I do find it ironic that when presented by situations like Bosnia and Kosovo, the U.S. government offers up rhetoric about “the right of self-determination”.
Jodih:
In absolute terms they did have representation. In real terms they did not.
Representation is based on population. The North had the larger population, and the majority vote. On major issues pertaining to the South’s welfare the North was able to effectively dictate policy because of their majority.
I’ll give you an example. Say there was a small city with 10,000 people. Outside this city there is a vast territory with 7,000 people. Everybody gets one vote. Fair, Right?
Let’s say all the agriculture is done in the country, by people living in the country. When the time comes to vote on agricultual policy the cityfolk naturally vote for things which keep give them benefit. They vote for lower-priced agricultural products for themselves, and higher tarrifs on exported products (so they get more tax-income.) Obviously cityfolk don’t vote for higher tarrifs on products they export.
The agricultural decisions are made by people having nothing to do with agriculture, and the countryfolk wonder why their listening to these cityfolk since they really don’t have say in anything, and aren’t receiving the same benefits as the cityfolk. In fact they might begin to think that their laboring FOR the cityfolk.
After a while you can see how the countryfolk might think this was an inequitable situation.
In this fashion you can see how a majority in one circumstance might be able to hold dictatorial power over a minority in another circumstance.
The concerns of the South were always outvoted by those of the North when they were in conflict.
The cultures had diverged to a certain degree, and the South felt that they were being dictated to by people they had nothing in common with, and whose concerns and interests were not their own.
Their answer was self-rule, and secession. They hoped for a relationship of equals, rather than one where they were held in thrall.
Scyla asked me to copy a post I mad on another thread to this one. Normally, I would resist doing this both on the grounds that it is spamming and because it is really only tangentially related to the issue in the OP. But, since I was asked nicely . . .
Okay – I really did try to avoid this, but it is friday and whimsy fills my soul. Therefore:
quote:
The South represented the Majority of US. territory, yet received only a small fraction of representation in the government.
There is a name for that, Scylla. It is called democratic representation. You know, the principal of one man, one vote. Representation based upon land ownership is most often associated with feudalism. Though if you really want to argue that Alaska should have more members in the Congress than New York it might make an interesting thread.
quote:
Northern industry had a free hand, while Southern production was severely regulated to the benefit of the North.
I am certain that you can ack this up with relevant federal laws which restricted the types of industry and levels of production which were permitted to be developed south of the Mason-Dixon line.
quote:
The North was quite hypocritical in its slaveowning attitudes, as Lib points out.
Lib mentioned a northerner who owned a slave at the end of the Civil War. From this you feel justified in damning the entire abolitionist movement as hypocrites? I assume, then, that you will agree that if we can find one KKK belonging, white sheet wearing, Nazi sympathizing, Stars and Bars waving, Dixie singing, Southern pride shouting, Bocephus loving, South Carolinian racist we can justly condemn all of those who argue for non-racist support of the symbol as hypocrites.
quote:
the abolition of slavery was not for altruistic reasons, but to keep the price of textiles high through regulating cotton prices. The North could export its products freely, but the South was curtailed so that Northern industry have a strong supply of cheap cotton
There are so many ways to criticize this, but I think I shall restrict myself to pointing out: “to keep the price of textiles high . . . so that Northern industry have a strong supply of cheap cotton”
quote:
Slavery was in decline in the South and almost surely would have died out due to economic and technological reasons without the Civil War.
The Southern states seceded from teh Union rather than surrender their slave-based economic system. How many more decades of mass enslavement would you consider it morally justified for them to have inflicted upon other human beings before acceding to economic inevitability? For that matter, are not these same “economic and technological reasons” some of the very same inequities and hypocricies of which you were accusing the United States above?
quote:
One might even argue that Northern policy during the reconstruction set back the equality of blacks for generations.
Certainly, if one conveniently ignored the history racism, segregation and abuse which characterized the deep south for long, long after the reconstruction had ended. What do you see in the land of Jim Crow laws and the KKK which leads you to believe that Southern society would have welcomed their black brothers into a society of equals if only those pesky Northerners would have stayed out of southern business?
Now – please do not take this to imply that I hold a simplistic, black-and-white view of the causes of the Civil War. On the contrary. I know of very few conflicts that can be reduced to a single cause. I just object to the type of revisionist glossing which attempts to paint the South as the innocent victim of oppressive Northern economic policies: a land full of honest, happy patriots most of whom did not own slaves and who were almost certainly going to abandon it on their own soon anyway, despite the fact that the constitution of every single Confederate State of America explicitly preserverd the institution of slavery.
