Posted on 01/11/2022 3:29:04 AM PST by Kaslin
Most Americans today have a romanticized (and extraordinarily narrow) historical understanding of the conflict that we call the Civil War.
In their imaginations, it goes something like this: With passions inflamed by a moral renaissance in the North regarding the institution of slavery in the South, the two sides decided to go to war over the issue. In the end, the evil South was righteously razed by the armies of the North, and thus, slavery was ended, and the former slaves made American citizens, as Abraham Lincoln intended.
If you think this an unfair caricature of the extent of the average American’s knowledge on the subject, I’d wager you haven’t spoken to many people under 50 about the subject. Our young and middle-aged enjoy a collective memory of this fantastic tale of good and evil, and so many of our countrymen believe that it actually occurred in this way that presenting any alternative or more nuanced version of the story earns one a million accusations of supporting “white supremacy.”
But the truth matters. And the telling of it matters, perhaps now more than ever, because at the rate that the leftists who indoctrinated generations to believe that fable are now using academia to rewrite history and are controlling modern avenues for free speech, opportunities to do so may be scarce in the future.
And, also, the true story is important because it’s incredibly relevant today.
The truth is most certainly not that Abraham Lincoln and the Union soldiers were so moved by the moral arguments against slavery that they were compelled to invade and destroy the South.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Cheap cotton and keeping the textile barons happy by ensuring access to cheap cotton.
As the Beards showed us, it was never about slavery, except for a few fanatics in the North.
If the federal government wages war against a state, the Constitution is null and void and no longer a binding document to keep the country together.
This is of course the long term communist point of view.
BLM couldn’t agree more.
If the cause was taxes, as the author claims, then there are certain similarities. In 1860, the southern states paid a disproportionately low percentage of the tariffs. In 2021 southern states receive far more money from the federal government than they pay.
I believe it was the Founder’s intent to allow states to leave in the event the Federal government turned against them.
I think it is implied through the enumerated powers and state rights that the Feds could not stop a state from having a final say in its relationship to the country. The Constitution was not meant to be a back-door way to tyranny by preventing states from leaving.
If a state left, the feds and the remaining could decide if they would allow a former state to rejoin and the conditions of its union, but it could not stop a state from leaving.
There are 14 recessions/panics between 1800 and 1860, so the economic scale in this 60 year period is pretty screwed up. If you dealt in cotton, you ran year to year....either in a massive happy-spell....or a dramatic financial collapse. Toward the 1860s...alternate cotton sites (Egypt/India) were set-up and the world market advantage for the US was ‘cast-adrift’.
Oh goody, another opportunity for FReepers to refight the Civil War.
Nor is it a club to beat the remaining states with. The Constitution protects all states. If a state wants to leave then the only logical process for doing so is to negotiate with the other states and ensure that possible areas of contention are resolved ahead of time. Any other way almost guarantees conflict.
Dog Park Dominance.
War among free states can emerge from a number of reasons, all sounding lofty and important but none of which are good in the end.
Wars have an ending, otherwise it’s a feud, a local perennial conflict.
The USA is an ongoing experiment to see how citizens can manage and hold onto their freedom. Unfortunately, it calls for bloodshed at unpredictable intervals. Blood is the only means to establish freedom as a serious principle of living. Otherwise, there will always be those that probe and test freedom’s foundation and ownership.
It was also about preventing the South from getting the price it could for its cotton, by using the navy to prevent the South from shipping its cotton to Europe for better prices.
By keeping the South from being able to export its cotton, the textile barons could impose its on price on the cotton the South had to sell.
If a state had, within the 10th Amendment, a unilateral ability to leave, there is no reason to negotiate its exit.
If it wants to trade with other states, as an independent unit, that’s when negotiation takes place.
Should states have to negotiate their abortion rights or is it within the 10th Amendment their right to unilaterally set their own policies?
An unlimited and undefined power is exactly that.
But did it? You say it was "implied through enumerated powers". But if we agree that implied powers exist, as Chief Justice Marshall found in McCulloch v. Maryland, then a better case can be made for requiring the approval of the other states. After all, a state cannot join the union without the consent of a majority of the existing states as expressed through a vote in Congress. Once in, they cannot split, combine, or change their borders at all without consent of Congress. Implied in all that is certainly the need for consent of the other states to leave as well.
What? Are you saying that the south left because the U.S. Navy was preventing them from exporting their cotton to Europe for a better price? Really?
I would note a couple of things without planting my flag on any of them.
The Congress and the courts spent an inordinate amount of time on the issue of slavery. New Free vs Slave state admissions, compromises, Dredd Scott etc. It was not a tangenital issue.
Not everything was about cotton. Tobacco and rice were big crops also. Virginia didn’t grow much cotton but they were huge in tobacco.
It is also undeniable that every Confederate constitution adopted after secession enshrined slavery on its pages.
Those who cannot see the thousands taking up arms to defend slavery when they did not own slaves should consider why they would take up arms over tariffs they did not pay or were even aware of.
I maintain it had the right, simply because unrestricted and undefined means exactly that. Either the Constitution means what it says or it does not.
I would agree that it would be to the advantage of the state to exit under the best conditions possible, so that other states won’t be motivated to punishment.
It is my understanding that the Federal government and states could impose conditions of a state entering the Union before they would vote on allowing them entrance, but being able to leave is unilateral under the Constitution, as the Constitution is written.
If the South determined that they screwed up by leaving, because cotton lost its value as other markets opened producing cotton reduced its value to non0viability, the Federal government and other states would then have a say as to whether it could happen and under the conditions that they would be permitted to re-enter, such as giving up slavery or being punished with excess taxation as a learning lesson.
Direct link to article:
Read up on the Cotton Blockade.
Read up on the Cotton Blockade.
The North wanted monopolistic powers on setting the price of cotton. If the South had no say in the matter, they would have to sell at a discount.
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