Which of the following best describes the Confederate cause?

In My Humble Opinion
61

But it wasn’t. Neither the Republican party nor Lincoln had as a public strategy to free the slaves or end slavery. Importation of slaves had already ended. What Lincoln and his party was trying to do is stop more slave states from being made, in other words, they were only trying to stop the spread of slavery into areas where it wasn’t generally practiced.

No doubt, as the decades and centuries wore on, if the North had the control of Congress they would slowly put more restrictions on slavery, but that was by no means the plan.

62

The South spent decades opposing any discussion of the issue - first by a “gag rule” that prohibited consideration of the topic of emancipation in Congress and later by laws that outlawed distribution of anti-slavery literature in the South. People who spoke against slavery were murdered, as well.

The South was not content to merely maintain slavery - they wished to expand it throughout all the States, overturning existing antislavery laws in the Northern states.

Yes, some folks in the North were “attacking” slavery with speeches and boycotts i.e. peaceful protest.

The South defended slavery from these speeches with canes, then guns, then cannons.

63

Your first sentence here is logically contradicted by the two sentences that follow it. The South’s way of life was slavery, the South was defending its way of life, ergo it was all about slavery. I mean you could make an argument that part of it was just about general obstreperousness, but even so it was obstreperousness over slavery. Just like it was about states’ rights… to preserve and expand slavery. It was about preserving the Southern way of life… as long as we don’t regard black people as Southern.

So in other words is was about the South trying to preserve its political power… so that it could both preserve and expand slavery.

Honestly I don’t get people’s need to over-reach finding nuance and complexity where it doesn’t exist. It was always and only about slavery. The only nuance involves untangling the rich tapestry of bullshit concocted by apologists to elide the frankly stated fact that the South felt justified not only in preserving slavery, but potentially extending it all the way to South America because they were superior to black people and were entitled to torture free labor out of them.

64

Yeah. The fact that secession was not universally popular in the South probably contributed to the the eventual war breaking out - the pro-secession faction momentarily in charge of the Southern states couldn’t afford an extended period of negotiation to peacefully work out details of secession (how is the debt accrued by the whole nation to be divided up between the two new nations (a large portion of which was due to paying off the large debts of Texas when it begged to join the Union), how is the border to be administered, etc.*), so they started a war, hoping to create a fait accompli.

*I can imagine a peaceful secession, but there would have been a lot of tricky issues to resolve - in addition to the debt issue, there are issues of immigration between the nations, etc., etc.

65

This is pure nonsense. American legislative history of the US, from the Constitutional Convention up through 1860, was in large part a series of accommodations and compromises toward Southern slavers. The three-fifths compromise. The fugitive slave law. The Missouri compromise. The 1850 compromise. The Dred Scott decision. The repeal of the Missouri compromise. The compromises (really capitulations) likely would have continued, but we’ll never know because the South had a tantrum purely because Lincoln was elected, and they feared that he might not make further comprises.

I don’t see how anyone with a straight face can suggest that “both sides” failed to attempt resolution. History is clear that Congress bent over backward to let slavery stand, and that wasn’t good enough for Southerners.

66

Yes, the populations of the states that attempted to secede were substantially more likely to be engaged in agricultural activities than the population of the United States as a whole–based on information from “U. S. Labor Force Estimates and Economic Growth, 1800-1860” (from American Economic Growth and Standards of Living before the Civil War, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research) nearly three-quarters of the work force of those eleven states worked on farms (many of them as slaves, of course), while for the Union states a slight majority of the labor force probably worked in non-farm occupations. But there were nonetheless some staunchly Unionist states where a substantial majority of the working population was still directly engaged in farm labor in 1860: Over 60% of the labor force in Michigan, Illinois, Vermont, Minnesota, and Wisconsin worked on farms; and nearly 70% in Indiana and Iowa. Those “small farmers” don’t seem to have seen the Republican Party as likely to “attack their entire way of life”: Lincoln won a majority of the popular vote (in a four-way race) in every one of those states, including over 63% in Minnesota, and over 75% in Vermont.

