Interesting tidbit on the “filibuster” with regard to Nicaragua. It was led by a guy named William Walker. ’bout a century later, the tone-deaf–to be redundant–State Department sent an ambassador to Nicaragua named….William Walker.

Not Nicaragua, but El Salvador(1988-1992) , which was just as volatile as Nicaragua , if not more so.
El Salvador is rather interesting these days, having a President who used to be with the FMLN, but got booted out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_G._Walker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayib_Bukele

Yes, the Civil War was not about slavery because it is not allowed that the US be seen to do anything good and noble.

How about this: See Elkins, on “Slavery……” Written in 1959, maybe depends a bit too heavily on Freud. However, he makes the case that abolition was coming on. Socially. Politically. More pressure in and out of government. That which was out of government promised to become more influential in government.
If Elkins–and others–are correct, perhaps the election of 1860 settled it. Aboliton was a thing and was going to win. Time to get out.

Should be recalled that cotton takes it out of the soil and you need new land. Hence the interest in Nebraska and Kansas, not to mention Nicaragua. The likelihood of getting new, fresh soil was substantially reduced.

Interesting tidbit on the “filibuster” with regard to Nicaragua. It was led by a guy named William Walker. ’bout a century later, the tone-deaf–to be redundant–State Department sent an ambassador to Nicaragua named….William Walker.

Thank you for the fisking of old hatreds.

Thanks Om. I will certainly give your advice the treatment it warrants; and in turn suggest that you also concentrate on whatever you do, if much of anything.

But, despite Om’s admonition I will summarize a few points.

Fair.

*Actually, neither Haley, nor I, commented on the morality of slavery.

Indeed, and I do not assume you or she are supporters of Slavery (though I would be intolerably naïve if I did not believe the left and others would not hesitate to use this to paint you as such.)

*However, since slavery is is the ‘hot button’ issue, the practice should be considered at least somewhat in the context of the times.

I agree, and that’s in particular something I keep pointing out. Brazil and Spanish Cuba both continued the sordid trade long after the US abolished it.

I presume that most people realize that slavery was quite common throughout the Americas; e.g. in European colonies (British, French, Portuguese) south of the U.S., until around the mid-nineteenth century.< (Spain, which began the practice, banned slavery in its colonies in 1811, although Cuba ignored the ban. England banned it in the 1830s, and again the ban was ignored for decades.)

More or less true though it began to break down in the early 1800s.

Although not particularly germane to this discussion, the fact is that 95% of the African slaves were imported into European, mostly French and Portuguese, colonies. The number of imports dwarfed those to the U.S. because the mortality rate was so much higher.

Indeed, and the demand for it was much larger.

*Secession was not prohibited until the post-war 14th amendment. Slavery was not legally abolished until the 13th amendment–which should be noted was passed about 8 months after the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse.

Sure, though the Union had begun steadily instituting rollbacks of slavery since 1862, first among slaves that escaped the rebel territories, then in occupied rebelling territory, and finally in Unionist Slave territory. The Emancipation Proclamation happened in 1863 and the meme that it didn’t free a single slave is ignorant because it means ignoring the slaves that escaped Confederate control to Union territory or Union troops (and there were QUITE A FEW of those).

Maryland and Missouri both outlawed slavery months before Appomattox.

*Despite the focus here, and elsewhere, there were issues other than slavery that motivated secession; and they varied by state.

True but misleading to the point of being borderline dishonest. This is one reason I keep banging on about the Confederate Constitution. Because it shows where the Confederates weighted reasons for secession such as slavery, tariffs, states’ rights, and so on.

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp

https://civildiscourse-historyblog.com/blog/2019/7/31/constitutions-of-the-united-states-and-confederate-states-a-comparison

Spoiler Alert: States Rights, Tariff Policy, and the like Lost Out. BIG TIME. Or at least they did when they were put in competition with the interests of chattel slavery, its spread throughout all Confederate territory (or territory the Confederacy claimed was rightfully theirs no matter the say of its duly elected government, such as say Kentucky, which was neutral in the Civil War until it was invaded).

This is why I keep banging on about the fact that the Republican Party Platform was more committed to states rights than the Confederate Constitution. Why I have a palpable sense of anger towards the Confederate leadership. Because believe it or not, I actually AM not one interested in demonizing or oversimplifying the grievances of the states that seceded or their advocates, and in some cases I actually sympathize with issues like the legality of secession and rejecting heavy handed Northern tariff policy for as far as went.

But the Confederate Constitution drawn up by the political leadership of the Rebels shows those things REALLY didn’t go that far.

A close reading of the CSA’s political leadership, their actions, and their statements show that these people dragged the country, their states, and their people to hell often on partially or completely false grounds (such as South Carolina’s greedy, corrupt, legally bankrupt, and diplomatically disgraceful claim to have all the rights and privileges of the Charleston Harbor Forts with none of the responsibilities, and that they had the right to use violence to seize them at any time), and that they sacrificed Quite Literally Everything Else on the altar of Racial Chattel Slavery.

