Here is a map of New Orleans circa 1801. Not exactly a boom town is it?
Posted on 12/16/2003 1:15:09 PM PST by PeaRidge
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Gail Jarvis by Gail Jarvis
People who disagree with me often claim that my historical views do not conform with "modern" interpretations. For my enlightenment, they recommend "modern" history books, books written after the 1960s. However, one correspondent took the opposite approach insisting that I needed to read a book from the past, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Of course, like most of you, I read the book years ago when I was younger. And, although I thought I remembered it, I decided to read it again; this time slowly and analytically.
Its author, Harriet Beecher Stowe was the daughter, sister, and wife of ministers and fervent Abolitionists who used New England pulpits to passionately proselytize against slavery. So it is not surprising that she became an Abolitionist and wrote her influential novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Although the book is the most famous of all anti-slavery polemics, I suspect most people are not aware of many of the opinions held by its author.
In rereading her book, I was first struck by Mrs. Stowe insistence that slavery in the South was no worse than slavery in the North had been. Furthermore, Stowe did not condemn Southern plantation owners but rather placed the onus of slavery on the slave system itself; especially New England slave traders, New York bankers, and other Northern entrepreneurs who profited from slave commerce.
Writer and Civil Rights activist James Baldwin was incensed by her position, stating: "It was her object to show that the evils of slavery were the inherent evils of a bad system, and not always the fault of those who had become involved in it and were its actual administrators." To Baldwin this opinion was racist and abdicated slave owners of personal responsibility.
Civil rights activists were also irritated by Mrs. Stowe’s support of the American Colonization Society’s belief that slaves should be returned to Africa, support she shared with Abraham Lincoln.
Although an Abolitionist, Stowe belonged to the "gradual emancipation" school. She believed that slaves must receive at least a basic education before being freed. And she insisted that they be converted to Christianity. After these two conditions were met, they should be recolonized to Africa.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published two years after the Compromises of 1850. During a hectic two-month period, Congress enacted several laws designed to placate both pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions. The law that especially rankled Mrs. Stowe was the Fugitive Slave Act, which required that all run-away slaves be returned to their owners. She thought it was hypocrisy for Northern congressmen, who publicly condemned slavery, to enact the Compromises of 1850.
Harriet Beecher Stowe decided that she could make her point more dramatically by using a fiction format. Her goal was not to write the great American novel, but, like Charles Dickens, create sympathy for members of an underclass of society, slaves.
The character "Uncle Tom" grew up on the plantation of his first master, Mr. Shelby, a Southerner who was kindly disposed toward his slaves. In the course of events, Mr. Shelby incurs such large debts that he must either sell Tom, his most valuable slave, or sell all the others. This dilemma allows Mrs. Stowe to demonstrate how the economic realities of the slave system itself often precluded humanitarian considerations.
Uncle Tom’s second master, Mr. St. Clare, was also a Southerner and a compassionate slave owner. Mrs. Stowe uses St. Clare’s Vermont cousin, Miss Ophelia, to illustrate the Northern view of slavery. Miss Ophelia chastises St. Clare: "It’s a perfect abomination for you to defend such a system – you all do – all you southerners." But, annoyed by the slipshod manner in which the house servants conduct themselves; she calls them "shiftless." Miss Ophelia is also offended by the close companionship of St. Clare’s daughter, Little Eva, with Tom and the other slaves, which she deems inappropriate.
Uncle Tom’s third and final master is perhaps the most famous villain in American literature – Simon Legree: a New England Yankee. Legree amasses enough money pirating to purchase a plantation in Louisiana. As a plantation owner, he regularly beats, curses and abuses his slaves. In one of his beatings of Tom, Legree's rage boils over and he accidentally kills the noble slave.
Toward the end of the book, an escaped slave, George Harris, realizes he can now achieve his dream of joining the colony in Liberia: "Let me go to form part of a nation, which shall have a voice in the councils of nations, and then we can speak. We have the claim of an injured race for reparation. But, then, I do not want it. I want a country, a nation, of my own."
