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.

[DoodleDawg]

One thing is for certain, I have never seen a group of people so secure in their imaginary world and so convinced of their imaginary figures as DiogenesLamp, FLT-bird, jeffersondem, and the rest of the Lost Causers around here.

[ek_hornbeck]

My point was not that secession was not controversial in the South - obviously it was, as some Southerners fought for the union.

My point is that almost nobody of sound mind in the north was willing to die or risk death for the sake of ending slavery. Those that fought willingly did so to preserve the union, not to "free the slaves," and rightly so. People today have so bought into the narrative of slavery as "America's original sin" and its abolition as the driving force of the Union cause that they retroject this sentiment back to 1861.

[DoodleDawg]

I picked this factoid up quite a while ago. Delaware refused to ratify the 13th Amendment in 1865, and did not ratify it until 1901.

Kentucky didn't ratify until 1976 and Mississippi didn't ratify until 2013.

[rockrr]

People today have so bought into the narrative of slavery as "America's original sin" and its abolition as the driving force of the Union cause that they retroject this sentiment back to 1861.

So far as I can tell from the posts, no one here is claiming this - or believes it to be true. I do often see it cited by the pro-confederate side as a strawman.

[ek_hornbeck]

I guess you must have missed stinkpot-65’s posts, and those of similar ilk on this thread.

[OIFVeteran]

Trust me, you’ll never get a straight answer from him. He’s incapable of it. He is so set in his delusions that he can’t see anything else. I doubt he’s even read the secession documents the southern states go made. It’s best just to ignore him.

[BroJoeK]

ek_hornbeck: "There would have been no need for a draft, nor so many attempts to evade it, if fighting the civil war were as uncontroversial among northerners as you claim it to be."

In both numbers and percent there were fewer Civil War Union Army draftees than during either First or Second World Wars.
Also fewer than the Confederate Army.
So if that's your measure of controversy, then the Civil War was less controversial than the one our Greatest Generation fought, right?

ek_hornbeck: "A good deal of reluctance stemmed from the fact that (especially towards the end) it was perceived as a war on behalf of liberating slaves rather than preserving the union. "

It's true that Northern Copperhead Democrats opposed the Emancipation Proclamation and expected to gain seats in Congress from it.
And Democrats did gain 28 House of Representative seats in 1862.
So Lincoln paid a political price for his Emancipation, right?
Well, not really.
Those 28 lost seats were fewer than lost by the in-power party in any mid-term election of the previous 20 years, and at the same time Republicans gained five Senate seats.
So 1862 resembled most the most recent mid-term election -- except in 1862 Republicans kept the House majority.
And as in 2018 the seats Democrats won back in 1862 were just those seats they unexpectedly lost in the previous election.
So there was no massive political change in 1862 from Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.

As for Army desertions, the percentages in Union & Confederate armies were roughly the same -- ~10% total during the war.
The number one state for desertions, New York, was also the biggest contributor of troops to the war, and arguably the largest number of Copperhead Democrats.
But even New York's desertion rate, total, was just 10%.
So it's not clear how any desertions can be blamed specifically on Lincoln's Emancipation.

ek_hornbeck: "Other than some foaming at the mouth radical abolitionists like Thaddeus Stevens (who were seen as clowns even in their own party), nobody wanted to sacrifice his life or that of his sons for “freeing the slaves.”
The Emancipation Proclamation added to that perception."

I have sometimes marveled at the vitriol Lost Causers focus on my fellow Pennsylvanian, from Lancaster County, Thaddeus Stevens.
Clearly, so much hatred could not be launched at a mere "clown", could it?
Of course not, because Stevens quickly became a highly influential Republican House of Representatives leader, largely responsible for such measures as the 1861 Confiscation Act, 1862 abolition in Washington, DC, and pushing Lincoln to issue his Emancipation.
Stephens was also instrumental in passing the 13th Amendment, among others.

But as for fighting to free the slaves, that became a Union marching song as early as 1862:

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on....

...In the beauty of the lilies[14] Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,[15]
While God is marching on."

So, many Union soldiers embraced the war to free the slaves and relatively few openly opposed it.

