On that, I’ll only say that the South put a strong emphasis on states’ rights and saw the states and sovereign entities rather than merely parts of a greater whole, and the South generally took the attitude of strict constructionism when interpreting the Constitution.
No, the North was no more fighting to end slavery in the Civil War than the Allies were fighting to save the Jews in World War Two. And slavery ended only in a legal sense. Practices such as sharecropping and the paying of subsistence wages, both forms of debt slavery, kept slavery going in the United States well into the twentieth century.
(Remember the refrain from “Sixteen Tons”? “Ya load sixteen tons, and waddaya get?/Another day older and ya deeper in debt/Saint Peter don’t ya call me, 'cause I cain’t go/I owe my soul to the company store.”)
I would, however, agree that many Southerners go much too far in minimizing the importance of slavery both before and during the Civil War.
Yeah, well, I admit I was just being ornery with that one.
Yep, me. John Corrado also (I think, or maybe he just likes early MD.) I’m not sure if the glamorization of any war is truly beneficial, especially this odd conflict, where probably no more than 1/3 of the country truly supported independence. A quick analysis that I have heard: 1/3 Patriot, 1/3 Loyalist, 1/3 just-want-to-keep-the-farm-intact-and-keep-from-starving. And, as others have pointed out, this is not even to mention the other rebellions that broke out in the early days of the country (Shays’ Rebellion, Whiskey Rebellion.) Slavery was an enormously divisive issue back then, before the Cotton Gin revived its economic vitality (and the South’s stake in their “Peculiar Institution.”) The divisions existed back then, it just took another 75 years or so for them to explode.
The Lincoln-Douglass debates had nothing to do with the presidential election of 1860–they were part of the election of 1858, and had to do with the US Senate seat from Illinois. (They sort of had to do with the Senate seat–Senators were not popularly elected, so in effect they were part of the campaign for seats in the Illinois Legislature.)
You are correct, as far as it goes…but you seem to be forgetting that Northern parents had been sending their sons off to die in the war for some time. Insofar as Lincoln managed to frame it as a war against slavery (which was indeed a political move), it was an addition to the war to preserve the Union. But preserving the Union came first.
I’d say you are partially right that the differences were due to slavery. But you are partially wrong, too–slavery was partially due to the differences. Remember that slavery was originally legal nearly everywhere in the new United States, but in some of those places it died.
Yes, slavery ended because of the Civil War–that does not mean your assertion that the Civil War broke out primarily because of slavery follows. One could just as easily argue that the Civil War was fought to establish the primacy of the federal government over the states, since that too was a result.
Gunslinger said:
That was part of it too, but I still say it primarily had to do with the South losing political power and not liking it.
Thank you, Gunslinger. Now if I could just get somebody to pay me for analogies, I’d be in business.
Satan said:
The historic boundary between North and South was the Mason-Dixon Line, which is the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland. In the 19th Century, Maryland was indeed considered the South…or, as it was also called, a “border state” between North and South.
Needs2know
That was certainly how the Southernors saw it, and certainly what those who promoted the policy hoped for–not so much that slavery would be banned, as that it would die out.
You may have a point there.
Don’t get me wrong–I’m not suggesting that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War. What I’m saying is that slavery was just the most visible subfactor in what was essentially a power struggle.
Boris B said:
Basically. The South would never have survived the SDMB.
I don’t have the state totals handy, so I don’t know for sure, but I’ll grant that it’s possible Lincoln could have won a majority of electoral votes with less than 40% of the popular vote (his total works out to be 39.75% of the major party vote) in a two-man race–he got almost no popular votes in the South, which skews the results quite a bit. On the other hand, the dynamics of the election change completely under those circumstances–just plugging in numbers only takes you so far… An unanswerable question, and not sufficient data to cause me to change my statement.
LonesomePolecat said:
My turn to admire your analogy. While there were abolitionists who wanted to use the war to end slavery, the vast majority saw it in the beginning as nothing more or less than a fight to preserve the Union.
there is a paragraph, later kept out of the Declaration by southern interests, which states:
Jefferson clearly saw that one of King Georges main offenses was sponsorship of slavery, which he saw as a “cruel war against human nature itself” and calls the slave trade “piratical warfare” and slavery itself as “execrable commerce.” He later also calls George a hypocrite for inciting the slaves, which arrived in America under his own cause, to rise up against their American owners, while he saw himself, as an American, attempting to bring freedom to said slaves. The portions enclosed in square brackets were edited by either Jefferson or John Adams before being submitted to the full committee of the Congress, but were among his first thoughts on the document.
