[rustbucket]

You fellows are all hiding behind the skirts of your mother Marx's dialectical materialism, instead of standing up and confessing basic historical facts.
Remember, Marx was the one who eliminated all idealistic or spiritual motives in history, replacing them with materialistic class warfare as the be-all & end-all of reasons.
And that's just what you do here.

Northern newspapers were talking about how their Northern economy would be ruined by the Morrill Tariff that the North passed after much of the South had left. Which side was the materialistic one exactly? The North wanted protection for their industries and increased revenue extracted from Southerners. That isn't "materialistic class warfare" to use your own words? And by the way, despite your flame war style slur, Marx isn't my philosophical mother.

Certainly you demand that Northern motives can have nothing but crass economic class warfare reasons.

Where did I say something like that? I believe that Lincoln plotted to instigate war because without a war, he had no Constitutional power or justification for blockading Southern ports to prevent the Northern economy from being ruined. Similarly, without a war he would have insufficient tariff revenue to run his government.

It was Lincoln in his first inaugural address who said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." But in that speech he also said he would use his designated power "to collect the duties and imposts ..." In other words, he wouldn't do anything about slavery, but he would collect the duties. So, no high moral principles there in Lincoln's speech; he was after the loot to run his government.

It was Seward, I think, that talked Lincoln into emphasizing the preservation of the Union, rather than emphasizing slavery. I believe that Lincoln did have the ultimate intention of freeing the slaves and that many Republican politicians wanted to do away with slavery in the country too.

Remember, of course, that this was the same Lincoln who believed that a Fugitive Slave Law was required by the Constitution, and when he was when in the House of Representatives in the 1840s wrote his own fugitive slave law into his proposed bill outlawing slavery in Washington, D.C.

At the same time you claim that Confederate motives had nothing, "nothing I tell you", to do with protecting slavery, but rather Confederates were inspired only by Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, especially the part where, "all men are created equal".

Where did I "claim" that Confederate motives had "nothing" to do with protecting slavery? I have argued on these threads that slavery was the primary issue (but not the only issue) that prompted the South to secede. IMO, slavery was a more effective issue for motivating the Southern people and Southern states to secede than the inequities of the tariff. Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops to invade the South was enough to prompt four more states to secede. Don't forget that as a cause for secession.

I have noted that, in seceding, the South was also protecting their economy, just as Lincoln was protecting the Northern economy. Were they both being Marxists in your opinion or only the South? (/sarc) I don't think either were Marxist; both sides were both working in their own self interests.

With respect to the Declaration of Independence, I prefer the words in Jefferson's original rough draft [Link] to the final version. Here are Jefferson's words about King George III's offenses that did not make it to the final version of the DOI:

"He has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow-citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture & confiscation of our property.

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobium of INFIDEL Powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another."

Jefferson's words above were not included in the final version, but the committee charged with writing the Declaration changed them to:

"He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."

That changed version dropped Jefferson's "fellow citizens." The changed version refers to Lord Dunmore's Proclamation that promised freedom to indentured servants and Negroes who were willing to fight for the British cause against the rebels.

And I hereby further declare all indented servants, Negroes, or others (appertaining to Rebels) free, that are able and willing to bear arms, they joining His Majesty's Troops, as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing the Colony to a proper sense of their duty, to this Majesty's crown and dignity. [Source: Lord Dunmore's Proclamation as British Governor of Virginia, November 14, 1775]

Didn't Lincoln do something similar in the Civil War with the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the opposition's slaves, but not the North's?

So, in you minds, it's Marxism for the North, liberty & constitution for the Confederacy, and I'm saying: that's pure ahistorical fantasy.

I didn't know I had more than one mind. The South certainly had the more accurate understanding of the Constitution.

Why are you flinging unfounded accusations against me about Marx? It is stunts like that that make you unworthy of a response. Are you trolling for a flame war? You won't get it from me.

My only reason for mentioning Marx in my immediate posts to you above was in response to your strange argument trying to tie the arguments of the Southern posters here to Marxism. Marx was in favor of freeing the slaves. Freeing the slaves was the only good thing that came out of the war. I don't think Marx's praise of Lincoln and/or the North makes the North or Lincoln Marxist.

[BroJoeK]

rustbucket: "Northern [anti-Republican, Democrat] newspapers were talking about how their Northern economy would be ruined by the Morrill Tariff that the North passed after much of the South had left."

Right, Democrat papers.
Remember, as recently as the election of 1856 the vast majority of Northerners were Democrat allies of Southern Democrats:

1856 Presidential election by county (blue = Democrat):

rustbucket: "Which side was the materialistic one exactly?
The North wanted protection for their industries and increased revenue extracted from Southerners.
That isn't "materialistic class warfare" to use your own words?"

First of all, "protectionism" protected all industries, North, South or West.
Yes, in 1860 most manufacturing was Northern, but Southern & Western producers also received protection from US tariffs.

Second, Deep South exports of cotton & rice did earn enough to pay for roughly half of US imports.
But the 1861 Morrill tariff rates meant that when those exports disappeared, US tariff revenues fell only 26%.

