Tuesday, March 18, 2014
On the Civil War Having Been Fought Over Slavery 2
"There is a natural disgust to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races....A separation of the races (via a shipping of black people across the Atlantic to Liberia) is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation." Abraham Lincoln, 1857............."I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not, nor have ever been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people." Abraham Lincoln, 1858............."I now assure you that I neither had, nor have, nor ever had any purpose in any way of interfering with the institution of slavery." Abraham Lincoln, 1859............."....no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Abraham Lincoln, 1861 (part of his first inaugural address)............."If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it....." Abraham Lincoln, 1862.
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As I said before.....the Civil War began over states rights....slavery was a secondary issue.
I would also add in the fact that Lincoln raised the tariff to a staggering 47% by the early 1860s and that this tax was being shouldered predominantly by the South.
A brief review suggests that the Morill Tariff
was legislated prior to Lincoln
and signed by Buchanan. Months prior to the act, seven states had already seceded. Although many of old Abe's prounouncements on the topic of slavery are moderated by his political acumen,
many, the south especially, could not abide by his moral stance:
"This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it."
-1858
Its unfortunate there are still american's suffering from a bad case of "white guilt." These deluded folks see a racial aspect in everything. They cant fathom the civil war being fought for anything but slavery...of course they are dead wrong,yet due to their guilt cannot accept the truth.
They cannot grasp the importance of states rights,then and now and because they are consumed by perceived guilt over slavery and civil rights....everything to them is race based. Right thinking people should feel compassion for these folks who live their lives filled with guilt over something that happened generations ago which they had nothing to do with.
I shall continue to maintain the CW was primarily an economic issue and secondarily a states right issue.
I know this requires you to think outside your box Rusty but I encourage you to make the attempt.
Here are the various states giving their reasons for secession from the Union:
South Carolina
[Copied by Justin Sanders from J.A. May & J.R. Faunt, *South Carolina Secedes* (U. of S. Car. Pr, 1960), pp. 76-81.]
Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union
The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
Mississippi
[Copied by Justin Sanders from "Journal of the State Convention", (Jackson, MS: E. Barksdale, State Printer, 1861), pp. 86-88]
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
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. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.
Texas
[Copied by Justin Sanders from E.W. Winkler, ed., *Journal of the Secession Convention of Texas*, pp. 61-66.]
A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union.
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.
States rights: to keep human beings as chattel.
Cont. (South Carolina)
While later claims have been made that the decision to secede was prompted by other issues such as tariffs, these issues were not mentioned in the declarations. The primary focus of the declaration is the perceived violation of the Constitution by northern states in not extraditing escaped slaves (as the Constitution required in Article IV Section 2) and actively working to abolish slavery (which they saw as Constitutionally guaranteed and protected). The main thrust of the argument was that since the Constitution, being a contract, had been violated by some parties (the northern abolitionist states), the other parties (the southern slave-holding states) were no longer bound by it.
The declaration does not make a simple declaration of states' rights. It asserts that South Carolina was a sovereign state that had delegated only particular powers to the federal government by means of the U.S. Constitution. It furthermore protests other states' failure to uphold their obligations under the Constitution. The declaration emphasizes that the Constitution explicitly requires states to deliver "person(s) held in service or labor" back to their state of origin.
Sorry for my opinion RN....only minored in American History...I still contend both Bloody Kansas and South Carolina's secession were driven by states rights.
Your attempts at witty retort,I'm sure impress over at the FCFB's place but kind of fall flat here.
BTW...the 70's called,they want that shirt back.
BB, are you insinuating that Mr. Lincoln was not a hard-core protectionist who fully supported the draconian tariffs which by that time were disproportionately affecting the South (an interesting assertion in that most historians recognize that Lincoln could have never been elected without first having courting northern industrialists and getting these folks to believe that he was NOT a free-trader)?
And while it may be true that Lincoln might have had some personal ambivalence regarding slavery (though please keep in mind here that HIS version of a free black man was one of an inferior human being on a boat heading back to Africa), his political positions on the subject were totally UNambivalent (his first inaugural pledging support for both the Corwin Amendment - which codified slavery into the Constitution - and the Fugitive Slave Act) and an abolitionist he was not.
You better rush to respond then RS, no time to waste.
Your opinion would gladly be welcomed, if you learned to show proper respect and decency.
I'm not going to hold my breath.
BTW, your reference to PE as the FCB's does not pass for respect or decency.
Cheerio RST.
States right to insure continued cheap labor, the real driving force for the southern states desires to maintain slavery.
Root cause analysis. I continue to accept the views of my liberal college profs.
Shaw, have you read Lincoln's first inaugural address? In it he pledges to leave slavery alone, support the Corwin Amendment, and enforce the Fugitive Slave Act (which would not have been enforced at all after secession). Couple that with the fact that the Democrats continued to control Congress and still had the Supreme Court solidly in their hands and what you have here is essentially paranoia (on the South's part).......And that's only half of the equation. Lincoln - he could have given a rat's ass about the slaves and fully intended to send them all back to Africa the very first chance afforded him.
