The John S. Mosby Highway out from DC and on through Middleburg is one of the most beautiful drives in Virginia. Robert Duvall lives not far off that road on a lovely big horse farm.
Posted on 05/01/2017 7:54:06 AM PDT by C19fan
Which is close enough to the same thing I said. ("Impossible to destroy.")
(Or do you think that it was only a matter for the federal government to determine?)
I think that with Article IV Section II remaining a valid part of the US Constitution at the time, a state could only end it's own laws requiring labor. It could do absolutely nothing about people held by other states laws on the matter.
It also did not permit the expansion of slavery into the territories, which is why the south refused to consider it.
Well getting back to that Article IV, Section II, I do not see how a government could preclude slavery in the territories. The Constitution says that they are held to labor by the laws of other states. Till you do something about those "laws of other states" problem, you haven't solved anything.
The south realized that slavery was doomed unless it could expand, if for no other reason than to get rid of the booming slave population.
People constantly repeat that claim, but this is nothing more than an assertion. The reason the South wanted slavery expanded into the territories is because the slave states and the free states each voted together as a coalition. The South had lost a great deal of influence in the Congress, and unless some allied states could help them mitigate the power of the North East, they were doomed to endure policies which enriched the North East at their expense.
In reality, the territory states were not economically feasible to make use of slavery. They did not lend themselves to the sort of cultivation that relied heavily on slavery, so it was more or less an academic point.
The South wanted a bigger coalition protecting it's interests, and they thought the only way to insure this was to get newly created states to vote with them against the larger Northern populations and states.
Remember, in those days Senators were elected by State Legislatures, so how goes the state is how went their representation in the Senate.
Slavery in the Southern states had the ability to persist for many decades if not a century. It wasn't going to be destroyed if it didn't expand, (Meaning it wasn't going to collapse under it's own weight) It was going to lose representation in Congress, and eventually be destroyed by various federal laws making it harder with each passing year.
When you can't muster a majority, you will be at the mercy of others who can.
Just to add to your post, what aggravated the slave issue in America was the cotton industry and all the money that came with it. Slavery was on its way out until the cotton industry started to grow in the early 1800’s. In fact, cotton was our number one export from the early 1800’s until the late 1930’s. Plenty of corporations and individuals in the North also made a good living off the cotton industry. It’s amazing that Lincoln and the Union held it together. In fact, it was a close call that doesn’t get much mention these days.
This is correct. Slavery was waning prior to the development of the Cotton Gin. It is the Cotton Gin that made it highly profitable.
If you're speaking of mechanization in general, cotton farming wasn't mechanized until the 1940s, when the first practical cotton harvester was developed.
It is possible that this may have been developed earlier had it not been for the destruction of the Civil War, but that is of course speculative. Once Cotton Harvesting machines became available, slavery would no longer have been profitable anyways. The surest way to kill a business model is to take away it's profitability.
Slavery was doomed eventually, but it might have lingered on another 80 years but for the consequences of the war.
A lot of damage to federalism occurred as a result of that war, and it's consequences are still living with us today. Issues such as "Prayer in public schools", Abortion, "Gay" Marriage, Interstate "commerce" issues, "FedZilla" and even Presidential eligibility are all consequences of that war.
A lot of people simply do not realize how many issues we are facing today all began in that conflict.
In general, I'm out of my league with in-depth civil war discussions on FR. Thanks for piping in.
I've only gotten interested in the Civil War over about the last two years. I've learned a lot of things about it which I didn't know for most of my life, and which changed my outlook quite a bit from what it used to be.
Anyway, Freegards.
The John S. Mosby Highway out from DC and on through Middleburg is one of the most beautiful drives in Virginia. Robert Duvall lives not far off that road on a lovely big horse farm.
So slavery would never have been abolished because at least one state would insist on maintaining it? South Carolina, right?
I think that with Article IV Section II remaining a valid part of the US Constitution at the time, a state could only end it's own laws requiring labor. It could do absolutely nothing about people held by other states laws on the matter.
So what are you saying, that as long as slavery was permitted in one state, that it had to be allowed everywhere?
