# Civil War Was Not Over Slavery? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 3, 2011, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779 "2011-11-03T20:40:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/101 "2011-11-04T16:10:16Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > No. They didn’t. South Carolina had seceded. But not legally. The constitution, as a legal compact, does not let one party unilaterally leave without the consent of the others. Or, [let James Madison say it](http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mjmtext:@field%28DOCID+@lit%28jm090141%29%29): > [@James Madison](#): > > The former [a state] as one only of the parties, owes fidelity to it, till released by consent, or absolved by an intolerable abuse of the power created. Denying the ‘right to secede’ is not _ipso facto_ an abuse of federal power. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/102 "2011-11-04T16:23:36Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > No. They didn’t. South Carolina had seceded. So? The fort wasn’t South Carolina’s fort, it was the United States’ fort. The thieves and brigands of the former proceeded to steal it from the latter. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/103 "2011-11-04T16:28:24Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#): > > This sort of clear cause-and-effect chain is transitive. Otherwise, “I didn’t kill him; the bullet did” would be a valid defense. > > Ergo, your “simple terms” are an admission that slavery caused the war. Glad you figured that out. You don’t have a legal right to aim the gun and pull the trigger. The South had the right to secede. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/104 "2011-11-04T16:30:57Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#): > > So? The fort wasn’t South Carolina’s fort, it was the United States’ fort. The thieves and brigands of the former proceeded to steal it from the latter. There is a man with a grenade in your house. You order the man to leave, but he does not. You take the grenade from the man. You are now labeled a thief.😕 Something went wrong there. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/105 "2011-11-04T16:33:32Z")
> [@bup](#): > > But not legally. The constitution, as a legal compact, does not let one party unilaterally leave without the consent of the others. > > Or, [let James Madison say it](http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mjmtext:@field%28DOCID+@lit%28jm090141%29%29): > Denying the ‘right to secede’ is not _ipso facto_ an abuse of federal power. “Denying the right to secede” is not an enumerated power, therefore, it is not a power of the U.S. government. Show me in the Constitution where it says the government has the right to deny secession and I will change my mind on this subject. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/106 "2011-11-04T16:40:36Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > Hijack: > > While I agree that slavery was the fundamental, primary cause of the Civil War, the statement of yours is just claptrap. > > If anything, the South was written out of American popular history in the decades after the Civil War, as the nation’s history came to be told from a suspiciously _New England_ perspective. American colonial history seemed to begin with the Mayflower, rather than with Jamestown. The American Revolution seemed to take place almost entirely within the vicinity of Boston and the Northeast, and more or less ended with Saratoga (with just a little mop-up operation in some place called Yorktown, no state specified). (King’s Mountain, Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse were largely ignored in grade school histories.) And the Virginians who couldn’t be written out of the story, like Washington and Jefferson and Madison, seemed at least to lose their Southern accents. > > So please, a cite for this proposition that the profession of history was dominated by Southerners. > > /Hijack The rehabilitation of the southern image from one of sheer evil bigotry began early and took the popular name of the [Lost Cause](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_cause): > [@](#): > > The term Lost Cause first appeared in the title of an 1866 book by the historian Edward A. Pollard, The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates.[3] However, it was the articles written by Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early in the 1870s for the Southern Historical Society that firmly established the Lost Cause as a long-lasting literary and cultural phenomenon. The 1881 publication of The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government by Jefferson Davis, a two volume apologia for the Southern cause as Davis saw it, provided another important text in the history of the Lost Cause. Even though the book’s initial sales were very disappointing to the author, the book remained in print and was often used to justify and or romanticize the Southern position and to distance it from slavery. The nobility of the southern cause during the War was mirrored by its hatred of what it felt to be unjust occupation during the period of Reconstruction. Other than W.E.B. DuBois, no serious historian challenged this camp until after WWII. The historians gathered at several major institutions, some of them admittedly in the North. Columbia University housed many of the Reconstruction as evil camp and Woodrow Wilson taught at and eventually became president of Princeton. The University of Georgia was a southern center, though. Blaming the South as instigators and bullies had to wait until after the civil rights movement made the face of the Lost Cause as prominent and public as it was ugly. Obviously many people would still prefer to be in denial. What you’re talking about is a simplistic non-history that appeared in children’s textbooks, which have no meaning at all in the context of serious history. Even so, something can be said about it. Apologists for the bad behavior of the American people that was within living memory naturally went back in time to apotheosize the Founding Fathers, those heroic individuals who could do no wrong and whose ideals we had diverged from. That the FF were the direct cause of the problem and that slavery was an issue that almost prevented the country from forming in the first place was written out of textbooks. This attitude is prevalent among the apologists today, as our own Will shows. > [@Bridget\_Burke](#): > > Can’t you imagine him speaking about “The War of Northern Aggression” in a Foghorn Leghorn accent? Wonderful. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/107 "2011-11-04T16:41:41Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > “Denying the right to secede” is not an enumerated power, therefore, it is not a power of the U.S. government. > > Show me in the Constitution where it says the government has the right to deny secession and I will change my mind on this subject. Could you show me in the Constitution where it says the government _doesn’t_ have the right to deny the right to secede? Legal turtles all the way down. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/108 "2011-11-04T16:44:10Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Could you show me in the Constitution where it says the government _doesn’t_ have the right to deny the right to secede? Legal turtles all the way down. tenth amendment. tenth amendment. tenth amendment. How many times must I say that in this thread? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/109 "2011-11-04T16:51:12Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > There is a man with a grenade in your house. > > You order the man to leave, but he does not. > > You take the grenade from the man. > > You are now labeled a thief.😕 > > Something went wrong there. A guy is renting a room in a house, and suddenly declares that he owns that room. Do you think he has the right to keep the real owner out because of his declaration. However, the “right” to secede is besides the point. Why did the South want to secede? Why after the election of an anti-slavery president? Why when Lincoln did not campaign on ending slavery, and there were no plans to force the end of slavery, outside the paranoid fantasies of the South, that is. Now, the South was actually responsible for the early end of slavery by being so stupid. If they had just stayed, slavery would have ended eventually, since the demographics were trending that way, but it wouldn’t have been for decades. Of course if they would have won it would have been much longer. How many people would have stayed in bondage for how long for the benefit of the plantation owners? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/110 "2011-11-04T17:25:26Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > tenth amendment. tenth amendment. tenth amendment. How many times must I say that in this thread? The notion that the tenth amendment contains the right to secede appears to be a recent one, promulgated by extreme right-wing groups, such as the [Tenth Amendment Center](http://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2010/02/scalia-no-right-to-secede/). That link actually goes to their blog, because they quote disapprovingly, a letter from Antonin Scalia, that’s relevant to this discussion. > [@](#): > > He is replying to a screenwriter’s query about a possible court case on secession: > > > [@](#): > > > > I am afraid I cannot be of much help with your problem, principally because I cannot imagine that such a question could ever reach the Supreme Court. To begin with, the answer is clear. If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede. (Hence, in the Pledge of Allegiance, “one Nation, indivisible.”) Secondly, I find it difficult to envision who the parties to this lawsuit might be. Is the State suing the United States for a declaratory judgment? But the United States cannot be sued without its consent, and it has not consented to this sort of suit. And that’s why your analogies fail as well. The better analogy is to a militia member who commits a murder and then claims he is a sovereign citizen and therefore not bound by the false laws of the United States. After he is tried and convicted he can spend the rest of his life in prison complaining bitterly that he is a political prisoner, but the fact remains that he was never a sovereign citizen and was always bound by our laws. Same with South Carolina. Strip away your phony assertion that South Carolina could secede and became a foreign country when it did so, and nothing is left except an illegal action that was properly punished by lawful authority. Not only is your argument laughable but its ahistoric as well. I don’t know of anyone at the time who explicitly justified secession by recourse to the tenth amendment. That’s modern folly. You can find it all over the internet today - the political equivalent of goatse - but not in historical documents. Southern states certainly wanted a broad interpretation of the 10th Amendment, but not even they justified their leaving by means of it. Check the text of the [South Carolina Declaration](http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp): > [@](#): > > By this Constitution, certain duties were imposed upon the several States, and the exercise of certain of their powers was restrained, which necessarily implied their continued existence as sovereign States. But to remove all doubt, an amendment was added, which declared that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people. On the 23d May , 1788, South Carolina, by a Convention of her People, passed an Ordinance assenting to this Constitution, and afterwards altered her own Constitution, to conform herself to the obligations she had undertaken. > > Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government with definite objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant. This limitation left the whole remaining mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or to the people, and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved rights. > > We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely: the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences. > > In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof. They’re leaving not because the tenth amendment allows secession but because other states broke the compact by not agreeing to uphold the Fugitive Slave Act. That’s the way they thought. The 10th Amendment was a compact, not a clause that granted license for any transgression. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/111 "2011-11-04T17:43:54Z")