Jefferson himself did officially own slaves, though there is little evidence that he actually worked them as slaves. Many have speculated, especially in light of this and other documents written by Jefferson on the matter, that he simply retained “ownership” of them to prevent other, less enlightened southerners, from gaining control of them. There is not much more than circumstancial evidence to support this claim, and it could also be otherwise, but it does not invalidate anything Jefferson may have said; slavery is an evil enterprise.
Jefferson DID support an agrarian, rural lifestyle as the democratic ideal, but though this notion was appropriated by Southerners who wished to make Jefferson their torchbearer (and also conveniently forget his vitriolic stance against slavery itself). Jefferson (borrowing heavily from Rousseau) supported a communal society of aggrarianism where by all people were equal in their place in society, and farmed the land not as slaves, but as communal owners of the very land that they worked.
Jefferson, being an honest intellectual, admits to the problem of race, in the context of attempting to understand the peculiar American type of slavery. A hundred years later, another intellectual, W.E.B. Dubois, made the famous statement “The main problem of America… is that of the color line,” and himself struggled with much of the same problems that Jefferson does in the above citation.
However, as Jefferson is attempting to understand the complexities of racial relations (which we are still faced with today) he does readily state:
and later
He is clearly struggling with how a free society can permit slavery to exist: It is a habit, and he admits that it takes “a prodigy”, one who is of higher enlightenment, to break the habits taught to him by his ancestors. However, the obvious stance taken by Jefferson is below (bold added by myself):
Here, Jefferson clearly states that slavery, insofar as it is a violation of man’s natural right to freedom, is an affront to God himself, and that conflict over slavery is inevitible, and we ALL know whose side God will be on. He even seems to be predicting the Civil War itself, though Jefferson saw it (nay, almost ASKS for it) to be a war precipitated by “the slave riseing from the dust” and that he wishes (or fantasize against what he believes will be otherwise) that “total emancipation… to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation”
Jefferson clearly believes that if America were to continue on its current course of slavery, a War over slavery was inevitable. Despite all of the smoke and mirrors about economics and political power and states rights, THAT is what the Civil War was about. It was about the South defending the right to continue the slave economy. It was about the South’s resentment over it’s loss of political power TO DETERMINE THE LEGALITY OF SLAVERY. The south was clearly ignoring the morally correct thing to do out of its own selfish interests to preserve it’s habitual economy, a state of affairs that Jefferson himself notes existed half a century and more before the Civil War itself. To state that Slavery was not the central issue of the Civil War (and by extension the economy of slavery, the politics of slavery, the power struggles over the future of slavery) is simply to cover up the reality of 19th century American politics.
From Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, famous for it’s line “With malice towards none, with charity for all…”
The words from his mouth do not lie.
Later in the same address:
Strangly miming Jefferson’s own sentiment that slavery as an institution is an afront to God, and that the north was fighting a Holy crusade.
Lincoln was no idiot. His nation’s capital was in the heart of slave country, and he needed to keep Maryland in the Union. It is a matter of public record that he forcibly dissolved the state legislature in Annapolis to prevent them from voting for secession, it was a step made to preserve the Union. Many have stated that Lincoln’s primary cause was preservation of the Union; such a stance could easily be justified by stating that recognized that in order to eliminate slavery, he needed to win the war. In order to win the war, he had to preserve the Union. In order to preserve the Union, he had to allow certain slave states to remain as such. So it could said that he was knowingly allowing a short-term evil to insure a long-term good.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by MysterEcks *
**2sense said:
****MysterEcks ** replied:
I would just like to comment that while I agree that the EP was a “political” move, it was expedient. The tide of the war was gradually turning in the Union’s favor (though it had not yet turned the corner), and the abolitionist movement was gaining more and more support. It was a huge gamble - - I believe that Lincoln knew that victory was inevitable, but he feared the Union populace would not have patience for it as more and more of thier sons came home in pine boxes. But the added bonus of the P.R. with European nations and the bone thrown to the growing crowd of abolitionists made the EP a shrewd move. Of course Lincoln couldn’t have made the EP cover all slaves or he would have lost valuable border state support. However, the myth put forth by modern neo-confederate apologists that the EP did not free a slave is simply not true. There were scores of escaped slaves who had fled to the north who could now look to the President’s order as evidence of their freedom. Additionally, there were large areas of the Confederacy under Union military control. As the war progressed, more and more Confederate territory came under Union control. The slaves held in these areas were truly freed in every sense during the course of the war after the EP. (I seem to recall that whole communities of freed slaves followed Sherman’s army in its march through Georgia). Agreed - - the primary motivation of the North was to preserve the Union and “smite the traitors,” but the sentiiment that it was a war to end slavery grew greater as the war progressed.
