Wumpus, you got a cite for this? What do you mean “large segment”? And you are aware, aren’t you, that we HAVE restrictions on tobacco?
[aside]
My kids’ social science/history(/English/math–there have been some cutbacks) teachers were told, “They had the Revolution and the Constitution last year. Start with the Civil War this year.” These heroic English and Kiddie Ed majors said, “You don’t start with the Civil War! There were things that led up to it!” and started with the War of 1812 and Andy Jackson and a general overview of the first sixty years of the century. To honor these women I will stay out of this discussion.
[/aside]
Okay, it’s really because MEBuckner, CalMeacham, and, when he shows up, Tomndeb are all more knowledgeable on the subject than I and better at putting their knowledge into words. But anybody who looks at it at all (like MEB says, read all of the articles of secession) can figure out the South seceded mostly over slavery and the other reasons seem to be inflated by their great-great-grandchildren as a smokescreen because the truth is too embarassing. I can’t blame 'em. I’m more German than Irish but thanks to German actions in the first half of the 20th century it’s less embarassing to say I’m Irish.
Ooooh! You better be ready to eat those words when the apologists see 'em! Why, the fact is that the Federal government brought supplies to Fort Sumter. That was a hostile, even warlike, act. The hand of the South Carolinians was forced. I mean, they should’ve just left the fort like nice boys. :rolleyes:
I mean it, I’m outta here. Nope, no more snotty comments. I won’t even read the thread. 
Odd, my great-great-grandparents were abolitionists. I just have this funny thing I do where I look at both sides of a conflict rather than picking one and automatically assuming that the central conflict must have been over a certain one of their positions. Especially since my great-greats were viewed as heretics and criminals for their views, in the North. I’ve got bad news for ya assumption boy, I’m a cynic and a misanthrope, not a hick.
It’s my experience with the American Civil War that most descendents of Northerners refuse to listen to any actual history about the war becuase they like to feel noble, and have the totemistic notion that if they proclaim that the North was the great force of God’s justice this speaks well of themselves.
But hey, let’s try a new line. How about a good old reductio? Let’s take a look at World War I.
The Cause
The Central Powers wished to secure and expand their territorial holdings.
The Allied Powers were opposed to Central expansion.
The Central Powers got tired of arguing about it, and decided just to work towards military dominance.
The Allied Powers said, you can’t have military dominance.
This latter disagreement was resolved by force.
See? Cleary WWI was all the fault of the Germans, and the Allies were great and noble people.
Weeeeelllllll, as it was the Germans who attacked first…
LMAO, yes, the Russians and the Germans hadn’t BOTH been militarizing the Balkans. And anyone who tells you differently is a German apologist.
Seriously, does anybody here NOT get their history from the back of a cereal box? What’s next, “The war started because Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated?”
You can name any reason at all for the cause of the Civil War. But the reason for all wars is economics.
Not in WWI. In that war, what happened was that both “sides” began mobilization simultaneously as hardcore diplomatic brinksmanship. Then, when the political leaders thought about pulling back, they were informed by their generals that it was “impossible”. Mobilization at that time was so cumbersome that once it was started, stopping would result in complete disruption of that country’s military, or so the generals of all countries involved claimed. Thus, according to the generals, not going through with war once mobilization got going would have left the country completely defenseless. Germany was just one of the several players in the game. After the war, they were forced to accept “war guilt” as part of the peace terms.
laigle, why don’t you try posting without mocking the people you’re responding to? The mods (and everybody else) like it better that way.
Speaking of oversimplifying things:
See, constantine never said the North entered the Civil War to end slavery; he said the North entered the Civil War to preserve the Union. (Of course, by the end of the war Union soldiers were singing “As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free”, and the war did result in the abolition of slavery.)
I mean, it’s one thing to oversimplify something big and complex, like the cause of a great and bloody war. But oversimplifying a 250-word post on a message board?
Why don’t you try coming up with a rational argument and present it? I’ll be happy to discuss it like an adult. On the other hand, if you, for instance, do a bunch of hand waving, misrepresent my position as a strawman, call me an apologist for Southern slavery, or generally behave like a twit towards me, I might not be very nice towards you either. Crazy, but true. For some strange reason that sort of thing tends to make me not like people and be sarcastic when responding to them.
All right, I’m bowing out of the thread. It’s clear that it’s a lot more fun to attack me than to discuss the thread now, and I really have nothing more to say about it. Good night all.
I completely agree with (what I understand to be) laigle’s point that lots of people seem to think
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that the North went to war to end the injustice of slavery;
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that therefore the Northerners were the good guys.
And I further agree with his point that #2 cannot follow from #1 because #1 is just plain false.
Just to be clear, what I said is that the North went to war to prevent the South from pulling out of the Union.
