The American Civil War - Question

In My Humble Opinion
41

I agree. The CSA was not a well-planned country. And it would have failed even if they had somehow been able to remain an independent country.

The southern states were based around a bad idea. They felt that agriculture was still the dominant pillar of the economy and the industrial revolution was a passing fad. They were definitely betting on the wrong horse on this one.

The only reason the southern states had been able to maintain this mistaken belief was because they were part of a national economy which was moving forward. The rest of the United States had a growing economy, which allowed the southern states to keep functioning while rejecting that economy.

By cutting their political ties with the United States, the secessionists were also cutting their economic ties. And they needed those economic ties. The rest of the United States had an economy that could work without the missing southern states. But the Confederates did not have an economy that could work with only its own resources.

42

Yeah, the political leaderships’ unwavering belief in “King Cotton” was an obvious mistake. They also seemed to miscalculate pretty consistently the extent to which Union soldiers were willing to fight for the idea of the Union, and the extent to which the slavery issue would make it very difficult for the European powers to support them (Britain in particular).

The OP the answer is that the North believed that the states which seceded were in rebellion. And that once they fired on American troops at Fort Sumter they were in armed insurrection. It truly was a fight over that idea - as Lincoln put it “testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

The Republicans honestly believed (rightly, I think) that allowing secession would destroy idea of a democratic nation. Once you allow the losers of an election, even one over as significant an issue as slavery, to take their ball and go home the jig is up.

We tend to think of things as homogeneous blocks, but as someone pointed out above there were lots of Unionists in the South. In the view of the North they were every bit as American as a New Yorker or Bostonian, and they deserved to be liberated from their rebellious local governments.

And on the flip side there were plenty of Copperhead Democrats in the North that were willing to allow a negotiated separation. They just lost in the elections in 1862 and 1864.

43

Part of that unwavering belief was that their control of global cotton production was unchangeable. The Confederates thought they could compel European powers into supporting them by denying them cotton.

That was dumb on a few levels. First, the European powers had seen which way the wind was blowing and had stocked up on cotton in anticipation of a crisis in America. So there was no immediate shortage when the Confederates cut off the cotton supply.

Second, the Confederates were fighting a war against a stronger power. They needed European industrial supplies more than Europe needed cotton. If Europeans were cut off from cotton, it would mean factories would close and there would be an economic decline. If the Confederates were cut off from military supplies, it would mean they would lose the war and their country would be destroyed. So the Confederates had more to lose in this economic standoff than the Europeans did.

Third, Britain and France were major world powers. The CSA was not. Britain and France were going to resent Confederate attempts to bully them into adopting a pro-Confederate policy. The Confederates should have attempted a less confrontational strategy.

Fourth, the Confederates were too focused on cotton and didn’t see the bigger economic picture. There were other products in the world. While the southern states were selling cotton to Europe, the rest of the states were selling corn and wheat to Europe. The United States had a more effective economic weapon in its hand than the Confederates did. Lincoln wisely never overtly threatened to cut off grain sales to Europe but the Europeans were aware of the reality if they took an openly hostile stance to the United States.

Fifth, there’s nothing that difficult about growing cotton. When the Confederates cut off the sale of American cotton, the Europeans responded by planting extensive cotton fields in Egypt, India, and Central Asia. By the time their stores of pre-war cotton had run out, they no longer needed to buy cotton from America.

44

This was part of it but they also underestimated how much the European countries despised slavery.

The South thought it was as simple as 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend" but no one wanted to align with a pro-slavery country fighting for the right to own slaves.

45

To me they are good questions because, over time, I have started to wonder if saving the union was a mistake. Half of this country wants to evolve into a super democracy like Sweden or Norway. The other half wants to be South Africa before apartheid ended. If we had divided back then, each separate country could have gone its own way and become the nation it really wanted to be.

46

Many people like to make observations along these lines, but as other people have been pointing out since at least the 2000 elections, “Blue States” and “Red States” are kind of a myth. I personally live in a Deep South state which went for Biden; but more than that, there are maps like this one:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/59/United_States_presidential_election_results_by_county%2C_2020.svg/2000px-United_States_presidential_election_results_by_county%2C_2020.svg.png

There are “Blue” patches, and sort of long blobby “Blue” strings, and a few large contiguous areas of “Blue” (like New England–outside Maine, anyway). But that’s all in a huge sea of “Red” areas, and not just in the “Red States”–look at New York State! And look at that big “Blue” patch in Mississippi!

Trying to divide the country up along partisan lines is even more hopeless than it was trying to divide it up along “Free State” versus “Slave State” lines.

47

Took the South to the woodshed? Four years of bloody warfare. North 365,000 dead. South 290.00 dead. Southerners didn’t think the North had the heart for a long drawn out war. They were mistaken.

48

Indeed - case in point.

(I don’t know quite how the thinking went in France, but Napoleon III tried to set himselfup as the arbiter of Mexican politics, albeit after the Civil War was over, so I wonder if actually he saw some advantage in weakening the US -but that’ s by the bye).

49

You’re right. In fact, if I remember my history class, the northern generals pretty much sucked and were totally outclassed by their southern counterparts. The north eventually caught up though, although I still think guys Like Lee, Stonewall jackson, and Jeb Stuart were better.

50

That is a modern misconception.

Slavery was not a huge torture-fest of constant beatings and whippings. A respectable Southern man did not needlessly torture his slaves, just as a respectable farmer doesn’t go out to the fields and whip the crap out of his cows for no reason. A better comparison would be to a farmer from a few decades ago when animal rights weren’t really a thing. If a farmer in the 1970s did go out to his fields and beat the snot out of his cows, he might not have much respect from his fellow farmers, but on the other hand, all of the other farmers are just going to be like meh, it’s just a cow. Same thing with slaves in the 1800s. If a slave owner beat a slave to death, the other slave owners were like meh, your loss, dude. Now you need to buy a new slave to replace that one. The other slave owners are going to think he’s stupid, not admire him.