Third, pure economics alone do not drive Americans to war, and your suggestions otherwise are pure Marxist analyses.
The truth is that no Republican paper ever called for war against the Confederacy based strictly on economics.
Those Democrats who claimed Lincoln was driven by such economic motives were simply using those ideas to mock & belittle Republicans.
They were no more accurate than claiming Bush's Iraq war was "all about the oil".
It wasn't.

rustbucket6: "And by the way, despite your flame war style slur, Marx isn't my philosophical mother."

Of course not, not regarding your Confederates' motives and reasons -- those in your own mind were all of the highest possible idealism.
But you degrade Northern thinking, and permit no other considerations, to the level of Marxist materialistic class warfare.
It is simply your own method of mocking and scorning Unionists.
And, of course, it's totally wrong.

rustbucket: "Where did I say something like that?"

In your very next sentences, for one:

rustbucket: "I believe that Lincoln plotted to instigate war because without a war, he had no Constitutional power or justification for blockading Southern ports to prevent the Northern economy from being ruined.
Similarly, without a war he would have insufficient tariff revenue to run his government."

Total rubbish, and you well know it, but keep repeating it anyway.
The facts are:

1. Only Jefferson Davis plotted, prepared and ordered instigating war at Fort Sumter.
   Lincoln merely sent ships to resupply his troops there.
   War was Davis' decision, confirmed on May 6, 1861 with a formal declaration against the United States.

2. Blockading Southern ports, aka Scott's "Anaconda Plan", was prepared many years earlier, likely while Davis was Secretary of War, as a normal response to rebellion.
   When Jefferson Davis ordered his rebellion to begin, then the Anaconda Plan went into effect.
   But remember this: blockade prevented both exports and imports from the Confederacy, so it necessarily ended the possibility of collecting tariffs from Southern ports.

3. Therefore your materialistic class-warfare analysis of Lincoln's motives has no basis in facts or reason and is, instead, just laughable propaganda.

rustbucket: "In other words, he wouldn't do anything about slavery, but he would collect the duties.
So, no high moral principles there in Lincoln's speech; he was after the loot to run his government."

Total nonsense.
In fact, Lincoln's guiding principle was his oath of office to the US Constitution.
Protecting the Constitution at that time meant defending slavery where it already existed and collecting revenues lawfully established by Congress.

rustbucket: "It was Seward, I think, that talked Lincoln into emphasizing the preservation of the Union, rather than emphasizing slavery.
I believe that Lincoln did have the ultimate intention of freeing the slaves and that many Republican politicians wanted to do away with slavery in the country too."

Seward opposed anything which might lead to war, including resupplying Fort Sumter.
But when war came anyway, on April 12, 1861, Seward & Lincoln both knew the issue was not slavery, but enforcing the Constitution in states then in rebellion against it.
That is the essence of Lincoln's first call for troops on April 15.
Slavery only became an issue months later when the question of what to do with "contrabands" escaping to Union Army lines came up.

rustbucket: "...this was the same Lincoln who believed that a Fugitive Slave Law was required by the Constitution, and when he was when in the House of Representatives in the 1840s wrote his own fugitive slave law..."

As required by the Constitution of that time.

Lincoln in 1859:

"We must not disturb slavery in the states where it exists, because the Constitution, and the peace of the country both forbid us —
We must not withhold an efficient fugitive slave law, because the constitution demands it —

But we must, by a national policy, prevent the spread of slavery into new territories, or free states, because the constitution does not forbid us, and the general welfare does demand such prevention..."

rustbucket: "Where did I "claim" that Confederate motives had "nothing" to do with protecting slavery?
I have argued on these threads that slavery was the primary issue (but not the only issue) that prompted the South to secede."

Then you are the only pro-Confederate on these threads I've seen who will confess to such a thing.
Without exception I can think of, the rest of you all claim secession was about something vastly more highly principled than merely protecting slavery.

rustbucket: "...slavery was a more effective issue for motivating the Southern people and Southern states to secede than the inequities of the tariff.
Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops to invade the South was enough to prompt four more states to secede.
Don't forget that as a cause for secession. "

Now you are repeating my arguments for me. Thanks.

rustbucket: "I have noted that, in seceding, the South was also protecting their economy, just as Lincoln was protecting the Northern economy.
Were they both being Marxists in your opinion or only the South? (/sarc) I don't think either were Marxist; both sides were both working in their own self interests."

Remember, FRiend, Marxist philosophy requires that we exclude all non-economic, non-class warfare motives for historical actions.
So you are purely Marxist when you emphasize economics to the exclusion of other ideals.
As soon as you allow for higher motives, then you step out from behind the philosophical skirts of "mother Marx" and become a grown-up human being.

rustbucket: "The changed version refers to Lord Dunmore's Proclamation that promised freedom to indentured servants and Negroes who were willing to fight for the British cause against the rebels....
Didn't Lincoln do something similar in the Civil War with the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the opposition's slaves, but not the North's?"