In reality, the territory states were not economically feasible to make use of slavery. They did not lend themselves to the sort of cultivation that relied heavily on slavery, so it was more or less an academic point.
Slaves were good for all sorts of things, from domestic servants to miners. Saying that slavery wouldn't have thrived in the west because its the wrong kind of agriculture ignores all the other ways slaves could be used.
The South had lost a great deal of influence in the Congress, and unless some allied states could help them mitigate the power of the North East, they were doomed to endure policies which enriched the North East at their expense.
You contradict yourself. On the one hand you say that it was essential for the slave states to increase the number of slave states in order to maintain a balance in congress, but on the other hand you say that slavery wouldn't take hold in the west. And what exactly were these policies that enriched the north at southern expense?
Probably not far different from the Southern states. There has long been flirting with the idea of secession among various states, the latest being California. I believe that in Texas it has always had a following, or at least for several decades it has had a following.
The other issue I see that is often terribly confused is that of the rights of freedmen after the Civil War. The Radical Republicans passed amendments using rather dubious methods to enfranchise blacks.
They wanted the political power that would come as a result of those votes.
Those amendments remained a dead letter for almost a hundred years as soon as Union troops were withdrawn from the South. Why?
Because without Union troops in place, they couldn't enforce those laws on the unwilling majority.
Why? Because there was only a passion in the North to preserve the Union (and eventually, to end slavery, which was seen as the principal cause of disunion).
There was no passion to even do that until it was ginned up by Lincoln. Most of the North was perfectly content to let the South leave and to let it keep slavery.
But there was no large constituency in either the North or South to enfranchise blacks: they were to be treated more or less as resident aliens.
Exactly right. The constituency which wanted to enfranchise blacks were those Republicans who believed they could gain political power through their votes.
They did a similar thing in the early 1960s, but Lyndon Johnson flipped the script on them.
“Not one person knew. One person said, Lee.”
Well, in a manner of speaking, he was almost correct. If the question had simply been "Which General was responsible for the burning of Atlanta?", the answer would have been, obviously, "General John Bell Hood".
I think this is an aspect that is perhaps not fully explored in these discussions. In the last two years that I have been discussing this issue in depth, I have been focusing on the distribution of wealth and power involved in the Civil War and the events leading up to it.
It is easy to see that the 3/5ths rule would give Southerners what would be seen as an unfair advantage in terms of electoral prospects, and you can see how such a thing might be greatly resented by those who didn't have such and advantage.
This 3/5ths rule did in fact give a political power advantage to those who exploited it, and it's easy to see why their political opponents in the North wanted to take it away from them.
Also, many in New England saw slavery as a black mark on America—not b/c slavery was evil, but b/c New Englanders saw mixing black blood with white blood the same way Hitler did.
Not just New England, but pretty much all of the Northern States. Lincoln himself was an officer in an organization dedicated to deporting blacks to other countries. Lincoln himself wrote about how much he disliked the mixing of bloods. Illinois had laws prohibiting black people from settling in their state.
Institutional and pervasive racism was the norm back in those days.
If the North was NOT fighting to free the slaves—and they most assuredly were not—then how could slavery be THE cause of the Civil War. I could go on and on....
If you start participating in these Civil War threads, you will pretty much have to "go on and on...." :)
People will refuse to grasp the point the first hundred or so times you try to make it.
Eli Whitney’s most important development was modern manufacturing processes that almost completely eliminated the need for handfitting of parts which in turn resulted in interchangeability of parts. This resulted in increased speed of manufacture, less waste, all at a significant reduction of cost. This is most important militarily for the reclamation and factory thorough repair of salvaged arms. Interchangeability of fit allowed the repair of arms to as new, or at the least to service issue condition. Less brand new arms required by the Union and tens of thousands of men released from manufacturing into the draft pool. This was a major advantage to the Union.
If states are required to respect the labor laws of other states, then I suppose that is what it means. How does a "free" state stop slavery when the US Constitution requires them to return a slave to the person for whom his labor is due?
Is there a special clause somewhere in the constitution that says, "...Unless they are a free state..."? If the free states have to obey the constitution, how do you get around this problem?