The Union never had a hostile fort in Confederate territory. The Union had a fort in Union territory. Yes, the Southerners thought that it was their territory. They were wrong. And heck, even if you do buy into the perfidious lie that it was Confederate territory, what makes you say Ft. Sumter was hostile? If there was a state of hostility, who created it? The fort was built to _defend_ the city, not to attack it: That doesn’t sound very hostile to me. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/112 "2011-11-04T18:05:58Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > tenth amendment. tenth amendment. tenth amendment. How many times must I say that in this thread? And how many times must we tell you you’re wrong? Your argument is begging the question. You’re starting with the assumption that a right to secede exists somewhere and then searching the Constitution to find where it exists. But there is no power or right to secede anywhere. The federal government doesn’t have it, the states don’t have it, and the people don’t have it. The Tenth Amendment doesn’t divide up non-existent powers. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/113 "2011-11-04T18:07:56Z")
**Exapno Mapcase** , I see absolutely nothing in [your post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14428356&postcount=106) supporting your contention that “The profession of history was dominated by southerners for generations after the Civil War.” Would you care to withdraw that claim, or do you have anything to support it? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/114 "2011-11-04T18:15:18Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#): > > This sort of clear cause-and-effect chain is transitive. Otherwise, “I didn’t kill him; the bullet did” would be a valid defense. Charles Guiteau tried a similar defense at his trial for assassinating President Garfield. He claimed (probably correctly) that Garfield would have survived being shot if his doctors hadn’t provided him such poor medical attention. In trying to treat his wound, the doctors ended up causing an infection which killed Garfield two months after Guiteau shot him. Guiteau claimed at his trial “The doctors killed Garfield, I just shot him.” ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/115 "2011-11-04T18:21:04Z")
Given the love for original intent, it is very curious that the Founders, who had just gone through a war to break bonds with England, would not have added a very clear clause that enabled the states to leave the Union if they intended them to have the power to do so. No such clause leads one to believe that they did not intend to permit secession. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/116 "2011-11-04T18:36:17Z")
You can laugh at it all you want. My argument lies directly in the Constitution. 1 The Constitution doesn’t prohibit secession, nor does it allow the federal government to deny secession 2 the tenth amendment reserves all powers not granted to he federal government to the states. When you refute either 1 or 2 I will change my mind, until then my argument stands. I don’t care if some right-wing nut jobs agree with me. Jefferson also agreed that secession was viable, and if he was around today he would probably be lumped in with them. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/117 "2011-11-04T18:38:14Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > “Denying the right to secede” is not an enumerated power, therefore, it is not a power of the U.S. government. Even though James Madison, the father of the constitution, says it is implicit? You enter into a contract. You don’t have the right to get out of that contract unilaterally. It’s binding. > [@](#): > > Show me in the Constitution where it says the government has the right to deny secession and I will change my mind on this subject. I don’t need to - SCOTUS agrees with me. You don’t have to put in “no party can unilaterally cancel their part in this contract” in every contract. Your request for me to show you “where” is unreasonable and demonstrates a fallacy in your reasoning. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/118 "2011-11-04T18:39:23Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > And how many times must we tell you you’re wrong? Your argument is begging the question. You’re starting with the assumption that a right to secede exists somewhere and then searching the Constitution to find where it exists. But there is no power or right to secede anywhere. The federal government doesn’t have it, the states don’t have it, and the people don’t have it. The Tenth Amendment doesn’t divide up non-existent powers. You’re unable to comprehend the vary plain language of the tenth amendment. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/119 "2011-11-04T18:46:31Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > You’re unable to comprehend the vary plain language of the tenth amendment. Well, if I have to make a choice between James Madison saying my understanding of the Bill of Rights is correct and WillFarnaby saying my understanding of the Bill of Rights is correct, I’m going with Madison. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779/120 "2011-11-04T18:47:52Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > You can laugh at it all you want. My argument lies directly in the Constitution. > > 1 The Constitution doesn’t prohibit secession, nor does it allow the federal government to deny secession > > 2 the tenth amendment reserves all powers not granted to he federal government to the states. > > When you refute either 1 or 2 I will change my mind, until then my argument stands. > > I don’t care if some right-wing nut jobs agree with me. Jefferson also agreed that secession was viable, and if he was around today he would probably be lumped in with them. So, despite the fact that _those who seceded did not cite the tenth amendment as the justification for secession_, you still say the tenth amendment allowed them to secede? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/civil-war-was-not-over-slavery/601779.md?page=7)