More comments from 2sense and MysterEcks, with my responses:
But what were those differences? Where they legitimate? Modern apologists for the Confederacy (event those participating in this discussion) argue that slavery either was not the reason for the Civil War, or at least not the primary reason. If slavery “died” a natural “death” in the rest of the country by the early 1820s, why did it hang on, and even flourish in the South?
I’ll admit, I get rather belligerent about this issue, and I don’t want this discussion to degenerate into a flame war. But I believe that the southern states’ commitment to a slavery based economy is what ultimately did them in, in every respect. While you can logically argue that “slavery wasn’t the immediate cause of the civil war,” I think its also reasonable to come to the conclusion that the South’s wholesale commitment to slavery was the foundation for everything that led to the conflict. I don’t think its possible to argue otherwise.
This becomes a circular argument. In an earlier post, someone made the analogy of symptom and disease. In the end, what is the symptom and what is the disease matters little if the result is death. Yes, one could argue that the War was fought to establish the primacy of the federal government. In essence, this was the “question” the war answered – no state or states could take its marbles and go home, ever. But if the Confederacy was fighting against this, and for “states rights,” state sovereignty, and concepts such as nullification (as many Confederate apologists posit), then why did the confederate constitution require strong “federal” control, even stronger control than the Union they had left? Why did the Confederate Constitution expressly declare that secession was illegal, if state’s rights were so important? Why did the Confederate Constitution expressly require that slavery could never be abolished in any state? Ultimately, I think we must conclude that while the Confederates were protesting that the Union was stomping on “states’ rights,” that the only right they really feared would be stomped on was the right to own slaves.
Gunslinger said:
Correct. And the great irony of all of this is just a few years prior to Lincolns election, the South held all the cards politically. The Northern states had long established that an agricultural economy could flourish without slavery. (While the North was much more industrial than the south, the primary output of the Northern states was still agricultural. It would be interesting to look at what the state economies were like in comparison circa 1859, e.g., Iowa vs Mississipi). But the south had used its political clout to keep the slave state/free state stalemate a reality. Despite trends to the contrary, the slave economy was expanding (to Texas, to the western territories), primarily due to southern political muscle. The Dred Scot case made the political nullification of slavery a non-issue. The fear of the northern politicos that the South would try and secede and start their own country was so real that folks like Henry Clay did all they could to prevent it. The South had the edge.
Then, Lincoln winds the election for president because the democrats can’t unite themselves on the issue of how pro-slavery they really want to be. The republicans are percieved by the South as totally abolitionist, but, as the arguments here show, Lincoln would have been politically expedient regarding the abolition of slavery if it could have preserved the Union. But the southern leaders were either too shortsighted or so intent on not budging on the slavery issue that they grabbed the ball and went home. Yes, it was the issue of losing political control – but they hadn’t really lost it yet. Instead, the south shot off both thier feet when they still had plenty of cards to play. Again, the bottom line was fears regarding the issue of slavery.
But that power struggle was ultimately ABOUT slavery, and the preservation of a social system and economy that depended upon slavery.
LonesomePolecat said:
There are things to agree with and disagree with in Polecate’s analogy. Yes, the war was fought to preserve the Union. Union volunteers viewed the confedrates as traitors who would tear the fabric of our country to shreds. (An opinion I share. Even if you subtact the emotional baggage of the slavery issue, I find it very difficult to defend the concept of the Confederacy becasue it ultimately was an act of treason). But, as you say, this was the majority view “in the beginning.” As the war wore on, the abolitionist support became greater, until the reality of the 13th amendment could be passed so easily by war’s end. I do not think that slavery could have been abolished as an institution with so much popular support had it not been a foundational issue in the waging of the war.
