well at least we agree on something
I also hate when aristocratic slavers unilaterally rebel against the constituted legal authority.
Now apply this logic to the Revolutionary War.
Well, for one thing, the British Crown at that time was neither democratic nor abolitionist, so the presence of “aristocratic slavers” on the Patriot side makes no relevant difference. The war was not about aristocracy v. anything else nor about slavery v. anything else.
As for what it was about – Lind again, in The American Way of Strategy – what frightened our FFs was the English ruling class. They did not want to wind up like the Scots and the Irish, toiling for English absentee landlords.
Bolding mine.
Yeah, slavery really was the direct cause of the war. It’s just this simple: no slavery no war. End of story.
I don’t know why people want to make this more complicated that it is but I suspect some just want to seem smarter than others.
This is revisionist nonsense. The South bitterly opposed States Rights, and several of the major complaints in their documents of secession were that the Federal government was allowing non-slave-owning states to exercise sovereignity over their lands instead of forcing them to comply with laws that slave states wanted. I mean, one of the biggest complaints leading to numerous political deals is that the southern states did not believe that states should be allowed to decide whether they were slave or free in the first place, that it should be dictated by the Federal government. How do you reconcile that position with the supposed ‘states rights’ argument?
In their own documents of secession, you have things like Mississipi’s “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.” and Georgia’s “A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia.” South Carolina and Texas both specifically mention that the North isn’t enforcing the fugitive slave act, which is the direct opposite of supporting States Rights.
How do you reconcile your position with the actual, direct statements of the governments of seceeding states, and the actions of those states?
This debate question comes up a lot, which is frustrating as it is quite clear that the southern states reason for secession. The north did not immediately say that they were going to abolish slavery if the states returned to the union.
Just go read the declaration of secession from the states that actually did leave the union, they left to protect slavery.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp
https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/secession/2feb1861.html
Technically the Emancipation Proclamation freed any slave whose owner was in an area in rebellion. At the time, the order was issued there were thousands of slaves who had run away from their owners and were behind American lines. All of those slaves were free at the moment the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect.
You’re wrong. Lincoln and the Republicans (along with all other political parties) repeatedly said they would make no attempt to abolish slavery in any state which had it. But the Republicans went on to say that they would not allow the slave states to impose slavery in states or territories that didn’t want it.
It wasn’t “these Northerners keep imposing their will on us.” It was “these Northerners say we can’t keep imposing our will on them.”
See post #21.
It’s possible that if you looked into the contemporary discussions in more depth than I’m up for, you would find clever people rationalizing the apparent inconsistency. (I suppose offhand that it’s kind of analogous to some state refusing to extradite people wanted for felonies in another state based on it not being a crime in that state. Point being that it’s not that the one state is trying to impose its will on the other state - they just don’t want the other state to undermine their own laws.)
But let’s grant that it’s inconsistent. People are inconsistent.
As noted, the issue of states rights versus federal was a big deal for tariffs, with the two sides on the same respective sides of the issue.
I am not aware of this.
Everyone knew at the time that the burning issue of the day - and the fault line between the two sides - was slavery. My point was that this was part of a broader issue, which 40 years prior might have applied to tariffs.
Yeah, it’s nowhere near that simple.
If you didn’t have northern industrialist fighting politically against the southern agriculturalists, there wouldn’t have been a war.
If you didn’t have a government where the majority rules, and is able to force their views down the other side’s throat, along with decades of doing exactly that, there wouldn’t have been a civil war.
Oversimplifying it and saying it was all about slavery ignores a lot of what was going on at the time.
