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.

FLT-bird: "Completely wrong as usual.
You have nothing to contribute except an endless cycle of "nuh-uh" type posts."

So, you have nothing to contribute except a long list of lies, some of it concocted by the original Lost Causers, much of it of more recent manufacture.

In this particular case we are discussing Rhett's December 1860 Address to Slaveholding States, which you claim is all about taxes.
True enough, Rhett did mention taxes.
But he directed even more attention to slavery, for example, these words:

"The fairest portions of the world have been turned into wildernesses, and the most civilized and prosperous communities have been impoverished and ruined by Anti-Slavery fanaticism.
The people of the North have not left us in doubt as to their designs and policy.
United as a section in the late Presidential election, they have elected as the exponent of their policy one who has openly declared that all the States of the United States must be made Free States or Slave States.
It is true that among those who aided in this election, there are various shades of Anti-Slavery hostility.
But if African Slavery in the Southern States be the evil their political combinations affirm it to be, the requisitions of an inexorable logic must lead them to emancipation.
If it is right to preclude or abolish Slavery in a territory, why should it be allowed to remain in the States?"

Clearly the issue of slavery to Rhett is vastly more existential than whether tariffs should be 15% or 20%.
But our Lost Causers adamantly refuse to see even the words of their own Confederate ancestors if such words contradict Lost Cause fantasies.

The Lincoln myth crowd relies on generalities to back up their claims such as “the states” vs the truth like “some states” and MOST importantly they can not separate the term seccesion from the term war. Case in point it does not matter why a state left nor if they mentioned slavery or not it was legal and indeed the Corwin Amendment the north wanted and passed to entice the states to return made it LEGAL forever. And...secession is secession; it is NOT war. War is when you fully know if you send a resupply ship to a fort in a city’s harbor it will be shot at. War is doing this while one of your echelons tells the Virginia peace commission that you are going to have the soldiers exit.

War is getting your first shot then calling for 75,000 troops to invade and kill Americans. That is war; not secession.

Here's the real problem with various Lost Cause quotes:

Alleged quotes which do directly support Lost Cause fantasies turn out, on close inspection, to be of dubious provenance.
Genuine undisputed quotes don't actually say what Lost Causers claim they mean.

And the bottom line is simply this: if what a Lost Causer tells us were true, it would not be Lost Cause, but just history.
So anything specifically Lost Cause is, by definition, fake.

I am not going to read more regurgitation of the same teeny tiny minority of states that people wish to read as speaking for all of them because it suits their agenda. I’ve already told you that I think it was just blather to cover up their real reasons, and some Northern newspapers also realized this.

“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”. “

Boston Transcript, October 1862

I do find it very interesting that your argument has (in a manner of speaking) “evolved” from “nobody gave a sh*t about the slaves” to, “it was just a teeny tiny minority”. I take from this that you concede that some people clearly did give a sh*t about the slaves, even if, in your words, it was just a teeny tiny minority.

Not having a graduate degree in mathematics, I’m not sure what actual percentage would be considered “teeny tiny”, so I looked at various statistics. 4 out of 11 states is 36%, or over a third. Doesn’t seem “teeny tiny” but, again, not having that graduate degree in math, I’m not sure. So, let’s look at some other statistics. How about population? We’re talking about people, so maybe you were using the population statistics? According to the 1860 Census, these 4 states (South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas) constituted 35% of the Confederate Population. Again, doesn’t seem “teeny tiny”. How about land area? Nope. Those 4 states constituted 57% of the land area of the Confederacy, and that; definitely, is not “teeny tiny”. If you would be so kind to give me your definition of “teeny tiny” and what statistic you used to define this combination of states to be considered “teeny tiny”, I would be forever grateful. I would have used population myself, but not having that graduate mathematics degree, I will defer to your clearly superior knowledge. Interesting fact – the 11 states who seceded constituted 29% of the population of the country. Should the rest of the states not have listened to this “teeny tiny” minority of states?

As regards your quote from a Boston newspaper regarding the cause of the rebellion, I find it very interesting that you consider the words of one newspaper editor to be gospel, but discount the written word of 4 state legislatures. What makes one Bostonian’s word more believable that the combined legislatures of 4 states? Not sure of the exact definition of “cherry-picking” but I think this might be covered by that phrase.

