How could the civil war have been avoided?

[ombre12]

I’ve never understood why the North fought so hard during the civil war. I do understand why the South fought hard…after all they were invaded. People always defend their homeland fiercely. Look at the Germans in WW 2, fighting so fiercely at the end for what was obvious to everyone was a lost cause.

So why did the North fight so damned hard? For 4 bloody years? When most people in the North gave a rat’s ass about the question of slavery. When most Northerners were at best ambivalent about secession. When, for the first few years the South was almost always victorious in battle.

I’ve never understood that part about the civil war? Lincoln must have been one hell of a convincing guy.

[Little_Nemo]

@WillFarnaby

This is laughably ignorant of the fact that the South was paying the majority of the taxes under the tariff regime before the Civil War because the Southern economy was built on exports. The Whig cronyist Abraham Lincoln stated in his inaugural address that he would invade the South in order to keep the tariff revenue flowing for his government looting cronyists in the North.

While the aristocratic slaveowners were indeed living off the slave labor, so were the Northern industrialists who taxed the South for all it was worth to pay for their crony deals.

The South was paying the tariff? How did that work? Was Alabama exporting goods to Indiana? Was South Carolina exporting goods to Massachusetts?

A tariff is a tax on goods being brought into a country - it’s the same rate for everyone in the country. And if the Southern cotton was being hit by a tariff, it wasn’t the American tariff - you don’t charge a tariff on goods being exported. Any cotton tariff was being charged by Britain or France or whatever country the cotton was being sold to. Maybe South Carolina should have seceded from Europe.

[Little_Nemo]

@ombre12

I’ve never understood why the North fought so hard during the civil war. I do understand why the South fought hard…after all they were invaded. People always defend their homeland fiercely. Look at the Germans in WW 2, fighting so fiercely at the end for what was obvious to everyone was a lost cause.

So why did the North fight so damned hard? For 4 bloody years? When most people in the North gave a rat’s ass about the question of slavery. When most Northerners were at best ambivalent about secession. When, for the first few years the South was almost always victorious in battle.

I’ve never understood that part about the civil war? Lincoln must have been one hell of a convincing guy.

Like you said, people defend their homeland fiercely. And despite the various attempts to spin what happened, the fact remains - the Confederacy declared war on the United States. The south united the country against them by attacking us.

[Ludovic]

@Little_Nemo

Like you said, people defend their homeland fiercely. And despite the various attempts to spin what happened, the fact remains - the Confederacy declared war on the United States. The south united the country against them by attacking us.

Yeah, there was opposition to attacking the South before they attacked the North. In addition to some opposition to secession before the North asked the Southern states for troops to attack their own seceding brethren.

[jsutter]

@WillFarnaby

Slavery was the cause of secession. Secession was the cause of war. The fact that Northern white supremacists didnt want slavery in the territories was also a factor. Of course, this was because they wanted to save the territories for whites only and deport freed blacks, not because they were concerned with human rights.

Well, actually, IMHO, no.

It was all about unencumbered wealth. The Northern Capitalist Confederacy welcomed immigrants, women and children to toil as wage slaves in their sweat shops and mines. The future CSA was content to rely on slave labor for as long as world opinion allowed it.

IOW, Southern wealth was encumbered by forced labor. In the North, free men/women were happy to work for a pittance. Alohaha. At least they weren’t NWORDs.

[Little_Nemo]

@WillFarnaby

Slavery was the cause of secession. Secession was the cause of war. The fact that Northern white supremacists didnt want slavery in the territories was also a factor. Of course, this was because they wanted to save the territories for whites only and deport freed blacks, not because they were concerned with human rights.

In 1865, when the South was under occupation and the northern states could do whatever they wanted, did they send all the freed slaves back to Africa? Did they ban them from leaving the south? No, they passed the 13th Amendment declaring black people were free, the 14th Amendment declaring they were citizens, and the 15th Amendment declaring they could vote like everyone else. These don’t seem like the acts of white supremacists.

There were undoubtedly some white supremacists in the northern states. But obviously the majority did not agree with them.

[Little_Nemo]

@Ludovic

Yeah, there was opposition to attacking the South before they attacked the North. In addition to some opposition to secession before the North asked the Southern states for troops to attack their own seceding brethren.

As I wrote in another thread a few weeks back, Robert Toombs, the Confederate Secretary of State, told President Davis that the CSA must do everything it could to avoid starting a war. He said they would be better off letting the United States keep Fort Sumter rather than attacking it: “Mr. President, at this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet’s nest which extends from mountain to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal.”

