Why Did The South Secede?

[JakeStarkey]

Mifkegriffith1, you are entitled to your opinion, but not your own facts. The South left because it had lost confidence that the North would let them keep slavery and that the North would no longer respect states' rights.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Mifkegriffith1, you are entitled to your opinion, but not your own facts. The South left because it had lost confidence that the North would let them keep slavery and that the North would no longer respect states' rights.

This is PC fiction. You didn't address a single point in my reply, and it's apparent that you didn't bother to read the article on "The Tariff and Secession."

Again, the four Upper South states initially rejected secession when the issues were only slavery and economic complaints. Why? Because they did not feel that the Deep South's complaints about slavery and economic issues justified secession. They only seceded later, after Fort Sumter fell, because they believed it was unconstitutional and wrong to use force to compel a state to return to the Union.

In fact, those four states initially rejected secession by hefty margins and were leaning toward staying in the Union, until Lincoln made it clear that he was going to launch an invasion. Then and only then did those four states change their minds and join the Confederacy.

Finally, FYI, the Confederate constitution allowed for the admission of free states to the Confederacy.

 

[JakeStarkey]

The fiction is your far right reactionary revisionism. Read VP Stephens' 8220 Corner Stone 8221 Speech Teaching American History cornerstone speech of March 21, 1861 and you will find the truth.

Any further information or guidance on the subject can be provided by paperview in a conversation request. She is recognized by those of us who understand this subject as the outstanding expert on the matter.

 

[regent]

For all that is written about a people having the right to create a new government, we forget the hard facts in that they often have to fight a winning war, to achieve that new government. As some have the right to create a new government other people have the right to refuse that new government.

 

[JakeStarkey]

longly, if we declared war, then perhaps you would have a legal case.

We did not, and you do not.

I have no interest in the legal aspects what interest me are the historical facts. The facts are US soldiers were fighting and dying in Vietnam in a struggle with an evil ideology. And Jane Fonda supported the enemy. That is treason.

You are entitled to your opinion is all.

 

[longly]

longly, if we declared war, then perhaps you would have a legal case.

We did not, and you do not.

I have no interest in the legal aspects what interest me are the historical facts. The facts are US soldiers were fighting and dying in Vietnam in a struggle with an evil ideology. And Jane Fonda supported the enemy. That is treason.

You are entitled to your opinion is all.

The southern states that seceded did not commit treason and this is the reason: Our laws are based on English law and from the very beginning treason has been an action against the sovereign. Sovereignty is the right to rule others. A sovereign is one who has no peers and there is no power above the sovereign but God. During the Revolutionary War we rejected kings, but sovereignty did not disappear the power the king once held reverted to the people in our country.

The United States is a federation; don’t confuse it with a confederation which we also tried at one time. Under a federation the people who hold ultimate sovereignty and delegate some of their power to at least two governments neither of which is superior to the other both are subjects of the people. The states are our basic sovereign unit of government; If the people of a state, the sovereign, vote to secede that is not treason. The sovereign can not commit treason.

If you will remember the no one was convicted of treason after the Civil War. Also I don’t mean to give impression that any group of individuals can be sovereign but only the collective.

 

[mikegriffith1]

The fiction is your far right reactionary revisionism. Read VP Stephens' 8220 Corner Stone 8221 Speech Teaching American History cornerstone speech of March 21, 1861 and you will find the truth.

So one speech by a guy who was given the meaningless job of vice present and who just weeks earlier was arguing vehemently against secession--this one speech is supposed to somehow prove that secession was all about slavery, when in fact he never even mentioned secession?

You still have no addressed the point that the Republicans' reasons for opposing peaceful separation clearly had nothing to do with any concerns about slavery.

And if Stephens' speech is supposed to taken as representative of how all Southern citizens felt, shall we argue that all Northern citizens agreed with the sentiments expressed in the following statements by Northern leaders, starting with Abraham Lincoln? Let's read:

Abraham Lincoln, just two years before he was elected president:

I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. ... I will add to this that I have never seen, to my knowledge, a man, woman, or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between negroes and white men. . . .

I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. (Fourth debate between Lincoln and Douglas, September 18, 1858)​

Lincoln again, and this time we see him regarding the idea of "negro equality" as fudge and demagoguery:

“Negro equality! Fudge! How long, in the government of a god, great enough to make and maintain this universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagogue-ism as this?” (Abraham Lincoln in notes for speeches in September of 1859)​

Lincoln, yet again:

I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. (Third debate with Douglas, August 21, 1858)​

Senator Stephen Douglas from Illinois, whom Lincoln warmly embraced as an ally after Fort Sumter fell:

I say to you in all frankness, gentlemen, that in my opinion a negro is not a citizen, cannot be, and ought not to be, under the constitution of the United States. . . . I say that this government was established on the white basis. It was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and never should be administered by any except white men. (Fourth debate with Stephen Douglas, September 18, 1858)​

It should be noted that Douglas finished second in the popular vote in the 1860 presidential election, receiving over 1.3 million votes, the vast majority of which came from states that remained in the Union during the war. He got 31% of the vote in California, 47% of the vote in Illinois, 42% of the vote in Indiana, 43% of the vote in Iowa, 29% of the vote in Maine, 42% of the vote in Michigan, 39% of the vote in New Hampshire, 42% of the vote in Ohio, and 46% of the vote in New York.