Another point that’s been bothering me is your insistence that the southern legislatures were using slavery as blather to cover up their real intent. Why? I mean, revolting over unfair taxation was clearly a winning argument in 1776. Why did these legislatures think that it wouldn’t be in 1860? Why were they so ashamed about seceding over money issues that they thought it was necessary to hide it with the slavery issue? Did they think that the British Empire would say “you know, I’m totally supportive of the whole slavery thing (even though we outlawed it in the Empire in 1833), but they better not mention monetary issues, or there’s no way we can support them.”

Team Cuda: "I do find it very interesting that your argument has (in a manner of speaking) “evolved” from “nobody gave a sh*t about the slaves” to, “it was just a teeny tiny minority” "

I think in such quotes DiogenesLamp is referring to Northerners who for some reason he wishes to believe hated African Americans as much as, or indeed more than, Southerners did.
So the now "tenet-tiny minority" means Northern abolitionists.
And that's not totally false, but it is misleading, typically.
The fact is that Northern populations of Freed blacks were growing rapidly and in some Northern states they qualified to vote.

And there is no case I know of of Northern freed blacks returning to a Southern state to "feel the love".

So you fault me for only finding 4 examples of states that seceded because of slaver, and you state that North Carolina and Virginia clearly seceded because they saw Federal Power as having become dictatorial.

I went back and read North Carolina’s Article of Secession. It’s short enough that I decided to show it in it’s entirety. It reads:

AN ORDINANCE to dissolve the union between the State of North Carolina and the other States united with her, under the compact of government entitled “The Constitution of the United States.”

We, the people of the State of North Carolina in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That the ordinance adopted by the State of North Carolina in the convention of 1789, whereby the Constitution of the United States was ratified and adopted, and also all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly ratifying and adopting amendments to the said Constitution, are hereby repealed, rescinded, and abrogated.

We do further declare and ordain, That the union now subsisting between the State of North Carolina and the other States, under the title of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved, and that the State of North Carolina is in full possession and exercise of all those rights of sovereignty which belong and appertain to a free and independent State.

Done in convention at the city of Raleigh, this the 20th day of May, in the year of our Lord 1861, and in the eighty-fifth year of the independence of said State.

So, where in this document does it clearly say that they are seceding because they saw Federal power as being dictatorial? I’m afraid I can’t find it, but I’m sure you will show me where it CLEARLY says that’s why they seceded. Or, are we back to “they didn’t give the real reasons in their official documents because..reasons”?

I read the Virginia Articles as well. Little longer so I won’t post in their entirety. There is a line that supports your position (see - I agreed when you were right - you might try that sometime). The line says: “the Federal Government having perverted said powers not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slave-holding States”. Not sure I would say this one line CLEARLY states that they seceded due to the dictatorial powers of the federal government but, there you are. Isn’t is interesting that even when they are complaining about the overreach of the Federal Government, they talk about them doing it to the slave-holding states? One might think that the overreach they complain about had something to do with slavery. Curious.

FLT-bird: "Notice how pissed BroJoe gets when you point out the truth to him.....ie that his side was the one in favor of big government and high taxes "

Except it's not true, it's just another lie you guys tell each other.
The truth is you voted solidly for Big Government & free stuff under Wilson, under FDR and even for the Illinois socialist Adlai Stevenson.
You only stopped voting Democrat when you finally figured out who was going to pay and who was going to benefit.
Then, suddenly big government didn't look so sweet and now you became conservatives.

Nothing wrong with that, better late than never and welcome to the more conservative party.
Just don't give us a load of cr*p about how you were always the real conservatives, because you just weren't.

I started out questioning the official narrative when I kept noticing things about the Civil War that just didn't make any sense. I finally realized the official narrative is simply incompatible with demonstrable facts. We have a "deep state" now pushing this "Russian Collusion" bullsh*t, and I now realize the buearacracy was pushing the equivalent of "Russian Collusion" about the war. Yes, they made up some bullsh*t, and they got the public to believe it because they control the media, same then as now.