Constantly beating your cows isn’t going to make them more productive. It’s going to make them less productive. It was the same with slaves. The slave owners only beat them as much as necessary to keep them in line. Slaves weren’t idiots. They knew if they misbehaved that they would get the whip, so for the most part, they didn’t misbehave. And if they didn’t misbehave, then they didn’t get whipped.

Raping slaves wasn’t admired either. Sure it happened, but it was more of a dirty secret than something to be admired.

Being treated as sub-human and having no freedom is miserable enough. Exaggerating the treatment of slaves to make it seem like a constant torture-fest does a huge disservice to history. By minimizing the actual misery of being treated like an animal and not having any freedom, it gives the impression that it was only bad if the slaves were actually constantly tortured, and ignores the actual misery that slaves went through in their daily lives.

51

As they say the South survived that long due to “leadership and guts”.

52

Yeah, the Southern side is pretty straightforward. They were literally fighting for their way of life.

The Northern side was much more complex, and wasn’t as anti-slavery as modern history portrays it.

In the North, there had been an abolitionist movement since before the U.S. was even a country. The Quakers were abolitionists, and some other religious groups also believed in abolition. The abolitionist movement had been growing all through the 1800s, but by the time of the Civil War the entire North was not abolitionist.

The other major political force in the North was the industrialists. They saw the agricultural way of life as on its way out, and industrialism was the way that the world was going (and to be fair, they were right). They felt that the Southern plantations were holding back progress and choking northern industrial companies, but then what was good for the South was bad for the North and vice-versa. If you put in protective tariffs so that manufactured goods from Europe were more expensive than locally made goods, then you protected the new northern factories. But then European countries would enact tariffs in response, which would hurt the sale of cotton and tobacco and screw over the southern plantations. Lower the tariffs, and the plantations thrive but the factories can’t compete with the European goods, and the factories starve.

So now you have the old “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” situation, and the abolitionists and the industrialists joined forces to create one big political party that was both pro-industry and anti-slavery.

But the one thing you have to keep in mind is that about half of this anti-slavery party really didn’t give two hoots about slavery, and about half of this pro-industry party really didn’t give two hoots about industry.

If you read Lincoln’s speeches from the time, you can see which half of the party he was addressing. If he was talking to industrialists, he would minimize the anti-slavery rhetoric and would talk up things like protection for northern industry. If he was talking to abolitionists, he would crank up the anti-slavery topics and minimize the industrial talk.

And from the Southern point of view, it didn’t matter that the Republican Party had two major groups in it. They saw one big enemy party that was both anti-slavery and anti-plantation.

So why did the North actually go to war?

Part of it is because they were attacked. But a major part of it was because of Lincoln and the Republican Party. There was actually a lot of debate about whether the South should be allowed to secede and just let them go their own way. A lot of folks in the North were in favor of it, or at the least they didn’t care too much one way or the other. But Lincoln and the Republicans were pro-Union, and they were the folks in charge.

The North really didn’t expect the South to put up that much of a fight. They thought the war would be over in a couple of weeks, so that probably factored into their decision-making as well. And to be fair, the South thought the same thing. They didn’t think that the North had the stomach for a protracted war. The South didn’t have to defeat the North. All they had to do was make the North give up, and once the fighting got down and dirty, the South was confident that the North would back off.

It didn’t work out the way that either side predicted.

53

How many farmers dismembered a cow alive with an axe in front of all of the other cows to teach them to obey?

No, slave owners weren’t just farmers who happened to own people. And people aren’t interchangeable with farm animals.

54

Nope, you’re entirely right. From the Union’s perspective, it was a rebellion, and something that needed to be put down, and the wayward states reintegrated into the Union. There was no recognition of the Confederacy as a separate nation, and the Confederate states were treated and referred to as rebellious states.

The Union would have gone to war regardless of what the Confederates did in terms of attacking- it was the putting down of the rebellion that was necessary. A peaceful resolution would have involved the Confederate states abiding by the Federal government’s laws, which is why they rebelled in the first place.

From the Union’s perspective, abolitionist sentiment wasn’t really part of it; even the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in rebellious states, not in the entirety of the US. It took until a couple of years later with the 13th Amendment to free the remaining slaves in the Union.

55

Well said.

56

I don’t know. Got any stats? Personally, I don’t think a cow can process that.

57

How many slave owners dismembered slaves to teach other slaves to obey? Slaves weren’t cheap. You didn’t slaughter one on a whim.

No, they aren’t. But southern slave owners treated them like they were. That’s the point. To the slave owners, slaves were animals, not real people. So they were treated like animals. The torture of slaves wasn’t admired any more than the torture of farm animals would be admired.

58

They did not treat them like a farmer treats their animals though.

They treated them like slaves. They knew they were human and they knew they could reason and plan and rebel and escape. They knew they copulate with them and they would give birth to children.

No, slaveowners were not just “people farmers” who only treated their property poorly on rare occasions because they “had to”.

59

Anyway this whole apologetics for how slaves were treated is a hijack away from the OP.

60

Imagine Texas seceding now – would the federal government just let them keep all the military bases in Texas?

Maybe there would have been a way to divide up federal property peacefully. I can’t think of one, and I’m not smart enough on history to know if the South even tried. But clearly the route they went – seizing all federal property within the confederate states and ordering non-sympathetic federal soldiers to leave – was destined to provoke a war.