[OIFVeteran]

I don’t think anyone would argue that very few people in the north wanted to go to war to end slavery. Hardcore abolitionist numbers are hard to come by because there was no polling then. Numbers I’ve seen vary from 2%-10% based on memberships in abolitionist society’s.

There was however a very large percentage of northerners who saw slavery as wrong and wanted to see it ended. The Republican Party was founded in part on that proposition. However they didn’t want to go to war to end it. They wanted a return to the founders original intent and put it on the road to extinction.

Even this was to much for the slaveocracy. They didn’t just want to stop it from being out on the road to extinction, they wanted the world to acknowledge that it was a positive good. So they gambled it would be better protected in their own nation. They then lost it all.

Again, the thing that gets me is that there weren’t more abolitionist in America. In a supposedly “Christian nation” founded on the ideal of all men created equal it should have been 80-90% of the people wanting to end slavery by all means necessary.

[BroJoeK]

OifVeteran: "Again, the thing that gets me is that there weren’t more abolitionist in America.
In a supposedly “Christian nation” founded on the ideal of all men created equal it should have been 80-90% of the people wanting to end slavery by all means necessary."

Well... that's a Lost Cause talking point, but it's just not accurate.
The real truth is that 100% of Northerners wanted slavery abolished in their own states, and a solid majority wanted it abolished in Western territories.

But as for abolition in Southern states, 100% of Northerners understood there was no way to do that, period.
For decades, the Southern slave-power had threatened secession for even discussing abolition and most Northerners took them seriously.

So, for sake of Union, Northerners were still willing to tolerate slavery in the South, in hopes it might be eventually abolished just as it had been in their own states.
Bottom line: it's just not correct to say that Northerners didn't care about slavery, they did in their own states.
But in the South, Northerners cared more about their Union and wanted to see it preserved.

[rockrr]

With over 650 posts it is easy to miss something. So I went back and reviewed stinkerpot65's posts, beginning with his #23 and the others after it.

His #23 says:

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.

While perhaps a bit idealistic (especially within the context of events that transpired 150 years ago) the sentiment regarding slavery couldn't be truer. Other posters chimed in with the usual "but the north did it, too" bromides which, while containing an element of truth to them, neglect the salient point that unlike the confederates, "the north" didn't go to war to defend the Peculiar Institution.

Bottom line - I do not see any posts from stinkerpot65 that claim that the north considered slavery the driving force behind the war.

[x]

There were two varieties of cotton in 19th century America. Sea Island cotton had fewer seeds but could only be grown in a few areas. Upland cotton could be grown across the Deep South, but had enough seeds that it was hard to process before the cotton gin.

Without the cotton gin, cotton-growing areas would have been much smaller and the labor involved in de-seeding the crop would be much greater. So the price of cotton would have been higher and it wouldn't have the advantages over wool and linen and hemp that it did after Eli Whitney's invention. Under those circumstances, Cotton would have looked a lot less Kingly than the cotton gin made it.

But the cotton gin wasn't that complicated an invention. If Whitney didn't make it work, somebody else would have.

[DiogenesLamp]

I never get my head handed to me. I usually end up whipping the @$$ of anyone who tries to get into this topic with me.

What you people are seeing is your own self delusion. You think you are winning only because your minds won't let you grasp what I am telling you.

[x]

"Slavery is not the cause of the rebellion .... Slavery is the pretext on which the leaders of the rebellion rely, 'to fire the Southern Heart' and through which the greatest degree of unanimity can be produced.... Mr. Calhoun, after finding that the South could not be brought into sufficient unanimity by a clamor about the tariff, selected slavery as the better subject for agitation." North American Review (Boston October 1862)

That is a long and strange article. For somebody who downplays slavery in this paragraph, the author spends a lot of ink writing about slavery (and a little about the tariff) earlier in the article. But it looks like he's writing to oppose the "ultra abolitionists" who, seeing slavery as the cause of the war, supported the abolition of slavery as a war measure. Saying that the war wasn't about slavery but about ambitious politicians and their intrigues allows the writer to reject emancipation.

