The first? It wasn't ratified until after most of the "slaveholding states" (their words) had seceded and the war had started.
It was also prima facia evidence that slavery was not what was motivating the original 7 seceding states to go. Were it slavery, this would have satisfied their concerns. It did not.
If they had intended to abolish slavery, they could have done it and taken that cause off the table. Why didn't they? Because that's what they were fighting for.
And of course, Lincoln started the war - deliberately - by sending a heavily armed fleet of warships to invade Confederate territory
Did those ships fire the first shot?
No, they weren't lying. The states that did issue declarations of causes noted that the Northern states violated the constitution. They did violate the constitution. That much is clear. You do understand that the legal argument one makes for their position might not be what is actually motivating them right? People make arguments all the time citing one reason for why they are doing what they're doing even though everybody knows that's not the real reason why. Something else is actually motivating them.
Did they free their slaves? No.
Anyone who refuses to see the exact quotes from Republicans that they were not Abolitionists must also struggle with what the meaning of "is" is.
From Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln, 14th paragraph
Lincoln WAS one of those racists - a flaming one at that. So was Seward. So was pretty much everybody. So much for the myth of the virtuous North.
I never said the North was virtuous. I even conceded that President Lincoln had to work with that. Being a product of his times, he may have had to overcome that in himself. Which he did, as Frederick Douglas said.
From Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln, 14th paragraph
But calling the North racists when it was the South who held slaves until forced by the North to free them is beyond absurd. Let's see what their declarations of secession said about blacks.
From Georgia: "They entered the Presidential contest again in 1860 and succeeded. The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races".
From Mississippi: "It advocates negro equality, socially and politically".
From Texas: "She (Texas) was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits"
Also from Texas: "They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States." So much for your claim the "Yankees" weren't abolitionists.
Another from Texas: "that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable."
None of these were fully legal justifications, so why would they make these statements if they didn't believe them?
But that's not why they started the war - that's the bottom line.
Then why did they fire on Fort Sumter?
I've cited 3 or 4 of the most prominent including Lincoln. I've also cited several Newspapers which were their mouthpieces. I've also noted that actual Abolitionists could not get more than single digit percentages of the vote in elections. You are being willfully blind to reality at this point.
I suppose ten or twelve snippets tell the whole story. Here's a snippet from Frederick Douglas, who I remind you was an escaped slave.
From Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln, 14th paragraph
The Republicans were not abolitionists.
From the Republicans in 1856: "that, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished Slavery in all our National Territory, ordained that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, it becomes our duty to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it for the purpose of establishing Slavery in the territories of the United States by positive legislation, prohibiting its existence or extension therein.
I'll also repeat what the declarations of secession said.
From Georgia: "They entered the Presidential contest again in 1860 and succeeded. The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races".
From Mississippi: "It advocates negro equality, socially and politically".
From Texas: "They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States."
Take a look at who spouts PC Revisionism today. Here's a hint: it ain't those of us on the Right.
Nope, it's the same party that fought to preserve slavery and is now trying to bury their historic role in defending it, and it starts with a "D".
You're delusional. PC Revisionism like what you are spouting here comes from LEFTISTS in Academia. It is furthermore pushed by LEFTISTS in the media. Government is their god. They want all power centralized and concentrated in ever fewer hands. They despise the whole idea of states' rights. Leftists are always against decentralized power.
The revisionism is that they want to stick us, the right, with their history. You're only helping them.
They are trying to obliterate the South's history for the same reason that they are trying to obliterate America's history. These are global socialists. I told you PCers they would move on to American symbols and leaders next way back in the 1990s. You lot assured me that I was nuts and it would never get to things like the stars and stripes, the Founding Fathers, American history, etc etc back then. Well look where we are today. Told ya so.
The only thing they're trying to obliterate is their own history. I agree with you it should be preserved as a reminder of what we never want to happen again, but if they don't want the statues in their cities, then what can anyone do about it?
It didn't happen until AFTER the war because the Republicans were not abolitionists. The US itself still had slavery. They didn't even get around to the EP which was a war measure until 2 years into the war.
I know I'm going to set you off on a rant about the North's poor military leadership early in the war and you'll be right, but President Lincoln waited until the North had won a solid victory before announcing the EP. It had nothing to do with not wanting to abolish slavery.
