Why The War Was Not About Slavery

[me]: If you think revenue was not crucial, I'd like to hear your argument supporting your conclusion.

[you]: There you go putting words into my mouth. Don't do that.

I didn't put any words in your mouth. I simply said if you think this way, I'd like to hear your argument. It is up to you to indicate what you think. So far you haven't, so we can only say that you haven't yet provided an argument in response to my post, only a claim that I was putting words in your mouth.

Lincoln was also happy with the XIII amendment that actually became law and urged it’s adoption

I must acknowledge that you have at least tried to evolve your thinking on exactly what Lincoln said and meant.

Post# 892 rustbucket “Great Emancipator was happy with slavery being made "express and irrevocable.”

Post# 896 rustbucket “ Lincoln: I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.

Post# 899 rustbucket “Yes, I'd say Lincoln was happy with the Corwin Amendment .......”

Lemme take a crack at it. President Lincoln, in his First Inaugural Address, stated that he had no objection to the Corwin Amendment becoming express and irrevocable. Now, was that so hard? Note that President Lincoln decidedly and emphatically, did not (as you first stated) say, “I am happy with Slavery being made express and irrevocable”. You see, pretty much everything leading up to the Civil War was an effort to avert its inevitability. The Corwin Amendment was one among many legislative efforts to placate the Slaveowners. I would think that any States Rights advocate should be “happy” that President Lincoln made the statement. The purpose of the proposed Corwin Amendment was to remove the central/federal government from any power to speak to the legality of Slavery in any State. It was meant to make Slavery strictly a States Rights issue. Ironic, huh?

Indeed. He even made sure to sign it (although his signature was not necessary). He was very very happy to sign it. And it passed after his untimely demise.

He did not sign the Joint Resolution from Congress. James Buchanan did that. What Lincoln signed was a cover letter sending the Resolution of Congress to the States.

Lincoln did not sign the Joint Resolution from Congress.
The Democrat President James Buchanan signed the document a day or two before Lincoln was sworn as President.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I was replying to your post #902 which stated, “Lincoln was also happy with the XIII amendment that actually became law and urged it’s adoption

I was referring to Lincoln signing the XIII Amendment even though his signature wasn’t required. He wanted his name on it. (I am aware that Buchanan unnecessarily signed the Corwin Amendment. As I am aware that Lincoln did not sign the Corwin Amendment. But that is another story)

signed also by the Vice President and the Secretary of State.

Why did the South secede? Doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is that the North invaded!

This is correct. My position is that they had the *RIGHT* to secede, and military action against them for seceding was contrary to the very nature of this nation. *You* want to focus on reasons for seceding.

If Independence is a right how can it be conditional upon reasons of which *you* approve? If they have the right, then they can choose independence for any reason, or even for no particular reason.

The mere fact that they tried multiple different things, including the Corwin amendment to maintain the Union that failed...

Which protected slavery, making the claim that they were seceding over "slavery", bogus.

If you think there was a way that the south would have stayed in the Union short of violence, please let me know.

If a woman wants to leave a man, do you believe he should use violence to force her to remain with him? At what point do you think it's her choice to leave? Or his choice to force her to stay against her will?

Given that war was inevitable...

Why was war "inevitable"? Most of the North just wanted to let them go. Why was there a need for war? (My argument is the money made it "inevitable". What's yours? )

By the way, explain to me again if tariffs were the most important thing to the South that none of the Articles of Secession mentioned it?

"Green eye shade lingo" ring a bell? Apart from that you are wrong. They did mention it. Quite a lot. It's just that all the later day Northern apologists in their rush to search through all the documents to find examples of "slavery" to support their narrative, always overlook it.

They also never mentioned it to Great Britain, who would have benefited from lower tariffs in the South, and only mentioned slavery (which they opposed) because of …..other reasons?

You are unknowledgeable about this point. "Tariffs" are a synecdoche for the larger issue. I'll take a moment to give you a little better understanding of what was happening.

The "Navigation act of 1817" gave New York shipping a virtual monopoly on shipping to Europe. Other laws, such as the "warehousing act of 1846", also benefited New York at the expense of the South. Because of the Navigation act artificially pumping up the costs of shipping, the New York based shipping industries set their prices just below the cost of all the penalties for using foreign ships or crew. Additionally, the act made it economically unfeasible for ships to go to Southern ports, and the vast majority of trade with the United States ended up under the control of New York City.

Independence would have gotten rid of this act, and it would have caused a massive shift of traffic from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, to Southern port cities like Charleston.

Now New York at this time was taking about 40% of all the profits made from Southern products shipped to Europe, and Washington DC was getting about 30-40% of what was left of the profits through tariffs. The Southerners who were actually *PRODUCING* the money, were ending up with 20-30% of the total profit from the business. New York and Washington DC were making more off of slavery than were the people who *ran* the business!