The thing is, even a generation ago most of those even in Academia didn't buy this BS. Hell, in the mid 70s the Congress voted almost unanimously....yes including Joe Biden to restore Lee's citizenship and honor him. The whole "it was all about slavery" narrative is a RECENT invention of PC Revisionists......the same Leftists in Academia Yankeefa claims to abhor otherwise.

Doodledawg: " Eminent domain doesn't allow states to seize federal property any more than it allows the federal government to seize state property." DiogenesLamp: "And this is exactly why all the British forts in 1776 still remain in British hands today!" FLT-bird: "Derp! He walked right into that one." DiogenesLamp: "DoodleDawg is a "she", and yes she did! :) " Well... first, DoodleDawg's gender is neither stipulated, nor a fact in evidence, nor relevant here. So "he" is acceptable unless requested otherwise. Second, DoodleDawg's point is totally valid and DiogenesLamp's response a total non-sequitur. When governments seize properties from other governments those are acts of aggression & war having nothing lawful to do with "eminent domain". Third, Lost Causers' biggest problem with their legalistic claims of "eminent domain" at Fort Sumter & dozens of other Federal properties is simply that no actual Confederate claimed it at the time. In no case was any pretense of legal process followed before seizing Federal properties -- many even before a state declared secession, nothing remotely legal about it. So those claims we see on these threads of "eminent domain" are just Democrats doing what Democrats do -- inventing cr*p out of thin air to explain the inexplicable and defend the indefensible.

Blah Blah Blah Blah, as always you have nothing to say.

FLT-bird: "We have warned them for years and years that the South's intellectual legacy is not limited to the mid 19th century. It goes right to the very heart of the founding of the Republic. For all their self congratulation, it was not New Englanders who provided the overwhelming majority of the intellectual force behind the Declaration of Independence or the US Constitution. It was Dixie. The Constitution is absolutely a product of the Southern mind." Not just the "Southern mind". The actual writers of the Constitution's drafts & final version did include Rutledge from SC, Randolph & Madison from Virginia, but also, Wilson from PA, Hamilton from NY, Ellsworth & Johnson from Connecticut, Gorham & King from Massachusetts and holding pen to paper, sometimes called "the rake who wrote the Constitution", Pennsylvania's Gouverneur Morris (Morris was then 35, single and we might say, a man about town. He, like Hamilton, was also closely allied to George Washington's views). George Washington was President of the 1787 Constitution Convention and James Madison is rightly credited as "Father of the Constitution", for his pivotal roles. Other Southerners contributed importantly to the Constitution as well, notably, the 3/5 rule & Fugitive Slave provision. So Southerners were indeed important, though there were plenty of others who also contributed. Regardless, the real story here is not how great Southerners were in 1787, but how far they fell by 1860. FLT-bird: "Had it been written by New Englanders it would have had a much more centralized and expansive federal government and no provisions for individual liberty." Sure, the South had it's fair share of anti-Federalists, but so did so did New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts & New Jersey. All objected because they thought the Constitution made Federal government too powerful.

LOL! Just as predicted. Your utter obsession would not permit you to avoid trying desperately to drag me in to your endless BS postings.

FLT-bird: "Completely wrong as usual. You have nothing to contribute except an endless cycle of "nuh-uh" type posts." So, you have nothing to contribute except a long list of lies, some of it concocted by the original Lost Causers, much of it of more recent manufacture. In this particular case we are discussing Rhett's December 1860 Address to Slaveholding States, which you claim is all about taxes. True enough, Rhett did mention taxes. But he directed even more attention to slavery, for example, these words: "The fairest portions of the world have been turned into wildernesses, and the most civilized and prosperous communities have been impoverished and ruined by Anti-Slavery fanaticism. The people of the North have not left us in doubt as to their designs and policy. United as a section in the late Presidential election, they have elected as the exponent of their policy one who has openly declared that all the States of the United States must be made Free States or Slave States. It is true that among those who aided in this election, there are various shades of Anti-Slavery hostility. But if African Slavery in the Southern States be the evil their political combinations affirm it to be, the requisitions of an inexorable logic must lead them to emancipation. If it is right to preclude or abolish Slavery in a territory, why should it be allowed to remain in the States?" Clearly the issue of slavery to Rhett is vastly more existential than whether tariffs should be 15% or 20%. But our Lost Causers adamantly refuse to see even the words of their own Confederate ancestors if such words contradict Lost Cause fantasies.