In a postscript to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe catalogues the evils of the slavery system and then addresses Southerners:
"The author hopes she has done justice to that nobility, generosity, and humanity which in many cases characterizes individuals at the South. Such instances save us from utter despair of our kind. To you, generous, noble-minded men and women of the South – you, whose virtue, and magnanimity, and purity of character are the greater for the severer trial it has encountered – to you is her appeal."
Next she turns her attention to Northerners:
"Do you say that the people of the free states have nothing to do with it? The people of the free states have defended, encouraged, and participated; and are more guilty for it, before God, than the South. There are multitudes of slaves temporarily owned, and sold again, by merchants in Northern cities; and shall the whole guilt or obloquy of slavery fall only on the South? Northern men, Northern mothers, Northern Christians, have something more to do than denounce their brethren at the South; they have to look to the evil among themselves."
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published almost ten years before the War Between the States. Harriet Beecher Stowe did as much as anyone to encourage "gradual emancipation" of the New England sort..
December 16, 2003
Gail Jarvis [send him mail], a CPA living in Beaufort, SC, is an advocate of the voluntary union of states established by the founders.
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"...on April 11 they were still a number of miles off shore."
Not true. The Harriett Lane arrived at Charleston on the evening of the 11th, just in time to fire on shipping entering the harbor, thus earning the honor of firing the first shot of the War.
Here is a map of New Orleans circa 1801. Not exactly a boom town is it?
Once again you have demonstrated your inability to view things properly through an historical lens. Here is a map of North America circa 1710, prepared by both the Royal Society at London, and the Royal Academy at Paris.
Granted, New Orleans didn't even exist yet , but to suggest that New York was located at the northern extremity of what Europeans viewed as the New World is absurd.
No, the fact that they survived there in greater numbers does. The climate of the northeast while sometimes harsh, was more suited to the northern Europeans who settled there. Again, take a look at the mortality rates amongst the European settlers living in the several northen and southern colonies, and you will see a distinctly higher death rate in the south.
In fact, the main testimony to that is found in the actions of their descendants who flock in waves to Florida as soon as other more pressing factors and their retirement permits them.
Once again, your inability to reason from an historical perspective is glaring.
I'd also argue that the Erie Canal actually helped southern commerce generally and New Orleans in particular because its creation helped settle the Old Northwestern territories. These settlers then used the Mississippi river to conduct trade with the south.
The shots fired prior to that at the Star of the West and the Rhoda A. Shannon don't count, huh?
Only because air conditioning was invented. Without it, Florida would still be sparsely settled. I know. I lived in FL for 8 years, and one summber had no AC. Not pleasant at all.
Oh don't worry about me, Pea. Think of the other members who have no idea of what you are talking about, and who might have actually read the legislation. Have at it.
Pick up the book you use to falsly describe the coastal trade, Wise's Lifeline of the Confederacy, and it lists the packet service ships that were in service before the war. Page after page.
Page after page, huh? A whole two of them?
But you know this, and like Walt, would rather argue for days than acknowledge the truth.
We're not getting it from you.
If you disagree, why don't you tell us what the business of the Star of the West was before Buchanan hired it to carry troops to Charleston.
Passenger runs between New York and New Orleans. And?
Historians disagree and notice contradictions and ambiguities, but they look closer in to the historical record than ideologues who make wholesale judgements based on political considerations. There is a great mass of historical writing on unionists in the Confederate states. Maybe you don't have time to read it, but if you don't, you shouldn't make claims that a little reading might disprove. If you are really interested, you can start here and move on to the works listed in the bibliography. But it helps if you don't read in order to tally points for this or that side, but to try to understand complex realities.
The initial Virginia, North Carolina and Arkansas conventions voted against secession. Tennessee voted against having a convention. Clearly signs of not negligible unionist sentiments. After Sumter sectional passions carried the day, but even then, close to 1 in 3 Tennesseans voted against secession. The collapse of unionist sentiment in middle Tennessee didn't affect union strongholds in the eastern highlands of the state.