Even then Lincoln went miles out of his way to not include not only slaves in the North but also slaves in Confederate territory the Federals were then occupying. It only happened after the war because Republicans needed to tell all those voters in the North that their loved ones had been killed, maimed and crippled for some noble purpose other than just lining special interest groups' pockets.
Even though most in the North were racists who opposed abolition, is that what you're saying?
Not the abolitionists. Who were miniscule in number.
There were enough of them that President Lincoln sold the abolition of slavery as the purpose of the war, as you've been saying. You can't have it both ways. If they were a teeny, tiny, minority, the President Lincoln wouldn't have used abolition to sell the war to the North.
Well on that we disagree. Chattel slavery was nowhere near as bad as mass extermination.
I'll clarify. That the slaveholders' crimes didn't measure up to what the nazis and commies did doesn't make their crimes of taking slaves any less abominable if the Holocaust hadn't happened.
You're trying to make a 21st century moral argument. No matter how much you and I abhor slavery today, the fact remains that most people in the West and in the US - and even in the Northern states - in the mid 19th century did not share our views. It was a different time. People's views and values were quite different....and before you say "but they abolitionists" they were a tiny minority seen as extremists by the vast majority. There were even people who believed in equality of the sexes and equality of religions and ethnic groups back then. They were a tiny minority too and were seen as extremists too.
Then why would President Lincoln use their cause to justify the war? You still haven't explained that.
It was the legal grounds cited by 4 states which issued declarations of causes - not the whole South. The fact that they turned down slavery forever by express constitutional amendment shows that this is not what was really motivating them.
No one even ratified that amendment until after the war had already started, and it never came close to ratification. It was a last ditch attempt to save the Union. It never had a chance and the confederacy knew it, which is why they rejected it.
strawman. I never said that. What I said is that the Republicans were not abolitionists. I stand by that. They weren't.
From the Republicans in 1856: "that, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished Slavery in all our National Territory, ordained that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, it becomes our duty to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it for the purpose of establishing Slavery in the territories of the United States by positive legislation, prohibiting its existence or extension therein.
From Georgia: "They entered the Presidential contest again in 1860 and succeeded. The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races".
From Mississippi: "It advocates negro equality, socially and politically".
From Texas: "They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States."
Correct. They freed the slaves AFTER the war. That does not make them abolitionists BEFORE The war. They did after all support slavery forever by express constitutional amendment.
I see. There were no abolitionists before the war to pander to. OK.
No, they offered the fig leaf of ending slavery to try to salve the deep wounds the war caused even in the North. People naturally recoil at the idea that loved ones were killed or maimed for something so base as money. They always want to believe they are the "good" guys fighting for some noble cause.
Why would they offer abolishing slavery if the people were against it or didn't care?
Do I have to explain to you again that people can make a legal argument that is perfectly valid even though the legal argument they make is not the real reason why they are doing something? Do you understand the concept of a pretext?
No, but you have to explain why they kept their slaves if it wasn't about preserving slavery.
Yes, first. They rolled over and offered slavery forever immediately. They voted for it with the necessary 2/3rds supermajority after the delegation from the original 7 seceding states had withdrawn.If they had intended to abolish slavery, they could have done it and taken that cause off the table. Why didn't they? Because that's what they were fighting for.
Who said they intended to abolish slavery? Nobody said that. You simply cannot address the fact that the Republicans/North offered slavery forever by express constitutional amendment and the original 7 seceding states turned down that offer.
Did those ships fire the first shot?
The aggressor is one who invades the territory of another.
Did they free their slaves? No.
Does your argument make sense? No.
From Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln, 14th paragraph
I don't care what some nauseating hagiography says. Lincoln himself was perfectly clear. He was no abolitionist.
I never said the North was virtuous. I even conceded that President Lincoln had to work with that. Being a product of his times, he may have had to overcome that in himself. Which he did, as Frederick Douglas said. From Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln, 14th paragraph
I don't care what some nauseating hagiography says. Lincoln himself was no abolitionist and was a flaming racist. He was trying to deport Blacks right up until his death.
But calling the North racists when it was the South who held slaves until forced by the North to free them is beyond absurd. Let's see what their declarations of secession said about blacks. Blah Blah Blah So much for your claim the "Yankees" weren't abolitionists.