And, in a sense, the comparision with Nazi Germany works, to the extent that in both instances the USA viewed its position as fighting an enemy that could destroy our nation and our national identity. But this is not meant as an moral indictment of southerners at that time who may have felt they were forced into fighting the “northern agressors” in defense of their homes. There was probably many a noble lad from Germany who fought and died in the name of his homeland during WWII who did not necessarily buy into the Nazi political ethic.
You are correct. My statement was completely subjective. I would be interested in opinions from other areas. Perhaps an IMHO thread would be in order.
Needs2know:
I think that the reason this topic is continualy rehashed is that the Civil War is an important part of our historical identity. People identify themselves as Northerners and Southerners. It is easier to believe something that conforms with the worldview that you already have then it is to believe something that would force you to change it. Changing your view of the world means that you must change your view of yourself.
Boris B:
Thanks for jumping in. I didn’t expect to have to carry a whole side of the argument alone for the weekend.
I’m afraid that I don’t agree that the EP was irrelevent. It was the political milestone of the war and shouldn’t be brushed aside.
Lonesome Polecat:
I hope that you can see the difference between “wage slavery” and “slavery”. I agree that the former is unfair and undesirable. Unfair conditions for blacks continue today, but they are no longer slaves. I think of this as an improvement.
I figured you were being contrary with your genocide comment. I am glad that I didn’t offer my opinion of the value of the culture in question.
MysterEcks:
I was using the Lincoln-Douglas debates as an example of political speech. What I was refering to in general were statements such as his famous letter to the New York Tribune:
This statement is not a good indication of Lincoln’s view of slavery. As I said before, if his only goal was to preserve the Union, then he would have accepted the Crittenden Compromise. By not allowing slavery to be enshrined in the Constitution, he showed that war and the possible end of the Union was preferable to eternal slavery.
Perhaps my post was unclear. I did not forget that people were dying. My point was that before the EP racist parents could rationalize that their sons were dying “to stop those traitors from destroying the Union” rather than just for helping niggers.
The reason for my statement was to point out that while the Emancipation Proclamation did not eliminate all slavery, it cannot be argued that it was intended as a compromise.
jayron 32:
Thanks for the info on Jefferson. I bookmarked the links and I will look through them when I find time.
The EP wasn’t compromise, it was propoganda. It said different things to different groups, all of which aided Lincoln in some way. To wit:
[ul]
[li]To the Southern Fighting Man: Yes, I can still issue commands that affect you! Declarations by the President of the USA don’t go unheeded, so you’d better watch out when, not if, you lose. Standard demoralizing propaganda.[/li][li]To the Southern Politician: I will march on Richmond, and I will have my way! This war has turned in my favor, so you’d do well to alter your stance when the bluecoats come riding in. Again, demoralizing propaganda.[/li][li]To the Southern Slave: I’m looking out for your best interests. Helping my soldiers means helping your own shot at freedom. This is an implementation of the ‘Take heart, victory is at hand!’ message Churchill would later use to great effect, but with definite undertones of self-interest gratifying, always helpful.[/li][li]To the Northern Fighting Man: Victory is at hand! You will fight those treasonous Southrons and preserve the Union! (Aside: He doubtless also wanted to play on the concerns of Union slaveholders by specifically targeting CSA slaves and not USA ones.)[/li][li]To the Northern Politician: I’m a popular president, and I will hold to the concerns of the party that elected me. When the war is won, there will be no debate over the fate of slavery and especially not the Union. Lincoln was also giving the same message to non-abolitionist pols as he was giving to non-abolitionist soldiers: I’m not attacking Union slavery.[/li][li]To the Northern Slave: When I win, I’ll free you just like I freed the Southern Slave. Note, however, that the Emancipation Proclamation never explicitly says this, keeping Lincoln free to appease nearly everyone Union at once. Lincoln wanted to be popular, and that has always meant saying things you never actually say. Lincoln was a lawyer. He knew you can’t be held to a clause that was never written down.[/li][li]To Abolitionists: Pretty much the same as to the Slaves. Appeasing firebrands is a good thing to do if you can’t ignore their vote.[/li][/ul]
Lincoln was a great politician. That does not mean he was moral, exceptionally truthful, or anything else. It just meant he knew what his people, the people who would end up voting him in or out next go-around, wanted to hear.