Those “small farmers” in the slave states weren’t joined by their fellow small farmers in the Northeast and Midwest in trying to destroy the Union over Lincoln’s election, because no one saw “industrialists” or the Republican Party as attacking “agriculture” in general; but the Republican Party was understood to be an at least moderately anti-slavery party. As already pointed out by Tzigone, very substantial percentages of white families in the Deep South states were directly connected to slavery (nearly half in South Carolina or Mississippi; and a third or more in Alabama, Florida, or Georgia). Additionally, even those “small farmers” who really didn’t own a single slave had, or perceived they had, a substantial stake in the maintenance of slavery and white supremacy. This included rational economic reasons: If the cotton industry were disrupted, everyone in the Cotton Belt would likely suffer, just like people in West Virginia or East Texas may be hurt by a slump in the coal business or the oil business, even if they don’t personally own a coal mine/oil well or work in a coal mine/oil field.

An ideological commitment to white supremacy, and on the flip side of that a deep-seated demographic fear of the large and permanently oppressed black populations found in many of the slave states, could be appealed to even among those white Southerners who had no direct economic stake in slavery. As long as white supremacy was enshrined in every part of the legal and social systems of the slave states, then even the poorest white man was still superior to those people. And on the other hand, not only did very large proportions of the free white population have a direct stake in slavery in the Deep South states, but a very high proportion of the populations of those states were slaves–a majority of the populations in South Carolina and Mississippi were enslaved–leading to fears about abolition leading to unspeakable atrocities against Southern whites (especially the women-folk), fears those with a more direct economic interest in slavery were all too happy to stoke. See for example Georgia Governor Joseph Brown’s open letter of Dec. 7, 1860. Note the lack of claims that Lincoln and the Republicans or “the North” are a threat to “agriculture” in some abstract sense; rather Brown talks about economic ruin to the whole state from the prospect of abolishing slavery, and the alleged social evils of abolition (including the specter of intermarriage, not to mention straight-up “plundering and stealing, robbing and killing” by the freedmen).

67

To recognize the right of secession is to claim that nations don’t exist and that governments have no authority whatsoever. What’s to stop every state from seceding every time the national government does something they disagree with? Or to stop counties from seceding from their states? Or individual households? If a state has a right to secede, then surely a household does, especially since my household is 100% unanimous on everything it decides.

Oh, and let’s forget about the idea that the Confederates were loyal to their states. They committed treason against them, too. What they did was defined as treason by the Supreme Law of the state of Virginia, and the Supreme Law of the state of North Carolina, and the Supreme Law of the state of Alabama, and so on.

Invasion? What invasion? American troops never left the bounds of the United States of America.

68

Let me clear it all up for you. The Confederacy caused the war by declaring war.

No, there was no such attack.

What happened was that the slavery system was a bad idea. Not just in the obvious way of being immoral but also as an economic system. It could not sustain itself. So the slave owners had become dependent on government support; they needed a national government that would prop them up.

The Republicans weren’t going to attack slavery - but they made if clear they weren’t going to defend slavery either. Their policy was that slavery was going to have to fend for itself.

Now I’ll readily concede that the Republicans figured that slavery wouldn’t be able to support itself. They figured that slavery needed government support and would end up collapsing when that support was withdrawn. They were probably right but we’ll never know.

Because as soon as the slave owners saw that their support system was going away they decided to break away and start their own country with a government they could count on to support slavery. Of course, they didn’t think it through - their problem was that they were dependent on support from the United States government and obviously they weren’t going to get that after they broke away from the United States. The Confederacy was doomed to failure even if it hadn’t doubled down on the stupidity and declared war on the United States.

Let me point out once again that this was a divide between slave owning states and free states. Slave owning minorities in free states tried to break away and join the Confederacy. Non-slave owning minorities in Confederate states tried to break away and rejoin the United States.

If the divide had been between agricultural states and industrial states, you would have seen the agricultural mid-western and western states fighting on the same side as the agricultural southern states against the industrial northern states. But that didn’t happen. The free mid-western and western states were on the same side as the free northern states fighting against the slave southern states.

69

Note that after the Southern congressmen left Congress, the Republicans passed legislation long blocked by the South - legislation like the Homestead Act that made vast tracts of land available to small farmers.

70

Could someone explain to me why Northern industrialists would be opposed to slavery? Seems to me that so long as the cotton kept flowing to their mills, they’d have no problem with it.

71

Little angel answer, on account of actually giving a shit about their fellow humans.

Little devil answer, more freepeople about represented a greater bigger pool for them to get workers from; more people being paid salaries meant more people buying their goods.