Notice, though, a few sentences after the quote, when he says: "If the nullification of 1832 had become an active rebellion, the tariff would not have been the cause of the war, but only a pretext for it." So the author isn't saying that it was all about economics, rather it was all about ambitious intriguers, and that the tariff was just another issue they could use to manipulate the masses. Sometimes it's true that personal ambitions start wars. World War II may be example. I don't think he's entirely wrong about the role of political ambition and intrigue, but to see the actual issue that divided the country as a mere pretext is to miss a lot.

[BroJoeK]

OIFVeteran: "In fact the south took the opposite path.
They went from the founding fathers generation of slave owners who knew slavery was wrong and incompatible with “all men are created equal”.
Who may not have had the courage to say it in public but many did express it privately in their letters.
To the 1840s and after slave owners (and even none slave owning southerners) who proclaimed slavery a positive good."

Exactly right, and that is the heart of the great bait-and-switch of Southern slaveholders from 1787 to roughly 1840.
Being Democrats of course they didn't admit to changing, instead they blamed Northerners for suddenly becoming hostile to slavery.
But it wasn't Northerners who changed, they were hostile in 1787 and still hostile in 1840.
It was Southern slaveholders who went from agreeing that slavery should be abolished, gradually, to open hostility to any such suggestions.

Northerners were conflicted on the subject of Southern slavery -- Northern Democrats remained Doughfaced & loyal to their Southern allies while Northern abolitionists slowly gained enough political support to form their own party, Republicans.
Republicans were the first party in our history to openly oppose slavery and the results were immediate & dramatic threats of secession by Southern slaveholders.

[jmacusa]

Sure you do. Keep telling yourself that dude. Keep defending the losers of a war that ended over one hundred and fifty years. How’s the Aspergers doing by the way?

[DiogenesLamp]

1 - It was NOT a war fleet. We KNOW what the orders were, and their orders were to function ONLY in a defensive mode.

You want to believe that. The clear truth is that the Confederates were never going to allow those ships to reinforce that fort. Lincoln knew it. His entire cabinet knew it. Major Anderson in Fort Sumter knew it. Everyone in the f***ing world knew it, and so the orders always were going to require the use of force, and it was *GOING* to start a war.

You don't want to believe that Lincoln intentionally started this war, because that runs counter to the beliefs you wish to hold about this being those D@mn slaveowners' fault instead of Saint Lincoln.

Lincoln deliberately started that war. He fully knew and realized this action would trigger that war, and he committed the nation to the bloodshed this war would leave because he needed to control the South's economics and he badly underestimated what was going to happen next.

2 - Lincoln sent a letter to South Carolina. They didn’t need spies because Lincoln didn’t HIDE anything.

Look up Lieutenant David Dixon Porters' secret orders to take command of the Powhatan, which completely paralyzed the strike mission.

Didn' hide anything my @$$!

Had the Confederates known that this mission was in fact a fake mission and those ships never would have attacked, it is quite likely that they would have waited out Anderson and taken the fort without bombarding it.

Lincoln made certain that no one was to know of what the Powhatan was doing because both the Union navy and the Confederates believed it was going to show up in Charleston and take command of the assembled ships of war.

But Lincoln made certain that nobody knew about this little stunt he was pulling, because if everyone knew that nothing was going to happen, the history would have turned out quite different.

You may not know this, but Lincoln was a dirty tricks politician of the most clever sort. If you had read about some of his other stunts he pulled in politics, you wouldn't be at all surprised that he would pull a stunt with the Powhatan that he did.

3 - The South CHOSE to attack. They didn’t have to. They decided to start the war. It isn’t open to discussion. THEY FIRED THE FIRST SHOTS!

Lincoln and Lincoln alone started that war. He did so deliberately and he is the only one that had a motive for starting that war.

He knew full well that sending those ships would cause a war, and he sent those ships because he was absolutely going to have that war he needed to keep economic control over the South. Under no circumstances was normalized trade with Europe ever going to be allowed, because it would destroy his financial backers and wreck the North financially.

You just want to believe the made up bulsh*t we've all been fed ever since birth. You just want to believe the pleasant myth you've been taught, and you have absolutely no interest in seeing events as the really were.

[x]

Other than some foaming at the mouth radical abolitionists like Thaddeus Stevens (who were seen as clowns even in their own party), nobody wanted to sacrifice his life or that of his sons for “freeing the slaves.”