Now, I wish to make a dangerous digression and actually address the OP. Libertarian, if the Battle Flag of the Conederacy were now or ever had been the official flag of the state of South Carolina you might have a valid analogy, though the speciic adoption of teh symbol during the period of teh civil rights movement would be a deviation worth examining. As it stands, though, your analogy fails almost immediately. Perhaps you can find another example of a non-official flag with similar symbolic conotations being raised above a seat of government.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
SCYLLA says:
I do not believe this is correct. Representation at the Federal level at that time was based on population in the House, but each state had the same number of Senators – two. This was because there were concerns about more populous states having more power than less poplulous states as far back as the drafting of the Constitution.
Again, I don’t believe this is correct. Then, as now, a bill had to pass both houses to be made law, and there was no way the North could force legislation through the Senate based upon a simply majority of poplulation. In fact, if I remember correctly, the South managed repeatedly to bollix up legislation they deemed not in their best interests, starting as far back as the early 1840s.
Not necessarily, because their interests are not necessarily in harmony – which is why that was not the system the government functioned under at the time.
Except, again, that wasn’t really the situation. And you are also conveniently leaving out the fact that the South’s agriculturally-based economy was in turn based upon that “peculiar institution” that Northerners increasingly considered immoral, inexcusable, and intolerable. Therefore, it was not simply “city-folk” against “country-folk”; it was people attempting to maintain an arguably immoral system against people trying to make them put it aside.
Again, I think this is historically incorrect. More correct, if my history is not failing me, is that the inability of the North and the South to compromise on any issue of any degree of importance as the 1850s wore on led to near paralysis in the federal government.
I think this is correct – that they felt that way and that, in fact, that was, to a great degree, what was occurring. The question is whether that dictation on the part of the North was justified.
In light of the tenacious adherence to the institution of slavery, I find your painting their situation in terms of being held “in thrall” to the North and seeking “a relationship of equals” to be supremely ironic.
In answer to the OP, I think the South had a right to attempt to secede, which they did. They were brought back into the Union by brute force, however, and that forced return was, IMO, necessary to the continued existence of the U.S. They tried and they lost; it’s as simple as that.
Jodi
Fiat Justitia
I. Smartalec Comment
Well, at least some Southerners were so deprived prior to secession. Of course, Amendments 13-15 took care of that. :rolleyes:
II. Serious Comment
Contrary to the point of view of nearly everybody except a few wierdos hiding out in the Rockies, the right to revolt is actually a part of U.S. Law. To wit, it is included in the Declaration of Independence, which is Article 1 of the U.S. Code. True, the right is hedged “not…for light and transient reasons” but it is there.
So, yes, technically the South did have the right to secede. In fact, a case could be made that the Civil War situation derives from the fact that South Carolina forces fired on Fort Sumter, a possession of the U.S. after succession, and were therefore engaged in “waging war on” the U.S., which is illegal under the Constitution.
However, after the Civil War, some cases involving the State of Texas and/or state bonds resulted in decisions that indicated that states, as of that point, did not have the right to secede from the Union once having joined it. So whatever rights the South, or its constituent states and citizens, may have had prior to the Civil War as regards secession are no longer valid.
Jodih wrote
Not accurate. The North held a majority of seats in the House. In the Senate, since the number of slave states and the number of free states were kept equal, there was more or less a deadlock. But then Lincoln was elected. (Remember that the Vice President gets to vote in the Senate in case of a tie.) The Southern states could also see the handwriting on the wall in Kansas, which was about to enter the Union as a free state. These events would have given Northern states the ability to push through legislation over the objections of the Southern states.
Of course it’s accurate. The fact that a tie in the Senate is broken by the V.P. is hardly an indicator that the government functioned under a strict majoritarian system; it is, rather, another indication that it didn’t.
“Could see the handwriting on the wall”? Don’t you see any irony in this? The South seceded not because of any infringement upon its rights that had occurred, but because of infringements it assumed would occur in the future.
It’s also ironic that you would bring up Kansas, since the Kansas-Nebraska Act was an attempt to get away from the sort of majoritarian, federalist rule that you allege was occurring (even though it really wasn’t). The K-N Act provided that Kansas and Nebraska would decide themselves – independently – whether they would be slave states or free states. This led to years of bloodshed in “bleeding Kansas” and no less than two rigged elections when men from slave-state Missouri poured in and voted illegally to attempt to insure Kansas would be a slave state. Of course, by 1861 the free-state settlers so far out-numbered the slave-state settlers that it eventually came in as a free state. But that was a decision made by the people of Kansas, not by the federal government.
