Suppose Congress had enacted the opposite equivalent of the Fugitive Slave Act. Suppose they had enacted a law which gave northern abolitionists the legal right to travel into a southern states where slavery was legal and abduct random black people off of plantations. The abolitionists could then bring the abducted black person back into a free state where they could declare that they “knew” that the black person was actually a free man. The plantation owner wouldn’t be allowed to present any evidence to support his claim that the black person was actually a slave. And the law said that anyone who interfered with the operation could be charged with a crime.
Do you feel such a law would have been acceptable? Because it’s the same procedure only with the directions reversed. Southern slavers were allowed to do this in northern states. Which is an example of the kind of favoritism that the national government showed towards the slavery system despite its claim that it was under attack.
That’s what would make me most angry if I had lived in the North back then. I would probably be vaguely abolitionist although able to ignore it if it weren’t in my face all the time especially if it got me cheap clothes. What I would not have appreciated is my right to self-government being trampled in service of slavery, forcing my government to become actively complicit in it.
Then you agree - the Fugitive Slave Act was a clear violation of the philosophy of States’ Rights, and thus demonstrates that the Southern white leaders were full of shit in their supposed attachment to that philosophy of States’ Rights.
And bullshit that the South had “every right” to be outraged by Prigg. You say you’re not a Southern apologist and yet you continually defend their actions with regard to slavery. Why are you making this choice? You don’t have to.
Here’s Bricker agreeing that the Fugitive Slave Act demonstrates the hypocrisy of Southern leaders’ cries of “states’ rights” (read back a few posts to start with from the link):
The South Carolina position was that federal lands in the state were held in trust by the federal government, but actually property of the state (that’s why I brought up the embassy issue earlier-it was not a dissimilar situation.) They felt that on dissolution of the union, the lands held in federal trust would revert back to the state-and to be fair, that’s not an unreasonable position to take, although you wouldn’t expect the federal government to agree with you and it didn’t. It should be noted though that they did make efforts to pay for the federal lands being confiscated, but they were officially rebuffed (although privately discussions continued)
There was also quite a bit of disagreement on whether the federal government violated its word by moving troops to Sumter. They believed that the government had promised not to fortify Sumter and it obviously did. Moultrie was not evacuated to minimize confrontations, but as a military maneuver. Moultrie was not defensible in the event of an attack and Sumter was. It was not ‘we don’t want to accidentally get in a fight.’ It was “We’re preparing for a fight.” The evacuation and troop movement was done during the night to avoid picket ships. That doesn’t strike me as an above-board just trying to avoid confrontation move. Totally different situation. After this happened, can you blame South Carolina for feeling that a fleet of ships coming to land at Sumter was not going to be in its best interests? They knew that Sumter was being operated by a skeleton crew, but that if it got its full compliment, any attack would turn into a blood bath. It was a very high risk to allow ships to dock there.
I don’t think they were provocations, but it wasn’t unreasonable for the southern states to want them back either. As I have said before, the US and especially the early US was much more like the EU than it was like a single state like France (That’s why we’re the United STATES and not United Provinces, we’re multiple STATES within an overarching Federation (hence ‘Federal’ government.) ) When we put it in that context, it becomes easier to understand. Let’s pretend for a moment that the EU had a single defense force with a base in the UK. The UK initiates Brexit. It’s not unreasonable for the UK to say that the EU base in the UK is no longer welcome and that it now belongs to the UK. There might be some need to compensate the EU for improvements to the land and they likely have a right to take their arms with them, but asking them to leave is not unreasonable. If the EU refused to withdraw its forces, it does become provocative. If the EU decided to fortify the base rather than withdraw, it would become even more provocative. If the EU decided to send over warships to resupply the base, it becomes more provocative still.
The 1850 Act was not a violation of northern states’ rights. It violated principles of due process in that free blacks should have been allowed far greater protections to assert that they were indeed not slaves.
At the Constitutional Convention and during the BOR ratifications, it was agreed that states would return escaped slaves. This was not a 10th amendment reserved power of the states to refuse to return them. The founders accepted slavery as a part of life and the south had every right (under the mores of the times) to understand that there was not a silent hostility to slavery built into the Constitution to put it on an eventual death course as Lincoln later argued.
There were debates in the convention about how to count slaves for representation purposes. The north did not want the south to get the benefit of their large slave population and get more representatives in Congress because of it (hence the 3/5ths compromise), but nothing in the debates suggest an open hostility or a “we will let you have slavery for now, but just wait” mindset.
This understanding was nearly immediately violated by the attempt to ban slavery in the territories and in newly admitted states. And, again, it was not because of some high morality of the northern states fighting the evils of slavery. It was so that federal policies would be more suited to the northern industrial trade than the southern agrarian trade.
The south was ready to secede in 1820 and in 1850 because of these policies. The Missouri Compromise and the FSA of 1850 temporarily placated them.
The horrific Dred Scott decision then tipped the balance toward the south. The north responded by becoming more radical and more anti-south and anti-slavery and the Republicans and Lincoln took over. The south saw the writing on the wall.
None of this makes me a Southern Apologist; it is history.