Congressman Samuel Cox, who was raised in the North, said the following in the House of Representatives on June 2, 1862:

I have been taught in the history of this country that these Commonwealths and this Union were made for white men; that this Government is a Government of white men; that the men who made it never intended, by any thing they did, to place the black race on an equality with the white. (Samuel Cox, Eight Years in Congress, D. Appleton & Co., 1865, Kessenger Publishing, 2005, reprint of 1865 edition, p. 156)
​

Joshua Giddings, a leading abolitionist Republican, declared,

We do not say the black man is, or shall be, the equal of the white man, or that he shall vote or hold office. (Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, p. 291)​

Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, an early opponent of slavery and an ardent foe of the extension of slavery into the territories, assured a Republican rally in Chicago that the Republican Party was “the white man’s party” and that he wanted nothing to do with blacks—in fact, he wanted blacks to leave the country:

I, for one, am very much disposed to favor the colonization of such free negroes as are willing to Central America. I want to have nothing to do with the free negro or the slave negro. We, the Republican Party, are the white man's party. [Great applause.] We are for free white men, and for making white labor respectable and honorable, which it never can be when negro slave labor is brought into competition with it. [Great applause.] We wish to settle the territories with free white men, and we are willing that this negro race should go anywhere that it can to better its condition, wishing them God speed, wherever they go. We believe it is better for us that they should not be among us. I believe it will be better for them to go elsewhere. (The Campaign in Illinois, Chicago, 1858, pp. 8-9)​

Shall I continue? I could.

So, again, you need to come to grips with the fact that the Republicans' refusal to allow the South to leave in peace had nothing to do with any concerns about slavery. Indeed, we now know that behind the scenes Lincoln--as president--was pushing for the Corwin Amendment, which would have forever prevented the federal government from abolishing slavery--he even mentioned his support for the amendment in his first inaugural address.

 

[JakeStarkey]

That the South did not secede legally is based on American constitutional and case law, which is the only law that counts.

Stephens outweights any and all nonsense you bring to the board, friend. He believed it, the president of the US believed it, and all alive then believed it. What you believe matters not.

Slavery was the cause of the war.

 

[mikegriffith1]

That the South did not secede legally is based on American constitutional and case law, which is the only law that counts.

Thomas Jefferson defended the right of secession. So did James Madison. So did John Quincy Adams. So did Timothy Pickering. There is not one word in the Constitution that says ratification was irrevocable or even that the Union was supposed to be permanent. Half the states would not have ratified the Constitution if they had been told that they could never revoke their ratification.

Furthermore, the evidence is clear that the Union was never intended to be held together by force. The founding fathers screamed against the British for using force to try to keep the colonies from leaving--they weren't about to give to the federal government the very power that they had denounced and had fought a war to overthrow.

Proof that the Union was Supposed to be Voluntary

Stephens outweights any and all nonsense you bring to the board, friend. He believed it, the president of the US believed it, and all alive then believed it. What you believe matters not.

That's your answer to the statements by Lincoln, Trumbull, Douglas, Cox, etc.? That's it? That all those statements are just "nonsense"? In other words, you don't want to deal with the fact that most Northern citizens held racial views that were very similar to those that Stephens expressed.

And how do you explain the fact that Southerners began debating emancipation in 1863 and that the Confederate government began moving toward emancipation in late 1864?

Slavery was the cause of the war.

How could slavery have been the cause of the war when Lincoln himself was prepared to permanently protect slavery from federal abolition, when four of the eleven Confederate states rejected secession when it was based on slavery concerns and economic complaints, and when the Confederate constitution allowed for the admission of free states to the Confederacy?

The South's desire for independence and the Republicans' refusal to allow the South to leave in peace were the cause of the war.

If the South had announced in 1863 that it was instituting a program of gradual emancipation that would follow the pattern of Northern emancipation, i.e., emancipation over a 20-year period, would Lincoln have halted the federal invasion and agreed to peaceful coexistence? No, because the war was not being fought over slavery. It was being fought over Southern independence.

 

[emilynghiem]

That the South did not secede legally is based on American constitutional and case law, which is the only law that counts.

Stephens outweights any and all nonsense you bring to the board, friend. He believed it, the president of the US believed it, and all alive then believed it. What you believe matters not.

Slavery was the cause of the war.

Yes and no, it goes in circles if you see how interconnected it is.
the Southern economy depended on slavery.
to fight for control, abolishing slavery becomes the focus strategy.

so which came first, fighting over slavery which became a control issue.
or fighting over control, where slavery was the key to breaking the South.