The claim that this whole thing was just about "tariffs" is an effort to minimize just how great of a wealth transfer from the South to the North was occurring. The term "tariff" is intended to trivialize Southern discontent with how much money New York and Washington was raping them out of. It was *way* bigger than just tariffs. I would like to go into more details about the massive money changes that would have occurred had the South kept independence, but it would take more space than I want to devote to this reply.

New York and Washington DC was going to be wrecked economically if the Southern states traded directly with Europe. People don't grasp this. Southern independence was a horrible threat to established money people in both cities. They were staring bankruptcy in the face, and they were facing a transfer of economic power from the North to the South.

That wasn't the last time Lincoln offered to strengthen fugitive slave laws.

If you study Lincoln's history with a critical eye, it becomes apparent that he was a wheeler dealer, with no fixed principles that he wouldn't trade for a deal.

That is in addition of course to offering slavery effectively forever enshrined in the constitution via express constitutional amendment.

Whatever it takes to get a deal.

Also, Lincoln and his corporate fatcat supporters started this war over money. Even a cursory reading of the major Northern Newspapers as well as Lincoln's insistence on collecting duties in Southern ports in his inaugural address makes that quite clear. They thought it would be easy....a mere matter of marching. Remember that they only called for 75,000 volunteers and only for a period of 3 months. Then their little war over money turned extremely expensive and turned into a bloodbath.

Unquestionably they misjudge Southern discontent and willingness to fight for Independence. And yes, once Lincoln's ill conceived war turned into a horrible disaster, they had to go searching for some better justification than "preserving the Union" that didn't want to be preserved.

Now there are a lot of parents of Northern sons grieving for the loss of their son and even more who came back mangled and crippled for life. What do you tell those people? They are voters! Do you tell them that their loved one was killed or had his arm blown off over......money?

They didn't breath a whisper of that. They always presented it as "Preserve the Union" being a somehow requirement. As I have pointed out many times, the US allowed the Philippines to leave, they allowed Cuba to leave, and there is still an open invitation for Puerto Rico to leave. These places didn't have any money, and so there was no great financial loss to the Northern power structure if they left. The South was different. If it were allowed to leave, it would directly challenge the Northern economic power structure economically.

This Northern economic power structure, (robber barons as they were later known) would not have it!

They know the voters back home won't look too closely. They desperately want to believe the frightful price they paid was for some noble cause. "dying to make men free" fits the bill nicely. Who cares if anybody who bothers to look at what they were saying in 1860 and 61 can immediately see that its pure BS?

And the strategy is still working today. Most people bought the sales pitch, and never bother to look under the hood. Part of this is because "group think" makes challenging the official dogma a reason for shunning in polite circles. Group think is self reinforcing because of social peer pressure, and so few people have the temerity to challenge the official account of what happened and why.

I’ll never forget the time when the Dung Beetle came rushing into one of these CW threads proclaiming the exact same thing in the exact same words.

Well the idea is quite startling to people who had been taught all their lives that the "Great Emancipator" was actually willing to keep people in bondage when it suited his political interests. I know *I* was shocked when I first learned of it.

Odd that this example of Lincoln contradicting the narrative of himself as the "great emancipator" never got taught to anyone in school. It seems to be quite an important point to be deliberately left out of any discussion of the civil war. Perhaps it isn't taught because it makes Lincoln look like an opportunistic hypocrite who would have sold the slaves down the river if it would have gotten him the deal he wanted.

Thanks for this extra information.

Lincoln was also happy with the XIII amendment that actually became law and urged it’s adoption

When you are in a position to pull the puppet strings of Southern states, your chances of passing an amendment that was otherwise impossible, is virtually guaranteed.

But this is not how the amendment process is supposed to work, and this amendment does not represent the actual will of the people of those states. It represents a dictator in Washington creating a Kabuki theater pretense of constitutional legitimacy.

But many people ignore this aspect because this is the result they wanted, and do not actually care how they get their result, so long as they get their result.

Careful or you’ll trigger a blizzard of nonsense all posted in ginormous font...

He won't trigger it from me. I make a point to not read most of what he writes. He blew his credibility with Pearl Harbor.

results counts for everything.

results counts for everything.

We either have a nation of laws, or we have a nation of men. One man becoming powerful enough to force his diktats on the rest of the population is a violation of our system of governance.

Rule by decree is the opposite of what we are supposed to be.

He was so happy with it he actually signed it. Which a President is not required to do.

Here’s the bottom line up front, Lincoln hated slavery. He hated it from a young age. This is easily proven by looking at his speeches and writings. However, when he was elected President his first priority was to save the Union. Just like many of our founding fathers when they were creating this country. To try to say Lincoln didn’t want to see slavery abolished flys in the face of a mountain of evidence.

You see, pretty much everything leading up to the Civil War was an effort to avert its inevitability.

I agree that the Corwin Amendment was an attempt to avert a war, but it was too late. Seven states had already seceded. I don't think there was any going back on Southern secessions, but I suspect they could have had peaceful relations with the US down the road as Senator Jefferson Davis had said on the Senate floor on January 10, 1861.