Insistence that we may never know this or that ranges from being true but less important than it seems to outright false.

Not all were true ‘slave states’.

Ok Oldflyer, please define what a “true slave state” was.

Considering I had to correct you on *very basic facts* such as who had control of Fort Sumter at the time of secession both in law (with South Carolina’s contract to build Sumter and its transfer to the Union) and in possession (with Federal troops already present there like they had been for decades), you’ll have to forgive me if I am somewhat skeptical.

Further, men of great honor who had faithfully served the United States for many years, Lee and Longstreet for example, defended the act of secession.

Indeed, and I have not denied that. I have however tried to explain their actions and their relations to those of the political and ideological leadership that led secession, the true “fireeaters” who mostly were civilian politicians (albeit often with military experience like Davis), with the exception of a few men like Beauregard, who did it. Longstreet and Lee both went along with secession out of a belief in their first loyalty remaining to their state (regardless of their belief in the wisdom of its secession) as well as in the material and social obligations they felt due to the commercial benefits they got from the slave system and the fear that its further limitation would cause a breakdown in society or even something like Haiti.

It’s one reason why I have far less hatred for them than I do the SC Leadership or Davis. And even then I’ll note that the costs of war and being yoked to the CSA’s loyalty to slavery wore on both mens’ nerves, honor, and reputation, with them having to deal with a host of atrocities by their subordinate commanders (such as many of Lee’s subordinate commanders kidnapping free Blacks during invasions of the North and his unwillingness or inability to confront them), or being unable to loosen separatist dogma even in the face of urgent military necessity, such as recruiting free Blacks – let alone Slaves – into the military.

Contrary to claims, there WERE Blacks and mixed race people that served the Confederate cause, both as planter lord financiers (such as William Ellison) and even as combatants (in particular they were notable defending Florida from advancing Union troops). But they were never very numerous and banned from formally being part of the Confederate Armies or their state affiliates in large part due to fear of arming Blacks (especially after the Confederate military authorities had justified murdering Union Colored Troops and even white officers and NCOs with them) in spite of Lee and Longstreet’s objections.

*Hostilities were triggered when the Union Army engaged in an act of war by using Fort Sumter to blockade the Port of Charleston.

STOP REPEATING BLOOD LIBEL. BECAUSE THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THIS IS.

Anderson NEVER imposed a blockade using Sumter. For starters, SUMTER WAS INCAPABLE OF DOING SO given the shoddy state of its supplies and how undermanned it was.

Secondly, as a Kentuckian with avowed pro-Southern sympathies in spite of a Unionist loyalty, he was not interested in confronting South Carolina and indeed worked hard until quite literally the very last minute (when Beauregard rejected even his conditional offer to surrender Sumter peacefully unless he was either resupplied or told not to) to avoid confrontation with the separatists, as shown by his abandonment of most of the Charleston Harbor Federal Forts.

Thirdly: For all of their many differences, Buchanan and Lincoln were intent on trying to find a peaceful solution to the Charleston Crisis if at all possible. There were no great armadas of US Navy ships trying to force their way into Charleston Harbor to resupply it or to impose a blockade.

(Which is the very first thing you’d THINK they’d do if the Union was in fact imposing a blockade on Charleston Harbor, and indeed it is what they proceed to ACTUALLY do after the Secessionist attack on Sumter).

There were instead isolated attempts to resupply it using fast moving, unarmed or mostly unarmed ships. Many of which were fired upon by separatist military units, as the Star of the North Incident on January 9th showed.

(Which I note would constitute an act of war in its own right.).

Why are you continuing to reiterate this blood libel prattle?

*The first true battle of the war was Bull Run (Manassas, Va) when Lincoln specifically ordered the Union Army to invade Virginia.

In response to Virginia’s secession from the Union on April 17 And its decision to form a Confederacy with South Carolina, which as I noted earlier had declared war on the Union and its member states, bombarded Fort Sumter, and harassed and stole from both the Federal Government and the private citizens of other states.

And that’s BEFORE I talk about the ongoing war in West Virginia, which unsurprisingly decided that if the Confederates could secede from the Union they had a right to secede from the Confederacy and rejoin the Union, which the CSA responded to by deploying troops and (re)invading West Virginia in May, in a campaign that lasted through the Summer.

So even before Bull Run both sides had shot each other and were continuing to shoot at each other because of fundamental differences.

A little bit of CONTEXT, shall we?

*Admittedly, I would have to do deeper research to learn whether there was a serious effort to negotiate a resolution, short of invading Virginia, once secession became reality. I have never heard of any. I am sure that someone would like to inform me if there were.

Yeah, I’d say you need to do deeper research in general on this issue.

The core of your arguments on this issue have been historically and legally illiterate (such as blaming Lincoln for not putting forth a gradual emancipation while ignoring that the secessionist leadership outright and unconditionally rejected this over and over again or claiming Anderson put Charleston under Blockade when he did no such thing), goal post shifting, and leavened by a fair bit of whataboutism.

It’s a disgraceful showing I find all the more jarring given your other contributions and the esteem I normally hold you in, but I am under no obligation to pretend otherwise.

