One thing we should all be able to agree on is that the Confederacy never had any sort of valid cause or legitimacy.
Pick up a history book from a Southern school in the 1920s and you will find that they taught that slavery was benign and to the benefit of blacks. Better yet, look for a historiography of the Lost Cause.
It was still a common meme in the South when I was growing up.
With my apologies to Godwin.
Yes, some German troops invaded Poland. The question here should be, why was the Danzig corridor garrisoned? Troops had already been peacefully withdrawn from other territory of states like Czechoslovakia. The garrison at Danzig had the opportunity to leave. Okay, so it was “Polish territory.” In the volatile climate of the times, though, would not a prudent President have cooperated with the wishes of Hitler (at least temporarily), and make every possible effort to resolve the matter by other means, before embarking on the very grave course of war, and provoking further agressions? Why keep this hot stick in the German’ eye, if not to provoke shooting?
True that, and what about the Jews killing Jesus? Was that not provocative?
I agree with all this, except for the idea that Lincoln was constrained much by what he could or couldn’t do “legally.”
Do you have a link for a detailed accounting of the compensated emancipation plan that you mention? It has been my feeling for some time that a strong compensated emancipation plan should have been the solution that ended slavery and avoided war.
Lincoln’s aim was the preservation of the Union, not war. War was the means with which he had to pursue his aim.
You appear to be suggesting that negotiation was an option; with due respect, I don’t think that’s realistic or even logical. I’m not the first SDMB poster to point this out, but a federation cannot possibly continue to exist under the circumstances you’re suggesting. If every state can simply threaten to walk away unless its demands are met, the result would be inevitable dissolution, either by secession or by the federal government’s powers being whittled away to nothing. A state would merely have to beat the separatist drum to gain more independence.
So is your point that the Confederacy was a noble and worthwhile cause?
I’d say the opposite, actually. With the notable exception of habeus corpus/ex parte Merriman (“Are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?”), Lincoln generally tried to find a legal and constitutional framework for his actions.
Read Guelzo’s “Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America”. He goes into some detail there about Lincoln’s plan.
But here’s Lincoln’s “Appeal to Border State Representatives to Favor Compensated Emancipation”, from July 2, 1862.
Also, this page goes into detail about Lincoln’s proposals on the subject and the reaction to them.
Ah, well, I have seen such notions expressed. While it’s true that not all Southern slavery was equally brutal (some of it was really brutal), I don’t find this to be particularly useful information.
More to the point, nobody here has said any such thing, so it’s a red herring in the present discussion.
That would be true, if there were no counterbalancing benefits to any state for remaining in the federation.
A federation that provides no benefits to its constituent members should dissolve.
In the United States, each state does (did) gain by its membership. The states understood that they were surrendering some elements of self-determination to the federal authority, but they reckoned the benefit to outweigh the cost. They understood this decision to be a free and potentially revocable one. (Some states made this explicit in their own constitutions, and in any event the U.S. Constitution did not make the reverse explicit. I subscribe to the view that if the Founders had really intended to make membership irrevocable by any means, they would have said so, unambiguously. Such an omission cannot possibly have been an oversight.)
Perhaps no negotiation would have returned the earliest-seceded states. Perhaps it would have taken some years. Even if this is true, I doubt allowing that first handful of states to leave the Union would have imperiled the existence of the remaining federation (which still included several Southern states), because the remaining states still had all the same reasons to remain that they had always had.
As the “Confederate Catechism” linked earlier points out, in fact, it would have removed the most-slave-dependent states from any influence on the matter of slavery extension in new western territories under United States federal authority. Perhaps the savviest course for an anti-slavery President at the time would have been to let the seceded states alone, work to ban slavery in all new territories, amend the Constitution to ban slavery entirely after some future date, and advocate a compensated emancipation in the slave states still remaining in the Union. With the political power of the slaveholding faction so much reduced by the absence of the first-seceded states, all these things would have been much more feasible than in the pre-1860 deadlock.
Some will contend that the mere example of any departure being tolerated would have led other states to try it (perhaps at other times for other reasons).
If that is true–if the Union really was held together by little more than each state’s fear of invasion and bloody subjugation by the others, should they wish to make their own way–is preserving that Union a “noble and worthwhile cause”?
Where did you get this feeling from? It seems like if this had been an acceptable bargain for the Confederates, they would have proposed it themselves.
At any rate, the impetus behind the war doesn’t appear to be fear that Lincoln was about to abolish slavery. Rather, the South was all a-panicky over their increasing loss of Congressional influence, as the number of new free states grew. The swelling abolition movement made them feel even more insecure, and suggested the nation’s winds were swiftly turning against their treatment of black folks.
But at the point that the states started leaving, Lincoln wasn’t threatening to abolish slavery. As far as I know, it wasn’t even put on the docket to discuss. So offering a compensated emancipation plan, out of the blue, probably would have inflamed the South even more, because it would have sealed in their minds that the president was coming after their slaves. They were not trying to have that.
I corrected the “Jeff Beck” mistake (I’m a guitarist, so “Beck” to me means Jeff).
“Seccession” was a typo.
It’s not a red herring. Your argument is essentially the same one that Lost Causers use. While it’s true that nobody her mentioned them I see nothing wrong with including other elements used by Lost Causers to argue their case.
Would it have been okay for blacks in the South to rise up, kill their masters, and attempt to form their own government?
What does this mean? Some didn’t, so that was OK? Confederate forces in other states weren’t involved? What’s your point?
I’m intrigued by this idea of “temporarily cooperating” with southern governors. “We’ll withdraw and let you have Fort Sumter, though we’re sure you’ll agree this is only temporary and we can have federal property back later.”
The South not only attacked Sumter, its forces seized arms from federal arsenals. Its hotheads were ascendant and wanted war. There was a profound deficiency of southern leaders wanting to talk first, shoot later.
Fair 'nuff. Beck also means Jeff Beck to me, but that’s just because he’s my favorite guitarist.
But the inevitable result of your scenario’s entirely one-sided, because the federal government can’t kick a state out. It’s an inherently uneven playing field. States will threaten to secede if they don’t get their way; the feds have no comparable option. Indeed, in criticizing Lincoln for not “Negotiating,” you neglected to note that the seceding states didn’t try negotiating, either. Secession was not bargained; it was simply a unilateral declaration of independence. The Confederate states were in effect defying the Constitution by unilaterally refusing to allow its continued enforcement on sovereign American soil.
To use a quote stolen from a Canadian politician, you can’t just take a country off and put it on like a suit of clothes. Allowing states to unilaterally secede is tantamount to saying there’s no union at all, since they can threaten the union with secession at any time, but the reverse is not true; the federal govenment can’t deny a state membership in the union.
By the same logic, civil order is only held together by the threat of force; is civil order a noble and worthwhile cause? You can’t say something’s not worthwhile just because it’s backed up by force.
If it is any help, two quotes, or paraphrases of quotes:
US Grant, or Uncle Billy Sherman: ”A better set of men never served a worse cause.”
Mark Twain: “The Southern Confederacy died of an overdose of Sir Walter Scott.”
As far as I’m concerned those are the last and defining words on the subject, except to ask all to bring the good old bugle, boys, and sing another song, sing it with a spirit that will move the world along, sing it as we use to sing it sixty-thousand strong as we were marching through Georgia. Hurrah! Hurrah!