Nikki Haley discourses on the Civil War
Here’s the brouhaha du jour – when asked by a questioner what the cause of the Civil War was, Nikki Haley inexplicably failed to mention slavery:
I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are. And we will always stand by the fact that I think the government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people,” Haley said. “It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom.”
I suppose that last sentence, about government needing “to make sure that you have freedom,” could be interpreted as an oblique reference to ending slavery. But it’s a very very odd way to put it.
Readers of this blog know I’m neither a Haley fan nor a Haley hater. And I do think this was a stupid response and a rambling one. But being a candidate means that you have to be perfect all the time; Haley isn’t, and most aren’t.
I also recall from my own history lessons that even historians argue about how prominent slavery was as a cause for the Civil War. States’ rights was a biggee, as well as the preservation of the Union, economic issues, and probably more. Nevertheless, if I recall correctly, most agree that ending slavery was also a potent factor and that Union soldiers’ letters home reflect that perception on their part.
Haley seems to be explaining something of the sort in an effort at damage control:
“Of course, the Civil War was about slavery,” said Haley at a Thursday town hall in New Hampshire. “We know that. That’s unquestioned. Always the case. We know the Civil War was about slavery.”
Haley continued to elaborate, telling the crowd that the war was about more than that.
“It was about the freedoms of every individual,” she said. “It was about the role of the government. For 80 years, America had the decision and the moral question of whether slavery was a good thing and whether government economically, culturally, any other reasons, had a role to play in. By the grace of God, we did the right thing and slavery is no more. But the lessons of what the bigger issue with the Civil War is that let’s not forget what came out of that, which is government’s role, individual liberties, freedom for every single person, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do and be anything you want to be without anyone in government getting in our way.”
I don’t quite see how that last sentence follows.
Plagiarizing/paraphrasing/inadequately documenting from myself elsewhere earlier today:
Nikki should have said:
“The Civil War was caused by Republicans wanting the Democrats to free their slaves.”
A better question for Nikki:
“What will be the cause of the next Civil War?”
State’s rights.
Recall the old saying, “we gotta destroy the village to save the village.”?
Corollary. “We gotta destroy the South to preserve the Union” They did.
A not so widely advertised fact. The UK ended slavery by the simple means of buying the slaves from the Caribbean Planters, and freeing them.
BTW, this happened about the time of our Civil War. Slavery had been outlawed in the Empire by 1833, but the Planters simply ignored the prohibition.
It is logical to think, but I cannot verify, that at least the first generation of freed British slaves went to work on the plantations where they lived. What were the other options? Once abolition took effect the Planters in Trinidad simply went to the favored British colonial practice of ‘indentured servants’, and this alternative persisted until 1917.
Lincoln could have done the same. It would have been cheaper in $$, and certainly less costly in lives–especially Southern lives. He chose war. The Carpet Baggers who profited in the war torn southern states appreciated the choice.
I don’t understand how Haley could have difficulty answering this (or blame it on being from a “Democrat plant” as she claimed today). Is there a constituency she is trying not to offend? I can’t think of one.
Here’s a quick refresher course for Nikki from Lincoln’s Second Inaugural:
“One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves not distributed generally over the union but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen perpetuate and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.”
Something about Fort Sumner and some southerner’s (South Carolina) is forgotten in blaming President Abraham Lincoln. Oh, and Great Britain had a different society and system of government. Counterfactual history is always fun.
Haley is a GOPe stooge that quite simply, is not up to the challenge.
More importantly, Vivek Ramaswamy just revealed a Machiavellian cunning, telling voters that to vote for Trump is to fall into the Democrat trap. No doubt many Democrats do want Trump to be the republican nominee because they think him too divisive to win. A not insignificant minority on the right share that view.
But Ramaswamy has to know that he has no chance whatsoever of securing the Republican presidential nomination. I had thought that his actual goal was to secure Trump’s VP slot. But his slipping the knife into Trump’s back disproves that assumption.
If he actually put America First as he claims,
rather than as a means of self-promotion, he’d continue to back Trump because Trump is going to be the republican party’s nominee and win or lose, Trump is fully against the forces working to destroy America. For that alone, Trump deserves every patriot’s support.
FWIW, I personally believe that Trump will actually win the election… but when the votes are ‘counted’, miraculously come up just a bit short in the critical swing states.
The South Carolina Declaration of Secession is rather up-front about the cause: SLAVERY. I would add that family members killed in the conflict would have also agreed. Such as the Confederate Colonel from Tennessee, from a slaveholding family, killed in battle in Tennessee. Such as a compatriot of John Brown killed at Harper’s Ferry. Absent slavery, there would not have been secession.
https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/south-carolina-declaration-of-secession-1860
Sorry, I don’t see what your problem is with this comment
I am not sure that Haley’s statements on this matter, as quoted above, are any great improvement on what someone like Kamala Harris would have offered up.
Like you, Neo, I have no particular strong view on Haley one way or the other. I’ve actually paid little attention to her over the years. But I would hope that having a GOP nominee who could at least put a couple of coherent, focussed sentences together would not be too much to ask. The above quotations represent, for me, a negative data point, I fear.
That being said, the original question as asked (and here, typically, the ABC article is of no help) is of interest. And I don’t think the person who asked the question need have been a Democratic agent, though it would not surprise me if he had been. Besides mere intellectual interest in the topic, to ask a candidate what he (or she) thinks was the cause of the war can yield some useful information about what said candidate might think is required to avoid a reprise. I suppose one could generously interpret Haley’s follow-up comments as an attempt to deliver this in some fashion.
The only proper response today to the question “what caused the civil war” is:
Democrats.
Oldflyer – the South never gave Lincoln the chance to come up with alternative solutions. South Carolina declared it’s secession in mid-December, 1860. Lincoln wasn’t sworn in as president until early March.
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”
Abraham Lincoln in a letter to Horace Greeley
The South chose war not Lincoln.
Years after the war former Confederate general James Longstreet averred that, if the war wasn’t fought over slavery, he didn’t know what it was for.
I DO know why my Irish-born great-grandfather and great uncles fought (and in two instances perished) for the Union: to end slavery, which they believed was an affront to God.
Another pseudo-controversy for your distraction.
She’s competing with our current Vice President in the Word Salad competition.
Chases Eagles:
That famous quote by Lincoln should be understood as a sort of thought experiment on Abe’s part — he meant it as such. He knew full well — he was too smart not to — that slavery was foundational to the states’ rights issue and that the Union could not be preserved absent slavery’s eradication. “States’ rights” was about the right of the Southern states not only to preserve slavery, but to expand it into the territories; and to compel Northerners to countenance slavery by returning runaway slaves in the North to their slave masters in the South. See: Dred Scot.
The South got what it wanted, war; and got what it deserved, destruction.
Well lincoln was a moderate abolitionist unlike seward or fremont who probably could not have gotten elected in his own right.
Oldflyer
It would be my opinion that beginning with the abolition of slavery in Trinidad in 1838, former slaves began, little by little, to leave the plantations. They did not wait a generation. The first Indian indentured servants arrived in 1845, a mere 7 years after slavery was abolished in Trinidad. Some of the former slaves DID stay on the plantations. Else why would I have run across a report (link lost) that black plantation workers were paid more than the Indian indentured workers?
Options to working on the plantations as sharecroppers or laborers? Go to the city, or better said then, the town. Go to the bush. When I worked in Trinidad 40 years ago, the southern part (San Fernando to Mayaro) was mostly forest. Granted, the northern plains were pretty well occupied by agriculture. In 1851, Trinidad’s population was 82,000. Today, 1.4 million. There was PLENTY of unoccupied land for freed slaves to cultivate on their own. Chop down some trees and get to work. Pioneering , Trini style.
Oldflyer:
Britain had a colonial empire where the slaves were, and the US slaves were in a union of states that couldn’t simply be dictated to. If the Civil War was fought at least partly over states’ rights to have slavery, do you think the states would have acquiesced to a buyout? I certainly don’t.
Please see this as well as this for further information. And here’s an article on the massive cost to Britain and the terms of that deal, including the fact that the slaves continued to work as unpaid “apprentices” for some years under the terms of the original deal.
Om, was secession unconstitutional? Refresh my memory.
I am well aware that England had a different form of government, and I don’t know how that applies. All I know is that they managed to end slavery without a civil war.
Irish-Otter, did your Great-grandfather tell you that? Or is it comfortable family lore? The Union imported a fairly large number of Irish mercenaries because they had so much trouble enlisting the privileged young men who did not care a whit about fighting to abolish slavery. Probably does not apply to your Great Grandfather.
Some of my ancestors fought for the Union. They were simple folk from Iowa. Somehow, I doubt that they knew why they fought. Maybe because they had no choice. Most troops fought an unpopular war because they were drafted–or were paid to take the place of drafted “privileged sons”.
Others of my ancestors fought because their homeland, Georgia, was at war. None of my ancestors owned slaves. Like many who fought for the Union, many who fought for the South had no idea why, and many had no choice.
Haley stumbled into something she could have easily avoided. She is sophisticated enough that she should be well aware that the victor writes the history. The simple, politically correct answer to a very complex question will always be—“slavery”.