As for efforts to “negotiate a resolution” after Virginia’s secession, the last real ones were the Crittenden Resolutions (following Crittenden’s attempt at Compromises over the winter of 1860-1). But this fell apart in large part because Crittenden had tried to make slavery a part of the constitution and forbid any Federal interference with it, which not only would have taken abolition off the table but also popular sovereignty and even risked problems from (say) the Union trying to check slave running from the likes of Alabama and Florida on the Atlantic, risking confrontation with Britain and France.

It got some initial support but eventually collapsed as it was pointed out.

The importance of Crittenden’s Compromises in the Winter and the limited terms of the Resolution for Union War Aims are also telling for their importance on what they focused on. Slavery. In case anybody thinks the Confederacy seceded and then went to war with the Union because of things like tariff policy or to give the President a Line Item Veto.

*However, I will heed Om’s advice, and Irish-Otter’s (terrifying) threat and withdraw.

I’d suggest doing more digging into the sources, especially primary sources and chronology. You have to be careful with handling them, of course, but they are among the best we have and they illuminate more than they hide.

I’m still working and most weeks spend half my days in a full face respirator in a Contamination Area monitoring drilling operations sampling next to underground radioactive waste tanks, legacy of the Cold War. I agree with your perspective on most things, but this isn’t one of them. Especially the conception that the North started the Civil War, entirely counterfactual, but it’s your “Hill to Die On.”

Which it did.
Enterprise, Al, has a statue to the bug. Forced it into diversity of agriculture and then the following prosperity.

The Mississippi Delta, more properly “flood plain”, starts just across the Ohio River from Cairo, IL. Illinois dips surprisingly far south for a state known primarily for the Windy City. In that area, the Shawnee National Forest is said to be part of the “humid, sub-tropical” climate scheme. Warmer as you go south, naturally.

You might use other resources, but using Google Earth and exploring the Delta will show you something indistinguishable from, say, Iowa.
Starting just west of Columbus, OH, and running to the Rockies, north up to Wisconsin and Minnesota, further as far north as Edmonton, is the grain belt. The Homestead Act presumed a farmer could make a living on 160 acres. Fat, flat, black soil farm country. Like the Delta.

But the rest of the South? Occasional pockets of flat land. But mostly hills. See Cades Cove west of Gatlinburg. Pretty cool for farming. Mile and a half across, likely. Nothing like it in forever in any direction.

Cotton grown and processed on an industrial scale has various activities which are simple and can be simply measured; amount picked, amount ginned, rows weeded (“chopping cotton”). Which is to say suitable for forced labor.

Small farms on rocky hillsides…not so much.

So when the boll weevil showed up….

The conditions and the development of the Spanish American world invite, as already mentioned, certain parallels with the American South. These two slave societies have interpreted their history in a similar way; or, rather, they have required the same self-justification. In 1816, the fledgling North American republic imposed tariffs to protect the development of its budding industry against the massive influx of English manufactured imports. The most ardent among the protectionists were the Virginians and the North and South Carolinians, who felt that, with their inexpensive cotton and cheaper manpower, the Southern states would become textile producers able to rival Manchester.

Eventually, the United States did develop a textile industry, under the protection of the new tariffs, but in New England, far from the cotton fields; and the South found that it had to pay higher prices for industrial goods manufactured in the Northern states, without being able to raise the price of its cotton. Though it started from a position that was theoretically inferior, the North within a few years succeeded in industrializing itself, while the South could only step up its cotton production, using more and more slaves, exhausting the soil, and causing a collapse in the prices of its one major crop. Wealthy Southerners, who were richer than their counterparts in the North, often considered setting up shipping companies and banks of their own, in order to free themselves from their dependence on the transportation system and capital of the North, but these projects aborted, and they invariably ended up investing in the purchase of more land and more slaves.

Barely fifteen years after Southern Congressmen such as Calhoun and Lowndes of South Carolina had established themselves as effective spokesmen for tariffs on goods brought in from Great Britain, the South began to justify its subsequent failure by charging that protectionism had been invented by the North as a means of enriching itself at the expense of the South. Southern leaders stirred up their audiences by claiming that of every hundred bales of cotton sold in Boston or New York, forty had been “stolen” from the South. They were preparing the dialectics of the Civil War. The argument became more heated, and the North found itself charged with having accumulated capital, in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth, by defrauding the South through financial trickery. One contemporary writer says: “When they [the Southerners] see the flourishing villages of New England, they cry, ‘We pay for all this.’ ”19 A myth was manufactured that attributed Northern prosperity to the South’s paralysis, and vice versa. Southerners went to war in 1860 quite convinced that if they succeeded in breaking their dependence on the North, not only would they prosper miraculously; the abhorred Yankees, deprived of raw materials and the Southern market for their manufactured goods, would be condemned to an economic crisis as well.

Thus, well before the birth of Hobson, Hilferding, and Lenin, the “Third World” arguments had been invented by Southern slaveholders.

The Emancipation Proclamation made the 13th Amendment inevitable.