How Much of the Civil War was About Slavery?

[longknife]

I've seen all sorts of comments about this. My own personal belief was that slavery was a minor part of the reason for the southern states declaring the secession from the union. It was all about states rights and the growing interference of the feds in their activities. However, the following piece puts a very good light on the truth.:


Confederate President Jefferson Davis no more sought to take over Washington, D.C., than George Washington sought to take over London in 1776. Both wars, those of 1776 and 1861, were wars of independence. Such a recognition does not require one to sanction the horrors of slavery. We might ask, How much of the war was about slavery?


Read the entire thoughtful piece @ Historical Ignorance II CNS News

 

[Steven_R]

You should go back and reread the original Confederate documents then. Every single one of the southern Declaration of Independences flat states they were leaving the Union over the threat to slavery. The Confederate Constitution not only provides for slavery, but outright bans any attempt later to end slavery in the CSA. There were other grievances to be sure, but at the end of the day the southern states seceded over the right for one human being to own another human being as chattel.

Now, your average Johnny Reb might not have cared about slavery one way or another, and likely thought he was just defending his home from DC (even if he personally couldn't tell you how Congress affected his day-to-day life), but the political class in the South wanted slavery and if they couldn't have slavery in the US, they'd take their ball and play somewhere else.

 

[Billy_Kinetta]

You should go back and reread the original Confederate documents then. Every single one of the southern Declaration of Independences flat states they were leaving the Union over the threat to slavery. The Confederate Constitution not only provides for slavery, but outright bans any attempt later to end slavery in the CSA. There were other grievances to be sure, but at the end of the day the southern states seceded over the right for one human being to own another human being as chattel.

Now, your average Johnny Reb might not have cared about slavery one way or another, and likely thought he was just defending his home from DC (even if he personally couldn't tell you how Congress affected his day-to-day life), but the political class in the South wanted slavery and if they couldn't have slavery in the US, they'd take their ball and play somewhere else.

A little pre-war history:

Kansas Nebraska Act - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

 

[Syriusly]

I've seen all sorts of comments about this. My own personal belief was that slavery was a minor part of the reason for the southern states declaring the secession from the union. It was all about states rights and the growing interference of the feds in their activities. However, the following piece puts a very good light on the truth.:


Confederate President Jefferson Davis no more sought to take over Washington, D.C., than George Washington sought to take over London in 1776. Both wars, those of 1776 and 1861, were wars of independence. Such a recognition does not require one to sanction the horrors of slavery. We might ask, How much of the war was about slavery?


Read the entire thoughtful piece @ Historical Ignorance II CNS News

Well the 'states rights' were the rights to slavery.

Read about the elections leading up to President Lincoln's election- the Southern States were very specific that they opposed Lincoln's election because they thought he was an abolitionist- and they accurately thought he was going to oppose the expansion of slave states in the West.

When the States started to secede- the right to own slaves- and the right to protect that ownership(forcing Northern states to return escaped slaves) was first and foremost among the rationale.

From the South Carolina Declaration of Secession:
South Carolina Declaration of Secession
The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D. 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.....


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.

That protecting the 'rights' of Slaveholding States to continue to have and own human property was not the primary cause for Secession is a neat attempt at revisionist history.

 

[regent]

Lincoln was afraid of Britain coming into the Civil War and helping the South. To combat this problem he would issue the Emancipation Proclamation making the war more of a moral issue that Britain would respect. The problem was Lincoln did not want to issue the proclamation in the midst of losing the war making it a desperation move, so he waited. Finally the battle of Antietam gave Lincoln the victory he needed and bingo the proclamation was issued. How effective was this strategy with England is debatable but in any case England stayed out of the war, and the North won.

 

[Picaro]

This again? The answer of course is zero. Lincoln started the war, not the South, so what the South did or didn't decide to defend is moot. Lincoln himself said he didn't start the war over slavery, emphatically said it and said it numerous times, so this is an easy question to answer.

 

[Syriusly]

This again? The answer of course is zero. Lincoln started the war, not the South, so what the South did or didn't decide to defend is moot. Lincoln himself said he didn't start the war over slavery, emphatically said it and said it numerous times, so this is an easy question to answer.

Well Lincoln never said he started any war. Lincoln said he would maintain slavery if that is what it took to keep the Union together.

The South started the war by two specific actions
a) The Confederate/slave holding states seceded in order to protect the institution of legally owning human beings known as slavery and
b) They fired upon American troops in an American fort.

Lincoln was not responsible for either of those actions- Jeff Davis was.

 

[Picaro]

Lincoln was afraid of Britain coming into the Civil War and helping the South. To combat this problem he would issue the Emancipation Proclamation making the war more of a moral issue that Britain would respect. The problem was Lincoln did not want to issue the proclamation in the midst of losing the war making it a desperation move, so he waited. Finally the battle of Antietam gave Lincoln the victory he needed and bingo the proclamation was issued. How effective was this strategy with England is debatable but in any case England stayed out of the war, and the North won.