Here's what many Yankees themselves were saying:
"Our people hate the Negro with a perfect if not a supreme hatred" said Congressman George Julian of Indiana. Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois conceded that 'there is a very great aversion in the West--I know it to be so in my State--against having free negroes come among us. Our people want nothing to do with the negro.' The same could be said of many soldiers. . . ." (McPherson, Ordeal By Fire, p. 275)
The same Congress that imposed Reconstruction on the South after the war also imposed racist policies on the American Indians "The same Congress that devised Radical Reconstruction . . . approved strict segregation and inequality for the Indian of the West." (Catton, editor, The National Experience, p. 416)
"So the Negro [in the North] is free, but he cannot share the rights, pleasures, labors, griefs, or even the tomb of him whose equal he has been declared; there is nowhere where he can meet him, neither in life nor in death. In the South, where slavery still exists, less trouble is taken to keep the Negro apart: they sometimes share the labors and the pleasures of the white men; people are prepared to mix with them to some extent; legislation is more harsh against them, but customs are more tolerant and gentle". -Alexis De Tocqueville, "Democracy in America", Harper & Row, 1966, p.343.
Ohio Republican Senator John Sherman, (brother of William T. Sherman): “We do not like the Negroes. We do not disguise our dislike…..The whole people of the Northwestern states are opposed to having many Negroes among them and that principle or prejudice has been engraved in the legislation for nearly all of the Northwestern states.”
William Seward, inveterate moralizer and creator of the phrase “irrepressible conflict,” who, at a political rally in 1860, described the American black man as a “foreign and feeble element like the Indians, incapable of assimilation…a pitiful exotic unwisely and unnecessarily transplanted into our fields, and which it is unprofitable to cultivate at the cost of the desolation of the native vineyard.”
On July 12, 1848, during a Senate debate over slavery in the territories, it was a New York Senator, John Dix, who got up and said that “free blacks would continue to be an inferior cast and simply die out.” It was a Senator from Mississippi named Jefferson Davis who replied that he was “horrified” to hear “their extinction treated as a matter of public policy.”
"the Prejudice of the race appears to be stronger in the States that have abolished slaves than in the states where slavery still exists. White carpenters, white bricklayers and white painters will not work side by side with blacks in the North but do it in almost every Southern state." Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America
This from Lincoln: "There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that— 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. Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them"
Even the chief PC Revisionist James McPherson was forced to admit it. "The problem with this lofty rhetoric of dying to make men free was that in 1861 the North was fighting for the restoration of a slaveholding Union. In his July 4 message to Congress, Lincoln reiterated the inaugural pledge that he had 'no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists.'" (McPherson, Ordeal By Fire, p. 265)
So much for your claims that Republicans were abolitionists.
But that's not why they started the war - that's the bottom line. Then why did they fire on Fort Sumter?
Lincoln started the war when he sent a heavily armed fleet to invade South Carolina's sovereign territory. South Carolina was forced to fire to drive the invaders away.
I suppose ten or twelve snippets tell the whole story. Here's a snippet I've posted 3 times already but am desperate to spam you with again because I have nothing else. Blah Blah Blah
They aren't "snippets". These are the statements of numerous Republican politicians of the era as well as the largest newspapers. There is also the fact that abolitionists received a pathetically small share of the vote in one election after another.
From the Republicans in 1856: "that, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished Slavery in all our National Territory, ordained that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, it becomes our duty to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it for the purpose of establishing Slavery in the territories of the United States by positive legislation, prohibiting its existence or extension therein.
In the territories. We've already covered this.
I'll also try to spam you with the same statements from the declarations of causes I've tried to spam you with a dozen times already.
We've covered this several times already. The Republicans were not abolitionists as they themselves said over and over again.
Nope, it's the same party that fought to preserve slavery and is now trying to bury their historic role in defending it, and it starts with a "D".
Correct! PC Revisionism comes from Leftist Democrats today. They are the ones who started pushing the "all about slavery" BS in the 1980s. People like Howard Zinn, James McPherson, etc etc.
The revisionism is that they want to stick us, the right, with their history. You're only helping them.
No. The revisionism is the "all about slavery" myth they try to spread and their attempts to deny the fact that the Southern states were being screwed over economically and wanted out for that reason. You help them by supporting their completely BS arguments.
The only thing they're trying to obliterate is their own history. I agree with you it should be preserved as a reminder of what we never want to happen again, but if they don't want the statues in their cities, then what can anyone do about it?