72

You are exactly right. The industrialists (broadly speaking) didn’t really give two hoots about slavery. What the northern industrialists wanted were protective tariffs, so that European goods would cost a lot more, forcing colonists to buy goods made in American factories through simple economics. But the southern plantation owners opposed tariffs, because tariffs enacted on goods coming into America from Europe meant that European nations would counter with tariffs on goods going in the opposite direction. This made American cotton and tobacco, produced in the South, more expensive and made it more difficult for the southern plantations to compete with tobacco and cotton produced elsewhere.

The industrialists didn’t have the votes to get their protective tariffs. They had been members of the Whig party, which favored economic protectionism and modernization. But the Whig party started to collapse in the late 1840s and early 1850s, largely over the issue of slavery.

At the same time, you had the abolitionists, who opposed slavery, but also did not have enough votes on their own to push their agenda forward.

So the two groups joined forces against the southern plantation owners. The northern Whigs and the abolitionists got together and formed the Republican Party. While the industrialists didn’t really care too much about slavery (though to be fair, some did, just because they were also abolitionists), and the abolitionists really didn’t care too much about industry, by joining together, they could get enough votes that they could both get what they wanted.

You can see the split in party politics if you read Lincoln’s speeches. When he addressed primarily industrialist groups, he pushed the tariff issues and downplayed the party’s anti-slavery platform. When he addressed abolitionists, he did the opposite, downplaying tariffs and emphasizing anti-slavery rhetoric.

The Republican platform in 1860 ended up therefore being the opposition of slavery, protective tariffs for industry, a homestead act so that the new western territories which were becoming states could be settled, and the construction of a railroad to the Pacific.

Lincoln did promise that the South could keep its slaves. But he refused to back down on his promise that all of the new territories would become free states.

In any event, by ganging up, the former Whigs and the abolitionists together managed to get enough votes to win the 1860 election.

73

This. If we’re anything like honest, and not revisionist, all the subtlety necessary is wrapped up neatly right here.

74

On the eve of the Civil War, tariffs were lower than they had ever been. Southerners wrote the Tariff of 1857. Had they decided to stay politically engaged, they had the numbers to defeat the Morrill Tariff of 1861, but they didn’t want to do that because secession wasn’t about tariffs.

If it were about tariffs then we would expect that they would rate at least the barest mention in the various states’ Ordinances of Secession. But they do not. (Or not that I’ve seen; perhaps you’re aware of one that I’ve missed).

75

Don’t forget all the outbreaks of violence in the US between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. (Ignoring the Indian Wars.)

You have a bunch of slave rebellions, Bleeding Kansas, scattered violence over slavery in Missouri, Harper’s Ferry, etc. The main reasons most Southerners were for the war with Mexico was so that they could add the SW to the US as future slave states. (And that war wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for the Texas Revolution which started by American immigrants over slavery.)

In short, if there was a noticeable violent event in the US (or future US) in that era that didn’t involve Native Americans it was almost certainly about slavery.

Another to ask is: Why did the secession start at that time? Why not 5 or 10 years later or earlier? The general economic/trade/etc. conditions were the same. Why at the precise time? Answer: Lincoln was elected. He promised no new slave states. That was a deal breaker. (Remember all those famous compromises?)

All the “industrial” vs. “agricultural” stuff is overstated. The North was barely into heavy industry at the time. The overwhelming majority of the population lived in rural areas even in places like Ohio. Never mind all the states west of the Mississippi.

76

Answers 3, 4 and 5 are all totally compatible with Answer 6, so technically anyone answering any of those is not in disagreement with someone answering 6.

77

I would argue that Lincoln’s decision to re-supply Fort Sumter was an intentionally provocative act of war, even though it was Confederates who fired the first shots. Regardless, provocation from either side was not justified, and I have no desire to defend it.

78

“Manifest Destiny”, Nationalism, and the American brand of imperialism.

79

Maybe not. I’m not arguing for the “righteousness of the Southern cause”. I’m arguing against the righteousness of the American cause.

80

The moral evils of the two sides were not comparable. Southern white culture and institutions of the 19th century were about as evil as humans can get and have ever gotten – easily comparable to Nazi Germany, the Taliban, and the worst communist regimes. An entire way of life built on mass brutality and rape.

The crimes of the Union army pale in comparison.