Sorry RN....you and the FCFB have to earn respect...neither have approached it.
I see guy's like you everyday...playing the penny slots and trying to score a comp to the early bird buffet and go figure they are usually wearing a polyester shirt.
The comments that I gave (and I'm pretty sure that I've read just as much history as you) are from 1857, 1856, 1859, 1861, and 1862, and the the topic was whether the Civil War was fought (at least from the North's perspective) over slavery. IT WAS NOT in that Lincoln supported both the Corwin Amendment and the Fugitive Slave Act and even a lot of the abolitionists (William Lloyd Garrison, for Christ!) had voiced a full-throated opposition to it.
And when did Lincoln precisely change his mind, Shaw? It sure wasn't when he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation in that that document essentially codified slavery in the Northern and border states, most of West Virginia, and most of the conquered Confederacy...AND it said that the Confederate states could in fact have slavery again if they simply returned to the Union by 1/1/1863. I hate to say it, Shaw, but it sounds like most of the "history" that you've read had been from the pen of the court historians (idiots like Doris Kearns Goodwin, etc.) and not the actual scholars like Mr. Garraty who I quoted in the subsequent post.
And it's not entirely clear that Mr. Lincoln EVER gave up his notion of colonization, unless, of course, you're a mind-reader, Shaw - http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/lincoln-colonization-and-the-sound-of-silence/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
And what's with this whole superimposition of LIBERAL and CONSERVATIVE here? Conservatives support slavery and liberals can't be bigots (you're obviously unaware that a lot of the early PROGRESSIVES were actually some of the most virulent racists on the planet; Woodrow Wilson, John Maynard Keynes, Teddy Roosevelt, H.G. Wells, Margaret Sanger, etc.)? Come on, Shaw!!
You and the rest of your friends can re-fight the Civil War and find an historian to shore up what YOU believe is "the truth."
I'm not interested in this skirmish.
It's boring and it appears you already have made up your mind on the subject, so why bother.
I look at it this way: Owning human beings was a thoroughly anti-human, anti-American idea that the South wanted to hang onto by any means. And we all know that the ratification of the Constitution was achieved by the South's demanding that nothing be done to change it.
For a country that bragged so loudly and constantly about freedom, equality, and justice, the US could not endure the existence of an institution that so thoroughly corrupted those ideals.
The slaveholders of the South would not voluntarily give up their chattel; war was inevitable.
My sources, Shaw, are the Emancipation Proclamation (which essentially codified slavery in all of the territory controlled by the Union) and Lincoln's own inaugural address in which he promised to support the Corwin Amendment and even vowed to strengthen the Fugitive Slave Act.......AND in which he threatened an invasion of the South if they didn't pay the tariff that his party MORE THAN DOUBLED!!
And if the vast British empire was able to get rid of slavery without a war I kinda think that we could done so as well eventually. 700,000 deaths, Shaw. Hundreds of thousands of amputees. That doesn't bother you?
I'm quite surprised the FCFB even showed up here. Another surprise..."I'm not interested in this skirmish." Of course she is'nt....this is not her echo chamber/chat room. The FCFB will always run when she cant control the conversation or is challenged with facts not from the liberal playbook.
Well done Will.
I said I don't care what you or the others who are fighting the Civil War again think.
This country was born with the idea that all men are created equal in the eyes of God and the law.
That it could continue to support the anti-human idea of slavery shows that the ideals on which this country was founded were a sham.
Every slave born in this country was an American citizen by law, but the white supremacists on the Supreme Court declared that Negroes were subhuman and not subject to the guarantees of the Constitution, based on nothing more than their rancid bigotry.
War was inevitable because the South and its belief in the righteousness of slavery would never give it up without a bloody fight. Their economic lives depended on it.
Relax, Shaw, we're all against slavery. The debate here is whether Lincoln and the North went to to war with the Southern states over slavery and I believe that the evidence is overwhelming that they didn't, based on what Lincoln said in his inaugural, what he said in that now infamous letter to Horace Greeley, what the Congress said in 1861, and what the Emancipation DIDN'T do in terms of freeing those slaves that Lincoln had the power to free.............I'm also strongly of the opinion that we could have eventually gotten rid of slavery without 3% of the population being murdered (a substantial number of them being civilians as a part of Lincoln's "total war") and half of the country's total net worth being destroyed. Literally every other country in the world (Haiti being the exception) did it that way and so, why not us? I mean, everybody does have a price, right?
What can I say, Russ. I knew that I was going to touch a chord with this whole Lincoln thing (the Church of Lincoln a lot of people call it) and damned if I wasn't right.
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