Alabama Governor's Slavery Blunder

CBS News ^ | 4/5/05

[Crackingham]

Confederate heritage groups got excited when Gov. Bob Riley's annual proclamation designating April as Confederate History and Heritage Month dropped a paragraph saying slavery was the cause of the Civil War. The groups were pleased because they consider that description of slavery historically inaccurate. Their excitement, however, was short lived.

"It was a mistake," said Jeff Emerson, the governor's communications director, on Monday. He said he did not know how the mistake was made.

Emerson said the governor was unaware of the deletion until The Associated Press contacted his office. The governor quickly reissued the proclamation with the paragraph on slavery restored, and posted it on his Web site.

"That makes Bob Riley look very inconsistent and inept," said Roger Broxton, president of the Confederate Heritage Fund.

State Rep. Oliver Robinson, House chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus, was pleased that Riley withdrew the version of the proclamation that makes no mention of slavery.

"To me, the members of the Black Caucus, and the majority of black citizens of Alabama that would be a disgrace," he said.

For many years, Alabama governors have signed proclamations designating April as Confederate History and Heritage Month. When Riley became governor in January 2003, he used the same proclamation as his predecessor, Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman.

It contained a paragraph that says "Our recognition of Confederate history also recognizes that slavery was one of the causes of the war, an issue in the war, was ended by the war, and slavery is hereby condemned... "

[GOPcapitalist]

Bawk, bawk, bawk.

There goes the parrot again. I think that's his mating call to the other members of the Wlat Brigade.

[GOPcapitalist]

At the time secession began, tariffs in the United States were governed by the Walker Tariff Act of 1846

Wrong. They were under the Tariff of 1857 by then, which favored free trade. Secession occured literally while the Senate was in the middle of debating the Morrill Tariff, which reversed everything and reinstituted a system similar to the Tariff of 1828. The House had already passed it and the incoming President was pledging to push for it.

[GOPcapitalist]

So you'd have us believe that the South started breaking away from the rest of the nation at a time when the tariffs they wanted were the law of the land.

That's a red herring. The tariff they object to was the one coming down the pipes through Congress. At the time they seceded the south believed they had exhausted every option they could to halt it.

[Non-Sequitur]

There goes the parrot again.

No, no, no. A parrot goes "awk" or maybe "squawk". A chicken goes "bawk". Or "cluck". "Cluck" is OK, too. But I went with "bawk".

[Ditto]

At the time they seceded the south believed they had exhausted every option they could to halt it.

If the "South" was so opposed to the Morrell Tariff, with total of 30 "Southern" Senators, a filibuster would have been incredibly easy, especially considering cloture required a 2/3 majority in those days. They had more than enough votes to block any legislation they cared to.

[PeaRidge]

"All Lincoln did was insist on holding on to the property of the U.S."

All he did?

Everybody knew what he was doing.

Col. John Baldwin to Lincoln, April 4, 1861:

Baldwin said,

“Then, sir, I tell you, before God and man, that if there is a gun fired at Sumter this thing is gone."

Major Anderson said this on April 7:

“I…confess that it…surprises me greatly…(that these orders) contradict the assurances of Mr. Crawford that Fort Sumter would be evacuated. I trust that this matter will be at once put in a correct light, as a movement made now, when the South has been erroneously informed that none such will be attempted, would produce most disastrous results throughout our country."

[PeaRidge]

Forced the issue? You must think that Gov. Pickens sent engraved invitations to the Union Navy for the Spring Ball in Charleston.

Being that Gustavus Fox was such the party animal.

[Non-Sequitur]

“Then, sir, I tell you, before God and man, that if there is a gun fired at Sumter this thing is gone."

Well, that was true. The confederacy fired the gun. The confederacy is gone.

...(that these orders) contradict the assurances of Mr. Crawford that Fort Sumter would be evacuated.

Army captains do not make policy. The President does.

[PeaRidge]

"The south never again achieved the percentage of exports that it accounted for before the rebellion, never even came close."

And of course you know why. The blockade and war changed everything. The agriculture and business base had been burned 100 years back. The middle classes of Southern communities were dead. The South did not start recovering until after the 1940s.

"And the sky did not fall, the country did not collapse, the U.S. economic engine grew and expanded continuously for decades. So how do you explain that?"

Obvious. The Union fought a war, heated up the economic engine, and consumed its way out of the massive debt, with over 600,000 dying in the process. The question is why you seem to think it was worth it.

