now, you know that’s not a myth.

[itsahoot]

We went to war with Germany because Germany declared war on the U.S., December 11, 1941.

Well if that was the real reason why have we not went to war with Islam?

Wars like tax increases will always have justifications, the public one and the real one.

[Bull Snipe]

about 2.1 million men served in the Union Army during the War. Of that number about 4% were drafted and another 9% were paid substitutes. The balance, enlisted in the Union army. Demographically, about 1 million were white men born in the U.S., 210,000 were black free men or ex slaves and 920,000 were white men from countries outside of the U.S.

[x]

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.

Good point. But many voters owned a slave or two or hoped to own slaves in the future. Even though they weren't big beneficiaries of the system, they did aspire to succeed in it. Also, slaveowning politicians could play on the idea that if abolitionists or slave revolt freed the slaves of the rich, those slaves would attack other Whites as well.

Economic arguments could rope in city dwellers, but for many Southerners hostility towards the Yankee didn't really depend on economics. Fear and hatred were already there. The idea that the Yankee was ripping off the South did have much appeal to wealthy slaveowners themselves. People who already had a big stake in the system might have wondered whether they'd really be better off outside the US, and the idea that they would become much richer would have given them a big push towards secession.