North Carolina had no referendum, but before Sumter unionism was particularly strong in the western part of the state. There was less disaffection in Western North Carolina in 1860 than in other Southern highland regions, and consequently more support for secession after Sumter than in the neighboring part of Tennessee. But as the war continued, support for the Confederacy crumbled in large areas, and older unionist loyalties reasserted themselves. There was much desertion and disobedience, and some guerilla activity. And in Western North Carolina, as in East Tennessee, distrust of Democrats and the myths of the Confederacy lasted long after the Civil War.
Virginia was a special case. It has been said that secession narrowly carried the day in the Western part of the state, but there have also been allegations of vote tampering, fraud, intimidation, and the destruction of records. It may also be that some Unionists boycotted the election. I don't know what happened, but the state convention voted against authorizing a secession referendum on April 4 by a vote of 89 to 45 and then decided for a secession referendum on April 17 by a vote of 88 to 55, an indication of a large bloc of unionist sentiment that wasn't reflected in the referendum counts. While there was much secessionist sentiment in the southern and eastern parts of what's now West Virginia, support for the union was overwhelming in the northwest near Ohio and Pennsylvania. It's hard to believe that voters who sent anti-secession delegates to the convention would somehow have been converted wholesale to pro-secession views.
Virginia was a special case because unionists took action and formed a government with support of the US government, rather than simply suffer under Confederate rule. This may have been a questionable or dubious procedure, but the same could be said of all the secession movements of that time. If West Virginian leaders were rash and heavy-handed, they were acting in the spirit of their scessionist contemporaries, who likewise wanted to seize the day and drag the recalcitrant or reluctant along after them.
Even the Deep South wasn't unanimously in favor of secession. The Alabama convention favored secession by a vote of 61-39, a nice margin in an ordinary election, but hardly a ringing endorsement of a major constitutional change. A sizeable part of the state was against secession and never gave much support to the Confederacy.
Georgia also had strong unionist sentiment, particularly in the North of the state. The vote to hold a convention (50,243 to 37,123) was no blow-out. Not everyone who voted for the convention necessarily favored secession, and the vote totals in some counties were questioned. In 1972, the Georgia Historical Society reexamined the results and found a narrow majority against immediate secession. Many of those votes for "cooperation" and against "immediate action" likely weren't unionists, but the vote count that had long been cited as support for secession didn't reflect Georgia sentiments. Prosecession delegates didn't even run in some North Georgia counties and weren't elected in others.
The convention's vote 208-89 was more one-sided, but the final decision to seceed was not submitted to the electorate. After the war Alexander Stephens said that if it had been, secession wouldn't have passed. Under the circumstances, his testimony may not be the most reliable, but given the way that Georgia's voting systems distorted election results and frustrated majorities, he may have had a point, that dissenting opinions might not have been fully reflected at the convention. During the war North Georgia, like Western North Carolina and East Tennesee saw peace candidates, draft evasion, desertion, fighting between home guards and deserters and local militias and reprisals by regular Confederate troops.
In some Deep South states sentiment was more strongly in favor of secession, but we can't say for sure if they didn't hold referenda. When the shooting had already started, the passions of the moment were apt to push referenda in the Upper South towards secession, and to override earlier qualms. But pro-union sentiments have to be taken into account in five or six confederate states. By the end of the war, all of them except South Carolina had mustered units in the US Army. Given how the war ended, that's not the best indication of sentiments, but one can't ignore or deny the strength of unionist sentiment in some parts of the Confederacy. If Davis gambled that war would solidify support for secession and the CSA he was right in the short-run, but wrong over time. Those converted from mildly unionist to mildly secessionist sentiments didn't always stay the course with the Confederate regime.
Does it matter today? It does.