As for the comments about Gen James Longstreet. I assume the commenter knows that he was a career officer in the United States Army, and served in Mexico and on the frontier right up until he resigned to join the Confederate Army. I don’t think he was a big plantation slave holder. Like Lee, and so many others, there was some other dynamic motivating him. I doubt that he told his troops that they were fighting for slavery either. Since the Union was hell bent on prosecuting Longstreet after the war for the crime of beating the hell out of them so often, he may have mouthed the words he needed to say. Or maybe he meant them. No way to know.
Fredrick is right again.
The war was fought because the South started a war. The South seceded because the writing was on the wall, the eventual abolition of slavery. What form that would have taken had they not started the war we do not know because we are not on that timeline. It might have been a federal buy out. We will never know.
IrishOtter49
Oldflyer in reply:
Given Longstreet’s career and political affiliation after the Civil War, odds are rather good that he meant those words. For a short summary, consult Wiki’s James Longstreet , where we find out he was a Republican who was a friend of Grant.
From the Amazon review of Elizabeth Varon’s Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South:
The rank and file confederate probably didnt own slaves, but this was the breaking point over the union
Oldflyer:
Sorry, but stopped reading after your failing to conceed that southern congressmen were not particularly interested in ending slavery, unlike the British, and chose by force of arms (their choice) slavery over union.
They took the FAFO road and 600,000 died. The Democrats were the party of slavery and dissolution of the USA.
Others can fisk the rest of your thesis. We disagree on this history but nonetheless have a Happy New Year.
I would say 1895 being plessy has a little more import why lincoln was right to act
There could be no happy resolution
And the southern resolution in 53 punctuated the point
Sooner or later, politicians are going to bring the discussion back to the present and the future, which is what they should be asked about — and that final answer is going to be clothed in a lot of idealistic rhetoric about the things we all claim to believe in.
Being a slave would certainly make it hard for you to do and be what you wanted to. We do have to take into account that until very recently, people weren’t proclaiming all the lifestyle options they talk about and indulge in now. For most people life was work, work, work.
Still it was nice to be able to leave your job and move elsewhere if you wanted to. Not to mention — no more beatings, at least until the KKK and the chain gang came along.
I too had an ancestor who fought in the Civil War, for the North. I don’t know what he thought of slavery as he and his family came from Poland to avoid being forced to fight for the Prussians. I’d like to think that he would have found slavery disgusting as I do.
My take on the slave issue is some different.
First, the South was agricultural; the North, industrial.
Second, the South’s population was inferior to the North’s.
The Civil War deaths totalled over 600,000; more than all other US deaths sustained in all other wars combined. Whites killed in the war usually had small landholdings which their widows could not farm, not big plantations. A problem!
Slaves were the prized capital of plantations. Thus they were necessarily well-treated. A male slave in 1860 cost $1000 to $2,000 THEN. After the war they were free but basically unemployed and most remain so today, living off federal handouts. Or they are thugs, strong and aggressive because their progenitors worked the plantation fields generation after generation. Female ex-slaves continued to work for the mistress of the house, and so became gradually more refined than black males. We see what success black dominance means to a city, any US city. Detroit? Jackson, MS is 85% black and is a rotten city if you have been there. New Orleans is little better; some better, but not much. And look at Memphis, enormously black and crime-ridden. Life in Atlanta, the capital of black America, is associated with a high violent crime rate, now in the ritzy areas like Buckhead.
The Civil War was fought to eliminate a form of leftism which had become institutionally ensconced in the southern United States.
As with most forms of leftism, it was institutionally violent, degrading, and morally perverse; and the so-called arguments given in its favor, backed up by nothing better than shit-eating grins, consisted largely of that type of proudly incoherent language-abuse that “isn’t even wrong,” famously analyzed by Frankfurt, here: https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Harry-G-Frankfurt/dp/0691122946
And as with all forms of leftism, it relied heavily on devaluing human persons, because it claimed that their membership in some unchosen (by them) category was the whole of their identity, and made them either useful or discardable. It exploited them as objects to be manipulated and valued according to their politically-or-economically-useful but morally-irrelevant group membership. It denied them the dignity of judging each individual according to his individual gifts and the content of his character.
It was defeated by a mix of mostly-good men with mostly-good intentions, mostly-bad men with mostly-bad intentions, unabashedly bad men with bad intentions who found self-seeking reasons to play along, and befuddled average men who could be persuaded to hop on the right train even though they had little notion of where it was going or why.
It’s a little ironic that the regions of the United States hypnotized by leftism now are the reverse of those dominated by leftism then; but we needn’t be overly surprised. It’s a recurring story: As the decades go by, there eventually arises a generation who “knows not the LORD,” and wickedness multiplies in the land. Civilization-burning catastrophe can be avoided through their repentance and conversion-of-heart, and the burden of making that happen falls heavily on persons who (seemingly by happenstance) are in positions of authority and influence at the time. If those persons don’t bother to lead, or the vast populace fails to follow, then repentance won’t come in time, and catastrophe will be penitentially endured when the chickens finally come home to roost.
The saddest thing about this cycle is that, every time, vast numbers of good, decent persons who opposed the evils of their culture, or who were at least innocent through uninvolvement, suffer through the catastrophes alongside the wicked. These folks are largely blameless, but when things explode, they still get hit by the shrapnel.
I reckon we’re all likely to see that part, this time ’round.
God have mercy on us.
One question that I do NOT see asked by the talking heads on TV is why was this even a question to ask of presidential hopefuls?
Were they testing her knowledge of history? Were they trying to see if she answered with the proper “political correctness”?
If she answered with a simple one word “slavery” they would have claimed that she didn’t understand the nuances of history.
It comes across as too much of “gotcha” question to me.
@Oldflyer
Which I note the Confederacy began butchering the hell out of at least when they contradicted the power of the slave system. One of the bitter ironies of the war and what is particularly ironic about the Confederacy’s “States Rights” advocates is that by midway through the Civil War it was being fought between two governments about who would leave society and government more centralized than it was before, and in what way. This is also why comparing the Confederate and US Constitutions is so damning to the narrative of the diehard pro-secession, pro-Slavery Fire eaters that drove secession (as distinct from the more moderate elements of Southern society and even the planter aristocracy – such as Robert E Lee – who more or less went along with secession after it happened due to mixed feelings of loyalty, obligation, regional ties, and the growing war fear).
https://civildiscourse-historyblog.com/blog/2019/7/31/constitutions-of-the-united-states-and-confederate-states-a-comparison
>blockquote> Recall the old saying, “we gotta destroy the village to save the village.”?
Corollary. “We gotta destroy the South to preserve the Union” They did.
Which isn’t that surprising when you realize that diehard pro-Slavery fanatics had been threatening to destroy the Union for about a quarter of a century by that point if they didn’t get their way. And they were increasingly unsubtle about it (see: the Nullification Crisis and John C. Calhoun). And unlike their opposite numbers among abolitionist radicals like John Brown (who while capable of doing a lot of fear and damage was ultimately hanged with moderate fanfare and- pushed most Abolitionists short of Garrison to condemn him) they were increasingly influential and powerful within Southern and to a lesser degree Northern politics (people tend to ignore that arguably the dry run for secession came from Fernando Wood’s Mayoral rule in New York City in the 1850s. However he was surrounded by the rest of New York State and like how much of what makes a great joke is timing did not pick the right time, and so instead got turfed out of office after a bonafide New York Police Civil War).
This is true, but
A: It ignores that this was a scenario the Confederate and Proto-Confederate leadership feared almost as much as the "Yankee Abolitionists pull a John Brown 2.0 and invade the South to cause the Negros to Revolt" scenario. Which is why upon seceding they quickly amended the constitution to make even this situation of graduated emancipation functionally impossible.
(A: Membership in the Confederacy was contingent on respecting Black Chattel Slavery.
B: The Constitution outlined the many, many ways states and territories Could Not interfere with it.
C: While not ENTIRELY ruling out the possibility of amending the CSA Constitution to abolish slavery in as many words, it did make it so that any amendments to that effect had to be unanimous. Which was probably never going to happen.)
And this shouldn't surprise us. The Southern Planter Aristocracy had witnessed what had happened to their Caribbean Kin (and quite literally many of them WERE kin due to dynastic ties going back decades if not centuries, with slavery first arriving in North America from the Trans-Atlantic plantation systems that had migrated from West Africa to the Caribbean). They were quite familiar with the nightmare scenario of Haiti which was central to their propaganda, but they were also familiar of the limp desiccated system the planter lords of the Caribbean faced as a result of graduated emancipation in British, French, Dutch, and Danish territories (with Spain and Brazil being stubborn holdouts in practice if not necessarily in theory).
They also knew that once that happened, they had no hope of retaining the same economic and political clout they once had under the system. And indeed, *they didn't*. Even in areas of the South that did not see Union troops ravage the major estates like say Florida South of the Panhandle or the Red River of Texas, emancipation broke the power of the great planter aristocracy and even though they were generally the wealthiest and most connected people around still and able to get a lot of cheap farm labor (often their very own former slaves) to work at the plantations, they didn't have anything like the same pull or ability to depress wages. Which is why plantation agriculture in the South steadily lost ground after emancipation.