In the end, of course, the South left not because democracy wasn’t working, but because it was working too well. When the votes and the government didn’t go the way the South wanted it to, it tried to leave and was stopped.
Jodi
Fiat Justitia
Jodih:
I can see that my analogy was too simplistic, and I thank you for calling me on it.
Are we safe to pass by the question of representation? Just this topic was hotly debated 100 years ago to know fruitful conclusion.
Suffice it to say that the Confederate States did not feel they were getting fair representation, and that their best interests were no longer aligned with those of the Union.
Does this and a desire for self-determinism merit secession? After all wouldn’t both new nations be able to function more efficiently once they were aligned along political, economic, cultural, and slave holding lines?
“The Southern states could also see the handwriting on the wall in Kansas, which was about to enter the Union as a free state. These events would have given Northern states the ability to push through legislation over the objections of the Southern states.”
Up to and including the 1850s, pro-slavery forces had been using the Federal legislative and judicial process to obtain laws favorable to slavery, even at the clear expense of “states’ rights”. To wit:
1)The infamous “Dred Scott” decision of the FEDERAL Supreme Court had the effect of partially nullifying state laws prohibiting slavery within the state’s borders. A slave who was brought into a free state by his or her owner was NOT thereby free, despite state law, and had to be returned to his or her owner.
- The FEDERAL Congress adopted the Fugitive Slave Act, which compelled the sheriffs and municipal police of free states to act as slave-catchers, legally bound to return runaway slaves to their owner despite any contrary provision of state law. This created an early version of the modern “unfunded mandates” debate, as even some Northerners who didn’t oppose slavery said “Let the slave owners recapture their own slaves! Don’t make the sheriff do it at my expense.”
So the Southern (slave) states were neither consistent advocates of states’ rights nor powerless before the Federal system. But as soon as they even SUSPECTED* that the cake walk might end, they decided to pick up the ball and head home. Crying out “states’ rights!” and “federal oppression!” over their shoulders as they left.
Just my humble opinion, of course. (^:
*Suspected is the right word: Lincoln was not an abolitionist, and stated in private as well as public that he had no intention to eliminate slavery, except POSSIBLY through gradual emancipation (basically, children born thereafter to slave parents would be free) and/or government purchase and emancipation of slaves(an inherently gradual process due to funding problems). His policy plank on slavery in the election was that slavery would not be extended into the unorganized territories. But slavery-based plantation farming was not viable on the Great Plains and, of course, bloody well impossible in the desert. Therefore, even if slavery had been made legal in all the remaining “undecided” territories, the odds of slavery expanding into those territories in significant numbers so that slave owners had a signficant portion of the vote – and a substantial voice in the (eventual) state assemblies and delegations to Congress – ranged from exceedingly slim to none.
SCYLLA says:
I think that’s accurate.
I don’t think so. The “self-determinism” that they sought included the ability to keep their fellow human beings in chains – not just a political problem but a major moral one. Moreover to take the United States and divide it into two (or more) nations would obviously weaken both parts.
How could they ever be so aligned? It seems more likely that the establishment of two nations would have lead to disputes over territory and to eventual war in any event, given what happened in Kansas and Missouri. How could the North ever accept a South that continued the practice of slavery – a practice becoming more and more repugnant to them as time went on? I don’t see how it could ever work.
I will freely admit that my take on this is colored in no small part by the fact that I do believe the Civil War, at bottom, occurred over the issue of slavery, which I personally find an indefensible institution. Would I feel differently if the South had wanted to leave for purely political (as opposed to immoral) reasons? I don’t know; that, for me, would be a much harder question.
Jodi
Fiat Justitia
Jodih:
Slavery is indeed evil and reprehensible.
Slavery was indeed the lynchpin in the conflict.
It really wasn’t until the Gettysburg address that the North was fighting to free the slaves though.
Lincoln 1861 “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists.”
SCYLLA – Correct. The North was fighting to preserve the Republic. The South was fighting to preserve slavery. Now, you may say (as has been said before) that the average Confederate soldier did not fight for slavery, but rather to preserve a way of life, and that is true; it is also true, however, that the way of life he fought to preserve was one built upon an economy that was in turn dependent on slavery. If the South had been able to preserve their economy and their way of life while abandoning slavery, I think they would have done so.
Jodi
Fiat Justitia
Jodih–
Hardly. But at any rate, I never alleged any such thing. Please read my post. (and my previous posts for that matter. I was simply pointing out the inaccuracy (not to say blatant falsehood) in your argument that there was “no way” the North could impose its will on the South. It most certainly could have.