Slaves were good for all sorts of things, from domestic servants to miners. Saying that slavery wouldn't have thrived in the west because its the wrong kind of agriculture ignores all the other ways slaves could be used.
Now here we touch on another matter. Most of the Northern animosity against slavery was the consequence of labor and wage issues. Northern men were very much against the possibility that they would have to compete with free labor in their jobs. So long as slavery stayed within the boundaries of plantation farming or certain other vocations which Northern men did not want to do, they were willing to tolerate it in the South. But if any effort had been mounted to use slaves in factories or mines, or other jobs for which people had to work for wages, it would have caused an eruption of violence directed at people who attempted such a thing.
There was resentment directed at the Southern Wealthy who were getting rich off of free labor, but it is nothing like the fury which would have been unleashed had that free labor been used doing the jobs from which Northern men themselves made a living.
You contradict yourself. On the one hand you say that it was essential for the slave states to increase the number of slave states in order to maintain a balance in congress, but on the other hand you say that slavery wouldn't take hold in the west.
Seeming contradiction. That something won't work does not preclude people from trying it. The South wanted more support in Congress and they believed that having a state declare itself as a slave state would make this happen. It probably wouldn't have worked in the long run, but people grasp at straws.
And what exactly were these policies that enriched the north at southern expense?
There were several. The first is the prohibition against Foreign ships carrying cargo between two US Ports. (Navigation Act of 1817) This had the effect of guaranteeing that virtually all foreign import traffic would come to Boston or New York, and go nowhere else.
Also included in that act was heavy penalties and duties for the use of Foreign ships or crews carrying export goods. This allowed the Northern shipping industries to set their prices just under the costs of the penalties for using foreign ships or crews.
Another significant impact was the lopsided costs of tariffs. Since 3/4ths of all import goods were in payment for Southern exports, and since the tariff's on these goods varied between 35% and 50% of the item's values, the Southern states were effectively funding the government at four times the cost to the Northern states. The Four Million citizens in the South were providing about 75% of the costs of running the Federal Government while the 20 million citizens in the North were only providing about 25% of the costs of running the Federal Government.
Another aspect is the subsidization of Northern Industries by the Federal Government. Those Northern Shipping companies were given government contracts to carry US Mail, and it amounted to a guaranteed income that would allow them to undercut their competition which did not have such a subsidy.
There are a whole lot of particulars about Federal Subsidies for Northern industries, but this example can give you the general idea of how it works. Southern Shipping and Southern Ship Building industries were wiped out by these policies.
Just for the record, the 3/5 provision of the constitution was an early compromise between the South and the North.
At the founding, the South wanted those bound to service to count as whole persons for the purpose of representation in the House of Representatives. This was, purposefully or not, an early proposal to recognize black people as whole beings.
The north knocked this down and did not want those bound to service to be counted at all. The reason: it was not in their political or economic best interest. And the north apparently had no moral qualms about counting those bound to service as less than a whole person.
The 3/5 compromise hurt the South which otherwise would have had a higher enumeration, and a higher number of representatives in congress. This compromise is another example of how the South bent over backwards to form the union and promote unity.
I thought you were talking about the first clause of Article Four, Section 2, the "privileges and immunities" clause. The fugitive slave clause only applies to "person(s) held to service or labour in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another." The issue is whether a person who owns a slave in South Carolina can bring them to Massachusetts and keep them there as slaves.
But if any effort had been mounted to use slaves in factories or mines, or other jobs for which people had to work for wages, it would have caused an eruption of violence directed at people who attempted such a thing.
Except that throughout the south, slaves were employed as skilled craftsmen, as miners, and as factory workers, and domestic servants. In fact, a full 25% of southern slaves were employed outside of agriculture. At the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, skilled workers did go on strike when the owner brought in slaves to do their work. He responded by firing the workers and bringing in even more slaves. By the beginning of the war, 450 slaves were employed at Tredegar, half the workforce.
Another significant impact was the lopsided costs of tariffs. Since 3/4ths of all import goods were in payment for Southern exports, and since the tariff's on these goods varied between 35% and 50% of the item's values, the Southern states were effectively funding the government at four times the cost to the Northern states.