He was worried about England long before that. The states that had joined Carolina after Buchanan's attempt at Sumter had sent delegations to England and France attempting to get their support, but the attempts to set up direct shipping and trade for cotton and imports was what swung the balance of many of the business interests in the North behind Lincoln. They would lose the monopoly on coastal and overseas shipping and the banking for the southerners that was so profitable for them, and face competing with a South that had a 10% tariff as opposed to the Republican's 100%-500% tariffs, and lose not only the southern trade but probably the Mississippi River trade and South American trade as well. New York City had its own secessionist fever going on as well, and almost followed the South, until the news about the deals the South was going to cut with Britain and Europe hit the newspapers. There were also secessionist movements in New Jersey and Pennsylvania springing up, though I haven't read up on how popular those were. The New York City one was pretty close.

 

[Picaro]

The South started the war by two specific actions
a) The Confederate/slave holding states seceded in order to protect the institution of legally owning human beings known as slavery and
b) They fired upon American troops in an American fort.

Secession wasn't illegal, and blockading a foreign port is an act of war, period. Who fired the first sshot isn't relevant; this wasn't some schoolyard fight wherein the kids are trying to avoid a paddling by the teacher.

Lincoln was not responsible for either of those actions- Jeff Davis was.

Ah .. no, Lincoln deliberately started the war, and he did so with full knowledge of what he was trying to provoke. There is no question about that, no matter how much some want to rewrite it into some sort of morality play over slavery.

 

[Picaro]

Lincoln was afraid of Britain coming into the Civil War and helping the South. To combat this problem he would issue the Emancipation Proclamation making the war more of a moral issue that Britain would respect. The problem was Lincoln did not want to issue the proclamation in the midst of losing the war making it a desperation move, so he waited. Finally the battle of Antietam gave Lincoln the victory he needed and bingo the proclamation was issued. How effective was this strategy with England is debatable but in any case England stayed out of the war, and the North won.

To add to the previous post re England, in addition to the diverging financial interests of northern bankers and manufacturing interests, the British were themselves trying to develop their own cotton industries that they could control themselves and not have to rely on speculative prices shocks and the like. They had been trying to develop large scale cotton farming in India for a long time, with not much success as far as quality of went, and some English bankers were attempting to develop Egypt into a major cotton producer, another reason the high tariffs would have bankrupted the South, which was already producing a glut with the addition of the newer more fertile lands of East Texas. A lower tariff on British imports would induce lower prices in the face of growing competition.

Looking around on EH Net will produce a price history of cotton in gold cents for those who want to verify this. Also Hunt's Merchant Review and other sources are now available on Google and archive.org and the like for those interested in what was 'current news in periods from the 1840's on. And not just about cotton, also railroads, shipping, and most other economic news of the day, stock prices, bank rates, foreign exchange, etc. LE Bow's is another source, and a few others, though a lot more is available after the 1870's than before of course.

Another key to the founding of the Republican Party is Fremont and the California railroad interests, the success of the Federal land subsidies to the Illinois Railroad in Lincoln's own state in feeding the greed of speculators and the lobbying for the transcontinental rail route, and the effects giving away Federal land would have on the tax structure of the U.S. at the time, and the long term effects on the American economy brought on by the war and the total success of the bankers and Wall Street swindlers the Civil War wrought right up to the modern era.

 

[regent]

Lincoln was afraid of Britain coming into the Civil War and helping the South. To combat this problem he would issue the Emancipation Proclamation making the war more of a moral issue that Britain would respect. The problem was Lincoln did not want to issue the proclamation in the midst of losing the war making it a desperation move, so he waited. Finally the battle of Antietam gave Lincoln the victory he needed and bingo the proclamation was issued. How effective was this strategy with England is debatable but in any case England stayed out of the war, and the North won.

He was worried about England long before that. The states that had joined Carolina after Buchanan's attempt at Sumter had sent delegations to England and France attempting to get their support, but the attempts to set up direct shipping and trade for cotton and imports was what swung the balance of many of the business interests in the North behind Lincoln. They would lose the monopoly on coastal and overseas shipping and the banking for the southerners that was so profitable for them, and face competing with a South that had a 10% tariff as opposed to the Republican's 100%-500% tariffs, and lose not only the southern trade but probably the Mississippi River trade and South American trade as well. New York City had its own secessionist fever going on as well, and almost followed the South, until the news about the deals the South was going to cut with Britain and Europe hit the newspapers. There were also secessionist movements in New Jersey and Pennsylvania springing up, though I haven't read up on how popular those were. The New York City one was pretty close.

Of course Lincoln was concerned about Britain from even before day one.

 

[Syriusly]

The South started the war by two specific actions
a) The Confederate/slave holding states seceded in order to protect the institution of legally owning human beings known as slavery and
b) They fired upon American troops in an American fort.

Secession wasn't illegal, and blockading a foreign port is an act of war, period. Who fired the first sshot isn't relevant; this wasn't some schoolyard fight wherein the kids are trying to avoid a paddling by the teacher.
.

Secession wasn't legal- and the Confederacy was never recognized as a legal state- and always remained a part of the United States in rebellion.

Shots being fired at American troops may not seem relevant to you- but it has always been relevant in every other war we have fought.