[PeaRidge]

"Any confusion was caused by the southern representatives, who decided that Seward spoke for the Administration when, in fact, he did not."

There was no confusion. Lincoln secretly organized the invasion, launched it, and brought war to the country.

That's about as clear as it gets.

[Non-Sequitur]

Obvious. The Union fought a war, heated up the economic engine, and consumed its way out of the massive debt, with over 600,000 dying in the process. The question is why you seem to think it was worth it.

Utter nonsense. By what passes for logic in the southron world the Northern economy should have collapsed without the southern exports and the south paying 80-odd percent of all tariffs. Now if even if we accept your claim that the war artificially propped up the Northern economy, then one would expect that once the war ended then the North would collapse because, after all, it didn't have the southern exports and the southern tariff income that were all that was propping it up to begin with. But amazingly enought, the war ended and the collapse never came. The war was over for decades and the collapse never came. The economy kept puttering right along without those southern exports and without the south accounting for 80-odd percent of the tariff income. How do you explain that?

[Non-Sequitur]

That's about as clear as it gets.

Clear as mud, Pea.

[PeaRidge]

"Lordy it's getting deep in here".

Yes it is. I will lend you a hand to get out of your mess.

Lincoln, heavily influenced by Northern business interests, was determined to destroy the Southern states in order to remove the constraints that Southern Senators and Congressmen, standing in the Jeffersonian tradition, placed in the way of centralized federal power, high tariffs and subsidies to Northern industries.

The Northeastern states were rapidly moving forward toward the future of industrial capitalism that many Southerners found distasteful; the South remained proudly and even defiantly rooted in their status quo.

When secessionists announced that they were acting to preserve traditional rights and values, they were speaking the truth.

They wanted to protect their constitutional liberties against the northern threat to overthrow them.

The South's concept of republicanism had not changed in three-quarters of a century, while the North's had.

With complete sincerity the South separated to preserve its version of the Republic of the Founding Fathers -- a government of limited powers that protected the rights of property and whose constituency comprised an independent ownership citizenry undisturbed by large cities with undesirable living conditions, demanding factory jobs, restless workers, and increasing class conflict.

The accession to power of the Republican party, with its ideology of competitive egalitarianism and government assisted capitalism, was a signal to the South that the northern majority had turned irrevocably toward this frightening, revolutionary future.

The Black Republican party appeared to many Southerners as a revolutionary party composed of political opportunists, mercantilists, abolitionists, socialists, and those that believed in expediency rather that a respect for Constitutional law.

Therefore secession was a pre-emptive counterrevolution to prevent the Black Republican revolution from engulfing the South.

It was the avowed promise of many Southern leaders that they were seceding from a pending revolution being brought to the Southern states. In resisting that revolution, they saw themselves as being consistent with Jeffersonian constitutional principles and therefore they were conservatives, obstructing liberal revolution.

[PeaRidge]

I do not deal in non-sequiturs. They are essentially dishonest.

[PeaRidge]

I do not deal in non-sequiturs. They are essentially dishonest.

[PeaRidge]

You did notice how quickly he reverted to the ad homs. His buddy, x, has gotten short tempered too.

[Ditto]

You did notice how quickly he reverted to the ad homs.

Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.

[GOPcapitalist]

If the "South" was so opposed to the Morrell Tariff, with total of 30 "Southern" Senators, a filibuster would have been incredibly easy, especially considering cloture required a 2/3 majority in those days. They had more than enough votes to block any legislation they cared to.

No. Filibusters during those days were both far more rare than the present and they actually made you get up and talk unlike today. At the time the southern senators decided to leave they had been holding the floodgates against the Morrill Tariff for almost a year straight of parliamentary tactics.

[GOPcapitalist]

His buddy, x, has gotten short tempered too.

Short tempered indeed, though he still takes about 50 paragraphs to express it!

[Ditto]

No. Filibusters during those days were both far more rare than the present and they actually made you get up and talk unlike today.

And legislative sessions was less than 3 months. Thirty Senators could easily tie up all business for an entire session if it were something so vital to their interests that they were willing to seceed from the Union. Being a Senator was not a full time job in those days and most lived two-to-a-room in crappy boarding houses when in Washington. They couldn't wait to get the hell out of that stinking (quite literally back then) town.

No matter how much the Lost Cause mythology tries to mislead people, the tariff obviously wasn't the reason they did what they did.