What, in your opinion, would have happened if George McClellan had won the election over Lincoln? Some say he would have negotiated a truce with the south allowing them to keep slaves. How long would Europe traded with the US? Would they complain but keep trading? How would slavery end? What would the landscape of the US look like? Would territories become their own countries instead of joining a slave keeping nation? What would the status of blacks and minorities be like if slavery lasted longer?
Why are blacks so anti-Republican? A Republican president freed them. He even took a bullet for the cause. After the war the Democratic party was hardly their friend. The Democrats controlled southern politics for so long but yet blacks flock to that party and have contempt for Republicans(they probably sould have contempt for both parties.) Why the attraction?
Blacks are Democrats because of Roosevelt and the New Deal, and the civil rights movement under LBJ.
Europe would have continued trading with the US even if slavery had lasted longer. But it couldn’t have lasted. Slavery was on the way out, and no compromise under McClellan would have changed that.
Not all are. But blacks tend not to be in the constituencies that the Republican’s currently have cornered. It’s also pretty hard to trust the party when so many of its major leaders in this century supported segregation, and even today still happily fraternize with racist and separatist organizations.
Freeing the slaves was not an act of generosity on Lincoln’s part. He had to do it for the nation to survive. Slavery had to end in the US, just as it ended in Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, etc. The Brits had ended slavery in their territories much earlier, with much less fuss.
There was also a strategic consideration. Freeing the slaves was an effective way of attacking the South’s economic and social structure, thus hastening the North’s victory. Lincoln allowed slavery to continue in those parts of the South not at war with the US.
The Republicans never followed through on their promises of full citizenship rights and equal treatment before the law for black Americans. Black Americans were abandoned, left to suffer under a hundred year reign of terror by the white majority.
In the South, the segregationist Democrats fled to the Republican party when LBJ gave his full support for full citizenship rights for black Americans. This was a truly courageous act on LBJ’s part. He recognized, even as he signed the legislation, that the Dems would lose the white southern vote for a generation. He willingly gave up a huge chunk of his constituency because he thought it was the right thing to do.
It also has something to do with a stolen election. The year 2000? No, I’m talking about 1876, when Reconstruction was abandoned by the Republicans in return for the southern electorates in dispute at that time.
Slavery may have been doomed by the Emancipation Proclamation, anyway. It made it clear that the war wasn’t about states’ rights or self-determination, but about ending a great moral evil. Once in place, it was no longer politically possible for Britain or France, or other nations, to diplomatically recognize the Confederacy anyway, although an end to the war with it intact might have changed that. Certainly “the peculiar institution” would have lasted much longer.
The freedmen’s vote was almost exclusively Republican during Reconstruction, in support of the “Radical Republicans’” punitive approach toward Southern whites. The Corrupt Bargain that capacitor mentioned, handing the White House to Hayes (an outrageous story, if you get into it) in return for selling out the black vote and ending Reconstruction played a role. The New Deal and the 1964 Civil Rights Act have been described already.
Except for this: Once the Democrats had effectively repudiated the segregationist faction in 1964, the Republicans embraced them with their 1968 “Southern Strategy”. That has further led to alienation of blacks from the GOP in more recent years.
That comment assumes that Lincoln had the power to end slavery in those areas, which is not the case.
Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation under his war powers as Commander-in-Chief, and therefore only had the power to free slaves in areas in rebellion. Areas that had never rebelled, or had already been brought back under federal control, were not included because doing so could not be justified under the war powers.
Nor could Congress, acting along, abolish slavery. That was the key point of the Dred Scott case: since slaves were “property”, the slave-owner could not be deprived of his “property” contrary to the 5th Amendment.
Hence, the 13th Amendment to change the Constitution and overrule the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott. Lincoln was an active supporter of that amendment.
From 1877 until the New Deal, African-Americans pretty much dropped off the political radar in the United States. Both parties allowed Jim Crow laws to make the African-American vote almost nonexistent.
And a Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, reintroduced Jim Crow to Federal jobs.
But once FDR took over and saw that he could benefit from the African-American vote, the tide started to shift very slowly. Truman took the step of intergrating the Armed Forces.
Under Eisenhower, you had Brown v. Board of Education and the Little Rock integration crisis, but Eisenhower did not seem forceful enough to African-Americans.
By the time JFK took over, the Democrats had captured the African-American constituency in the U.S. LBJ sealed the deal with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
That comment assumes that Lincoln had the power to end slavery in those areas, which is not the case.
Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation under his war powers as Commander-in-Chief, and therefore only had the power to free slaves in areas in rebellion. Areas that had never rebelled, or had already been brought back under federal control, were not included because doing so could not be justified under the war powers.
Nor could Congress, acting along, abolish slavery. That was the key point of the Dred Scott case: since slaves were “property”, the slave-owner could not be deprived of his “property” contrary to the 5th Amendment.
Hence, the 13th Amendment to change the Constitution and overrule the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott. Lincoln was an active supporter of that amendment.
