It was paranoia.
Yeah, that was because the South lost the war and slaveholders were pretty much out of politics during the period.
The North had no plans to outlaw slavery. None. Not in that generation or more.
Fugitive slave act? Gone, sure.
There was no real threat in their lifetimes.
I see no historical signs of that. Southern slavery was not an anachronistic holdover from the 18th Century, it was a product of 19th-Century industrialism. Cotton production became a major industry, and slave labor made it more profitable.
No – that’s why I said “landmass” instead of “continent.”
“The problem with things you read on the Internet is, you never know if they’re true or not.”
– Abraham Lincoln
Interesting historical trivia: As the Union forces advanced into Confederate territory, many slaves ran away and sought asylum with them. This put the officers in a quandary: This was before the Emancipation Proclamation, emancipation was not yet policy, and the laws of war required them to respect the enemy’s private property. However, the laws of war also allowed them to confiscate enemy property classed as “contraband of war.” Usually that meant weapons, but it could be construed broadly enough to encompass anything helpful to the enemy war effort – which slave labor certainly was. So they called the runaways “contrabands” and set them to doing camp chores, and eventually started paying them, and recruiting the men into the U.S. Army, where they fought very well.
. . . he expected his own side to win the war in a few weeks.
The problem was, each side underestimated the other side’s determination to win.
The most tragic thing about the Civil War was, 620,000 Americans, north and south, died – and only one-third of them died of combat injuries. The rest died of disease.
You take a bunch of farmboys who have never lived in cities, never had a chance to build up immunity to contagious diseases, and you herd them into an army camp with 19th-
Century sanitary standards, and that’s what happens.
God help you if you were wounded. The surgeons would go from one patient to the next without even washing their instruments. Why not? It would be decades before the germ theory of disease was discovered.
Ignaz Semmelweis proposed it in 1847 and this led to some cleaning with chlorinated lime water,carbolic acid and so forth.
Louis Pasteur discovered it in 1864. Lister published in 1867.
However, America was perhaps slow in adopting it, not until the 1880’s.
Well, he was a Jew, and most physicians of his time would not believe they had anything to learn from the likes of him.
The general Republican belief was the slavery required expansion and support to remain profitable. They felt that if they prevented slavery from expanding into the territories and allowed states to prohibit slavery if they wished then slavery would become unprofitable. As this happened, states that still had slavery would be encouraged to voluntarily enact laws which would abolish it.
So the Republicans did have a goal of ending slavery but they thought they could do it without forced abolition.
You’ll hear some people claiming that the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t actually free any slaves as it only applied to areas that didn’t recognize the authority of the United States government. But as you note, there were many people who were immediately freed by the proclamation. Any runaway slave whose owner was in the unoccupied parts of the CSA was covered by the proclamation and was freed the moment it went into effect.
And his is that different from France, Germany, Italy and others that control a clear “landmass”? Not getting your comment.
Should be. “And how is that different …”. Fat fingered typing.
Still don’t understand what point you were trying to make with that comment …?
The landmass discussion was based on a flip comment. It is not pertinent to this discussion and will stop, now.
Yessir!
Yes which is why it is bizarre to expect the Confederates to be the first, last, and only govt that has operated according to consistent abstract principles.
The decision to disallow secession was a decision made by a small group of men. It was very much in the realm of possibility that the Union chose to negotiate the practicalities of the secession instead of suppressing the rebellion. So it is a good idea to question the decision.
Can you see the difference between questioning a definite decision by a small group of men and questioning why an entire society did not want to change?
Lincoln chose to not negotiate the practicalities of the secession. He also promised bloodshed to collect tariffs in his inaugural.
Your line of thinking ignores historical facts about the Lincoln administration’s internal discussions on whether to make war. It was not as simple as the comic books, bud. There was a choice made. This is not in dispute.
Ignoring the true root cause…
They were not wrong in thinking that expanding slavery to the free states would effectively be the end of slavery–perhaps not in that generation, but the next. Once we stopped adding slave states, it was over.
This. Also, it was understood that slavery could only be ended by a constitutional amendment. Once 3/4 of the states were free, slavery would end. Essentially, the South saw themselves at a do-or-die moment; the longer they waited, the weaker their relative position would become, and this was their last chance. They were wrong, of course–their last chance, if they ever had one, was a generation before.
They threw away half a million lives in a hopeless attempt to preserve one of the most evil institutions in history.