You left two out: France and England, who were in some danger of intervening on the side of the South. Even so, anti-slavery sentiments in both countries were quite strong, and historians seem to agree that the Proclamation went a long way towards keeping them from meddling in the conflict.
As for all of you who seem to be so upset when it is pointed out that the Proclamation was a slick bit of politicking rather than a noble statement of principle: why? One of Lincoln’s greatest achievements was keeping the Unions’s often weak and wavering public support for the war going in the first place. Even as recently as the summer of 1864 there was a lot of support for simply quitting the war and letting the Southern states leave the Union, and some historians have suggested that if Sherman had not succeeded in taking Atlanta before the election, the former Union General McClellan might well have won the Presidency and sued for peace. The Proclamation was part of Lincoln’s shrewd maneuvering. I can understand that you might resent what you see as insinuations that the Proclamation was merely a cynical ploy. But Lincoln was a practical politician with a tough problem in front of him, and he was not the sort to be swayed by naive idealism. The Proclamation was a purely political move.
All that said, I still hold to my position. Freeing the slaves was not the North’s primary goal, not even after the Proclamation. While slavery was clearly an important issue in the war, it was far from being the only issue, and it is a serious distortion of fact to insist that “the Civil War was about slavery” and simply leave it at that.
However, it is also a serious distortion of fact to insist, as most Neo-Confederates do, that slavery was not an important issue at all.
Damn! That’s one of the problems with trying to be objective and reasonable! Too often you find yourself out there in no-man’s-land drawing fire from both sides!
“Word up” is a slang expression signifying respectful agreement.
I agree with your post.
Derleth:
I agree that the EP can be considered propaganda. I don’t agree with some of the messages you read into it, but many I do. I think that it is important to realize this was not an empty promise.
I agree that Lincoln was a great politician. Rather than catering to the various positions, he created consensus. The hallmark of a leader.
Lonesome Polecat:
:: gets down off soapbox and joins LP in the middle ::
I agree that the EP was was shrewd politics. I agree that the North was not unified behind freeing the slaves until the end of the war. I agree that my thread title is an oversimplification. I withdraw it; however, if someone makes the assertion “the Civil War was not about slavery” then they can expect arguments from the middle.
2sense, it’s too bad you’ve withdrawn the thread’s title. It was correct and concise. Sure it was simplistic, as are all titles. If James Mitchner (sp?) had made this thread, he would have called it “Slave”. I’ve never met a sentence that was the complete unabridged embodiment of the human experience. So complaint that your thread title “oversimplifies” the matter are pretty much useless. “The Civil War was complex like all other aspects of human history” wouldn’t really do as a thread title.
I didn’t mean to imply that the Emancipation Proclamation was irrelevant to everything. I mean that it was irrelevant to the cause of the war, for simple temporal reasons. All events that happen after the beginning of the war are totally irrelevant to the cause of the war.
So why pick apart the EP constantly? (If I wrote a book called Lies Lies My Teacher Told Me Told Me, the first “lie” would be that slavery is still legal in Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and Kentucky. No, no one ever came out and said that, but most of the “lies” people bandy about as having come from their teachers are in fact their own poor memories playing tricks on them.)
The 13th was ratified on December 6, 1865. The EP was delivered September 22, 1862 and went into force January 1 of the next year. Slavery ended a little under 135 years ago. My point is, why is it so incredibly relevant that there were a little under three years intervening between the EP and the 13th? That the shooting was over by the ratification of the 13th is no matter; they both occurred after the war began and thus cannot be blamed or credited for starting the war.
So what would you have done, Derleth? Left the slaves in chains in captured areas of the Confederacy, even though you had the power to free them (and conquering commanders-in-chief do have legal power to do just about anything in captured areas), just so future revisionists wouldn’t call you a “politician”? Or would you have freed the slaves in the loyal border states in flagrant violation of the Constitution?
What portion of the slaves in this country were freed between January 1863 and November 1865? I don’t know. I’ll hazard a guess that it was around 90%; the border states had lower rates of slave ownership than the Confederates. So this 10% remained to be freed by the 13th Amendment a few months after the shooting stopped.