I also said, and still say, that the Northern moral position was superior to the Southern moral position. And this, I think, is where the fight heats up again.
I am not arguing that the Northerners were saintly because they went to war to end slavery. I’m arguing that the Southerners were vile because they went to war to preserve slavery. And I’m arguing that, despite the considerable faults of the Northerners, they weren’t fighting to preserve slavery.
But now we reach, I think, the harder question: given that the North’s aim was preservation of the Union, and not the abolition of slavery, was that aim–preservation of the Union–enough to justify the suffering of the war?
It seems to me, that Reeder has asked exactly the right question.
The answer is that the United States was not an “alliance,” like NATO or the United Nations. The Constitution created a nation, not an alliance. The Southern States ratified the Constitution. The Constitution provides for no mechanism for secession, and pace Alan Owes Bess, I think that seceding is not permitted under the Constitution. Among many reasons, Article I Section 10 bars States from entering “into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation,” and also from keeping troops, from entering into “any Agreement or Compact with another State,” and, last but not least, Section 10 provides that “No State shall… engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”
It is surely inevitable that some will argue that the South was in danger of being invaded by the North, or some such, but I think this argument is a nonstarter. Section 10 does permit states to engage in war if they are in danger of invasion, but clearly the exception is meant to address invasions by a foreign power. The North was not a foreign power, but part of the same country.
A confident 100 years + after the fact hindsight assertion about the simplicity of root causes and contexts of the Civil War all tied up with a big red bow … and a moderator is going along for the ride… M’kaaay… this should be better than the Oft Beaten Tiger Thread in the Pit.
Prohibiting a State from seceding is not specifically spelled out in the US constitution but a number of States joined on the proviso that, as sovereign States, they retained the right to withdraw from the union at any time.
If they could not, then they would no longer have the right of self determination, would they?
The right to leave the union was not questioned by anyone at that time and there are a number of sites which identify the States that joined the union while still reserving the right to withdraw.
This one’s as good as any It seems to be historically accurate, as far as I can tell, plus it is reasonably interesting to read.
This provision appplies to States that are still bound by the agreement.
If a State exercised its right as a sovereign State to withdraw from the union, it becomes an independent and sovereign State and this provision would no longer apply.
As a libertarian, I’ve been curious regarding some libertarians defense of “southern revisonism” (especially L. Neil Smith http://www.lneilsmith.com/ ). So, trained academicaly in history I decided to do some research. Surprise, I could find nary a reference to the importance of “tariffs” actually being the primary cause of the war. Even Jefferson Davis, writing post-bellum said the tariff issue was “minor”. (at the same time Davis tried to say the cause was not about slavery, only that the North was unalterably opposed to the Southern way of life-which was based on slavery)
In 1832, the “tariff of abomination” WAS the big issue–and Andrew Jackson was poised to drop Federal troops down on South Carolina like a ton of bricks. The tariff issue kept coming up for the next 30 years, but by the 1850’s it was strictly back-burner stuff–the expanssion of slavery into the new territories and if those territories would become free or slave was the 500 pound gorilla of American politics.
Here’s how free soil politics worked: slavery versus free labor in close proximity reduces the value of free labor (and also held so did free black labor against free white labor-hence Kansas trying to forbid free black immigration). The territories offer an escape zone for poor whites to go to become independent farmers and tradesmen–but if slavery is allowed into the territories, then that escape valve becomes useless–so, the formation of the Free Soil Party which evolved with remnants of the Whigs and Know-Nothings into the Republican Party.
Quick run down on Pro-Slavery politics: All those yeoman class and poor whites in the south whose labor was devalued in the established slave states–they also need the territory escape valve–along with the younger sons of plantation owners who want to become Masters themselves–and cotton is hard on soil, besides there can be other things slaves can do (like mining-one serious proposal bandied in Southern papers after the California Gold Rush)–and what all these Southerners know as upward mobility involves using slaves to make their wealth.
The rhetoric in Southern papers is pretty darn consistent in that it considered Northern containment synonymous with attempted destruction of slavery. Wishy-washy at best about abolition, Lincoln was portrayed by Southern propagandist on par with John Brown. At the same time, Northern hysteria about “Slave Power” reached new heights of fear and loathing. Elected on a specific platform of keeping the Union together, Lincoln’s presidency was the last straw for the Southern Aristos (I like the euphanism “War to preserve Rich Southerner’s Rights” to counter “The War of Northern Agression”). Lincoln knew he had to let the South throw the first punch and the South Carolinans were too ready to provide it. Perhaps we should have let the South go it’s slave-whupping way and avoided an unessesary war-but I’m still glad we don’t have a “Slave Power” on our borders today.
