“So why did the South secede?”
I go back to my original posting about the war being for control of the economic future of the country. I don’t have the stats at my fingertips anymore and congratulate you on having them.
But don’t call my ideas odd and expect me to back off. They come from way, way back in my lineage and reflect both the working man’s way of looking at CW I, mixed with a more elitist version provided by the winner’s version.
I don’t usually go into detail about myself, and certainly not on CW thread slugfests. I have my own version of how I see things, and it’s not like those opposed have not attempted to persuade me otherwise—all through my life.
I have both slavers and abolitionists in my background. The abolitionist end mostly won out, but I’m not fool enough not to see the parallels with what is still occurring in the US. I’ve looped around behind the States Rights movement, but I’m no Pickett and I’m bloody well dug in on my thinking.
You can have your opinions about who started the violence, but there were several different kinds, not all of which were physical. They’re still not, and we’re still in a slave society without calling it that. Color of skin isn’t the source by a long shot, and the slavers are Northern now mostly, as I see it.
Of course that's true, in a very general sense.
But there's no reason to be so general when the historical facts are clear and simple to understand:
Basically the Deep South, especially, saw the rise of Northern abolitionist anti-slavery Republicans in 1860 as a mortal existential threat to the prosperity and survival of their "peculiar institution" -- slavery.
That's why it was the South -- not the North -- which seceded.
But even though Republicans were the only abolitionist party (there were three others in 1860), their candidate, Abraham Lincoln, said nothing and promised nothing regarding abolition during the campaign.
Indeed, none of Lincoln's earlier anti-slavery remarks was "radical" enough to imply he intended to immediately abolish slavery in the South.
But what he had been adamant about was the North's refusal to allow slavery to expand into non-slave territories & states.
And that's what caused the Deep South to declare it's secession.
combat_boots: "But don’t call my ideas odd and expect me to back off. They come from way, way back in my lineage and reflect both the working man’s way of looking at CW I, mixed with a more elitist version provided by the winner’s version."
It might interest you to learn that I first heard a version of your ideas from a Marxist history professor, many, many years ago.
I thought it was nonsense then, and still do.
One problem is: it ignores the obvious -- the stated reason why the South seceded -- and it assumes what cannot be even demonstrated, much less proved.
So I keep it simple, and take our Civil War era ancestors at their own words, while ignoring Karl Marx's lunacies.
combat_boots: "You can have your opinions about who started the violence, but there were several different kinds, not all of which were physical.
They’re still not, and we’re still in a slave society without calling it that. Color of skin isn’t the source by a long shot, and the slavers are Northern now mostly, as I see it."
Of course, as long as you talk in broad generalities and vague metaphors (i.e., "slavers are Northern now"), then there's no way to disagree or discuss.
But if you ever decide to get specific, then I can help you learn the difference between historical facts and metaphorical fantasies.
;-)