With respect, I do disagree, however, with your statement that "pretty much everything leading up to the Civil War was an effort to avert its inevitability." The Morrill Tariff was a key exception to your statement. It signed into law by Buchanan on March 2. This was after the Confederates passed the initial version of their tariff in February that was essentially the same as then US tariff. I believe the two different tariff rates led to the Civil War.

I don’t mean that the South seceded because of tariff concerns, although the tariff, even the 1857 US tariff, had been a serious irritant and transfer of money from the agricultural South to the industrial North. I mean that in passing a high protectionist tariff like the Morrill Tariff after the South had set their tariff the same as the then existing US tariff, the Republicans had shot themselves and the Northern economy in the foot. The two different tariffs created a large incentive for foreign companies to shift their imports (and the resulting tariff income) to Southern ports. I have posted before on how this immediately affected the businesses and imports to New York. See my previous post: [Link to post 796].

I believe that this and the sad state of the US Treasury at the time Lincoln was inaugurated [see my post 852] were why Lincoln make such statements as "What is to become of the revenue? I shall have no government, no resources," as his reason for not seeking peace with the South.

Perhaps a Northern newspaper editorial will help explain the Constitutional box Lincoln was in. From the Cincinnati Enquirer as reported in the Memphis Daily Appeal of March 27, 1861:

The New York and all Eastern Republicans are getting clamorous for an extra session. They now admit that, critical and extraordinary as the condition of the country is, the President is without power to take any effectual step toward its relief. He can effect no fixed and decisive policy toward the seceding States, because no laws give him authority to carry it into effect.

He cannot enforce the laws, because no power has been put at his command for that purpose. He cannot close the ports which refuse to pay Federal duties, nor has he the authority to enforce payment except through the local authorities. These, moreover, are the least of the difficulties which embarrass the action of the Government. This loan is called for, but there is no prospect of revenue to render it safe. The seceded States invite imports under the tariff of 1857, at least ten per cent. lower than that which the Federal Government has just adopted. As a matter of course, foreign trade will seek southern ports, because it will be driven there by the Morrill tariff. It has been stated that Secretary Chase has been heard to say that the tariff bill must be repealed.

I believe Lincoln saw a way out of the box, and that was to provoke war with the South. He chose to send the expedition to Fort Sumter that his cabinet and military men had told him would start a shooting war. He didn’t start planning the Sumter expedition until after he told the Senate he didn’t have anything important to tell them, and they could adjourn. They did adjourn sine die as usual, which meant they couldn’t call themselves back into session until December unless Lincoln called them back into session earlier.

With Congress out of session, Lincoln basically engineered the country into war and invaded the South before Congress reconvened on the July 4th date that Lincoln set for them to come back in session.

With regard to Lincoln calling Congress back as the Cincinnati Enquirer had urged above, a confidential letter to Lincoln in early April from a confidant of his (see post 766) said Lincoln had apparently told him that he [Lincoln] did not want to convene an extra session of Congress “for fear of reopening the compromise-agitation.” Lincoln didn’t want compromise. Compromise wouldn’t solve his revenue problem.

Here are a couple of additional newspaper editorials that realized what the Morrill Tariff would do/was already doing:

New York Post, Mar. 12, 1861 [paragraph break mine]:

That either the revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the ports must be closed to importations from abroad, is generally admitted. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe.

There will be nothing to furnish means of subsistence to the army; nothing to keep our navy afloat; nothing to pay the salaries of the public officers; the present order of things must come to a dead stop.

New York Times March 30, 1861 [my bold below]:

With the loss of our foreign trade, what is to become of our public works, conducted at the cost of many hundred millions of dollars, to turn into our harbor the products of the interior? They share in the common ruin. So do our manufacturers...Once at New Orleans, goods may be distributed over the whole country duty-free. The process is perfectly simple... The commercial bearing of the question has acted upon the North...We now see clearly whither we are tending, and the policy we must adopt. With us it is no longer an abstract question---one of Constitutional construction, or of the reserved or delegated powers of the State or Federal government, but of material existence and moral position both at home and abroad.....We were divided and confused till our pockets were touched.

You couldn’t be more wrong FRiend. Lincoln was against slavery from a very early age. He was raised in a separatist Baptist church that denounced slavery. He first spoke out publicly against it in 1854, when he called it immoral. He never changed that position.

Now when he was elected President he viewed his first duty as saving the union. He was a lot like many of the founding fathers during the constitutional convention. They were against slavery but realized strengthing the union was more important.

Here is a letter he wrote to a good friend, and slave holder, Joshua Speed. He talks about their trip down the Mississippi in 1841. I ask you, in all sincerity, to read it and tell me your opinion of it. I saw this because my stance towards you has softened over the last couple of weeks and believe you are a good, smart, man.

You know I dislike slavery; and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it... I also acknowledge your rights and my obligations, under the constitution, in regard to your slaves. I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes, and unrewarded toils; but I bite my lip and keep quiet. In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio, there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continued torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border. It is hardly fair for you to assume, that I have no interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union. … How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.[24]