Posted on 04/09/2002 9:35:02 AM PDT by GulliverSwift
You people are in denial. Without the issue of slavery, there would have been no Civil War. I know you try to justify their fight against the federal government, and I think it's good to fight against today's left-wing trash bureaucracy that runs the federal government. But back then slavery was the catalyst that started the whole thing.
In each of the states that seceded, their official document that announced secession referred to slavery as the number one issue.
Now, the average Southern soldier probably didn't think about owning slaves since he sure couldn't afford one. But the average Joe Southerner didn't finance the war. The war was financed by the wealthy class in the South, and they're the ones who had a stake in preserving slavery. The wealthy controlled all the newspapers, the town councils, and the economy, and they're the ones who controlled what people heard and thought.
Lincoln wanted to keep slavery out of future states that would expand in the West, which would create more Congressman from free states that would tip the scales on the Hill. So Southern governments threatened that if Lincoln won the election, they would secede. And sure enough, the seceded.
There's nothing wrong with hating the federal government, the nosy SOBs and DOBs in the bureaucracy feel it's their job to run everything. But that doesn't mean that we also have to agree with what the South did, even if it was against the federal government. I don't want two different United States--two weak countries--especially not one with slaves.
Yes, it was about slavery. Southern states stated that as their official reason, and the wealthy class in the South, the ones with money to pay for the guns and cannons, wanted slavery as well.
You and liberals have something in common. Both believe that it was about "states' rights." Liberal blacks think it was about that because they hate to think that so many white people would want to stop slavery. You Southerners think it was about "states' rights" because you hate to think that so many people fighting against the federal government could ever be a bad thing.
Usually, it's not.
And why did it only free the slaves in the South? They didn't free the slaves in border (read Federal) states until years later?
It wasn't about slavery, it was about control.
To claim otherwise is tantamount to saying a murder was committed by a gun, not a shooter.
The North economically dominated the South. They used them like feudal states. The Federal government dictated the buying price of the raw goods they bought from the South, and then set the prices of manufactured goods sold back to the South artificially high (through taxes and tariffs). Other taxes and tarrifs made it impossible to sell the raw materials to other countries. Then the North had the gall to say that not only will we control how much you make and who you sell to, now we're going to tell you that you can no longer use slaves to produce those raw goods.
When people get squeezed by a tyrant, they tend to rebel.
On 19th August, 1862, Horace Greeley wrote an open letter to the Abraham Lincoln in the New York Tribune about forcing David Hunter to retract his proclamation [General David Hunter began enlisting black soldiers in the occupied district under his control. Soon afterwards Hunter issued a statement that all slaves owned by Confederates in his area (Georgia, Florida and South Carolina) were free - Lincoln was furious.]. Greeley criticized the president for failing to make slavery the dominant issue of the war and compromising moral principles for political motives. Lincoln famously replied on 22nd August, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it."
I do not pretend to be a Civil War scholar but I seem to recall that all the agricultural production of the South was required to pass through Northern ports with the Northern states taking a hefty chunk of the proceeds. So, while the agricultural production of the South was indeed supported by slave labor, an underlying reason for the Civil War was money and only, indirectly, slavery as it pertained to economics.
As I said, this is only my recollection and I will be happy if someone wishes to correct or clarify my remarks.
It might have been about slavery, but that does not mean that slavery was the cause. Just as the American Revolution might not have happened without a tax on tea. However, "tea" was not the cause, taxation without representation, freedom, etc. were the causes.
And then only in the south, not the north.Never mind that 4 of the 13 northern states were slave states, plus the chunk of Virginia that didn't secede and later became West Virginia. Not to mention the fact that Ulysses S. Grant owned slaves and supported slavery while Robert E. Lee was a staunch and vocal opponent of slavery.
I think that we're muddying up poor GulliverSwift's opinions with facts. He must be ... in denial!
Oh, and as for that freedom he believed blacks should enjoy, he suggested and pushed for on more than one occasion it should be done outside of the United States. He didn't believe blacks and whites could ever live together and as much said so
Slavery was the ultimate States' Rights issue of the day. People who say slavery wasn't the catalyst are fooling themselves. People who say it was all/i> about slavery are also fooling themselves.
Two great-great-grandfathers and at least two great-great-uncles of mine fought for North Carolina and none of them ever owned slaves, so I'm glad you acknowledge that the average dogface soldier didn't give a damn about slavery one way or another.
I think the efforts to deny slavery as the catalyst for the Civil War are really overcompensation to the equally false notion that Southerners fought to keep their slaves.
It resulted in ALL of the states AND ALL folks being "enslaved" with TAXES......after Southern loot was not enough....and just like a junkie/crackhead..needed MORE $$$$$ to satisfy the urge(to spend other people's money).....
Learn to read and comprehend. He wrote "Lincoln wanted to keep slavery out of future states that would expand in the West, which would create more Congressman from free states that would tip the scales on the Hill. So Southern governments threatened that if Lincoln won the election, they would secede. And sure enough, the seceded."
Freeing the slaves in slave states was an ADDITIONAL goal after the slave states seceded.
You can actually read the history of the time (wouldn't that be novel, reading before you lecture!)
Check out South Carolina's own words (they were the first to seced.)
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.
You know, we really don't give a tinker's damn how you do it up north or what you learned in your liberal, bedwetting, homo promoting high school.
We all have seen that politicians, both good and bad, don't always talk about what they are really thinking. The divisive issue was not just slavery itself, but the fact that slavery had created two different interest groups, so that the question of whether new states out west should be free or slave spoke to the question of which of two evenly balanced factions in congress would win, and which would lose.
Similarly today, abortion is not the only political issue. It is just one among many. And yet it underlies most of the conflicts between Republicans and Democrats, one way or another. Abortion policy and law infects everything else. Slavery did that too. In many ways I admire the southern aristocratic ideal more than the northern industrial ideal, and I agree that many slaves had a better life in the south than blacks in the northern cities. Nevertheless, slavery is a great evil, and we did right to put an end to it. I would rather be poor but free than a slave, and I imagine most Freepers would feel the same way.
Sadly, slavery was LEGAL when the War Between The States broke out. Ergo, if the war was truly about slavery, then the North was acting illegally...
Just because you live down here doesn't mean you're Southern. Southern is a state of mind, Washington himself even saw that when he noticed the differences between the two regions and predicted there would be trouble down the road. As for open mindedness, I suggest you do a little research into the editorials written by hundreds of papers up north in 1860 calling for abe just to let the South go their own way. The only time they changed their tune, and BTW they even gave it as THE reason for not letting the South go, was when the amount of money lost in revenue was considered. I suggest you open your mind a bit as well
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