What this all has to do with the South’s reasons for seceding, moving their capital to Richmond, or firing on Fort Sumter is anybody’s guess, unless the apologists would care to explain.
I just wanted to add that one of the conditions put on the admission of West Virginia as a seperate state was the gradual emancipation of all slaves within its borders within a set number of years (I don’t recall how many). Again, while preservation of the Union was tops on the nation’s agenda, the abolition of slavery (even if gradual) was still a primary concern.
It is my belief that slavery was the most important difference between the sides. This was the issue that could not be resolved by peaceful means. For those who still believe that states rights were more important than slavery, ask yourself this: If for some reason the North would agree, would the South have agreed to free the slaves in exchange for leaving the Union without bloodshed?
I think not.
I think so. Towards the end of the war, the Confederate government was seriously considering putting an end to slavery, as many Southerners had finally come to understand that slavery was an albatross hanging from the South’s neck and argued that gaining independence was more important than clinging to the institution of slavery. One purpose of freeing the slaves would have been to gain the sympathy of France and England, and another would have been to raise black troops for the Confederate army.
One of the many ironies of the war was that, although the South started the war to preserve its way of life, the war itself radically transformed the South. From the moment the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter, the South was irrevocably changed forever, regardless of the outcome of the war.
Anyway, the North’s primary purpose was to put down the Southern rebellion and keep the Southern states in the Union. They would never have offered or consented to such a deal.
BorisB, you know I must reply to that remark. If I was in Lincoln’s shoes, I would have done the same thing. Why? It helped my cause, it helped me, and it brought together groups that could otherwise have fractioned violently. Take a hint from 2sense and LonesomePolecat: Just because the EP was in Lincoln’s self-interest does not make it a bad thing. In fact, the EP ranks with the Declaration of Independence, Churchill’s ‘Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat’ speech, and Paine’s Common Sense in the Hall of Good Propaganda. It is a work of genius. It really helps prove the worth of good propaganda.
For the most part I’m gonna let everything go–my views on this matter are in my previous posts, and I haven’t changed my mind–but there are a few points I want to reply to.
jayron 32 said:
Yes, there are several choice remarks on the subject in that speech…all of which came after Lincoln had intentionally framed the war as being about slavery. He was justifying himself–hardly a new trick with politicians.
SoxFan59
I would agree with that. I’m not sure that anybody hasn’tagreed with that.
I assume I’m not one of the ones you term “apologists for the Confederacy” (unless that’s your label for everybody who fails to agree with you on the matter), but I have to ask why exactly you get belligerant over it. Why have an emotional stake in whether the Civil War was really about politics, or slavery, or Mary Todd Lincoln having a bad hair day? It’s fun to rehash, but it’s not like it’s gonna change anything.
That was my analogy, and I stand by it. What’s the symptom and what’s the disease matter a whole lot in understanding and treating it.
Here’s a link to a copy of the Confederate Constitution:
As far as I can tell, the answer to these questions is “it didn’t.” It’s mostly a ripoff of the US Constitution, and it doesn’t mention secession at all that I can see. What are you talking about?
Because as a politicalmatter one of the things that got their panties in a bunch was the move to prevent the spread of slavery to the US territories. That being one of the justifications, they couldn’t very well turn around and do the same thing.
Of course it was treason–I don’t think there’s any question about that. But I can’t resist pointing out that the Southernors had a history of treason–the Civil War was the secondtime they committed it. The first time involved battles at places like Kings Mountain and The Cowpens…and Yorktown, and Concord, and Bunker (Breed’s) Hill. Had they and their Northern co-conspirators lost that first time, slavery would have ended much sooner–the British abolished slavery around 1812, as I recall. So assuming you’re not of the opinion that the Brits were the Right Side in the Revolutionary War, we immediately notice that treason in and of itself is not evil–it what you do with it that counts.
2sense said:
There is no question that Lincoln disliked slavery. But, as I’ve said before, he was not an outright abolitionist. Everything I’ve seen suggests that his main–not *only,*perhaps, but main–concern was preserving the Union. Not necessarily at all possible costs–if that had been the case, he would have withdrawn from the election and thrown it to Douglas (who died shortly thereafter anyway, I might add)–but it was his main concern.