[jsutter]

@Little_Nemo

As I wrote in another thread a few weeks back, Robert Toombs, the Confederate Secretary of State, told President Davis that the CSA must do everything it could to avoid starting a war. He said they would be better off letting the United States keep Fort Sumter rather than attacking it: “Mr. President, at this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet’s nest which extends from mountain to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal.”

True. But it wasn’t just Sumter. Sumter represented Union control of the entire South Atlantic seaboard plus the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and New Orleans. A non-starter for the Southern Gents.

Aloha

[iiandyiiii]

@ombre12

I’ve never understood why the North fought so hard during the civil war. I do understand why the South fought hard…after all they were invaded. People always defend their homeland fiercely. Look at the Germans in WW 2, fighting so fiercely at the end for what was obvious to everyone was a lost cause.

So why did the North fight so damned hard? For 4 bloody years? When most people in the North gave a rat’s ass about the question of slavery. When most Northerners were at best ambivalent about secession. When, for the first few years the South was almost always victorious in battle.

I’ve never understood that part about the civil war? Lincoln must have been one hell of a convincing guy.

Armed men started shooting at US soldiers. The US was attacked. It’s appropriate that the US responded with force.

[Tee]

@ombre12

So why did the North fight so damned hard? For 4 bloody years? When most people in the North gave a rat’s ass about the question of slavery. When most Northerners were at best ambivalent about secession. When, for the first few years the South was almost always victorious in battle.

I don’t think what you’ve said is wrong, exactly, but the North as a whole was angry and insulted and far from ambivalent about Slave Power and its politics.

“We went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, compromise Union Whigs & waked up stark mad Abolitionists.” - Amos Adams Lawrence, on Anthony Burns

Some prominent people supported succession in a “good riddance”-type way, but that wasn’t very compatible with either abolitionism or preserving the Union.

[Little_Nemo]

@jsutter

True. But it wasn’t just Sumter. Sumter represented Union control of the entire South Atlantic seaboard plus the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and New Orleans. A non-starter for the Southern Gents.

All of that happened after the CSA declared war. In April 1861, there were only two places in “Confederate territory” occupied by the United States: Fort Sumter in South Carolina and Fort Pickens in Florida. The CSA would have been a lot smarter to have just ignored those for the time being and worked on building up their country. The longer they could string out their de facto independence the more it became an accepted reality.

[tomndebb]

@ombre12

When most Northerners were at best ambivalent about secession.

I believe that you are mistaken about this point.
The idea of the United States was extremely strong in both the North and the South. The notion that one group could pick up their sticks and go play by themselves was beyond unsettling to the point of rage throughout the population. The South was able to persuade themselves that the North had already abandoned the notion of unity so that they could justify, in their own minds, that secession was merely keeping the spirit of the Declaration of Independence alive. However, 46 years earlier, when representatives of the New England states met to consider withdrawing from a union that was causing them ruination as the result of “Mr. Madison’s War” (of 1812), there were cries of treason throughout the South and dire warnings that they would use force, if necessary, to keep the wayward New Englanders from secession.

@ombre12

Lincoln must have been one hell of a convincing guy.

He was–and a masterful politician.

[Captain_Amazing]

@WillFarnaby

The Whig cronyist Abraham Lincoln stated in his inaugural address that he would invade the South in order to keep the tariff revenue flowing for his government looting cronyists in the North.

My Lord! He said that?! And then future historians edited it out of his Inaugural Address replacing it with conciliatory language like this?!

Abraham Lincoln First Inaugural Address - Collection at Bartleby.com

Shocking.

[Dissonance]

People have been reading your posts in their entirety jsutter. What’s nonsense are things like these:

@jsutter

There’s no it escaping folks. The South was founded as a Union colony, a banana republic. The corrupt Union oligarchies supported the corrupt Confederate oligarchies for sixty years primarily with the 3/5 rule, giving slaves the right to vote as their masters did. Indeed, in the early days of the Republic, the South, united behind leisure and profit built on slavery, was easily a match for a confederation of Union financial powers, competing among themselves.

The South was founded as a Union colony?:dubious:

@jsutter

But as slavery fell into disfavor during the first half of the 19th century, the game changed. The South seceded, the Northern military intervened and Northern capitalists (and a few in the South) found more profit in war than in uneasy peace.