In the South, there were two groups, the big plantation owners that had slaves, and the little farmers that couldn’t afford slaves. Back in the early 1800s, if someone had played their cards right, they probably could have easily convinced the little farmers to abolish slavery. The reason for this was that slavery gave the plantation owners a big advantage in terms of labor cost. The little guys really wanted to be big plantation owners themselves, but abolishing slavery at that point would have leveled the playing field among the agricultural south, and the little farmers probably could have been talked into that just because it was in their own best interest. But there’s a problem with that. Even the little farmers were huge racists. They believed that blacks were inferior, and they definitely did not want to give blacks the right to vote or anything else. Keeping the blacks as slaves kept the lower class down and unable to vote, which kept all of the power, both politically and economically, in the hands of the whites.
So even in the South, it wasn’t all about slavery. It was about slavery and racism. That’s maybe a subtle distinction, but the point is that even those who did not own slaves and would never own slaves were on the same side as the slave owners, and were very strong in their beliefs.
The North side is a lot more complicated. There had been a growing abolitionist movement all through the 1800s, but this movement did not have anywhere near the numbers needed to counter the southern plantation owners politically. If the North had only been about slavery, there definitely would not have been a war because a lot of folks in the North really didn’t give two hoots about slavery one way or the other.
Also in the North you had the northern industrialists, and this is where a lot of the political and economic power was in the North. These industrialists felt that the world was changing from an agriculturally based economy to an industrial economy, and they felt that the southern agriculturalists were holding the USA back and were ruining the country economically. While some industrialists were also abolitionists, most of them weren’t, and most really didn’t give two hoots about slavery. For this group in the North, it was more about greed than slavery.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as the saying goes, and so the abolitionists joined forces with the industrialists. Now they had the combined power to combat the southern plantation owners, and now you have a very much north and south divide.
But even that wasn’t enough to start the Civil War, though it did lead to some interesting politics. This also dragged in the issue of the exact powers of the Federal Government over States. South Carolina famously decided that taxes and tariffs enacted by the Federal Government didn’t apply to South Carolina, for example. Decades of this sort of political fighting made everyone pissed off, and that anger helped fuel the Civil War. Without that anger, a lot of folks wouldn’t have been willing to go to war to fight for their views. If both sides had been able to compromise somehow during the 1840s and 1850s, there definitely would not have been a war in the 1860s. There were a lot of compromises at the time, but nowhere near enough to diffuse the hatred and anger that was building up.
So you’ve got the Southern slave owners and the Southern racists squaring off against the Northern abolitionists and Northern industrialists, and the two sides are constantly fighting and pissing each other off over the span of decades. But even all of that wasn’t enough to start the Civil War.
What finally triggered the war was the issue of the new territories in the west, which were about to become new states. Southerners really didn’t care if folks out west owned slaves or not. It didn’t affect their lives at all, one way or another. But the Southerners very much cared about how these states would vote. If the new states became free states, then the northern abolitionists and industrialists would dominate Washington. If the new states became slave states, then the southern slave owners and racists would dominate Washington.
Lincoln went out of his way to tell the South that they could keep their slaves. However, Lincoln was very firm on the western territories issue, and promised during his election that the new states would be free states. When Lincoln won, the South could see the writing on the wall. Even though Lincoln said that they could keep their slaves, the new states would swing the balance of power to the North, and the South was doomed. The abolitionists had been gaining in strength all throughout the 1800s, and that saw no signs of diminishing in the North. The North would have the political power to eventually abolish slavery. It was only a matter of time. And so, the South seceded, effectively starting the Civil War.
So it’s a lot more complicated than just slavery.
Take away industrialism and greed, and the North did not have enough power politically to fight the plantation owners. This path probably would eventually lead to war as the abolitionist movement continued to grow, but the war would have happened much later, more like in the 1890s or so, most likely.
If someone had started trying to convince the small southern farmers in the early 1800s that it was in their best interest economically to get rid of slavery, despite their racism, then slavery could maybe have been abolished in the 1840s or 1850s. Instead, the industrialist and agriculturalist fight forced the little farmers to side with the plantation owners. At that point, it was no longer just about racism, but the little farmers were fighting for their agricultural way of life, which the northern industrialists were happy to destroy economically, in the interest of moving to an industrial economy.