Like I said- the South started this war by their actions.

a) The Confederate/slave holding states seceded in order to protect the institution of legally owning human beings known as slavery and
b) They fired upon American troops in an American fort

 

[Syriusly]

Ah .. no, Lincoln deliberately started the war, and he did so with full knowledge of what he was trying to provoke. There is no question about that, no matter how much some want to rewrite it into some sort of morality play over slavery.

Well that is a neat bit of revisionist history- but you proclaiming that there 'is not question about that' is disputed by most historians.

Lincoln did not go to war because of slavery- he went to war to protect the United States.

The Confederate states attempted to secede to protect their human property rights, and as part of the process started the war by firing on American troops.

Lincoln didn't go to war to free the slaves- but between the emancipation proclamation- and his advocacy of the 13th Amendment he was instrumental for the freeing of all slaves in the United States.

If it had been up to the Confederate slaves states- they would never have freed their slaves.

 

[Picaro]

Of course Lincoln was concerned about Britain from even before day one.

As he himself said to the last Virginia peace delegations in their last attempt at preventing Lincoln from invading the South before they joined the secession he was against the South and what their 10% tariffs would do to his extortionate tariff agenda.

 

[Picaro]

Ah .. no, Lincoln deliberately started the war, and he did so with full knowledge of what he was trying to provoke. There is no question about that, no matter how much some want to rewrite it into some sort of morality play over slavery.

Well that is a neat bit of revisionist history- but you proclaiming that there 'is not question about that' is disputed by most historians.

Nothing revisionist about it; the Lincoln Myth is the revisionism. you have it backwards.

Lincoln did not go to war because of slavery- he went to war to protect the United States.

The United States wasn't in danger of a Confederate invasion, so this isn't a point.

The Confederate states attempted to secede to protect their human property rights, and as part of the process started the war by firing on American troops.

Nah, just your biased belief in the Civil War as a morality play.

Lincoln didn't go to war to free the slaves-

Yes, now you got it.

 

[Picaro]

Here is James Ostrowski on what the Constitutional Convention would have had to agree to in order for Lincoln and his apologists to justify his war on the South:


"1. No state may ever secede from the Union for any reason.

2.If any state attempts to secede, the federal government shall invade such a state with sufficient military force to suppress the secession.

3. The federal government may require all states to raise militias to be used to suppress the seceding state or states.

4. After suppressing the secession, the federal government may rule by martial law until such time as the state accepts permanent federal supremacy.

5. After the secession is suppressed, the federal government may force the state to adopt new state constitutions imposed on them by federal military authorities.

6. The President may, on his own authority and without consulting any other branch of government, suspend the Bill of Rights and the writ of habeas corpus."

I'll add to number 6 " in every state in the Union.", since Lincoln suspended it in every state in the Union, not just the seceding states.

 

[Moonglow]

You should go back and reread the original Confederate documents then. Every single one of the southern Declaration of Independences flat states they were leaving the Union over the threat to slavery. The Confederate Constitution not only provides for slavery, but outright bans any attempt later to end slavery in the CSA. There were other grievances to be sure, but at the end of the day the southern states seceded over the right for one human being to own another human being as chattel.

Now, your average Johnny Reb might not have cared about slavery one way or another, and likely thought he was just defending his home from DC (even if he personally couldn't tell you how Congress affected his day-to-day life), but the political class in the South wanted slavery and if they couldn't have slavery in the US, they'd take their ball and play somewhere else.

A little pre-war history:

Kansas Nebraska Act - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

Try The Great Compromise...

 

[Syriusly]

Ah .. no, Lincoln deliberately started the war, and he did so with full knowledge of what he was trying to provoke. There is no question about that, no matter how much some want to rewrite it into some sort of morality play over slavery.

Well that is a neat bit of revisionist history- but you proclaiming that there 'is not question about that' is disputed by most historians.

Nothing revisionist about it; the Lincoln Myth is the revisionism. you have it backwards.

Lincoln did not go to war because of slavery- he went to war to protect the United States.

The United States wasn't in danger of a Confederate invasion, so this isn't a point.

The Confederate states attempted to secede to protect their human property rights, and as part of the process started the war by firing on American troops.

Nah, just your biased belief in the Civil War as a morality play.

Lincoln didn't go to war to free the slaves-

Yes, now you got it.

As I have said all along- Lincoln- and the North didn't go to war to free the slaves.

The Southern Slave Holding States seceded to protect their right to own human property.

And then started the war by firing on American troops.

 

[Syriusly]

Of course Lincoln was concerned about Britain from even before day one.

As he himself said to the last Virginia peace delegations in their last attempt at preventing Lincoln from invading the South before they joined the secession he was against the South and what their 10% tariffs would do to his extortionate tariff agenda.

LOL......feel free to provide the citation and actual quotes.

 

[Syriusly]

Here is James Ostrowski on what the Constitutional Convention would have had to agree to in order for Lincoln and his apologists to justify his war on the South:

If the Confederate States had not attempted to secede there would have been no war.

If the Confederate States had not started their war on the United States by firing on American troops you would not have to be here trying to justify their war.