All this proves is that the southerners were unorganized and bad strategists. How would you feel if there was a hostile fort in your proximity? If the Union intended to recognize the states’ rights to secede, they would have withdrawn troops from the fort during the siege. They were determined to initiate conflict
Obviously the Union didn’t recognize the states’ rights to secede. (Even the Buchanan Administration declared secession illegal.) But the Union didn’t “initiate conflict”; it was the South that “initiated conflict” by opening fire. The “hostile fort” was just one fort, with 85 guys in it. Over this one irritant, the Deep South started a war that wound up getting over half-a-million people killed.
Not at the time of the Civil War he didn’t. From an editorial in The Liberator, :
The War started due to the South’s secession. The South’s secession was about preserving their institution of slavery. Period. It is good to see Dopers lay to rest the contrary lie that has developed over the years.
But while I’m posting, let me give credit to my distant cousin, John Brown. The secession was a direct result of the fears his efforts had instilled. More importantly, some historians consider Brown essential to the North victory in the Civil War.
Consider how horrific the Civil War was, killing 10% of all Northern males of soldiers’ age, and 30% of such Southern males. Merely “preserving the Union” would not have inspired the North to persevere in the face of such horror. Some of Lincoln’s generals, mentioning Brown, had declared the war to be about emancipation before Lincoln made his Proclamation. “John Brown’s Body” was a hugely popular song among Northern soldiers, many of whom were indeed inspired to believe they were on a moral crusade. To say John Brown was essential to North victory is exaggerated or unprovable, but it is still a shame to see this righteous and influential figure so often disparaged.
If the United States was determined to initiate conflict, why didn’t they? They had over three months.
Secession was only considered due to the issue of slavery, so we’re back to the point that so many of us have made. Regardless what secondary issue is raised–tariffs, states rights, secession, expansion of slavery into the West, or anything else–the prompt for each of those issues was the overriding matter of slavery.
War of Southern Treason.
Just saying.
You are defending the right of the South to secede in order for them to preserve slavery. And by implication upholding the position that the slaves had no right to an opinion on the matter. And you are holding the North responsible for “aggression”, while absolving the South of responsibility for considering slavery more important than avoiding “the deadliest conflict in US history”.
If you defend the right of the South to secede, then you are defending slavery. That’s why they seceded, that’s the only purpose the Confederacy had.
Can’t you imagine him speaking about “The War of Northern Aggression” in a Foghorn Leghorn accent?
Again, that is over simplistic. I would agree with you if:
- The north didn’t have slave states of its own. AND
- It started the war with the avowed purpose of ending slavery.
Neither of these are true, so it can’t be said that the war was about slavery without any qualifiers. The North had no problem with the benefits of slavery in the form of tariffs and food, so long as they didn’t see slavery among them.
It very much can be said that the cause of the war was slavery without any qualifiers.
It would not be true to say that the North went to war to stop slavery. However, the North did go to war to preserve a union that the South attempted to break for the express purpose of defending and promoting slavery. The South had no need to break that union; slavery was not in jeopardy and the abolitionist movement was not that popular in the North. All the derivative factors cited by the South to abandon the Constitution resulted directly from projected fears regarding the hypothetical possibility that slavery would be limited or abolished.
Certainly many other factors, on both sides, entered into such a movement that would eventually lead to secession and war, but the war was very much about slavery. No other issue ever came close to providing impetus on such a large scale to break the union.
Nope. The New England states never actually attempted treasonous insurrection; they just had some hot-headed leaders jaw-flap about the possibility.
That just makes the Confederate traitors even more contemptible for forcing the issue to come to war within this country.
It has been proven in this thread that the Union was not at war to prevent slavery. Lincoln said so himself. So did the Senate:
People are dancing around the answer here. Put into simple terms, slavery caused secession. Secession caused war. Take that how you want to but that’s the answer.
Nope. People have, over the years, convinced themselves that such an egregious conflict was necessary for the end of slavery. This makes them feel better about so many people dying. They also ridicule anyone who says that the war was avoidable as a racist buffoon. How pacifism equates to racism I do not understand.
I’d probably think it sucks. Fidel Castro presumably thinks that the presence of Fort Guantanamo sucks. However, when somebody else has a clear legal right to do something that, from your perspective, sucks, you just have to grin and bear it.
Or you can put yourself outside the law of nations. Turned out that didn’t work out so well.
They saw it as legal at one moment and illegal at another.
yep i’m right.
That’s the point. South Carolinians did not believe the Union had a “clear legal right” to have a fort there.
We can talk about Sherman if you want to talk about putting yourself outside the law of nations if you would like. I suspect not.
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.
That doesn’t change the reality that they did, in fact, have a clear legal right to have a fort there.
Yeah - he mentioned that during Jackson’s presidency, didn’t he (I think)? South Carolina was talking about secession then, and James Madison said there was no right of a state to secede.
No. They didn’t. South Carolina had seceded.