Yes, and the Southern slaveowning class (compared to Northern industrialists) had relatively little money. Their capital was in (1) land and (2) slaves. They couldn’t afford to lose the latter.
Which is why Andrew Jackson invaded Florida in 1817 in the First Seminole War – to put a stop to that – and why Florida belongs to the U.S. today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Seminole_War#First_Seminole_War
For some reason, the History section of the annual Florida Almanac (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1589801350/qid=1114122467/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl14/104-3882668-0941543?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) glosses over that point. Every year.
Well, economic factors were certainly part of the cause of the war. “$3,000,000,000 of our property” as the Great State of Georgia put it. Or “the greatest material interest of the world” to use the words of the Great State of Mississippi. Of course, there were also social and political factors–a concern for the equality of “all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor” as Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens put it; or, as the Great State of Texas maintained, that “in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights”.
There is a new biography of John Brown out; John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights by David Reynolds. I haven’t read it, though I may have to go out and get my hands on a copy; but I’ve read a couple of interesting reviews of it. Christopher Hitchens had a piece on the book (and on John Brown more generally) in The Atlantic Monthly (the full article is only available online to subscribers, I’m afraid); there’s also a review by Adam Gopnik in the latest New Yorker. At the very least the review essays are worth reading.
I agree that there are myriad causes for the Civil War. slavery, economics, states rights.
But if you dig deep, the North had no reason to go to war over slavery. The North didn’t care. For that matter they had no desire for hordes of freed slaves. All of the northern states were slave states save one.
Anyone care to guess which?
Yes I listen to NPR and I listened to the interview with David Reynolds hence this OP.
And keep in mind the shooting war only started when the Federals did not leave what SC claimed as soveriegn land.
But we are straying from the OP.
And if you look closer, you’ll find “states’ rights” meant little besides preservation of slavery and all the South’s economic points of dispute were directly or indirectly rooted in slavery.
:rolleyes: Once again: The North went to war over national unity, not slavery. The South seceded over slavery.
All the states that sided with the Union were free states, except for the “border states” – Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia (which counter-seceded form Virginia), Maryland and Delaware. All the others had been slave states, but the institution had been abolished decades earlier. (If there was one state that never was a slave state, my guess would be Vermont. I know there was slavery in Massachusetts at the time of independence.)
Reeder You’re not going to be one of those guys who ignores fact, in favour of personal opinion are you? As already has been linked the Southern States in their own words say they suceded to protect Slavery. That’s it.
If you wish to debate whether or not the North cared about the slaves, that’s a different matter, but irrelevant to the reasons why the South left the Union.
You want to call it economic, pride, state’s rights fine…however all those things are ultimately tied to the institution of Slavery and the caste system which stemed from it.
The words of a few leaders do not make a reason.
State’s Rights mean exactly that. The states right to determine it’s future. So what if slavery was part of it? The CSA constitution did not allow any new slaves. None. Slavery would have withered.
How many slaves were carried on ships that flew the CSA jack?
It actually came down to semantics.
Define “United States”
Is this a whole or many parts?
Might I point you to this OP…
The words of a confederate soldier. At the end he says why he fought.
I doubt he owned any slaves.
But please people…can’t we get back to the OP?
Well, nobody’s yet posted any refutation of post #6.
Reeder, I’m amazed to see you among the “the war was over states rights” crowd - do you realize most people holding this belief are extremely conservative? And that they’re wrong. The war was 99% over slavery - it was the WMD’s of its day. All of the other causes combined did not equal the single primary cause.
Well, it’s hard to refute a hypothetical. I’ll concede your secenario could have happened. Or alternately, that another major slave uprising might have paniced the south into more confrontational anti-abolitionist policies at the same time that slave massacres were fueling northern opposition to the institution.
The 1850 census recorded a slave population of 3,874,031. The 1860 census recorded a slave population of 3,950,546. The U.S Congress, acting in accordance with the provisions of the U.S. Constitution, had banned the African slave trade since 1808. At that point, it no longer mattered.
I don’t think you can have an coherent discussion of the events leading up to the Civil War if you have a totally unrealistic view of the fundamental causes of the Civil War.
:smack: Correction: The slave population in 1850 was 3,200,600. The slave population in 1860 was 3,950,546.
I thought he did succeed.
He succeeded in the sense that he did manage to capture the armory and take some hostages. But his goal was to forment and arm a slave uprising and he failed completely in that. Not a single slave rose up and most were probably unaware of Brown’s actions until they were over.