Secondly: While the British (and later others) did buy out the planter lords, they were also parking the Royal Navy offshore and stating "Or Else" in no uncertain terms. Which along with the risk of slave revolts (which started picking up) that might be accepted or even sanctioned by the Crown or other government because "You dudes aren't supposed to have this in the first place."
The South's hardliners however recognized that they had something the Caribbean planter lords didn't. A sizable interior and the ability to call on lots of militias independent of a centralized government, and a SLIGHTLY lesser dependency on the navy to do their business. If you were a British planter lord on say Nassau or Jamaica, your entire livelihood was dependent on import or export overseas guarded by the Royal Navy and others. If you were one in say the Mississippi Delta, you probably still were but there was at least a CHANCE You could make bank selling to others.
They tried to one degree or another but by and large were not successful, and in particular because they were more dependent on Parliament and the Central Government.
They by and large did.
No, NO HE COULD NOT HAVE DONE THE SAME.
This becomes painfully clear if one actually looks at the primary sources or the timeline. Lincoln was not even a proper abolitionist in 1860, he was a Freesoiler who favored a gradual emancipation of slavery.
The issue is that the Fireeaters were frankly less interested in what he actually was than what he represented. Their loss of power over the central government, which coupled with a lot of hysteria about him possibly being a radical abolitionist meant they decided (at least in South Carolina) they decided to unilaterally secede between when it became clear he had won the election and when he took office. Simply put, South Carolina’s goon squads did not give him the time or opportunity to see what he would do about slavery, if anything (and we can guess from his policy writings before that it probably wouldn’t have been much beyond working to enforce the slave trade ban and working to exclude it from Western territories.
And even HE Had to run with an “Anti-Nebraska” former Democrat, Hannibal Hamlin, as Vice President, and then double down with an actual Southern Democrat Unionist in Andrew Jackson during the 1864 wartime election.)
This seems bizarre especially for people who are trying to make this about what Lincoln or the Federal Government could have, should have, would have done or didn’t do, but it makes sense when we actually read things like the Declarations of Secessions, the CSA Constitution, and the writings of the leading fireeaters.
They were not interested in abolition. They were not interested in emancipation. They obviously opposed Garrisonian Immediate Abolition (especially without Compensation), but they were also opposed to British/French/Dutch/Danish and later Brazilian style Graduated and Compensated Emancipation.
And they were prepared to drag the entire country to hell in a handbasket over the mere PROSPECT of an anti-Slavery POTUS taking office again.
NO HE DID NOT, this meme needs to DIE.
South Carolina’s paramilitaries had been engaged in massive looting of Federal property and violations of the security and property of other states’ citizens for months before Lincoln’s inauguration, with Union troops being forced (peacefully but under pressure) from almost every position in Charleston Harbor until they were cooped up in Sumter, at which point the brainlets in the SC Assembly authorized Beauregard and others to use violence.
Notably, SC Separatists had opened fire on the supply ships going to and from Sumter before, and Beauregard turned aside a last minute offer by the Sumter CO (who I note was a Southern Pro-Slavery Unionist) to wait for a few hours stating he would peacefully surrender the fort unless he received either supplies or express orders from the President not to give it up.
And that’s before I get into other nonsense like the decision to violently invade neutral Kentucky.
There are two interpretations for the Separatists actions.
The Union one is that South Carolina committed treason by unilaterally, violently seceding and then attacking Federal citizens and military positions.
But the other – and the one implicitly recognized by the Separatists themselves (and which I am more amiable to)- is that South Carolina reasserted its right to independence…. and THEN proceeded to commit egregious acts of war against a “Foreign Nation” (namely the US) and/or “Foreign Nations” (other US States) using nakedly self-serving and often legally incoherent (especially by the standards of the time) justifications that if applied to nationals from another country would’ve gotten a rerun of the Don Pacifico Affair or outright war.
Neither interpretation pains the Confederates/Proto-Confederates in a good or justifiable light, and both underline why Lincoln felt he needed to act.
So the moral of the story is: don’t start wars you can’t win, especially not because you believe you’ve found an ideal form of socialism* or because you believe racial caste slavery is divinely ordained.
* Yes, these were actual arguments used by Fireeaters.
Had the Confederate leadership been amiable to a graduated emancipation like what happened in most of the European colonial territories at the time or that most of the Founders (and Henry Clay) were in favor of, the Confederacy would not have been formed and the Civil War would not have happened, at least not like it did. But as I mentioned before and as their own constitution makes clear, that was not the case.
Blaming Lincoln for something South Carolina etc. al. did during Buchanan’s lame duck portion of the term does not add up.
@Oldyflyer Part 2
Sorry, missed this
Secession was at least legally and constitutionally dodgy, especially as South Carolina practiced it. Which is why I don’t focus most of my argument about that, because I frankly view it as a distraction.
Whether or not secession was unconstitutional, unilaterally attacking Federal American/”Another Nation”‘s troops and property absolutely was and is illegal and an act of war, and this was particularly serious in the 19th century where there was a lot, lot, LOT less appetite for “Turn the Other Cheek” from some tinpot mob breaking the shops of someone holding a passport (metaphorical at least) of your country.
The Confederate leadership knew this full well, or at least they should have. But the South Carolina radicals decided to go ahead with it anyway. They played with fire and committed crimes against the peace, it’s not surprising they got burned. Turns out they weren’t quite as good at eating fire as their nickname implied.
Ironically because they had a system that lacked representation in the territories (meaning that everybody had to kiss the shoes of Almighty Parliament, a problem the Founders identified and which caused issues) and because the planter system in the Caribbean was more dependent on the goodwill of the Royal Navy than their American cousins were on the Federal Government’s say so (and even then it was something of a matter of degrees, hence the fugitive slave acts being so controversial because they faced the prospect of an East German style slow bleed due to population fleeing).
I’ll defer to him, but it is not hard to look up the assessments of many Confederate leaders on the matter.
Both sides “imported” a large number of “Irish Mercenaries” (and indeed you saw Irish Brigades on both sides, with the Irish being stereotypically sympathetic to the South or at least anti-Black). Though I agree that both sides ran into problems recruiting people and the war – at least from the Union’s POV – did not start over abolishing slavery and on a foundational level the National Union Party was agnostic on the issue due to the need to keep moderates and pro-Slavery Unionists onboard.
Which is also why I note the irony that the Confederates were the one to identify the causes of the war so firmly with slavery (by things such as public proclamations and especially their laws), and ironically helped fan the flames of abolitionism and especially radical abolitionism far, far beyond what they could’ve hoped to reach in peace.
Largely true to some degree, though we have the writings of plenty of draftees who at least were aware of the nominal reasons why it was fought.
Indeed, and the Union army was hardly a gracious landlord.
No but I’m guessing they were at least connected to the territorial militia system that while originating from English practice in the South became inextricably linked with slavery protection and putting down the risk of revolts in a way it didn’t in the North or West. Because when society and the economy revolves around planter lords who own almost everything and are dependent on slavery, your social order becomes dependent on preserving it. It’s also that I’ll note most Confederate jurisdictions adopted conscription well before the Union did.
Indeed, but that goes back to the question of why.
Indeed.
I’m tired of this meme. It’s at best partially true and sometimes not even that (Good luck finding Attila’s autobiography about his campaigns in the Eastern Roman Empire). Moreover one of the problems with Civil War Historiography was because you had no shortage of Confederate leaders (or their apologists further North) who were prepared to line up about it.
And that’s still less egregious than what I’ve talked about with things like WWI, where the German Empire’s old propaganda department was almost allowed to write its massacres in Belgium and Poland and support for Genocide in Serbia and the Ottoman Empire out of history entirely.
And it is that because ultimately, pretty much whatever string you choose to tug and follow the root of it goes back to slavery. Again, I have to emphasize *this wasn’t the Union’s doing.* The Union government under Lincoln spent the first half of the war arguing that Slavery could co-exist in the Union and pointing to the Unionist Slave States like Kentucky to point this out. And not surprisingly.
It was the Confederate leadership who continuously banged on about slavery, made their declarations of secession about it, and enshrined it in their constitution. Indeed their Constitution shows that they were prepared to sacrifice virtually everything – including States Rights – on its behalf. And that is the ultimate answer because while many Confederates had plenty of different reasons for fighting (up to and including the basic “Damnit Sheridan’s Cavalry is on my farm and they’re shooting people”),it was the decisions of the hardcore, Fireeating political leadership of bitter enders that made the decision to secede and then go to war. If they did not want to be known for fighting because of slavery (and frankly many of them would have been happy to), they did so much wrong it is not even funny.
Longstreet was quite literally the son of one Planter Lord (or Lady, as the case might be) and Nephew of another Planter Lord. It was quite literally a family business for him, even if he himself owned few if any slaves (I’d need to double check). This is not the strong argument for your case.
I agree absolutely, and it’s important we do not discount that.
But that’s also why I don’t discuss Longstreet and Lee much when it comes to discussing the actual outbreak of the war, which was inextricably linked to separatism and the decision of the separatist hardliners in power to use violence.