First of all, it's an indication of the failure of ideas of unilateral secession. Rely on a single vote taken at a time of duress to radically change people's citizenship and status in the world and you invite war, since a referendum a few weeks before or a few months after would give a different result. Stampede people into taking a given political course at a time of crisis, and you'll pay for it later, when people have second thoughts. Somebody always gets dragged along in such secessions against their will. That's why a more deliberative and mutual process is necessary. It allows dissenters to work out their own future.
Secondly, it's wrong to exploit people's love of liberty or distrust of outsiders to promote a cause that their ancestors may well have fought against on the grounds that it offered them neither greater individual freedom nor greater group autonomy. Some of those who've adopted the Confederate Battle Flag as their symbol ought to at least examine the possibility that their own ancestors might have stood by and fought for the Union with pride. It would introduce nuance, complexity, and ambiguity, to what too often is a tribal, "them against us" argument.
To be sure, there were many convinced secessionists in regions with many Union supporters, but it's arguable that the better part of the population -- those who were more patriotic, more devoted to justice, and less swayed by appeals to emotion and privilege -- went with the Union. Some of those in the Old South who were in real and practical ways the most libertarian and anti-statist supported the Union, recognizing greater oppression in state governments and breakaway confederacies, than in the distant national government in Washington. That may not be the case today, but it is something that ought to be acknowledged.
As for the tariff, I followed Alexander Stephens and others in saying that Southerners could have written the tariffs they wanted. This was an exaggeration, as any tariff would have to reflect the different interests of different parts of the country. But the basic idea was sound. The high tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were revised downward in 1833. An upward revision in 1842 was corrected downwards in 1846. The downward movement in 1857 would inevitably be revised upwards. And that upwards movement would eventually have been revised downwards had everyone kept their heads about slavery and secession. Such were ways of ordinary politics in 19th century America. The fact that extreme free traders didn't get their way in 1842 or extreme protectionists win out in 1846 was no cause to dispair or rage at the state of American politics. There was nothing apocalyptic about tariff legislation. The same could not be said for the slavery issue.
As for Calhoun, he did see slavery as a "solution" to the South's racial problems, but he went much farther than that. Confronted with the European revolutions of his day, he came to see slavery as a safeguard against the evils of revolution, socialism, and democracy. In this mood, Calhoun saw the racial split between master and slave castes as a positive bulwark against the dangerous tendencies of democracy. There was no wall of separation between Calhoun and other thinkers who built upon his belief that slavery was a "positive good."
There was an evolution at work in Calhoun's thinking and that of his contemporaries, but it ran in against what one takes to be the path of progress: In 1823, Calhoun said that slavery was "scaffolding, scaffolding, Sir, it will come down when the building is finished." By 1838, he asserted: "Many in the South once believed that it was a moral and political evil; that folly and delusion are gone; we see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world." Later in life he was saying that "Slavery is indispensible to a republican government. ... There cannot be a durable republican government without slavery."
There were contradictions in Calhoun's thinking. For all his reputation as a rigorous logician, he expressed quite different views on different occasions. In this he was a politician, lauding slavery as the basis of freedom to wealthy Southern audiences, while denying it in letters to and conversations with Northerners. He prefered to restrict himself to defenses of Negro slavery in current conditions, but couldn't resist making broader claims for slavery as an institution, outside of the existing racial context.
It's highly unlikely that Calhoun wanted to enslave free Northern White workers, but it's clear that he was dubious about their value to the polity. One would have little trouble constructing a defense of slavery as an institution and of racial divisions between rich and poor castes based on some of Calhoun's statements, and some Southern intellectuals did just that.
And as regards Toombs you might look at his speech before the Georgia Legislature on secession or his speech on resigning from the Senate. These are only excerpts, but they indicate that he had more on his mind than tariffs.
Was he making "libertarian" arguments? Is Toombs's defense of the rights of slaveowners "libertarian"? Is his attack on abolitionists? Or his proclamation that he should be able to take his slave with him anywhere? Are fears for the survival of slavery libertarian? One could go further. Are the complaints of ill-treatment and grievances of one section necessarily libertarian? Or its defense or promotion of its own interests? Or its dreams of future wealth and grandeur? Looking secession as a "libertarian" solution can make some take all expressions of support for secession as "libertarian," though they may be anything but that.