I would say it is intertwined.

people are still fighting for control today, with or without slavery.
states rights vs. federal centralized govt
same battle different battlefield, with different issues from
health care to immigration to legalization.

it is a mix of the issues inherent with slavery itself
and the context of fighting between state and national sovereignty

 

[JakeStarkey]

One, what the Founders may have thought about secession does not matter.

There are no circles about slavery as the cause of the war.

It is not "well, I am coming at it differently," but you in fact are wrong.

 

[emilynghiem]

One, what the Founders may have thought about secession does not matter.

There are no circles about slavery as the cause of the war.

It is not "well, I am coming at it differently," but you in fact are wrong.

I think both views are right, and nobody has to be wrong.

If a couple gets divorced because of money problems and because
they were fighting over that, it is both the money problems and the fighting
for control over or how to solve the money problems that caused the divorce.

[SIGH JakeStarkey
you remind me of how I had to explain to my Republican prolife friend
that the prochoice fight is not about abortion per se but about
govt mandates and bans that would affect women more than men.
same with how people rejecting the mandates on health care
are not about opposing health care per se but the flawed legislation.]

 

[JakeStarkey]

Derivative analogies fall apart.

But I recognize that you always strive for calm and peace, and that is a good thing!

 

[emilynghiem]

Derivative analogies fall apart.

But I recognize that you always strive for clam and peace, and that is a good thing!

Well if you and Mike can come up with a better analogy,
maybe you can be more helpful and effective in that area
and help a lot more people to understand how to avoid similar
fighting even where we continue to disagree. We can all be right without making others wrong.

 

[JakeStarkey]

However, there is right and wrong, and Mike is having difficulty accepting that slavery and race are the twin crosses we carry in the USA.

Slavery was the root cause for every symptom of the Civil War.

 

[Discombobulated]

I see you can't even discuss history without infusing your contempt for the current president, which is most disingenuous to your premise...

Some people find superficial historic comparisons to be compelling.

 

[mikegriffith1]

One, what the Founders may have thought about secession does not matter.

So your position is that secession was unconstitutional but it doesn't matter that the founding fathers, the guys who wrote the Constitution, did not say secession was unconstitutional.

There are no circles about slavery as the cause of the war.

Well, you know, you can repeat this myth a thousand times and it will still be a myth, and a silly one at that, no matter how widely believed it might be in some circles.

You have not answered a single point of fact that I have presented. Instead, you just keep repeating yourself and insisting that you're right.

I ask you again,

How could slavery have caused the war when Lincoln, the guy who launched the federal invasion, was pushing for a constitutional amendment that would have forever protected slavery from federal abolition? How?

How could slavery have caused the war when four of the eleven Confederate states did not even secede over slavery, nor over the tariff, but in fact rejected secession when it was based on those complaints?

If slavery was the cause of the war, why didn't Lincoln and the Republicans ever offer to allow the South to leave in peace if it would just abolish slavery, especially when they found out in 1862 that Confederate diplomats in England were saying the CSA would abolish slavery if England would recognize the Confedercy?

By the way, when Lincoln sent the armed federal naval convoy to provoke an attack on Fort Sumter (he later admitted this was his plan and boasted it had "worked"), there were more slave states in the Union than there were in the Confederacy. In fact, when Lincoln issued his illegal call-up for 75,000 troops on his own presumed authority, there were still more slave states in the Union than there were in the Confederacy. It was only after it became clear that Lincoln was going to invade that the four Upper South states changed their minds about secession and joined the CSA.

 

[JakeStarkey]

What the Founders thought does not matter in terms of law.

Don’t mistake freeing the slaves as the root cause of the war. Lincoln wanted to confine slavery to the Old South. The Southern states did not think that slavery should be restrained at all by the federal government.

They were mistaken, much as the TPM is today, that they thought they had the right and the numbers and the might to prevail.

 

[bendog]

Well, I'm not so quick to think Madison was all in favor of secession.

Right of Revolution James Madison to Daniel Webster

Nor Adams. But that's really a digression from the OP.

I liked the post on the "upper southern states" not being all for secession ... at least at first. But trying to argue the War of Northern Aggression was about anything but slavery seems a fool's errand. The whites feared the slaves having power. Whether you owned one or not wasn't the question. Monroe pondered the question of what to do with them all.

Tariffs, trade .... all aspects to the central question of the largest piece of capital by far was the value of the slaves in the deep south, and the value they could produce.

 

[bendog]

Mifkegriffith1, you are entitled to your opinion, but not your own facts. The South left because it had lost confidence that the North would let them keep slavery and that the North would no longer respect states' rights.

What would you say were states' rights that were distinct from slavery? I find the economic justifications were tied to their agrarian economy, and that was tied in turn to literally all the Southern capital being the slaves held by the Southern "1%"