The North militarily intervened? On what planet did this happen? The South opened fire on Fort Sumter and started the war. Northern “military intervention” didn’t occur until after the South started shooting and started the war.

@jsutter

And, the longer the war, the better. Years of Northern military “incompetency” prolonged the war to the point where nothing but the total destruction of the Southern infrastructure would do, hence Sherman.

Holy conspiracy batman, Northern military “incompetency” wasn’t actually incompetence but a deliberate plan to prolong the war?

[handsomeharry]

@iiandyiiii

Which is why it’s ridiculous to talk about “popular will” or the reasons for the Declaration of Independence when discussing secession. It was only popular will if you ignore the will of millions of people.

Says the guy who, when discussing the reasons for the South’s attempted secession, ignores the stated reasons from southern states and the frickin’ VP of the Confedracy.

I can see that you are still basing your statements on what you are deriving from your feelings, or what you ‘figger’, rather than facts. Please read the Articles of Secession (or whatever they styled them) and give a cite for the *frickin’ VP of the Confederacy’s *, what, actions? statements? color scheme in his carriage? (That ought to keep you out of mischief for a while.)

[Captain_Amazing]

@handsomeharry

I can see that you are still basing your statements on what you are deriving from your feelings, or what you ‘figger’, rather than facts. Please read the Articles of Secession (or whatever they styled them) and give a cite for the *frickin’ VP of the Confederacy’s *, what, actions? statements? color scheme in his carriage? (That ought to keep you out of mischief for a while.)

He’s referring to Stephens’ “Cornerstone Speech”, which he gave in March of 1861, and said:

The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away… Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the “storm came and the wind blew, it fell.”
Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.

In terms of Articles of Secession, this is from Mississippi’s:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

And Georgia:

For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war. Our people, still attached to the Union from habit and national traditions, and averse to change, hoped that time, reason, and argument would bring, if not redress, at least exemption from further insults, injuries, and dangers. Recent events have fully dissipated all such hopes and demonstrated the necessity of separation. Our Northern confederates, after a full and calm hearing of all the facts, after a fair warning of our purpose not to submit to the rule of the authors of all these wrongs and injuries, have by a large majority committed the Government of the United States into their hands. The people of Georgia, after an equally full and fair and deliberate hearing of the case, have declared with equal firmness that they shall not rule over them. A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia.

South Carolina:

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

Texas:

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.

I mean, how many do you want?

[Ibn_Warraq]

It’s worth noting that the Confederate Constitution didn’t give states the right to secede and in fact overall gave the states fewer powers than they had in the US Constitutions since the Confederate Constitution explicitly forbade states from making slavery illegal.

So much for the idea that the South was more concerned with States’ rights than protecting slavery.

[iiandyiiii]

@handsomeharry

I can see that you are still basing your statements on what you are deriving from your feelings, or what you ‘figger’, rather than facts. Please read the Articles of Secession (or whatever they styled them) and give a cite for the *frickin’ VP of the Confederacy’s *, what, actions? statements? color scheme in his carriage? (That ought to keep you out of mischief for a while.)

Dude, I already did this in post #60 (links to an article about the states and the VP’s statements). And Captain Amazing expanded on it.

The key statement from the VP of the Confederacy (again): “Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.”

[Lumpy]

@Little_Nemo

In 1865, when the South was under occupation and the northern states could do whatever they wanted, did they send all the freed slaves back to Africa? Did they ban them from leaving the south? No, they passed the 13th Amendment declaring black people were free, the 14th Amendment declaring they were citizens, and the 15th Amendment declaring they could vote like everyone else. These don’t seem like the acts of white supremacists.

There were undoubtedly some white supremacists in the northern states. But obviously the majority did not agree with them.

Pragmatically, every enfranchised freedman was a guaranteed Republican vote. Moreover, citizenship meant that African-Americans were eligible to serve in the militia, essential to maintaining Reconstruction.

A question: it wouldn’t have avoided the Civil War in the long run, but what if in the 1860 election the anti-Republican opposition hadn’t been split, and Lincoln hadn’t been elected?

[georgewk10]

I would have had the North become a refuge. a beefed up Underground railroad.
Protection from bounty hunters from the south. Ending slavery in the North would be quite a magnet for the runaways.
Then, the south would die economically . And so many lives would have been spared.
You surely wouldn’t have heard the cry. “The south will rise again” again. & again.
I’ve been in Dixie. there’s still “slavery” and voting hi-jinx.
Racist bastards!