Lee and Longstreet, as much as I can figure, were moderate regionalist planters. They were broadly in favor of remaining in the Union while pursuing their states’ interests through it, and viewed the slave system as a necessary evil (which itself was becoming controversial due to the many defenses it was a “positive good”). They tended to either oppose secession or remain neutral on it, but when called to serve after it was done they split, with many like Lee and Longstreet joining their states.
They aren’t the people you look to when evaluating the outbreak of the war because frankly they weren’t the people who sparked it.
That’s why it is important to study the likes of Beauregard, Chris Memminger, Aldritch, Davis, and so on. Who by and large were responsible for it.
You’re welcome to read through what orders and diaries from the war are still preserved. They paint a very different picture than your doubts and assumptions. But in any case he didn’t need to because by and large the Confederate Government itself made it painfully obvious, especially among the civilian leadership.
“No way to know”? How about we actually use the primary sources we have available from the war, and which can avoid the thorny question of post-war preformism or Speer Syndrome?
This is again why I keep banging on about the declarations of secession and the Confederate Constitution, because they form concrete (and fairly unambiguous) evidence at the time of the politics, agenda, and views of the separatist leadership. They also show what they prized and how much (which is why States’ Rights got thrown under the bus even faster than Hunter Biden did when it ran the risk of undercutting the transport of slaves and other aspects).
@Cicero
This is the common pad answer and it’s accurate as far as it goes, but it doesn’t really go that far past the Ohio River, aka into the majority of “The North” all the way out to California. The North certainly prized industry far more than the South and at times this was taken to an ideological level, but this ignores the fact that the heart of the white Northern anti-slavery movement was a marriage between the Northeast and the West, with the single largest factor by far being smallholders. Indeed urban industrial bigwigs like those in New York could and did do business with the slaveocracies (as recipients of their raw goods) but for the smallholders allowing the planters in was a speedy ticket to economic and social oblivion.
And even moreso when we talk about free whites and mixed race people.
More iffy especially when you start counting in the wars that tend to go forgotten, but close enough.
…..because most Americans were smallholders by DESIGN and there weren’t enough major planters to fill out a Division. However, in the South the great planters could and did explicitly structure society into a system where smallholders could act as their clients (comparisons to Rome pop up constantly).
That’s a stretch. Especially if you study mortality rates, especially in places like the Mississippi Delta. It’s more accurate to say they were necessarily CAREFULLY treated, but that is VERY different from “well treated.” By about the late 1600s the Greater Caribbean had more or less figured out how to work slaves to the bone for maximum profit, and that included things like feeding them diets that would probably kill them of malnutrition (on the basis they wouldn’t live long enough to suffer from that anyway).
They were closer to literal beasts of burden or food. A pork farmer is almost certainly going to care about their prize boars and porkers and will often care for them carefully or well. But they will also kill them in untold numbers when the time is right.
Because of the Transatlantic Trade Ban meaning that supply became rarer and more costly, meaning you had to shift to lower attrition, higher retention regimes in order to not burn out your work force quite as much since you were now reliant on natural growth at home plus whatever you could smuggle in past the Royal Navy, USN, and increasingly others like the French and Dutch.
You’re skipping several generations and quite a lot of changes to try and force a square peg into a round hole. The dependence on federal handouts was largely a product of the LBJ era, especially after Reconstruction fell out of favor (in part due to how costly and divisive it was).
That’s not how genetics work; Lamarck was wrong more than he was right. Moreover, while the planters did favor “strong” slaves, they did not favor aggression (and indeed the stereotypical problems with American Black culture mirrors those of stereotypical 18th/19th century American White Southern culture of the time).
They’re thugs, strong and aggressive, because they congregated in urban areas and especially in the North to try and escape lives of terror, servitude, and economic deadends out in the South, only to then have the family and social structures break down as a result of prog racial manipulation and handouts.
Even a cursory examination of Booker T. Washington or even W.E.B. Dubois underlines it..
… in large part because women in general tend to be more “refined” than men.
Detroit was already an unsustainable, corrupt shithole before it became majority Black, and the Curley Effect was originally about urban Irish Leftist Politics. The rise of black nationalism and racial grievance crippled Detroit further and made things even worse but it was largely pushing boulders downhill.
Frankly urban political culture in the US is an even bigger problem than modern “American Black” culture. And modern American Black culture -tainted as it is by racial grievance and warped by perverse incentives from welfare- is a gigantic problem.
Summation: a lot of people reading this blog have a lot of interest in the Civil War.
Histories of the Civil War indicate that history is not necessarily written by the winners. The Lost Cause narrative of the Civil War dominated histories of the Civil War for nearly 100 years. Today, the Lost Cause narrative is slowly being pushed back.
Similarly, the historical narratives of the losers in the Spanish Civil War and the Allende era in Chile are dominated by the losing sides. (Not until I had read extensively on both issues did I conclude that the world was better off for how those conflicts ended up. Many lost causes are better lost than won.)
Javier Cercas’s Lord of the Dead investigates the Spanish Civil War and his great-uncle’s role in it. His uncle, who chose the Nationalist/Franco side, was killed in battle at age 19. The village and Javier Cercas’s relatives chose the Nationalist/Franco side. It is rather amusing to read about Cercas bewailing how his relatives could have made such a bad choice.
I will leave with 2 little details, which Javier Cercas ignores or pretty much ignores. Government police kidnaped and murdered Jose Calvo Sotelo, a leader of the right in Parliament. If your “democratically elected” representative gets killed by government police, it may well be safer to revolt than to remain non-violent. After the uprising commenced, the Republicans/leftists/Popular Front killed about a quarter of Span’s Roman Catholic clerics, some 6900. There are additional reasons enumerated in his book . Maybe his great-uncle and his relatives didn’t make such a bad choice.
https://www.thepostil.com/the-lopsided-spanish-civil-war/
@Gringo
Well said Gringo. It’s also worth noting that while Franco was a nasty piece of work in his own right he actually was one of the moderates as far as the military went, was a johnny come lately to the rebellion, and actually was quite hesitant about waging war.
Stanley Payne is hardly an idolator of him or the military putschists but his books are absolutely scathing about both sides, and particularly the abdication of the Spanish Republican government and left wing terrorism in the latest.
For the “winners write the history” crowd I give you …
The Cold War.
What other “rights” except slavery were Southeners worried of losing?
“The Civil War was caused by Republicans wanting the Democrats to free their slaves.”
West TX Intermediate Crude – seriously stealing this.
@FOAF at 4:10 a.m. – That is truth.
@Turtler: When was Battle Hymn of the Republic written and when did it come into common use by Union troops as a marching song (or is that use a myth)?
“He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.”
I think there are a lot of cases where the common people understand more than their “betters” give them credit.
@Skip – I was very surprised in college when I encountered native southerners for the first time as an adult. The individuals I knew were apologetic about it, but explained that the Civil War was still known in the south as the War of Northern Agression and that there was a whole mythology of the war that gave southerners permission to believe that it wasn’t really about slavery.
R.C. @11:40,
Very well stated.
Slavery is feudalism which is what they want to return us to. Now haley could have just said slavery and be done with it. There is a larger point why jim crow was allowed to stand for 70 years
Turtler, Cicero, Oldflyer, RC, om and all the rest-
Thanks for the history lesson.
“So the moral of the story is: don’t start wars you can’t win…”
Sensing a rhyme here.
I could be wrong because it’s a long time since I read the Constitution, but I don’t recall secession even being mentioned. The Declaration of Independence, however, is predicated on the idea that people have a right to withdraw from a previous allegiance and form a new nation – which is what the southern states did. Their reasons for doing so may have been reprehensible but the act itself was probably not illegal at the time. Whether it’s illegal NOW is a whole different question.
Regarding the cause of the war, I think it’s oversimplified to say that there’s a single one; but for purposes of this discussion:
1. As others have observed, firing on Ft. Sumter was an Act of War. Prior to that the conflict might have been avoided, afterwards it was already in progress.
2. Without Secession, the firing on Ft. Sumter would not have occurred.
3. Without Slavery, Secession would not have occurred.
Therefore slavery “caused” secession, secession “caused” the attack on the fort, and the attack on the fort started the war.
That said, southern politicians certainly cared about slavery, but I suspect that most of those who actually fought were fighting either for their State or for the Union,
Yes franco was the best case scenario because the republic was just a stalinist catspaw see bela kun which was deposed by horthy
Slavery was a comorbidity, as they say.
But as they also say what doesnt that have to do with the price of tea in china
I’m still reeling from Cicero’s assertion that slaves were well treated.
As for this statement: “Irish-Otter, did your Great-grandfather tell you that? Or is it comfortable family lore?”
If we were standing face-to-face and you said that, I’d punch your lights out.