First off, the tariff rate in the 20 years preceding the Civil War averaged about 25%. Second, it's generally accepted that the person who pays the actual cost of a tariff is the consumer, to whom it's part of the price. And since the consuming population of the north was much greater than the south, it makes sense that it was northern consumers who were paying the bulk of the tariff, or of the increased cost of US made goods.
I'm dubious about the "3/4ths of all import goods were in payment for Southern exports" line. The cotton industry was full of middlemen--brokers and lenders and factors and shippers--and cotton wasn't just loaded on a boat and traded on the docks for an equivalent value in foreign goods.
Finally, most of what you say sounds like it was the south's foolishness in refusing to diversify their economy. Or as Louis Wigfall put it: “We are a peculiar people, sir! We are an agricultural people; we are a primitive but a civilized people. We have no cities – we don’t want them. We have no literature – we don’t need any yet … We want no manufactures; we desire no trading, no mechanical or manufacturing classes … As long as we have our rice, our sugar, our tobacco, and our cotton, we can command wealth to purchase all we want from those nations with which we are in amity, and to lay up money besides.”
At the founding, the South wanted those bound to service to count as whole persons for the purpose of representation in the House of Representatives. This was, purposefully or not, an early proposal to recognize black people as whole beings.
I think I might have read that years ago, but I never realized it's significance at that time. Of course it makes sense from a political power perspective to want to count slaves as a whole person for representation.
It is obviously in the North's interest to count them as less than that, because it gives the South less representation than it would if you counted them as a whole.
It also reinforces the point that the North didn't give a crap about blacks, they just wanted as much political power as they could get for themselves.
In contrast, it was illegal in most of the antebellum South to teach Blacks to read and write. Wary of the disruptive potential of industrialization for slavery, the South expressly looked to the agriculture and the cultivation of crops that were congenial to slavery. Expansion into Central America and the Caribbean were projected for additional slave crops, for territory, and for added strategic position and strength.
As it was, the horrors of combat and long casualty lists of the Civil War gradually drove Northern opinion toward emancipation. The scale of the sacrifice that the war demanded called for a greater purpose than saving the Union. With the victory at Gettysburg, Lincoln thus issued the Emancipation Proclamation and redefined the conflict.
Meanwhile, with even greater proportional casualties and the Confederate cause failing as the North's armies advanced, the South's leaders rejected freedom for their slaves even if it could secure Southern independence. Like all great conflicts, the Civil War wore its way through to fundamental causes and issues.
For all the romantic appeal of the Confederacy and of the Lost Cause myth, it should not be forgotten that slavery was wrong, wrong, wrong, and that secession and civil war were foolish and self-destructive. The better course is to recognize and accept this, while cherishing the South's genuine and considerable virtues and her contributions to America's greatness.
Notably, in the modern South, White Southerners' restraint and peaceful protests by Black Southerners against segregation provided a model for the rest of the world. Instead of revolutionary violence, the American South showed that peaceful protest and generational change could redress deep grievances.
Southerners also provide much of the core strength of the American military and an attachment to traditional manners and virtues. The grandson of immigrants, there are no Confederates in my ancestry, but I would not willingly live anywhere but the South.
So you say, but there is more than one way to interpret these words, and "escaping" can have more than one meaning depending on context. Certainly Dred Scott tried to "escape" but not in the running away in the night sense. A clever lawyer would simply argue that if a Slave is on a man's property in a Free State, leaving his property constitutes "Escaping" into a free state.
If the issue is brought to an unbiased Federal Court, at what point can you interdict a slave owner from bringing a slave into a free state? Can you forbid him from crossing the border? Can you forbid him from crossing the border with his slave? You keep running afoul of that article IV, and not just the labor part, but the "privileges and immunities" part as well.
Oh, and the Northern States didn't honor your interpretation of it either. They routinely refused to assist in returning anyone. They would often throw up obstacles to prevent it. It was effectively a dead clause of the Constitution.
Except that throughout the south, slaves were employed as skilled craftsmen, as miners, and as factory workers, and domestic servants. In fact, a full 25% of southern slaves were employed outside of agriculture.