On the McClelland candidacy, Little Mac’s platform (handed him by the Democrat Party) assumed that the war was a failure and that the South could not be brought back into the Union by force. While McClelland was pretty spooky about the platform, if he did not repudiate it outright, in the spring of 1864 the proposition that the war was a failure was not all that unreasonable. The Army of the Potomac commanded by Meade but accompanied by Grant was in the middle of the Wilderness/Spotsylvania campaign and was losing 2000 men a day without any prospect of taking Lee’s army out of the war. In the West, Sherman’s army had started its march from Chattanooga toward Atlanta but had been effectively stymied by Joe Johnstone. There was no assurance that the war was going to end successfully and it was clear that a military solution was a long way away. In the face of all this there was a fair chance that Lincoln would lose the election. For many, even in Iowa which had sent half its eligible population into the Union Army, the cost of the war in blood and treasure was just too great to be endured much longer.
By November when the election was held the situation had radically changed. Grant (and Meade) has besieged Lee at Richmond and Petersburg and Sherman had decisively beaten the Confederate Army of Tennessee and occupied Atlanta and was preparing to go on the March Through Georgia. It was apparent to Northern voters that the end of the war and the defeat of the Confederacy could not be far off. That just knocked the props out from under the Democrat’s “the war is a failure” platform and the Northern peace party.
For McClelland to have won the 1864 election the Wilderness and Atlanta Campaigns would have had to have turned into fiascos on the order of Second Bull Run and Fredericksburg. When the campaigns turned into successes, albeit at great cost, McClelland’s chances and the hope for Southern independence by default went a-glimmering.
Spav, I forgot that Meade was in command of the Army of the Potomac during the period of Wilderness, Spottsylvania through to Appomattox.
Think what might have happened if Jefferson Davis had proposed a truce after Cold Harbor untill after the election. The war might not have started up again.
Punitive? So you mean “punitive” as in lax, lenient, weak? I see, we’re playing the game of opposites.
“Poor, poor us. We tried to overthrow the legitimate government by force, in order to protect an archaic, immoral institution. And now we’re being held responsible. The horror!”
There were feelers back and forth all during the war. The problem was that, as I think Lincoln actually said, the essential Southern condition to peace was Southern independence and the essential Northern condition was restoration of the Union. There was no way to reconcile those two positions. Confederate Vice-president Stevens was the principal Southerner in these contacts. As long as Secession was nonnegotiable, the Lincoln government would not even receive the Confederate delegation, even informally.
This argument was popular among Southern apologists for some time.
It is my understanding that it has been discredited. Slavery was actually a viable institution in 1859. If it was not viable, we would have expected to see slave auction prices decline to low levels before the Civil War, which did not happen.
It is true IIRC, that cotton prices dropped following the Civil War. This may have driven certain plantations into bankruptcy. It does not follow in any way, however, that the slaves in those plantations would have been set free, although their auction price may have fallen.
Apologies for bringing the dismal science into the discussion.
Say there was simply stalemate rather than Northern success in the summer and early fall of 1864, which may have permitted McClellan to win.
Unless it was widely believed McClellan would “sue for peace”,and I don’t know what the opinion was, the relative strength of Northern and Southern forces was turning so much in the North’s favor, by Christmas there probably have been major Union victories. Victory would have been in sight and McClellan, whatever his inclinations, would probably have presided over a Union victory.
Once Union forces captured ground, the slaves were generally released from masters control. This emancipation became a political and physical fact, which would have been extremely difficult to undo. Whether McClellan’s victory may have left some portions of the country with slavery is debateble, but the area would have shrunk so dramatically,slavery may have been abolished anyway.
Flowbark, even if the economics of slavery remained viable, an independent Confederate States of America would be the only Western, “Industrialized” state where slavery was legal. After Brazil liberated its remaining slaves in 1888, the international pressure on the CSA would have been enormous. I would imagine the peculiar institution would be forced to evolve into an apartheid-like system but not true slavery.
Spav, I wasn’t thinking of a formal truce, more like a cease fire for the election and into Christmas. Even a re-elected Lincoln might find it difficult to reintroduce hostilities. A state of armed neutrality with each side holding what they had. Such a state might have continued for awhile.
When a civil rights plank was added to the Democratic Party Platform at the presidential nominating convention in 1948, the Southern Democratic delegates walked out of the hall in protest.
Alabama Governor George Wallace, who included the exhortation “Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!” in his election campaign speeches in 1962, was a Democrat.
Twentieth-century GOP leaders have included Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Evans Hughes, Thomas E. Dewey, and Nelson A. Rockefeller, all noted liberal governors of New York.
Well, that’s assuming Brazil would have liberated its slaves on schedule in 1888 if the course of history had been altered by a Confederate victory. If the CSA had won, that would have had international repercussions as well; exactly how a Confederate victory would have affected events in other parts of the world would of course depend on the circumstances of how the Confederates won.
If the Confederates had won, it’s likely that they would have continued to import more slaves, and in large numbers.( Illegal importation of slaves continued up to the Civil War.) With slaves doing all of the heavy labor, and more and more of the skilled labor, working class whites would be forced to migrate to the US, where their labor would have real value.
So the CSA, years down the road, has a small, rich white upper class, and a majority of black peasants. Slavery ends, as it has to, as it ended everywhere else. Disgruntled black majority, small white upper class. Haiti? Jamaica? Kenya?
The North saved white Southerners from themselves, in the Civil War, and again with the Civil Rights movement. Signing Civil Rights into law, and backing them with Federal force prevented what could easily have become a hopeless, Northern Ireland style conflict. With the end of Jim Crow, the South became fully open to modern economic development.