In general, the idea that the secessionists were "imperfectly libertarian, but libertarian nonetheless" is a weak one. This is America, and all of our political disputes tend to be cast in terms of liberty and rights, just as a wise lawyer clothes his client's interests in "rights talk" whether or not they are really justified. So all American politicians are more or less "imperfectly libertarian," even Abraham Lincoln. Secession is regarded by some as a libertarian idea, an anti-statist concept, consequently secessionists are given haloes by some libertarians. But this is a dubious, question-begging proceeding.
First, not everyone who advocates breaking away from a larger political unit is justified or truly libertarian, no more than everyone who supports the overthrow of an existing government is justifed or a true lover of freedom. An oversimplified version of libertarianism leaves obligations and procedures out of the picture and produces perverse results. Anarchy would be the result of allowing any group exit from larger polities at its own wish, and most people generally fear anarchy. But then anarchy is not a bad word or thing to some radical libertarians. Actions that most people would characterize as reckless, irresponsible, and dangerous, are celebrated by them if such actions weaken the state.
Second, secession is a means that has little to do with one's ends. If one group desires independence in order to secure, extend or perfect its oppression or exploitation of another group, libertarians, if they care about liberty, ought to think twice about supporting the independence bid. That's not to say that they should justify or join in crushing it, but they shouldn't give it their approval. To blur or ignore important questions of means and ends serves no useful purpose. Describing the rebels of 1860 as "imperfectly libertarian" makes a hash of libertarianism and a mess of politics in general.
Third, There's a hypocrisy in the libertarian coloring some give to state's rights theories of secession. If one is to support Southern slaveholders desire for self-determination, one has to grant similar support to the desires for liberty and autonomy of free non-slaveholders, and of slaves. A narrow focus on the biggest and possibly least justified revolt slights other people's efforts at freedom. When Rockwellites talk as much about the slaves' struggle for freedom or the plight of Southern highlanders dragooned into fighting for an alien Confederacy as they do about the Confederacy as victim of the evil Northerners, one may be able to take their claims to be libertarian more seriously.
Fourth, applying a late 20th or early 21st century ideology to mid-19th century politics is a dubious procedure. It means ripping ideas out of their 19th century context and substituting one's own context for that of a previous generation. If it's to be done at all it has to be done fairly and evenhandedly. To disregard all questions of slavery, focus on tariffs, and annoint the Confederacy as "imperfectly libertarian" without irony, would be a mistake. The idea that somehow one need only preface one's comments with "Of course, slavery was wrong," and exclude it from further consideration is ridiculous.
In his historical work, Charleston's Maritime Heritage, P. C. Coker, described the decline of Charleston as one of the top three ports in the early 1800s.
He cited several reasons for its decline, none of which you mention.
He did state that the construction of the Erie canal contributed to the decline of the Charleston freight traffic because the Erie connected New York to the midwest market.
But your attempts at 'argument' sound more like notions than logic and knowledge.
Lincoln had not called up the militia or declared a blockade when the south fired on the Rhoda Shannon or when they shot up Sumter a few days later. Or was that just some Citidel students out on a spree as well?
Charleston shipped a lot of goods to Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio did she?
Sure I did. Appendix 4 pages 230 to 232 in my edition. Grand total of 33, one of which was captured after the war began. Doesn't look like 'page after page', IMHO of course.
[Nonseq 240] Nowhere does it say that the presidence can act only with the approval of the legislature of the state in question.
You now absurdly claim that, in case of insurrection, the Militia Act is silent on whether the President can act only upon state application. You must be practicing your stupid act.
In language too clear for all but Non-Seq and his brother RJ, the Militia Act of 1795 states "in case of an insurrection in any state, against the government thereof, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, on application of the legislature of such state, or of the Executive, (when the legislature cannot be convened,) to call forth such number of the militia of any other state or states, as may be applied for, as he may judge sufficient to suppress such insurrection."
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