There were idealists who didn't mind the idea of dying for the country and for freedom, and they weren't necessarily "radical abolitionists." Not everyone was an idealist of course, and after the war, many of the idealists turned cynical as they grew older.

[BroJoeK]

NKP_Vet quoting: "The official story that the war was about the South’s desire to protect and expand slavery and the North’s determination to abolish it is not merely an error in academic history.
The evidence against it has not been ignored so much as it has been suppressed.
It had to be suppressed because it contradicts the legitimizing myth of the centralized nationalist regime that emerged after the war.
Having been repeated so often it has come to be believed because of repetition.”
Robert Penn Warren

Years ago, as a young man I was told I should revere Robert Penn Warren, but somehow never quite got around to it.
Your quote here suggests something of why.
Like many slavery-minimizers, apparently Warren looked at the fact that slavery had nothing directly to do with Fort Sumter or Lincoln's call-up of 75,000 troops to suppress the rebellion, and so Warren says in effect: "see, see, no slavery, not about slavery, nope, nope, nothing to see, no slaves here, move along, move along."

But secession was all about slavery and Civil War quickly raised slavery issues, beginning in Spring 1861 with "contraband of war".
Contraband lead to paid black workers, the 1861 Confiscation Act, 1862 Emancipation, 1863 enlistments of colored regiments and from 1864 on: 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments.
Those were all about slavery, even if Fort Sumter wasn't.

You disagree?

[DiogenesLamp]

So, I asked Why did the South secede? You answered by saying “If a man has Freedom of Speech, what opinions are so bad that he can be denied the right to speak them”. How, in any reasonable universe is this poor excuse for a Zen koan an answer? I would like you to respond, in clear English, Why did the South secede. It’s a simple question, and deserves a simple answer.

Money. I think i've answered this a dozen times. Why did the North invade? Money. Why did the South secede? Money.

It was all about who was going to control the slave produced money. Both the North and the South wanted that money, and that is exactly what the war was about.

Money. Money. Money.

I don’t see why I should pay attention to those four states instead of the other 7 states. Since when do four states represent a majority in a coalition of 11?”

So, I will turn it back on you. Why can you ignore these four states?

Well firstly because they are a minority, and secondly because I don't really accept what people say at face value. You may find this hard to believe, but people will lie about their real motives for doing something, especially in politics.

Economics tells the true story, and what the financial numbers clearly show is that the South was going to make a fortune off of being independent, and the North was going to lose an @$$load of money to the South.

All else is just blather and noise. Money is the reason slavery existed in the first place, and money is the reason why the South wanted to leave, and Money is the reason why the North was intent on stopping them.

The First f***ing thing the North did was to throw up a Naval blockade all around the South. Hello? The whole F***ing war was mostly *LAND BATTLES* and the blockade did very little to affect the military portion of the war.

The blockade was totally about economics. It was not done for military reasons, it was done for financial reasons.

They claimed it? They did more than claimed it. They flat out stated it.

Sure, that small minority of states claimed it, but as I said people lie. Slavery was in absolutely no danger from remaining in the Union. The only change was going to be where the slave produced money ended up. With those states in the Union, the bulk of the slave production money ended up in New York and Washington DC. With independence, the bulk of that money would end up in New Orleans, Charleston, Mobile, and other southern port cities.

if slavery wasn’t the real reason why would they state it in their official documents?

Why would that teeny tiny minority of relatively unimportant states mention it in their official documents? To throw people off in figuring out the financial screwing the North was going to get when the South handled it's own trade with Europe without the US laws driving all of it's profits through New York and Washington DC.

One of the Northern newspapers figured it out.

"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...."

18 March 1861, the Boston Transcript

[DiogenesLamp]

You can't fool me with your attempts at gaslighting. I know what was going on in the War, (money) and I know I consistently win these exchanges. Trying to tell me otherwise is just a waste of my time and yours.

The Civil War was a money war in which the same bastards we are fighting today, (New York crony capitalists and "establishment" "deep state" government) was the same bastards the South was fighting back then.

And it's still only about money. 20 trillion in debt because the money spending system of government is how these evil F***ers in New York and Washington DC get rich off the rest of our backs.

We are now the slaves for Washington DC and New York.