There was nothing comfortable (nor made-up and embellished as lore) about the Civil War experiences of my Irish great-grandfather and great uncles. Their letters and other sources of information demonstrate this. What they went through, how they felt about their service, and why they volunteered to fight (they were not conscripted and they certainly weren’t mercenaries) is not “comfortable family lore.” They joined, willingly, because they understood the issues at stake — the moral obscenity of slavery (their was, of course, a religious component to their decision to join), the treason of secession and, not least, the tyranny of the South, via the Dred Scot decision, to force de facto compliance with slavery on the North. As Irishmen who had experienced and fled English oppression which reduced the Irish to a state of virtual slavery in their homeland (and which manifested, in part, as a catastrophic famine that the English did little to ameliorate), they were especially attuned to issues of the oppression and exploitation of the powerless by the powerful.
Not incidentally, they were all married and, despite being quite young (teens to early twenties), they all had children. My great-grandfather, a Catholic from County Tipperary who had bitter (and documented) memories of English oppression in his homeland, enlisted in a volunteer regiment in Decatur Illinois at the age of 16, lying about his age to get in. As a cavalry trooper he was wounded and invalided out of the army before the war’s end and eventually died before his time as a result of his wounds. Two of my great uncles were killed in battle and are buried in mass graves near the Chickamauga battlefield. A third was grievously wounded and struggled with the effect of his wound throughout his life. Their youngest sister, my great-grandmother, who died at age 99 just three years before I was born (and from whom I inherited letters, documents, and photographs of her brothers), was still collecting the latter’s pension, a few dollars per month, when she passed.
As a I said, all this is known. It is not lore. And I really really would like to punch you in the face for your snarky arrogant insinuation that it was.
https://donsurber.substack.com/p/the-questions-we-should-ask
When one is asked that question in public, part of the environment should be recalled.
It’s the theme, apparently taught in high school and college that America may never be seen to do anything noble. Everything is for evil intent.
So, to answer “slavery” would generate a scornful, superior knowing look and, possibly an accusation, happened to me, of being a “patriot” (imagine sneering tone).
I can’t speak for Haley, but if it were me, I would be prepared to override such a response.
To be generous, possibly it was reflexive caution, not wanting to be drawn into such an argument with a person whose assertions would mostly be dishonest.
Well, Irish-Otter your threat is taken at face value. I quake.
My humble apologies for triggering your ire. I simply found it interesting that you were so emphatic about you great-grandfathers motives. I don’t know his motives since I can not speak to him personally. However, I did not mean to imply that he was personally a mercenary. I did intend to note, and still do, that many Irishmen, some not actual U.S. citizens, fought for a variety of reasons having nothing to do with their feelings about slavery. As to motives, I have correspondence that was initiated by an ancestor from a Union prison camp. I don’t know his actual motives for fighting for the Confederacy, but I can state with some confidence that this boy from a small Georgia farm was not fighting to defend slavery.
I asked the question about Secession. Many responses. I assume that the respondents are aware that any actual prohibitions, including the 14th Amendment, were enacted following the war. But, the motives for secession are actually irrelevant aren’t they? BTW, it would be ironic if someone who questions the right of states to secede from the U.S in the 19th century happened to support, as the government of the United States did, the break up of Yugoslavia due to multiple Secessions, wouldn’t it?
Someone stated that the Confederacy started the war by firing on Ft Sumter. Well, that was the first shot. On the other hand, Ft Sumter was under the control of the state of South Carolina following secession, until the Union Army installed an occupying force, used the fort to blockade the port of Charleston, and refused demands to desist. A blockade is legally considered to be an act of war. Like so much, the opening of hostilities was a more complex issue than is sometimes acknowledged. By the way the first major battle of the war was fought at Manassas (Bull Run) where and when the Union Army invaded Virginia, on Lincoln’s orders, in an attempt to reach Richmond before the meetings of the Confederate Congress.
Finally, there is speculation here that the Southern plantation owners, who I acknowledge were the political force in some, but not all, Confederate states would not have accepted a British style plan. I would say that we can never know.
As to Lincoln. He ran on a platform. Apparently the seceding states assumed that he would govern on that platform.
Some may wonder why I, an individual who voluntarily served 25 years in the Navy of the United States, ventured into this argument. I don’t know why myself. Like Haley should have been. I was well aware that it would not be a popular position; not that I give a xxxx about that. On the other hand, I react to over simplifications; and, like Irish-Otter (although not with so much hostility) I bridle at blanket condemnations of my own ancestors’ motives.
A fear of the Southern planters not mentioned here was a slave rebellion. After all, the planters were seriously outnumbered by the slaves. There had been a very large and bloody rebellion in Haiti in 1805. What could happen if the slaves were freed? In 1835 the State of Virginia was considering freeing its slaves because it had become economically inefficient due to the poor quality of its soil. The major slave holders had moved south to Alabama and Mississippi because cotton could be profitably grown there. The Virginia legislature was seriously considering the step when Nat Turner’s rebellion erupted resulting in the murder of white planter families . That ended consideration of emancipation.
Had Virginia emancipated its slaves that would have had a profound impact on other Southern states due to its stature among the founding States. A number of other states would have followed suit.
Can we agree on this:
Whether or not slavery was the cause of the Civil War, it should have been.
By this I mean the following:
Imagine a country, let’s call it “Canada”, with a current population size similar to that of the U.S. then, and imagine there is a part of that country, let’s call it “Quebec”, that wants to secede for some silly reason or other that has nothing to do with slavery. Imagine there was a war over this in which about a MILLION people die, merely for the cause of either secession or unity. Would any reasonable person say it was worth it?
The only possible cause that makes the Civil War worth it, is the destruction of slavery.
Oldflyer should stick to flying and not to digging holes or divining ancestor’s motives (while casting aspersions about other’s ancestors).
Happy New Year!
As to slave mortality, consider the overall mortality. Memphis twice came close to being abandoned due to yellow fever.
Those who could afford to sent their families to hill towns during fever season .
Poor white folks not already in the hills suffered as well.
Sorry, I still need someone to explain why Haley’s comment is so offensive? It includes several political issues that were at the forefront of the issue and was a a a simple but factual response to a simple question-not inclusive, but not incorrect either.
We had a wonderful opportunity to explore Mississippi. Our guide was well-read, well educated, and well-informed about the events. Our itinerary not only included the most famous old mansions, but also the old docks, waterways, and informed summary of the economy of that state at the time of the war. Including, but not limited to the influence of New York business interests, which are hardly ever included in detail in this discussion. Having walked through multiple areas, ruins, and still viable places I have a different sense of what the issues were. In the history classes carpetbaggers were always presented as an unavoidable after effect of war. I dunno–they could also have been instigators as well!
@Bauxite
Not QUITE a myth but a half-truth. To put it simply, it started with the wrong John Brown.
John Brown;s Body originally referred to a very different John Brown, a Scottish Immigrant Tenor who volunteered for an army unit on the outbreak of war but then perished of natural causes before ever seeing action. That was the John Brown the song originally referred to. Of course the issue being that almost nobody actually knew of Private John Brown the Scottish Tenor in the fledgling Union Army, they did know the Abolitionist Terrorist who was executed for his misdeeds. So it wasn’t surprising the song became attached to the latter, which I do find to be very unfortunate.
I do think it’s a good indication of how Union sentiment hardened towards the South and on the issue of slavery as the war went on, since John Brown the abolitionist terrorist went from being in monumentally bad taste to discuss or praise to being the (admittedly indirect and partially unintended) subject of praise.
Agreed, and this is something we see come up plenty of times in research. WWII and the Axis in Europe are probably the most cliched and known but it applies elsewhere too.
@Paul in Boston
Agreed, and I do think it is a great tragedy that the Cotton Gin came along when it did just as it looked like the slave system would be abolished. We also tend to like overstating the obviousness or the virtue of opposing slavery when many (especially among the Freesoilers) viewed it as an economic and political manner at least as much as a humanitarian one. We also tend to overlook how RADICAL a world or society without slavery was and how we really did not have a good idea on what it would be.
And even many of the abolitionists or anti-slavery advocates like Lincoln were skeptical of if not outright opposed to the idea of Blacks and Whites co-existing in a society without slavery. Lincoln in particular favored recolonization to Africa for most of his life, and while he does seem to have begun raising questions and doubts by mid life and particularly changed his tune by mid war, it shows how remarkable it was.
Sorry, I still need someone to explain why Haley’s comment is so offensive?
Not offensive, to me at least, just not responsive: empty platitudes with almost nothing to do with the Civil War.
Agree with Charles above that the question was odd and probably designed to catch her off guard. But even so, she fumbled.
Oldflyer
What did that platform say? Primary Source: 1860 Republican Party Platform provides us with both the platform and with a summary of it. Here is the summary:
Here is an excerpt from the platform, not a summary, speaking to expanding slavery to the territories in the West.
There was a big disagreement in the 1850s over expanding slavery to the territories. The South reasoned that as slavery was legal and accepted in the Southern states, it should also be legal and accepted in the territories in the West. The Republican Party Platform of 1860 disagreed. The platform pointed out that there was already precedent in outlawing slavery in the territories.
What did the platform mean when it discussed “abolished slavery in all our national territory?” As slavery was legal and accepted in 15 states at the time, the platform differentiated from “states” and “territory.” The platform’s discussion of territories did not refer not to ALL the land area of the US, but only to parts of the US that were designated as territories, not yet states. Before the Constitution was enacted, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The Northwest Ordinance provided the path by which territories would become states. It also prohibited slavery north of the Ohio River. Lincoln pointed out that there were four men who had voted on the Northwest Ordinance in Congress who were also members of the Constitutional Convention. Of the four, three voted for passage of the Northwest Ordinance.