Yes, but there were other precedents in US history since Lord Dunmore.
The one which comes to mind was the US military operations in Florida, after the War of 1812, when Spanish-owned slaves were declared "contraband" and freed by US Army forces.
But when the US Army began declaring slaves "contraband" in 1861, Lincoln at first did not support it, because that implied, as with Spanish Florida, the Confederacy was a recognized foreign power.
In due time he got over that objection.

rustbucket: "Why are you flinging unfounded accusations against me about Marx?
It is stunts like that that make you unworthy of a response.
Are you trolling for a flame war?
You won't get it from me."

No, it's simply because you use Marxist analyses to mock & ridicule Unionists, while reserving only the highest of motives for your own Confederates.
Marxism is your weapon against the Union, and I'm simply pointing out what's obvious.

rustbucket: "Marx was in favor of freeing the slaves.
Freeing the slaves was the only good thing that came out of the war.
I don't think Marx's praise of Lincoln and/or the North makes the North or Lincoln Marxist."

Then you are unusual amongst pro-Confederates who stretch the truth beyond its breaking point to find connections between Union & socialism / Marxism.
To repeat, I merely point out that your economic class-warfare analyses of Union motives uses Marxism to mock & ridicule Republicans.

It's total rubbish, imho.

[PeaRidge]

Outstanding post. The word dialectic was used in the post to which you responded, but that was certainly not characteristic of his intent.

Just a few words:

"Northern politicians were ever ready to sacrifice whatever anti-slavery sentiments they had for the sake of a tariff deal. Rumors after the Compromise of 1850 linked it to logrolling for tariff protection. Illinois votes for the Compromise were connected to railroad land grants that Illinois obtained in 1850..."

During this period, Southern politicians and merchants began a movement for Southern economic independence. Advocates supported banking, manufacturing, shipping, and transportation improvements in the South.

The movement to independence filled the merchants of New York with fear, not from worry that the movement would be successful, but that the abolition movement would add impetus to the movement and lead to the dissolution of the Union, thereby achieving much more than commercial conventions, direct trade conventions, and propaganda campaigns could accomplish.

Though the United States had withdrawn from the international slave trade in 1808, the internal slave trade between slaveholding states became a multi-million-dollar industry during the nineteenth century. Between 1830 and 1860 an estimated 300,000 Virginia African Americans were sold further south. Many slaveholding states attempted to regulate this trade, though efforts were poorly enforced and usually short-lived.

In the 1830s, a brisk trade was carried on between Baltimore and Havana in the sale of vessels built along the lines of the speedy and highly maneuverable Chesapeake Bay model “Baltimore clippers” used as privateers during the war of 1812. The clippers were publicly sold to Spanish or Portuguese slavers in Cuba who were willing to pay high prices for the rakish craft. It was almost impossible to convict Americans for selling the vessels because papers could never be found that the vessels were intended to be employed in the slave business.

Commercial ties between legitimate maritime trade and the slave trade further complicated the problem. American merchant ships carried rum, tobacco, flour, and cloth to trade along the bulge of Africa for palm oil, gum copal, ivory, gold dust, and peanuts.

Enoch Ware, trading agent aboard the Salem brig Northumberland, gloated over his arriving on the coast ahead of his competitors:

”Now if no envious competitor present himself the prospect could not be well better—that is if my Sierra Leone tobacco will suit for the slave trade. No! What am I to know for what purpose it is to be sold? I sell for produce or money. The use of it afterwards certainly am not accountable for. . . scarcely a hundred pounds of Tobacco or Powder that is sold but what sooner or later is used for purchasing slaves though it may go through half a dozen hands first.”

Further, the reason for outlawing this trade was far from humanitarian. Slaveholders in the Deep South had a fear of a rapid increase of “unmanageable,” African Americans shipped south. Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana all banned the importation of the enslaved via interstate trade after the 1831 Nat Turner Revolt. However, all three states permitted interstate trade again during the profitable cotton trade of the 1850s.

Most of the industrialists could not rationalize why some Northerners, abolitionists, had begun to quarrel with the manners and customs of the South, and were attempting to force upon them a new system of morality. In doing so, they were driving a wedge between the two sections which neither really desired.

In the beginning, the abolitionists consisted of unscrupulous politicians, clerical agitators, parsons with grandiose ideas, and reprobates of a variety of motivations.

Hence, a vast majority of New York merchants regarded the agitation of the slavery question and the interference with the rights of Southern slaveholders as inexpedient, unjust, and filled with evil.

It was not a question of morality with the merchants, but of millions of dollars in Southern trade, which would be jeopardized. Samuel J. May, a prominent New York abolitionist received this from a New York merchant:

“We cannot afford, Sir, to let you and your associates endeavor to overthrow slavery. It is not a matter of principle with us. It is a matter of business necessity…we mean, Sir, to put you abolitionists down, by fair means if we can, by foul means if we must.”

The coming war did not just spring up overnight, nor was there one simple political or social issue involved.

The seeds were vigorously sown during this period.

Passages from http://www.etymonline.com/cw/economics.htm