Let me suggest that in 1860 we had something else going on that compelled the Cotton Belt to attempt to leave the Union. The basic issue was slavery but the nation had managed to muddle along with that particular viper at its bosom for nearly four score and seven years. What was it that brought things to a head in 1861?
I think there were two events or circumstances that pushed the simmering controversy over the line. The first was the Dred Scott decision in 1857. In that case, you will recall, a divided Supreme Court held the Missouri Compromise to be void as being in excess of Congress’s power. Among other things the Missouri Compromise had admitted Missouri as a slave state but prohibited slavery in the Western Territories lying north of the western extension of Missouri’s southern border. Justice Tanny held that Congress had no power to regulate, prohibit or ban slavery in the territories. (This of course ignores the fact that in Congress’s first territory legislation, the Northwest Ordinance, slavery was prohibited in the new territory and to a great extent the NWO was written and enacted by the very same people who wrote and approved the Constitution.) Slavery questions, said Justice Tanny, were to be addressed in the draft state constitution submitted with the application for statehood. The consequence was Bloody Kansas in which firebrands of both persuasions rushed to fill the new territory with their people. After considerable bloodshed Kansas did approve a free labor constitution.
Up until the Bloody Kansan debacle the Southern States could rely on their votes in the Senate to suppress any efforts to abolish slavery in favor of a free labor system, or even chip around the edges. The balance had been maintained by admitting new states in pairs, on free, one slave. Thus my state, Iowa, was admitted to statehood in tandem with Florida. By 1860, however, the territories in which cotton could be produced had pretty much already been admitted and it was pretty apparent that new territories were going to be dominated by free labor Northerners or Spanish-Mexican inhabitants who were hostile to chattel slavery. The new states admitted to the Union were going to be free labor states and the balance of power so carefully preserved in the Senate was going to be lost. Once lost, the free labor vote in the Senate would be sufficient to refuse admission to statehood of any territory with a constitution that permitted slavery in the new state.
It seems to me that the prospect of the loss of the ability to protect chattel slavery in Congress had much to do with, first, the increasingly shrill tone of the national debate in the late 1850s and the ultimate decision to take a radical step when Lincoln, as the representative of the party which stood not for abolition, but for non-expansion of slavery, was elected. For the South’s slavery based economy expansion of territory and political clout was essential to the survival of slavery.
While it is only an educated speculation, I would expect that the first thing an Independent Confederacy would attempt would be the occupation of Cuba and Central America and maybe French occupied Mexico. All had been on the “slave power’s” wish list for some time, as evidenced by the semi-private filibustering expeditions that followed the War with Mexico.
Alan Owes Bess:
But the Constitution is neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Articles of Confederation. A simple, straightforward reading of the document makes it evident that, under it, the states were not “sovereign” in any meaningful sense of the word. I’ll certainly grant that some states ratified the Constitution with the proviso that they reserve the right to leave the union but, if the Constitution is a legal document, that’s irrelevant. It would be like my signing a contract with you, and then declaring that I reserve the right to back out later if I wish. It’s not what you say as you sign that matters, it’s what’s on the paper that you’re signing.
laigle:
What the hell are you talking about? You’ve been presented with several rational arguments (especially by MEBuckner) that go towards showing that the South seceded over slavery. You’ve shown no interest in discussing these arguments. You’ve accused people of “automatically assuming” that slavery was the cause, but you’ve done nothing to refute their arguments in support of that point (of course, acknowledging that they made arguments would mean that they weren’t automatically assuming anything, wouldn’t it?).
Finally, unless I missed something, no one called you an apologist for southern slavery. What are you talking about?
Most people north and south refuse to listen to any actual history of the war, in part so that they can feel noble (and in part because they have no interest). However, there are people here who really do know what they’re talking about. If you can accept that you’re not going to be right about everything, I think you’d find it worthwhile to discuss this.
And also, elected without southern votes. Lincoln didn’t win any state south of the Mason-Dixon line, and, in fact, wasn’t even on the ballot in most of them. Even though this was partly due to the circumstances of the election (a divided Democratic party, the last gasp of a rump Whig party), it confirmed for a lot of southerners that they had become irrelevant in national politics. (Which again, was due in large part to slavery…the North, which was rapidly industrializing, offered a lot more job opportunity to immigrants, than the agrarian slaveholding south)
Obligatory Simpsons reference, from “Much Apu About Nothing”, in which Apu is taking his US citizenship exam:
Seems to me that the Southern “noble cause” propaganda at the time and for generations later is derived at least in part from a wish not to have been on the morally wrong side. A systematic attempt to find justifiable reasons for the revolt, and implant them in the public consciousness, could be simply denial. But yes, even though other tangential factors were obviously involved, the war was essentially about slavery.