The 1860 Republican Platform took a strong stance against expanding slavery to the territories of the West, but made no mention of slavery in existing states.
Expand, or die: the slaveholders saw that as Republicans would confine slavery to the South, the balance of power between slaveholding and nonslaveholding states had changed. THAT is why they seceded.
If slavery was the only cause of the war, then it should not have taken almost 8 months AFTER the war ended and 6 months after Texas ” Juneteenth” , to free the last slaves in the NORTHERN UNION.
The Emancipation Proclamation freed *the slaves in the south.
The 13th Amendment freed the last slaves in the North.
* Obviously, The Emancipation Proclamation was unenforceable in the south until an area was conquered.
@Oldflyer
This is starting to get tiring, especially given the poor quality and rather facetious nature of many of your arguments. I have generally had a great amount of respect for you and your contributions here, which is one reason why I find this baffling.
I’ll skip this because while I find the threat to be in bad taste and of no great service to the argument. However I do note the ramble about “Irish Mercenaries” was hardly that.
Interesting yes, but is it really surprising? It wouldn’t be the first or last time we’ve seen people fighting passionately over arguments decades or even centuries in the past (as my fellow Yorkist Ricardians can attest), and you have certainly been quite emphatic and strident about the motives and origins of the US Civil War (even if not necessarily about the motives of a family relation). And I note on often very flimsy grounds, as I and others have noted regarding your efforts to downplay the responsibility and motives of the Separatist Leadership (in spite of their frankly voluminous and explicit writings on the matter, and the chronology of events) while trying to blame Lincoln for being unable to convince fundamentally inconvincible hardliners by proposing and getting a policy accepted before he was even inaugurated.
The fact that you are doubling down on that last point (and in frankly incompetent fashion) does nothing to help you.
Which is a fair point, but that is also why it is important to assess motives by carefully assaying the evidence we have, with a skeptical eye. In particular through examination of actions and records.
I’ll punt on this issue.
Agreed, but as I note that was not at all exclusive to either Irishmen or the Union army. Indeed out in the Midwest you saw it mingle with nasty clan and tribal blood feuds among Amerindians and in places like the border states (especially Missouri) you saw it degenerate into a horrifying blood feud.
Which is a fair point, and why I do not emphasize or focus on the actions of the rank and file (who were bound by their own complex webs of loyalty, ties, and so on as well as the burgeoning militia systems of the different states – which in effect were the prototype of the National Conscription invented in this war). I do not even emphasize the motives of the major military leaders that rose to prominence after the war began such as Lee, Longstreet, and Grant since
A: They weren’t in a position to do too much of the relevant deciding around the time of the outbreak of the war.
and
B: They were generally much more moderate than their more established peers were.
I assume you are being vague about what “actual prohibitions” are because this doesn’t wash. The Northwest Ordinance was signed by the Founders themselves and banned slavery in the territories of the Northwest Territory, including the land that would become my current state. The state of my birth came into the Union as a free state after its conquest from Mexican Centralist despotism during the Mexican-American War. Indeed, up until around the time of the Cotton Gin it was widely accepted that chattel slavery and slavery as a whole would be limited to “certain latitudes” where agricultural plantation slavery growing cash crops was feasible, which the likes of Ohio and Michigan were not.
(That was something the more die hard slaver lords and their advocates came to rue as a failure, and why they took pains to insist that chattel slavery would be permitted anywhere and everywhere the Confederate flag flew.)
And indeed the long and contentious history of what restrictions or prohibitions could or could not be placed on slavery or even the retention of slaves helped dominate American political life for decades before Sumter.
Absolute goddamn codswallop. NO, the motives for secession ABSOLUTELY ARE NOT irrelevant. Even if one interprets the Confederate cause generously or through their own metric such as that they had a legal right to secede, the fact of the matter is that doing so caused a massive and ultimately destructive diplomatic crisis with the other states and the US Government. One that more pragmatic and/or ethical leadership may have been ultimately able to disentangle through negotiations or measured evaluation, but which was in tragically short supply in places like Charleston and Richmond (as even many of the moderate Confederate leaders lamented).
Even if secession did not outright cause the outbreak of the war, it did enflame or cause the crises that ultimately did cause the outbreak of war. As such, the motives of secession are Absolutely Crucial to understanding the American Civil War, and especially the Confederacy, its leadership, their motives, and why they did what they did.
You don’t seem to want to do that in spite of the abundant evidence on hand – including primary sources – in large part because it jams a stake through the idea that the people who led as much of the country into secession as they could get away with were amiable or open to a British style graduated, compensated emancipation as you blame Lincoln for not having on offer. This is in distinction from much of the later Confederate leadership or rank and file, who came onboard later and who generally were less fanatical on the issue or more open to compromise (as shown by the fact that they generally were less militant and intolerant of compromise up until after Sumter and the fallout) but who also were not the people making the relevant decisions that led to war.
Oldflyer, we”ve already established that your understanding of the American Civil War, its causes, who was responsible, and the relevant evidence and documentation is lacking. Indeed, you admit this albeit implicitly by your hedging about how difficult it is to know a given subject (even if we have significant evidence about it).
I don’t think you are likely to be competent to evaluate the almighty complicated clustereff that was the Yugoslav breakup even in comparison to me, especially given your simplification that the US supported the right of Yugoslav states to secede.
Firstly: An actual examination of the US policy shows that the US actually worked closely with Milosevic and the Belgrade Government in the years leading up to the breakup (including on things like the First Gulf War), and was actually openly agnostic about Yugoslav separatism and favored doing business with a united Yugoslavia.
You have to remember this was the era of HW Bush and the “Chicken Kyiv” speech implicitly opposing Ukrainian separatism from the USSR. https://archive.kyivpost.com/article/opinion/op-ed/george-bush39s-chicken-kyiv-speech-39freedom-is-no-9437.html
And in general the US and many of the other established powers in the West believed it was better to deal with reasonably friendly central governments of composite commie/ex commie states (like the USSR and Yugoslavia) than with a bunch of breakways. And this wasn’t entirely without good reason given how the world was witnessing Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan plunge into civil war.
This extended to Yugoslavia. The US didn’t deny the right of Yugoslav statelets to break away, but they also didn’t support it either. Indeed, US and German finangling was crucial to the last minute, slapdash attempts to keep Yugoslavia together. In particular Bubba the Brioni Agreements which got Croatia to do a takesy backsie or “freeze” on their declaration of independence, in effect getting it back into Yugoslavia.
https://peacemaker.un.org/croatia-slovenia-serbia-brioni91
(That backfired badly since it allowed the Belgrade-dominated Yugoslav military to attack Slovenia, and helped prompt a more chaotic and bloody breakup by having JANL troops spread throughout Croatia and Bosnia-Herzogovinia).
In effect US policy well into the middle of the 1990s consisted largely of impotent and noncommittal “Can you all please get along?”
This tends to get memory holed by all sides HARD. For one, among the butthurt Serbian ultranationalists and Commie Simps that tend to shill for Milosevic and his allies, reminding them that the US worked long and well with their supposed bastion of independent socialism. Clinton and Foggy Bottom similarly don’t like remembering this dirty laundry since it paints them in a bad, impotent light, especially in an era where “Serb War Criminal” was a stock villain. Conversely, the breakaway states like Croatia/Kosovo/Bosnia wanted to play up their ties to NATO and the US. It also helps downplay the inconsistencies and conflicts between the US and other NATO countries on one hand and these factions (which sometimes led to bloodshed, such as the Franco/Canadian v. Croat battle at the tail end of the Medak Pocket Offensive).
But the evidence is pretty clear when we look. The Brioni Agreement is in black and white.
Secondly: As I mentioned before I do not make an emphasis on secession because I frankly view it and its legality as secondary to understanding the outbreak of the civil war. I believe that secession’s always going to be contentious and that reasonable people will disagree with it (in spite of me being generally in favor of the right to secede). However, the fundamental cause of the war’s outbreak wasn’t necessarily secession (and in any case both sides favored secession to one degree or another when it benefitted them) but the diplomatic crises caused by it and South Carolina’s separatist government deciding to use violence.
I reject the idea that the Founding Fathers would have accepted unilateral, uncompensated secession, seizure of “foreign” property, and fratricide simply because one side lost a free and fair election, and I can point to their efforts to keep the rickety union together through the 1780s and 1790s.
More dubious given the paramilitary violence beforehand, including separatist artillery firing on Federal ships in the months beforehand, including the Star of the West incident on January 9th 1861.
https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/34907
More on that later.
But it certainly made it impossible to ignore. Especially since unlike John Brown the abolitionist terrorist skulking around doing literal axe murders and trying to storm the Federal Arsenal, or his Slaveocracy counterparts doing similar in Kansas, there was no real ambiguity about responsibility. It was a clearcut act of war by the government of South Carolina against the US Federal Government (including a significant number of Unionist Southerners or pro-Southern leaders, such as Robert Anderson the commander, who was outward in expressing his sympathies towards the South but rejected the idea – as most did – that South Carolina could break its oaths and former diplomatic arrangements, pulling an All Give and No Take at bayonet point).