When the V.P. is from the Republican Party, I think it was pretty clear how he is going to vote on the issues dividing North and South. The election of a Republican President, and the admission of Kansas destroyed the equilibrium, gave the North a clear majority, and yes, would have allowed the North to impose its will on the South on a variety of issues. (And to clarify, yes slavery was the issue of the day and the underlying cause of the War. I am not disputing that, and certainly not dispputing the evil of slavery. What I am doing is pointing out your error when you say the North didn’t have the numbers to impose its will.)
John Bredin–
OK, this is a little off-topic: Granted, the Dred Scott decision is infamous, but all the Court was really doing in that case was following the clear language of the Constitution:
Hey, I didn’t write the Constitution, and neither did the Supreme Court. Slavery is evil. However, the Supreme Court did not create the institution. OK, back on-topic…
Abolition was a plank in the Republican Party platform. Wasn’t hard to guess where things were headed.
Again, let me emphasize that I am not defending slavery, states’ rights, or the Confederate cause generally. (Please read my earlier posts.) What I am doing is pointing out that the North did in fact have the numbers in Washington to impose its will, and that the North’s will (on slavery, and on myriad other issues) was abundantly clear (so there was quite a bit more than “suspicion” to go on).
“Every time you think, you weaken the nation!” --M. Howard (addressing his brother, C. Howard).
SPOKE – We may be talking about a matter of semantics. Any time you agree, implicitly or explicitly, to put something to a vote, and by implication, to abide by the decision reached in the vote, you must allow for the possibility that the winning side will “impose its will” on you if you are on the losing side. If you vote in the upcoming election for the man you think ought to be president, and your candidate loses and someone else wins, then the voters who voted for the winner are “imposing their will” upon you that their candidate be the president instead of yours.
“Imposing the will” to me indicates actions taken without the volition of the individual being imposed upon. A democracy, it seems to me, has two components – not just an agreement to put issues to a vote but also an implicit agreement to live by the results of that vote. It’s more than just agreeing to be bound by a vote if and only if the vote goes your way.
Assuming that the North followed lawful procedures in passing its laws – which it did – then their actions can only be seen as “imposing their will” upon the South if we construe any action that results in a party not getting its own way as “an imposition of will.”
Jodi
Fiat Justitia
**jodih[/]–
All I was doing was pointing out the inaccuracy of this statement:
Somehow, my post has been construed to mean that I oppose democracy and that I am an unreformed secessionist! 
The fact is, the North could force legislation through the Senate with a Republican V.P. casting tie-breaking votes.
Dang UBB codes!!! :rolleyes:
Spiritus:
Thank you for indulging me. I didn’t want to respond in the previous thread, but you make some very strong points which need addressing.
I think the representation issue has been dealt with satisfactorily.
The economic issues are more complex.
When the sewing machine was invented by Elias Howe, a new word sprung into the English vocabulary. “Yankee Ingenuity.” The cultures and economies of the North and South diverged. Cotton was cheap domestically, but exporting it imposed heavy tarrifs that were not laid upon manufactured goods. It was more of a benefit to the economy of the United States overrall if goods were manufactured in the U.S. and then exported. OK so far?
This provided cheap cotton to Northern manufacturers, cheap finished goods to the South. A strong demand for finished goods in Europe kept the demand for Southern cotton high, and the higher tariffs discouraged European emulation of American manufucaturing techniques.
Everybody benefits so far.
The northern states became even more inustrialized though, and Europe did begin to copy American manufacturing techniques, yet the same tarrif situation remained.
Modern manufacturing processes were not without their price and Southern plantation owners were unimpressed with what they perceived as the hypocrisy of looking down their noses with distaste at Southern slavery while in fact Northern “wage slavery” was becoming equally distasteful, if not more so.
The southerners felt justified that they at least kept their slavery to the negro population who would have reverted to barbarism without their beneficial rule (NOT my views, I’m trying to duplicate the Southern mentality prevalent at the time,) while the northerners enslaved their own kind. They also felt that they treated their negros a lot better than their northern counterparts did their workers, and saw no reason for anybody to be claiming moral superiority.
The protestant work ethic and new puritanistic attitudes prevalent in the Northern states and partly responsible for the economic boom enjoyed there were also incompatible to Southern culture as was the contention that a negro’s soul was worth as much as a white man’s.
In short the southern economy did not evolve as fast as that of the North. They were being left behind, and not participating in the manufacturing renaissance of their northern brethren.
Southern attitudes became disdainful of the North. “Capitalism is incompatible with republicanism,” was the vocal response of Southern politicians. They no longer felt attached to Northern society, and resented its impositions.