No, it wasn’t a compromise–it was a combination threat/military tool/foreign policy weapon. But here’s an interesting what-if–what if the Confederates had a sudden attack of reality in December of 1862 and called it all off? Interesting question, no?
Derleth: I can agree the EP was in part a propaganda tool, but I don’t think your first two catagories work too well. By the very act of rebelling in the first place, the Confederates took the implicit risk of the penalty for treason–being hanged. That being the case, threatening to free slaves wasn’t going to make them shiver in their shoes.
I find it interesting how their are 3 very logical arguments that I’ve never heard anyone else point out.
Lincoln quotes that “A house divided against itself cannot stand” presumable as a justification for war. Either A) Lincoln didn’t belive this at all, B) It cannot possibly be used as a justification for war, or C) It’s wrong. A) If Lincoln had truly belived this then he would have done everything in his power to enable the south to secede peacfully once it was obvious their would be secession, while the “house” would be divided, it would not be divided against itself so it would still be possible for it to “stand”. Acording to his statement however going to war would ensure the destruction of the union. B) follows from the above. C) Lincoln’s actions indicate that he did belive that “house divided against itself” could stand, so it appears that he tried to justify war with a statement he knew to be patently false…
Lincoln did NOT fight to preserve the United States, he fought to make the United States his idealised version of what it should be. While there is nothing inherently wrong with that, everyone seems to be willing to gloss over the fact that he used military force to throw the constitution out the window to get what he wanted. A Constitutional amendment requires approval 2/3rd approval by by houses or 2/3rd of the state legislatures followed by either a ratification by 3/4 of the states, or by state conventions in 3/4 of the states. This method, which I regard to be THE single most important power of the constitution, was simply IGNORED by Lincoln and the army. Nobody had (or has) the constitutional authority to deny the states the right to vote. The logical point is that with moral imperitives such as abolition that strict adherence to the law cannot be held as a neccity. I would grant that point, only with the following stipulation, ANY legal principal that is in conflict with such moral imperitives is invalid, as the constitution was plainly against abolition of slavery it has to be nullified, and replaced with something better!
Yes, I’m argueing that the 13th ammendment to the constitution was never truly passed. Yes I’m argueing that it should have no legal power, regardless of such concepts of jurisprudence. Yes I’m argueing that under the constitution a state could in fact have slavery (as long as their was “due process of law” and the right to vote was not infringed) But those are side issues. I’m actually argueing that the constitution of the United States of America should be held invalid. I’m argueing that the United States of America as a country does not truly exist, and HAS not existed since the civil war. The constitution was a great start, but that is what it was a start. A succesfull carpenter will not go back to the first or second hourse he ever built and simply add on new rooms to make a retirement home for himself, so why do we live under a constitution that has to be ignored in order to keep people happy?
I do not argue that we are inherently better than the “fouding fathers” and that we will make a better try at an ideal constitution. But neither will I accept that they were inherently better. We can do better, and I view it as imperitive that we try. These previous issues are not irrelevant, we’re facing problems that we haven’t had in hundreds of years (“militias”) as well as wonderfull new problems such as children killing each other, and abortion which as a moral issue is just as strong as slavery to some!
Of course what really irks me is the miseducation of our country as a whole. Reading the Federalist Papers by Madison, Hamilton and Jay was more of an education than I’ve gotten in all my years of history and government classes (I’m 19) It’s disgusting how many people view our “Founding Fathers” as perhaps a dozen men all with identical views of everything that wrote a wonderfull constitution that was instantly accepted and praised by all.
55 delegates were sent to the constitutional convention, and 16 of them didn’t sign the final constitution! The constitution wasn’t officialy ratified for 9 months, and it was 3 years before all 13 colonies had ratified it. The constitution was a document of compromise written by 55 white men who had to balance morality, practicality, and politics.
Anyway, now I’m going to get down off my high horse and get ridiculous.
If the leader of a country turns into a traitor then it’s a patriotic duty to stop that leader by any means, including assassination right? Isn’t that what Jogn Wilkes Booth did? He shot Lincoln a full 6 months before the 13th amendment was “ratified” so at this point in time Lincoln was unconstitutionally denying southern states of the right to vote.