Take a look at Lincoln’s speeches. When he was speaking to a mostly abolitionist group, he played up the slavery issue and didn’t talk much about industrialism. When he spoke to mostly industrialist groups, he played up the industrialist issues and didn’t talk much about slavery. If it was all about slavery, there would have been no need for him to split his speeches like that.
If the only issue had been slavery, the war wouldn’t have happened in the 1860s, and might not have happened at all.
See post #21.
Commitments from politicians are not worth a lot, especially in the long run.
Lincoln’s position was that the federal government could stop any new territory from allowing slavery. The North already had a majority of the federal government, and if they succeeded in making sure all new territories were free states, then the South was doomed to become an ever-shrinking minority.
I think that everyone who says the civil was was about slavery is aware of 3 things:
1- that it was the wealthy people in the south that owned slaves
2- that the north was an industrial center
3- that new western territories were involved in the dispute
This is a great point and something I need to remember the next time some knuckle-head tries to play the State’s Rights card.
I have to disagree. It is hard to conceive of a way that slavery would have ended peacefully. Even if Lincoln had allowed the Confederacy to break away there would have been fighting in the West when the US and the Confederacy fought over the territories. Slavery was the only issue that had no compromise both sides were willing to accept.
The Civil War gets simple, then complicated, then simple again.
Simple: It was about slavery.
Complicated: It was about a lot of different interacting things…
Simple: …which all trace back to slavery in some fairly simple fashion.
Racism? Moral justification for slavery. Yes, the North had it, too. The North didn’t go to war over it.
Industrial/Agrarian divide? An economic distinction founded on slavery, and wholly addicted to it.
Tariff fights? Traceable back to the above, and, therefore, to slavery.
Cultural differences and the distinction between the Southern Honor Culture and the Northern Capitalist Culture? Slavery was, in the South’s own words, the cornerstone of that culture. This also puts the lie to the idea that slavery would have died peacefully had the South been able to secede: The South’s culture, especially the culture of the poor Southern whites, was founded on the idea that some people were chattels, less than human, and therefore inherently less valuable than even the meanest, poorest sharecropper in Arkansas. It defined their social hierarchy, and having successfully gone to war to preserve it would have ingrained it that much deeper.
Westward expansion and new states in general? The Missouri Compromise, a major component of that fight, was explicitly about preserving the slave state/free state balance in Congress. It was about voting, sure, but the voting was predicated, again, on the state’s position on slavery.
The Lost Causers and the Neo-Confederates can throw as much chaff as they want. The fact remains all that chaff was thrown out by, and can be linked back to, the underlying issue of slavery, and how half the country was willing to kill hundreds of thousands of people in an attempt to split the country in order to ensure slavery would forever be preserved.
It’s OK to admit might makes right. Is there any doubt if the Confederacy won they’d teach their children how their forefathers valiantly defended their freedoms and way of life from the elites in the North? They practically do that anyway.
“These northerners keep imposing their will on us (most notably WRT the slave issue) and won’t let us impose our will on them (WRT fugitive slaves and other slavery issues), and we’re sick and tired of not being able to push them around (as well as being sick and tired of the possibility that we won’t be able to routinely rape and brutalize black people any more), so we’re out of here”.
It was about slavery. The Southern states wanted to secede to protect slavery. They started the war to secede. It was about slavery.
It’s always funny to hear people defend the Confederacy using phrasing like ‘force their views down the other side’s throats’ when the Confederacy was founded on the principle that whites should be allowed to rape, torture, and kill black people at their discretion. I think that forcing someone to have sex with her owner, or branding people for talking back is a far, far more egregious example of ‘forc[ing] their views down the other side’s throad’, especially since in some cases it would be literal. I point this out because the whole ‘those poor innocent graceful Southerners’ rhetoric turns pretty absurd when you remember the torture and rape that were such a huge part of their belief system.