The *reason *they wanted to secede being … what? :dubious:
Hint: There’s plenty of documentation, including their VP’s speech, the subject of the thread.
Why isn't the "Cornerstone Speech" used to shut down "The Civil War was about economics" apologists?
As I’ve pointed out in other threads on this subject, ironically the North wasn’t fighting to free the slaves (although that was what the South was fighting against), and the South wasn’t really fighting for independence per se (although that was what the North was fighting against). But somehow the historical narrative later became inverted.
Are there many surviving records of the poor financial state of the South? The plantation owners faced the same problems that all farmers face-how to borrow money against a future crop. The South seemed to accept the domination of Northern and British banks in this-why didn’t they set up their own banks? I imagine that the South was actually close to bankruptcy, as the result of one crop, slave-powered plantations.
I’m still puzzling on the boll weevil and sausages thing. 
I blame a lot (about the inversion) on how Grant worded the surrender at Appomattox.
" This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to his home, not to be disturbed by the United States authorities so long as they observe their paroles, and the laws in force where they may reside. "
The “not to be disturbed” part (and to a lesser extent the “where they may reside” part) allowed some in the South to come out of it thinking they were being honored and their lifestyle and most of the culture would be preserved under the terms of the surrender. Some in the North just looked at the surrender as an overall document and thought “now’s our chance to teach those bastards a lesson” since the South was admitting defeat. And the result is 150 years of spin and rewriting history by both groups.
And yet the self-congratulation of the antebellum South borders on the psychotic, as evident in the Cornerstone Speech… They actually thought that they were keeping the banks and factories of the North and Britain in existence, not the other way around.
It’s not defending racism to say that the North provided a more hospitable environment to blacks than the South did. It’s hard to imagine the people who risked their lives running the Underground Railroad splitting semantic hairs over the relative levels of racism in each region.
Your entire position hinges on this definition of racism as a belief divorced from all of the cultural and economic institutions that reflect and perpetuate it. That may be the first usage in the dictionary, but that doesn’t mean that definition is exclusive of any others, and it certainly doesn’t reflect the way words like racism and other “-isms” are used in general discourse; words mean what we all agree they mean. But if it will soothe the pedant in you, we can substitute “racism” with “race-based institutions of repression and disenfranchisement,” and then maybe all agree that yeah, the North was probably a better place to be black in antebellum America.
Did you post in the wrong thread?
Why isn’t the “Cornerstone Speech” used to shut down “The Civil War was about economics” apologists?
Actually, it is.
Encyclopædia Britannica/Random House Dictionary:
Cambridge Dictionaries Online:
Certainly, the word began as an indicator of belief. Usage does not stand still, however, and the word currently includes the expanded meaning of actions driven by the racial beliefs. The credibility challenged by your statements is your own.
There was no “Fugitive Slave Law North” There was a national Fugitive Slave Law and the South, (the South that threatened war, insisting that New England had no right to secede when New England’s economy was being destroyed by Mr. Madison’s War, the South that tried to experiment with Nullification to avoid dealing with “Northern” tariffs then turned around and denied it could be used by Northern states opposed to the Fugitive Slave Law, the South that insisted that there was no “States Right” to ignore the Fugitive Slave law), insisted that it be applied to Northern states.
There was and is a lot of racism in the North. However, before the Civil War, every Northern state had made some effort to abolish slavery. No Southern state did until a couple were bribed to support the Thirteenth Amendment after the war. There is a reason that escaped slaves headed to the North away from the South. There is a reason why black people migrated to the North in increasing numbers throughout the late 19th through the middle of the 20th centuries. The effects of racism (whatever word game you want to play regarding its definition) were less in the North than in the South.
Due to the Southern insistence on the Federal Fugitive Slave laws, few escaped slaves were comfortable in the North, either, most fleeing to Canada. On the other hand, slave takers were often hassled in Northern towns and fugitive slaves were often protected by white citizens in the North against the slave takers.
Slavery was outlawed before the Civil War:
1771, Massachusetts, (overruled by Governor appointed by King George)
1777, Vermont, (before joining the U.S.)
1780, Pennsylvania (Gradual)
1783, Massachusetts (Total)
1783, New Hampshire (Gradual)
1784, Connecticut (Gradual)
1784, Rhode Island (Gradual)
1787, Northwest Territories (Total)
1799, New York, (Gradual)
1802, Oho (Total)
1804, New Jersey (Gradual)
1820, Maine (Total)
Dont forget that states rights WERE a big issue back then. Thats why for example, Union troops were organized by state like the “101st Maine” or the “23rd Pennsylvania” brigade. States were very against federal rule.
And under the last iteration of the Fugitive Slave Act, free blacks weren’t safe either. Purported fugitives were not allowed to testify in their own defense, and the commissioners who heard fugitive slave cases were paid double if they agreed that the person brought to them was an escaped slave.