So long as it remained in the South, it wasn't going to greatly upset the Northern artisans and factory workers, and what you are speaking of was an evolving condition, not a sudden change.
First off, the tariff rate in the 20 years preceding the Civil War averaged about 25%. Second, it's generally accepted that the person who pays the actual cost of a tariff is the consumer, to whom it's part of the price.
The tariff's varied from Item to Item, but the Morill Tariff increased them dramatically. The Confederate Tariff was something like 13%. As far as who pays the tariff goes, it is hidden from the final consumer by the various transactions to get it to them, but certainly it is the final consumer who pays the cost of it.
Since the Final consumer must always be those who are redeeming their export value with import value, it falls mostly on the South.
I'm dubious about the "3/4ths of all import goods were in payment for Southern exports" line. The cotton industry was full of middlemen--brokers and lenders and factors and shippers--and cotton wasn't just loaded on a boat and traded on the docks for an equivalent value in foreign goods.
Fortunately we have the numbers all broken down for us by value.
I think PeaRidge has more numbers from official US Government sources that paint a similar picture.
Finally, most of what you say sounds like it was the south's foolishness in refusing to diversify their economy.
Yes it was foolish, but at the time there was so much money in what they were doing that they thought it was foolish to spend time and capital on anything else. The Northerners did not have this easy money path, and so they had to build up their societies the hard way.
I suspect that no small reason why Reconstruction was such a short-term and fitful thing was that the North soon realized that most freedmen stayed in the South and had little desire to move North. There was no need to fully remake Southern society to ameliorate the condition of keep freed Blacks to keep them in the South. With the defeated South's loyalty assured, the country moved on to the larger business of national reconciliation, development of the South's resources, westward expansion, and America's prosperity and rise in the world.
Yet, even if deferred as to Blacks, America's foundational principles could not be ignored forever. As Blacks acquired education and skills, by the mid-20th century, they learned how to insist on the full measure of rights due them. Imperfect we are as a people and as a country, but we now more fully live according to our principles. And, in the odd, crosswise way of history, those principles were mostly laid down by Southern slaveholders wearing knee britches and powdered wigs.
That is one take on it. For a different take I will point out what a London newspaper thought of it at the time.
The Government liberates the enemy's slaves as it would the enemy's cattle, simply to weaken them in the coming conflict....The principle asserted is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States.
Even Lincolns own Secretary of State said:
"We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free."
For all the romantic appeal of the Confederacy and of the Lost Cause myth, it should not be forgotten that slavery was wrong, wrong, wrong, and that secession and civil war were foolish and self-destructive. The better course is to recognize and accept this, while cherishing the South's genuine and considerable virtues and her contributions to America's greatness.
That is not my issue in discussing this topic. My issue is to point out that the right to independence is the fundamental principle upon which this nation was founded, and that people have a right to avail themselves of independence if they so choose, even if we don't agree with their reasons for doing so.
The South had every right to leave the Union, and the Union had no right to force her back in. In terms of the more important principle involved, the right to Self Determination is the most important.
I am also aware of how much of our current troubles extend from that conflict. The Birth of FedZilla started with that war. That war is the event that triggered the growth of the Super State and it's unsettling alliance with North Eastern based Crony Capitalists that have a great hand in running Washington now.
It is no accident that all the "news" we see is controlled from New York. That is where much of the real power in this country resides. The media is reliably Liberal because people making their money off of Federal Largess own the media, and they like liberal spending policies in Washington D.C.
Virginia was part of The United States. Virginians weren’t ‘’defending’’ Virginia. They were attacking The United States.
The resulting flood of slaves on the run deprived the South of essential agricultural labor and reduced Southerners and their armies to hunger and inadequate clothing. The runaway slaves then provided labor and new recruits needed by the North's armies.
In addition, Europeans recognized that the political effect of the Emancipation Proclamation committed the North to ending slavery. That defined the conflict in a way that solidified European support for the Union.
Arguments over the South's supposed right to independence are a major element of the Lost Cause mythos. Yet why did the South want independence? To protect slavery -- an evil and foolish choice. Similarly, a husband who divorces a good and faithful wife and abandons his children to marry a stripper may be within his rights, but he must be judged in the wrong and a fool.
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