Today's Democrat Party is not the same as the Democrat Party of the mid 19th century. Hell, the Democrats used to be for limited government, balanced budgets, states' rights/decentralized power and a non interventionist foreign policy. They are the exact opposite of that today. They hate the South in particular with a visceral hatred because the South is the heart of the Conservative movement.
I know I'm going to set you off on a rant about the North's poor military leadership early in the war and you'll be right, but President Lincoln waited until the North had won a solid victory before announcing the EP. It had nothing to do with not wanting to abolish slavery.
It was a war measure. It wasn't some moral gesture. As the English (who by then were real abolitionists having abolished slavery in 1838 noted: "The Union government liberates the enemy’s slaves as it would the enemy’s cattle, simply to weaken them in the conflict. The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States." --London Spectator, 1862
Even though most in the North were racists who opposed abolition, is that what you're saying?
Yes. People were desperate to believe there was some "noble" cause for which their loved ones had been sacrificed. They were prepared to latch onto just about anything. This was hardly unique to the Northern states circa 1865. There is no question they were not in favor of abolitionism beforehand. Hell, there were major riots when it was announced. Federal troops had to be brought in to quell the riots in New York City they were so bad. There was a massive desertion crisis in the Union army. Union soldiers ‘were willing to risk their lives for Union," McPherson writes, "but not for black freedom." James McPherson For Cause and Comrades; Why Men Fought in the Civil War.
There were enough of them that President Lincoln sold the abolition of slavery as the purpose of the war, as you've been saying. You can't have it both ways. If they were a teeny, tiny, minority, the President Lincoln wouldn't have used abolition to sell the war to the North.
No. That is not what I said. Lincoln didn't do any such thing. After the war....AFTER....that would be AFTER Lincoln was dead....Republicans tried to argue that secession had been "all about slavery" because they didn't want to admit it had been about money for obvious domestic political reasons....they also didn't want to openly admit they had been fleecing the Southern states economically and now were doing so to an even greater degree than before with the crushing Morrill Tariff which set tariff rates at an eye watering 54%.
I'll clarify. That the slaveholders' crimes didn't measure up to what the nazis and commies did doesn't make their crimes of taking slaves any less abominable if the Holocaust hadn't happened.
Nobody is arguing chattel slavery was good. I would note the slave trade was worse than chattel slavery itself but obviously both were abominable by our modern standards - though views in the mid 19th century were different.
Then why would President Lincoln use their cause to justify the war? You still haven't explained that.
HE didn't - as I said above.
No one even ratified that amendment until after the war had already started, and it never came close to ratification. It was a last ditch attempt to save the Union. It never had a chance and the confederacy knew it, which is why they rejected it.
Lincoln only sent it to the states a few weeks before he started the war. It did not come close to ratification because the original 7 seceding states rejected it. Thus Lincoln did not push it nearly as much as he had been. You can say it was a last ditch attempt to save the union. It failed because the original 7 seceding states were not really motivated by protection of slavery. They were motivated by wanting to take control over tax and trade policy so as to stop getting screwed over for others' benefit......ie the actual cause of secession and the actual reason Lincoln started the war.
Here I'm going to spam you with the exact same quote I've used a dozen times at least about how the Republicans did not want slavery spread to the territories.
Being against the spread of slavery is not the same thing as advocating abolition everywhere. We've gone over this.
I see. There were no abolitionists before the war to pander to. OK.
I didn't say there were no abolitionists before the war. I said they were a tiny minority. I stand by that. They were a tiny minority. They were not pandered to then.
Why would they offer abolishing slavery if the people were against it or didn't care?
Because what else could they say? That they had waged a war of aggression for money and empire? Could they say that people's loved ones were killed or had arms or legs blown off so that their corporate supporters who funded their campaigns could make more profit? Those things happen to be true but people don't want to hear that. People never want to be told they fought a war for money even though most wars are about........money.
No, but you have to explain why they kept their slaves if it wasn't about preserving slavery.
Your argument makes no sense. Why would they abolish slavery? Nobody had. The North wasn't threatening to abolish slavery. There were still slave states which stayed in the Union.
Yes. The sending of them with orders to attack was the first shot. The putting warships in peoples faces and telling them those ships are going to attack them *IS* the first shot.