Pardon my French, but this is a giantic tide of MERDE. At this point I am left with no recourse but to conclude it is either historically illiterate, uninformed delusion (which would hardly be the first case in this, as shown by your blundering about graduated emancipation and US opinion on the breakup of Yugoslavia), patent dishonesty, or some mixture of the above.
But in any case, it is BLOOD LIBEL and I’m not going to pretend it is anything else, regardless of the intent.
But as someone who has studied the Charleston Crisis to a significant degree (in large part BECAUSE it is crucial to know how the war played out), this is nonsense. And I’m going to go through this bit by bit.
Firstly:
BULLSHIT.
A: Fort Sumter like most of the other major forts in Charleston Harbor was a joint venture between the State of South Carolina and the US Federal Government, In Sumter’s case it was purpose built to resist British or French naval attacks on Charleston Harbor of the kind that had ravaged Atlantic Seaboard coasts throughout the 1600s to the early 1800s, and was built explicitly as a Federal built and owned fort with South Carolina’s state acceptance .
There were other forts in Charleston Harbor like Fort Moultre that were built by South Carolina itself, but which had been ceded to Federal control for various reasons (starting with costs) in the early 1800s. With the result that the forts that became the bone of contention in Charleston were owned in title by the US Federal Government, which had a compelling legal stake in the matter that South Carolina had respected in better times.
That called for CAUTION when dealing with the issue of it and delicacy in trying, precisely BECAUSE the forts were not “under the control of the State of South Carolina” EITHER IN LEGAL TITLE OR PRACITCAL OCCUPATION at the time of secession. Caution that might have worked in other cases (such as the US success in getting the British forts on US soil out in the course of the 1780s and 1790s).
South Carolina’s separatist government however insisted that it was under no obligation to acknowledge the US Federal title or rights to Sumter etc. al. that it had clearly signed away, and in essence demanded Uncompensated Gibs. Which again was an incredibly radical, provocative stance to take and one found despicable even by the likes of President Buchanan and Major Anderson, who were hardly died in the wool John Brown Axe Murder Abolitionists (to put it lightly).
This is also in sharp contrast to how similar disputes were handled (such as the Austrian Quadrilateral in Northeast Italy), or what logic dictates here.
Secondly: Even in terms of actual occupation, the Fort was NOT under the control of the “State of South Carolina.” It was occupied – as it had been since construction – by the US Federal Army. This is painfully evident if you read actual sources of the time, and indeed the reason Sumter became the bone of contention was because it was the most defensible fort in Charleston Harbor, was already manned by US Army personnel, and was gradually “reinforced” by Anderson etc. al. pulling troops from exposed positions in the other forts like Moultre to Sumter under threat of separatist attack (in a backdrop of pillaging, mob violence, and looting).
Thirdly: As mentioned before the “Union Army” already had personnel in and title over Sumter, but the “installation of the garrison” (or rather the enlarging of it) was the result of defensive pullback and attempts to avoid conflict, by essentially abandoning the other Federal forts in Charleston Harbor to the Separatists because of fear they could not be held and the risk of violence.
(Ironically a number of the forts elsewhere in the South showed this wasn’t necessarily the case but hindsight is 20/20.
A literal child could have seen that South Carolina threatening military force on Sumter, pushing the Federal garrison into a corner, and demanding unilateral revocation of Federal title to the forts without compensation was a provocative, incredibly reckless move of “questionable” legality and likely to provoke conflict. Indeed, the separatist leaders knew this quite well, as comes through in Beauregard’s correspondence with both his political/civilian superiors and Anderson, and particularly his rejection of Anderson’s last minute olive branch to turn over the fort after a delay if either supplies or contrary orders did not arrive.
He went through it anyway.
Firstly: A Blockade is legally considered an act of war, but it does not always constitute the start of it. In contrast to say ordering a volley of artillery.
In any case this is irrelevant because as we’ll touch on, the Union garrisons DID NOT in fact impose a blockade on Charleston Harbor (though frankly the norms of diplomacy both now and at the time would have more than justified them doing so in light of the actions of the South Carolina Gov’t against the US Federal Government and the citizens of other states of the Union).
Secondly: “Used the fort to blockade the port of Charleston” No, NO they DID NOT. As indeed the drip drip drip of ships going to and from Charleston Harbor during this drama (mostly foreign, non-American ships) showed. The Separatist leadership were fearful of Sumter because of the prospect it could pose to blockade the Harbor IF supplied and manned rather than because it was, and also the aforementioned demand for Gibs.
Anderson for his part was a Kentuckyian Unionist with moderate Southern sympathies who was concerned about doing his duty (as he understood it) to the flag and uniform but avoiding confrontation, especially since he actually sympathized with the separatists’ (stated) grievances even if not their actions.
This along with the frankly dismal state of Sumter’s supplies is why Anderson rejected all calls to impose a blockade on Charleston Harbor, and also why separatist leadership focused on preventing him from being resupplied (even to the point of actually imposing a blockade on Sumter to the point of firing on unarmed Federal supply ships, like the Star of the West was on January 9th, 1861).
https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/34907
By the way: this was almost two months before Lincoln’s first inauguration, with the Star of the West being sent by President Buchanan, Lincoln’s political opponent and Southern Slaveowning Unionist.
The fact that both Buchanan and Lincoln rejected acts of war against South Carolina in the face in INCREDIBLY awful Separatist conduct towards American citizens and their own troops and continued to negotiate on the issues of the Federal Forts and damages for *Four. Months* after the Star of the West Incident, until definitively terminated by Beauregard’s rejection of Anderson’s final appeal, is nothing short of jaw dropping
It also explains why I take issue with the narrative you are spinning “without evidence” (to use a much abused term in actual context). And why you have to claim that the Federal Forts in Charleston Harbor were under State Control until a Federal Garrison somehow perfidiously took control of Sumter and engaged in blockade. Because otherwise the criminal, warlike, and frankly reckless nature of the South Carolina separatist government puts the blame for the war squarely on its lap and that of any other organization that decided to support its actions by force of arms.
This is true, but not in the way you claim. Indeed, it is in almost exactly the opposite way that you claim with your narrative of Sumter being under SC State Control and being used as a blockade by Union forces.
The more you actually look at the complex situation around Charleston Harbor in late 1860 and early 1861, the worse the separatists look.
This is true, but was in response to other acts of war, including Sumter, and the Confederate Governments’ decision to endorse South Carolina’s attack on the rest of the Union.
Which brings us back to the “Don’t start a war you can’t win” and “play stupid, immoral games, win stupid, immoral prizes” part.
“Speculation.”
No, no there isn’t. There is ironclad evidence from many of the Plantation Lords on the matter (including those of the moderates or anti-separatists. And again while not all the Slaveowners sided with secession (again, one thing I keep drumming up was that the crisis in Charleston started under Buchanan’s lame duck term and it was he who sent the Star of the West) the hard core planter lords and their enthusiastic cheerleaders were the brain trust and driving political force behind the separatism.
As they made painfully clear if one reads things like the SC Declaration of Secession and other stuff like Davis’s endorsement of it prior to the Sumter Bombardment.
I also find it ironic you are citing “speculation” in the face of things like the SC Declaration and Davis’s letters (which are the opposite of “speculation”) when you regularly have to resort to doubt casting about why Longstreet wrote what he did after the war and possible motives. Which while not INHERENTLY uncalled for or unjust, does make the attempts to ignore the primary source evidence in favor of talking about “speculation” when it doesn’t fit your preferred stance all the more jarring.
By all means, navel gaze away about Longstreet’s post war motives in writing what he did (though when possible compare them to what he wrote during the war and beforehand). But would it be uncouth of me to insist that we apply similar navel gazing to the South Carolina declaration of secession, the Confederate Constitution, and the writings and rhetoric of many of the Fireeasters?
Ok Oldflyer, >b> name a goddamn Confederate State where the Planter Aristocracy was not a political force.
I dare you. I double dog dare you.
This is richly ironic considering that the Planter Aristocracy was a political force in many UNION states, especially the border ones, and was a driving force why the Union insisted for half the war it was not fighting a war to abolish slavery.
I also note that while the Planter Lords were more diverse (philosophically AND ethnically; if you want a good laugh look up mixed race or outright Black Confederate Planter Aristocrats that sided with the Confederacy) than is often given credit for and at least some of them (most famously Henry Clay) and would have been willing to accept graduated emancipation (indeed, Clay championed it in Kentucky), the die hards that made up the Separatist leadership did not and would not.
But don’t take my word for it. Please look up.
We can know with at a minimum “very very very very very high certainty” the opinions and probable (lack of) acceptance of such men as Memminger and Davis. Which is more than this “we can never know” without note or consideration deflection, certainly better than guesscasting about Longstreet writing what he did because of Union coercion, and is good enough for historical analysis.