That’s not what the people at the time thought. If you look at the secession precedings in Virginia immediately following Sumter, they clearly paint Lincoln as the aggressor and desiring war. Here’s a quote from Robert Whitfield a Delegate to the Virginia Assembly on April 13th:
Similarly, when we go to the 16th, people like Samuel Staples who were elected as pro-Union legislators and voted not to secede in the earlier votes changed their vote. Why? Here are his words:
Keep in mind that Staples was pro-Union and had given pro-Union speeches and voted pro-Union prior to Fort Sumter. The maintenance of Sumter was clearly seen by the border states as a hostile act. I think that something that gets lost in the history is that this precipitating episode was very poorly handled by Lincoln. We like to lionize him, but it’s not unreasonable to believe that a more judicious response could have saved Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and Arkansas and broken the fighting back of the Confederacy down the line.
Bullshit. In practice, the Act meant that any Southern asshole could go to Pennsylvania, kidnap black Pennsylvanians, and say they were escaped slaves, and bring them back down South. And you’re saying that only those free blacks’ rights were violated – not the state? That sounds too absurd to even consider. It’s ludicrous that a state wouldn’t be allowed to take part in ensuring that potentially violent activity in its own borders is legitimate, as this Act in practice mandated.
How did this violate any principle? Are you saying that all of those territories and newly admitted states should reasonably have been required to be slave states?
Bullshit. At least partially. It’s bullshit to say that there was no legitimate abolitionist sentiment in these decisions. There were actual, real abolitionists in Congress, and among state leaders, and these considerations really did play a part in anti-slavery legislation and other political actions.
Some of what you said is history, some of it is bullshit. The Apologist part comes when you twist the real history and attempt to excuse/rationalize the monstrous and hypocritical behavior of Southern leaders. You don’t have to do this – it’s a choice you’re making, and it’s an ahistorical choice at that. The 1850 Act, which allowed slavers to round up free blacks in Northern states, really was a violation of any legitimate “states’ rights” philosophy, since it meant that those Northern States had no legal way to prevent attempted kidnappings of its own citizens. How could that not be a violation of the rights of that state?
Also, just as a little slight digression for those who insist that slavery had nothing to do with it, from a bit later in the debate a quote from Benjamin Wilson of Harrison County, also given on the 16th.
The people at the time were pretty sure that slavery had something to do with it.
In was in that it violated the State’s right to assume that bringing a slave voluntarily into a Free state made him free. That was a legit ruling and did not violate the Constitution.
Actually there was a understanding that slavery would slowly go away as I quoted. The Constitution specifically included a provision to stop the slave trade in 1808.
There was no “understanding” that slavery was going to be allowed forever. So it couldn’t be violated. And banning slavery in new States was completely legit. And yes, one of the things driving the “new States shall be free” policy was the Abolitionist movement.
Yes, the South did. But instead of a slow, gentle path to the end of slavery over decades and decades, the South opted for violent rebellion.
As I said before, this is the kind of arguments that sovereign citizens make. They make it sound like they’re talking about actual laws but the content of what they’re saying has no basis in legal reality.
This has no basis in reality. Are you seriously arguing that the eight-five soldiers in Fort Sumter were planning on launching an attack?
The reality is simple and obvious: South Carolina wanted to launch an attack. So it pretended that a threat existed as a pretext. Countries do this all the time; justify attacking another country be claiming the other country was going to attack you. The only thing unusual in this case was how flimsy the pretext was.
Eighty five soldiers were not, the fear of an approaching fleet is what precipitated the conflict. The location of Sumter was the problem. Google Map it. It completely closed off Charleston harbor. If it were allowed to reach a full complement of soldiers, it would have effectively barricaded the harbor to all boat traffic, cutting off Charleston’s trade routes and any resupply from sea. The fort itself under a full complement would have proven nearly impossible to take as was shown by later Union attempts to do so. If it were just 85 guys and not a threat, why didn’t the Union abandon it? The reality was that it was certainly a threat to Charleston.
To whom? These were people that were directly elected to keep Virginia in the Union and previous to Sumter had supported that position. Unless you conjure them as an evil cabal keeping their true preferences hidden and waiting for a moment to strike, then to whom were they lying? The proceedings were even kept secret, so they would only have been lying to themselves.
They obviously had plans to take it, they said so. The question is whether they had plans to take it by force. They were leary of appearing to be the aggressors. We know this from communications between Davis and Pickens and possibly memoirs after the war ended, but those can always be rose-colored by the past. Again, pointing back to earlier posts, there were five states that were up in the air about which side to be on (Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and Arkansas) and legislators in all of those states were pretty keen on saying that they were against aggression from either party. It was in the interests of both parties not to appear to be the aggressor.
I think that many pro-Southern historians want to say that Lincoln was trying to be a mastermind by provoking the south and then saying ‘Self Defense,’ but I don’t agree. I think it was a fumbled decision by a newly installed President. He was caught between a rock and a hard place where withdrawal would be tacit approval of secession and he had already decided that if Buchanan withdrew, he’d take the forts back by force. He knew that when Buchanan decided to resupply Sumter in January the supply ship was interdicted and had no reason to think that wouldn’t happen again. He was told not to resupply the fort. He was told to withdraw his troops. I think that the decision to do so was an inherently hostile action and he hoped he could get away with it. I think that he didn’t understand the real mechanations of eastern governments which were more slow and deliberative and he should have stalled for time allowing Southern Unionists time to quell the hotheads in the secession movement and certainly not announced a military call-up the day the fort fell and even more grievously demand troops from the states that were on the fence. It was miserable optics that misunderstood the situation.