It was in this climate that the divide between North and South became more marked, and that the civil war was engendered.
I have borrowed heavily from Edward Pessen Riches, Class, and Power Before the Civil War in the last few paragraphs.
I have necessarily ommitted and simplified many key points. Any errors are assuredly mine alone.
I wanted to show that slavery alone did not cause the civil war, and this is but one example of the cultural and economic rift between North and South at the onset of the civil war.
Yes, I feel the fact that one Northerner maintained a slave while the bloodiest war in American history was being fought to “free the slaves” held by the South is hypocrisy in the extreme. The situation was much more prevalent than that though. Northern enslavement of blacks continued under many guises, some obvious, until well after the civil war. (Please don’t make me look up the numerous examples that are easily available.)
For that matter, there are plantations in Mississippi where I have been that the descendants of slaves work in the same fields, and live in the same housestheir forefathers did for the descendants of slaveowners. The hypocrisy is not one-sided.
I also feel justified that the reconstructrion certainly added to White resentment after the civil war. Some of the fallout undoubtedly migrated North, and results in racial tensions and prejudice today. (Obviously I can’t prove it, but it seems readily apparent.)
I also have no evidence to suggest that slavery would have been abolished in the South of its own accord, though I feel that industrialization would have eventually made it unviable for its inefficiencies, and that the distaste and moral dilemmas associated with the institution would have eventually pervaded Southern culture. How long this would have taken, I have no idea.
Had slavery not ended soon, the differences between North and South would have become an unbridgeable gulf.
Let me know what you think of my response. Did I hit all the important points?
Lest anybody think differently, I am morally opposed to slavery and prejudice in any form.
I don’t wish to belittle the injustice of slavery, or it’s role in the civil war. My reading indicates that the primary motives to the civil war were economic and cultural with the slavery issue being a primary catalyst.
Propaganda to the contrary, “Equality, and Freeing the slaves” were not the North’s primary motivations here, though they quite literally became the battle-cry. I don’t think it takes much insight to agree that an entire generation of white folk in 1860 weren’t willing to send their son’s to fight and die just to free some slaves. Black people were not exactly held in the highest esteem in the North of the 1860s either.
Wow, I see that the conversation has moved on quite a bit while I was writing, and researching.
Jodih:
I think we are pretty close to agreement. The Southern economy was deeply based in slavery though it was in the decline.
I see the problem of the North “imposing its will on the South” as one deeply rooted in Democracy. A popular vote does not always provide an equitable solution. If you have two groups that are fundamentally different, a popular vote amongst both groups is not going to bring an accord, or a workable solution. It’s simply going to tell you which group has more members.
In such a generic situation would you agree that having those two seperate groups decide the issue for themselves and then creating a workable solution between them is more equitable?
Lib, I’d never call your rhetoric flowery, so don’t worry.
Call it barbaric if you like - it doesn’t change the fact that the only objective measure of ‘right’ is power.
This whole question is absurd. How can it be ‘legal’ to revolt? Questions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are, unless framed in an objective context (such as application of physical force) are meaninglessly subjective.
What the hell, I might as well jump into the middle of the fray.
1 - Anyone who claims that the Southern secession was about anything other than slavery is in a serious case of denial. There may have been other trivial points of disagreement between the North and the South, but their was only one serious issue.
2 - It’s true that the “founding fathers” of the 1770’s led a revolution and seceded from the British Empire. But that doesn’t mean they regarded secession as a permanent American right. The Declaration of Independence was written on the premise that secession was one of the most extreme actions any people could take and needed to be defended as being a last resort carried out in the face of overwhelming and unrelenting adversity. South Carolina and the other Confederate states never presented any case arguing their own situation was similar. Presumedly if the founding fathers had intended secession as a right they would have said so in the Constitution where they listed so many other fundamental rights.
3 - In the absence of any mention of secession rights, we have to assume that the voluntary joining of a state into the union is a contract that is mutually binding on both parties. Neither side can declare it is dissolving the contract without the consent of the other. If South Carolina wanted to withdraw from the United States, it should have raised the issue in Congress. Personally, I’d guess the Southern states might well have won secession rights in Congress if they had acted in concert. Had they done so, they could have then legally left the United States if they had chosen to do so.
4 - The Southern states had at least as much representation as they were entitled to. Many would argue that they were over-represented. Afterall, slaves were counted proportionally as part of a state’s population for voting purposes even though they had no rights as citizens.
5 - Anyone who claims the “south will rise again” is living a pipe dream. You may have a lot of guns but you also have a large black population that doesn’t have the rosy memories of the Confederacy that you have.