And we know with absolute certainty the exalted, all but inextricably linked position of racial chattel slavery in the Confederate Constitution and how functionally impossible it was to limit or remove it from the context of the Confederate constitution. Which I assume should be taken as a useful document indicating the intent and mindset of the Confederate leadership and the drafters of the CSA Constitution.
Like Gringo said, this is a massive self-own on your part. You played yourself.
The Republican Party Platform is opposed to slavery’s spread but explicitly punted on abolition or even hard free soil, and not without reason.
Indeed, it explicitly included this:
In doing this, the Republican Party Platform was actually FAR more pro-States Rights than the Confederate Constitution was. And while you can argue (correctly) this was with an eye towards the partisanship over Kansas-Nebraska and perceived and real pro-Slavery influence in the Federal Government, the fact remains that the Republican Party did not avow any plans to abolish – forcibly or otherwise – slavery in the South.
In large part because they KNEW this would not fly.
IRONICALLY, YOU NOTED THIS EXACT THING, ONLY WHEN YOU WERE TRYING TO BLAME LINCOLN FOR HIS FAILURE TO PUT FORWARD A BRITISH STYLE COMPENSATED EMANCIPATION. while ignoring the vast differences between the British Empire’s Caribbean colonies and the American South, US law and British law, and so forth. As well as the fact that the British Caribbean Slaveocracy was not able or willing to rise in revolt against or even threaten war against the Royal Navy that had them by the throat while the hardliners like Davis etc. al. were and did against the US Federal Government.
Fair enough, and indeed I confess I am thinking the same. Less because of exact loyalties there but more because of the lack of historical awareness and that. I can probably make a better argument about the Confederacy and South Carolina’s grievances than this if I am so inclined (and in some cases I am in fact sympathetic to some of their claims such as the right to secede, and worrying about the Federal Leviathan, worsened by Lincoln’s often ad hoc and “dubiously constitutional” measures during the war).
But I’ve spent way too much time burning my eyes reading timelines and letters and documents from this era not to use it, and while I thank you for your service that gratitude cannot extent to allowing you to besmirch the historical record or the actions of others (including many other servicemen such as the aforementioned Major Anderson) by claiming they were the aggressors when in reality they were the aggressed.
The separatist leadership (unwisely in my opinion) ventured their positions and beliefs for the world stage over the course of the 1850s and especially the 1860s, and whatever doubts or the like we might raise about what they “really thought” separate of the official documentation, they clearly believed that documents like the Secession Declarations, the Confederate Constitution, and their missives to foreign countries explained their causes well enough. I am inclined to accept that in lieu of complicating evidence as I would that of your ancestor, IrishOtter’s, and others such as Longstreet, Lee, Grant, and Sherman.
I’ll freely admit the Civil War was a bloody, horrifying conflict and many people fought for many different motives, often at the same time. I also freely point out the Union fought first and foremost to retain the Union, not to abolish slavery, let alone to create some kind of Sowellian 1990s Paradise of Racial Equality (which would have horrified basically everyone this side of Thaddeus Stevens). This is borne out by the Union leadership’s policies and stances. And I try to maintain a fair amount of empathy and sympathy for the actions of the various soldiers (who as you noted often had little choice in fighting) and people caught up.
I even try to maintain some skepticism and judgement about the stated reasons of given major players with a track record of it.
But I am not obliged to abdicate all judgement or to ignore all evidence on the grounds that “We will never know.”
I do not fault you for that. The truth is the truth no matter how unpopular it is, and I admit I find it admirable in many ways that you are prepared to stand up for what you believe is the truth even if it is unpopular.
But that is offset by your lack of research and rigor.
Now imagine how galling IrishOtter and I find your statements about Anderson blockading Charleston and moving the goal post about Lincoln and his claims.
I try to avoid blanket condemnations about your ancestors’ motives, which I can believe were as complicated as any. Indeed even among the Confederate hardliner separatists like Alexander Stephens I try and underline how they were rarely cartoon villains (indeed, Stephens was a personal friend of Lincoln’s torn apart by the slavery issue, and personally was both a virulent racist and supporter of institutional slave power, and a rather impeccably ethical slaveowner by the standard of his time to the point where he spent his life trying to pass laws banning mistreatment of slaves by their owners.
The fact that even that got torpedoed and never went anywhere i think speaks volumes about the Confederate government’s unwillingness to reform the system even moderately).
However, while the agendas and stances of many that fought in the Grey and Butternut (among others) are complex and mysterious and in many cases sadly unknowable, that isn’t so true about others. Especially the political leadership that dragged this country to hell through secession.
This is not the Dark Ages, and this was a by and large literate and urbane society that had been debating and discussing these issues (and events outside) for decades on decades. We may not be The Judge of men such as Davis or Stephens or Beauregard so on, but I do posit that we can make judgements based on what they did and said. And those judgements I do not think are flattering, to put it mildly.
@Miguel Cervantes
I’m skeptical if Franco was the best case scenario or even one of the best. But the Second Spanish Republic was not merely a Stalinist Catspaw, especially at the start of the war, unlike how the “Kun Gang'”s Hungarian Soviet Republic was a catspaw for Lenin (in an awkward alliance between Hungarian Communists and Hungarian Imperialists).
In some ways it was even worse. Payne makes this very clear. The Stalinists largely came to power as a result of the Civil War in Spain, not before it, and indeed the Spanish Right had managed to form a government in the elections before (which led to a leftist coup attempt in 1934).
In some ways the result is worse. Azana and co were not Stalinists but they were leftist radicals who eroded the core of the Spanish constitution and republic in a system that was already dangerous and unstable because of left wing and right wing totalitarianism and terrorism (to say nothing of the actual Fascists in the Third Position, who were less prominent than pop history made it out to be). Great is their guilt, to put it mildly.
@Anne
I find it offensively stupid and incompetent since it is such an easy give for the Left to spin, and also I am a history nerd who knows a lot about the Confederate Leadership’s statement, but that doesn’t mean I favor Burn the Witch. And honestly I judge it less egregious than her jihad on internet anonymity. It certainly reinforces my belief she is not up for Prime Time and not trustworthy with a position of responsibility, but that is just me.
But discussing it can and should be a point, and I’d argue that while the Confeds were primarily focused on slavery they had other, related issues. Even if they largely sacrificed them on the altar of slave power.
@Charles
Largely agreed. Of course it was a bait question and a gotcha. This shouldn’t be too surprising and it says plenty about the bad state of our country. But it also underlines why Haley is weaker than many want to admit since she failed to manage it properly.
Dealing with gotchas from the left is an important skill for any conservative, and I do think that DeSantis and even Trump were very good at it. Haley not so much and it shows.
But it also points to the deeper rot at the heart of our system, and the left’s contro of messaging.
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.
*Actually, neither Haley, nor I, commented on the morality of slavery.
*However, since slavery is is the ‘hot button’ issue, the practice should be considered at least somewhat in the context of the times. 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.) 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.
*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.
*Despite the focus here, and elsewhere, there were issues other than slavery that motivated secession; and they varied by state. Not all were true ‘slave states’. 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.
*Hostilities were triggered when the Union Army engaged in an act of war by using Fort Sumter to blockade the Port of Charleston.
*The first true battle of the war was Bull Run (Manassas, Va) when Lincoln specifically ordered the Union Army to invade Virginia.
*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.
*However, I will heed Om’s advice, and Irish-Otter’s (terrifying) threat and withdraw.
Oldflyer
From the 1860 census
“True” slave states? Those with about a quarter of its population being slaves seceded.
Here are 3 books that deal specifically with the interim period between Lincoln’s election and the beginning of the war.
Mark Tooley wrote The Peace That Almost Was: The Forgotten Story of the 1861 Washington Peace Conference and the Final Attempt to Avert the Civil War.
William J. Cooper wrote We Have the War Upon Us: The Ordeal of the Civil War.
Adam Goodheart wrote 1861: The Civil War Awakening
I have read the first two, but years ago.
Interesting that Lincoln was kept off the ballot in 1860 in the South, and Democrats are trying to do the same to Trump in 2024.
Jon baker – I don’t think the time lag between emancipation and the 13th amendment has much to do with whether slavery was the cause of the war.
The Emancipation Proclamation made the 13th Amendment inevitable.
Since we are discussing slavery and the South, I will add a quote from a book by the Venezuelan journalist Carlos Rangel about the subject. The Latin Americans: Their Love-hate Relationship with the United States. One of my favorite books.
Couple of observations:
Suppose the secession had happened and there’d been no war. And the boll weevil showed up.
Or suppose there was no fuss whatsoever and the boll weevil showed up.
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….
Oldflyer:
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.”
Another question for Oldflyer, did Lee invade Pennsylvania in 1863 in the War of Southern Aggression?
@Oldflyer
Fair.
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.)
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.
More or less true though it began to break down in the early 1800s.
Indeed, and the demand for it was much larger.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
Turtler:
Thank you for the fisking of old hatreds.
Saw a comment addressed to me which I cannot now find. Possibly on another thread.
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.
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
Walker then popped up in Kosovo, shortly before the fireworks there, where one of the leading players was the head of the KLA gang, who became prime minister thaci, hes the one that dread pirate smith, would later harpoon,