I did not know that. But it's not entirely true either. Davis kept the plan from the Confederate Congress. It wasn't his plan, but Duncan Kenner's, and Davis reluctantly agreed to it. And the offer was that if Britain and France recognized the Confederacy the CSA would abolish slavery. They couldn't do that in a treaty.
And the date was January 1865. Long after any chance of recognition or victory had been lost. Another Hail Mary Pass that did not reflect the true opinions of the man who made it. Davis turned down Kenner when he first proposed the idea in 1864 and Kenner only got to his new posting shortly before Lee surrendered. The way you said it, it's like you wanted people to think that Davis was trying to end slavery in 1861, which isn't true.
Oh but it does matter. Lincoln made it perfectly clear he was no threat to slavery. Many in the South understood that slavery was doomed in the long run anyway. It had already been dying out in several western countries as well as several Northern states, and was already extinguished in several more by the mid 19th century.
Slavery died out in areas where it was unprofitable. In the Deep South it was very profitable. Cotton was King. How did you miss that?
Slavery was not the real issue. Many of the most influential people in the South knew that as evidenced by the statements of numerous politicians and the editorials in the newspapers of the two largest ports in the CSA at the time.
Charleston would have been one of them?
"Here's an editorial from the Charleston Mercury, The Terrors of Submission." A mention of tariffs and all the rest is about slavery. Anyone could easily find more editorials and speeches from the period that give the same impression.
They could always go to some other labor system be it sharecropping or wages and still be quite profitable so long as they could set the terms of their foreign trade for themselves and so long as any tax revenue raised from their trade was spent for their own benefit.
It's easy to say that now in hindsight, but few slaveowners were thinking about alternative labor systems back then. Looking back over just what happened in my own lifetime it's easy to say Gorbachev or GM or Lehman Brothers or Sears could have done this or that to get out of trouble, but that's only because of the wisdom that hindsight brings.
You dredged this up from another thread by the way. I cited my sources.
I'm not sure what this is about. I commented on something you quoted at the end of your post #145 on this thread. If you don't remember what you typed it's not my fault.
Yeah I’m just not buying your argument here.
Yeah, you basically just wave aside any arguments against what you want to believe
I did not know that. But it’s not entirely true either. Davis kept the plan from the Confederate Congress. It wasn’t his plan, but Duncan Kenner’s, and Davis reluctantly agreed to it. And the offer was that if Britain and France recognized the Confederacy the CSA would abolish slavery. They couldn’t do that in a treaty.
And the date was January 1865. Long after any chance of recognition or victory had been lost. Another Hail Mary Pass that did not reflect the true opinions of the man who made it. Davis turned down Kenner when he first proposed the idea in 1864 and Kenner only got to his new posting shortly before Lee surrendered. The way you said it, it’s like you wanted people to think that Davis was trying to end slavery in 1861, which isn’t true.
Duncan Kenner did come up with the plan. Davis supported it - not reluctantly. They certainly could have abolished slavery by treaty. The date was 1864, not 1865. Here is the citation with sources.
Precious few textbooks mention the fact that by 1864 key Confederate leaders, including Jefferson Davis, were prepared to abolish slavery. As early as 1862 some Confederate leaders supported various forms of emancipation. In 1864 Jefferson Davis officially recommended that slaves who performed faithful service in non-combat positions in the Confederate army should be freed. Robert E. Lee and many other Confederate generals favored emancipating slaves who served in the Confederate army. In fact, Lee had long favored the abolition of slavery and had called the institution a “moral and political evil” years before the war (Recollections and Letters of Robert E. Lee, New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2003, reprint, pp. 231-232). By late 1864, Davis was prepared to abolish slavery in order to gain European diplomatic recognition and thus save the Confederacy. Duncan Kenner, one of the biggest slaveholders in the South and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the Confederate House of Representatives, strongly supported this proposal. So did the Confederate Secretary of State, Judah Benjamin. Davis informed congressional leaders of his intentions, and then sent Kenner to Europe to make the proposal. Davis even made Kenner a minister plenipotentiary so as to ensure he could make the proposal to the British and French governments and that it would be taken seriously.
Slavery generally died out in countries that were more industrialized. Firstly the South was industrializing - particularly the Upper South and Slavery was starting to die out there. Secondly profit margins for Cotton were declining as the British Empire started producing cotton in large quantities in India and Egypt. I didn’t miss anything.
“Here’s an editorial from the Charleston Mercury, The Terrors of Submission.” A mention of tariffs and all the rest is about slavery. Anyone could easily find more editorials and speeches from the period that give the same impression.
Here’s another editorial from the Charleston Mercury
“The real causes of dissatisfaction in the South with the North, are in the unjust taxation and expenditure of the taxes by the Government of the United States, and in the revolution the North has effected in this government from a confederated republic, to a national sectional despotism.” Charleston Mercury 2 days before the November 1860 election
Here’s one from the New Orleans Daily Crescent:
They [the South] know that it is their import trade that draws from the people’s pockets sixty to seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interests. These are the reasons why these people do not wish the South to secede from the Union. They, the North, are enraged at the prospect of being despoiled of the rich feast upon which they have so long fed and fattened, and which they were just getting ready to enjoy with still greater gout and gusto. They are mad as hornets because the prize slips them just as they are ready to grasp it. These are the reasons why these people [the North] do not wish the South to secede from the Union.” The New Orleans Daily Crescent 21 January 1861
There were plenty of examples of other labor systems at the time including what was effectively wage slavery in several parts of the industrial North.
You try to dismiss the actual facts with weak arguments based on supposition alone.