Oh Lookie here. Yet Again.

FLT-bird claiming Doodledawg says this: "nuh-uh...now go on a wild goose chase tracking down a million different sources while I sit back and claim any and every source you provide no matter how ironclad is somehow not good enough....ie trolling 101." Here's the real problem with various Lost Cause quotes: Alleged quotes which do directly support Lost Cause fantasies turn out, on close inspection, to be of dubious provenance. Genuine undisputed quotes don't actually say what Lost Causers claim they mean. And the bottom line is simply this: if what a Lost Causer tells us were true, it would not be Lost Cause, but just history. So anything specifically Lost Cause is, by definition, fake.

Oh, and again. Have you ever thought of getting a life?

FLT-bird: "Notice how pissed BroJoe gets when you point out the truth to him.....ie that his side was the one in favor of big government and high taxes " Except it's not true, it's just another lie you guys tell each other. The truth is you voted solidly for Big Government & free stuff under Wilson, under FDR and even for the Illinois socialist Adlai Stevenson. You only stopped voting Democrat when you finally figured out who was going to pay and who was going to benefit. Then, suddenly big government didn't look so sweet and now you became conservatives. Nothing wrong with that, better late than never and welcome to the more conservative party. Just don't give us a load of cr*p about how you were always the real conservatives, because you just weren't.

Apparently not on the whole getting a life thing.

No it wasn’t legal, it was treason. There was precedent for this from a previous President.

The States severally have not retained their entire sovereignty. It has been shown that in becoming parts of a nation, not members of a league, they surrendered many of their essential parts of sovereignty. The right to make treaties, declare war, levy taxes, exercise exclusive judicial and legislative powers, were all functions of sovereign power. The States, then, for all these important purposes, were no longer sovereign. The allegiance of their citizens was transferred in the first instance to the government of the United States; they became American citizens, and owed obedience to the Constitution of the United States, and to laws made in conformity with the powers vested in Congress. This last position has not been, and cannot be, denied… it has been shown that in this sense the States are not sovereign, and that even if they were, and the national Constitution had been formed by compact, there would be no right in any one State to exonerate itself from the obligation.

So obvious are the reasons which forbid this secession, that it is necessary only to allude to them. The Union was formed for the benefit of all. It was produced by mutual sacrifice of interest and opinions. Can those sacrifices be recalled? Can the States, who magnanimously surrendered their title to the territories of the West, recall the grant? Will the inhabitants of the inland States agree to pay the duties that may be imposed without their assent by those on the Atlantic or the Gulf, for their own benefit? Shall there be a free port in one State, and enormous duties in another? No one believes that any right exists in a single State to involve all the others in these and countless other evils, contrary to engagements solemnly made. Everyone must see that the other States, in self-defense, must oppose it at all hazards.

Your pride was aroused by the assertions that a submission to these laws was a state of vassalage, and that resistance to them was equal, in patriotic merit, to the opposition our fathers offered to the oppressive laws of Great Britain. You were told that this opposition might be peaceably-might be constitutionally made-that you might enjoy all the advantages of the Union and bear none of its burdens. Eloquent appeals to your passions, to your State pride, to your native courage, to your sense of real injury, were used to prepare you for the period when the mask which concealed the hideous features of DISUNION should be taken off.

But the dictates of a high duty oblige me solemnly to announce that you cannot succeed. The laws of the United States must be executed. I have no discretionary power on the subject-my duty is emphatically pronounced in the Constitution. Those who told you that you might peaceably prevent their execution, deceived you-they could not have been deceived themselves. They know that a forcible opposition could alone prevent the execution of the laws, and they know that such opposition must be repelled. Their object is disunion, but be not deceived by names; disunion, by armed force, is TREASON. Are you really ready to incur its guilt?

President Jackson’s Proclamation Regarding Nullification, December 10, 1832

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