Posted on 10/26/2004 4:28:59 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
The recent flurry of letters from neo-Confederates asserting that slavery had no role in the Civil War is troubling, as they seem doggedly determined to force counterfactual information on the public. The trend towards "true Southern history," minimizing the slavery issue by insisting that all of America was racist, and that slaves fought for the Confederacy is a spurious and disingenuous argument. Using half-truths and outright misinformation, they try to avoid what any serious historian of the Civil War recognizes as a major issue of the war.
Having studied the Civil War since my early teens and teaching it on a college level here in Hagerstown and at George Mason University, I feel qualified to point out a few holes in their argument. First of all, yes, much of America was racist, at least by today's standards, but that does not mean that slavery was not an issue in the war.
The controversy was not on a humanitarian basis, but was political and economic. Many states outlawed slavery soon after the Revolutionary War, and slave-state representatives were determined to "force" slavery into the newly acquired western territories. There was no political effort to eradicate in existing states, but a strong attempt to halt the spread of it to the new territories in the West.
The much-cited proposed 13th amendment in 1861 was intended as a compromise to reassure the southern states that their property rights were not in jeopardy due to Lincoln's election, and it did pass in Congress. Because of their insistence of spreading slavery, southern states chose to leave the Union and fire upon Fort Sumter rather than take that assurance. The actual 13th amendment did indeed outlaw slavery and end the institution, but the claim that three southern states ratified it before Lee surrendered is disingenuous.
The three state legislatures cited by the author of a recent letter were not the same ones that had decided to secede. They were Union-occupational legislatures dominated by Unionists that had little connection to Confederate states. Surely the author does not suggest that the Richmond legislature was approving United States Constitution amendments while still maintaining their Confederate independence!
Another writer cites a large number of blacks who aided the Confederate cause, some in combat. This too is stretching a point. Prof. Smith's estimate of 90,000 blacks who served the Confederacy in one way or another is just that, an estimate. Since the author who cites this number then states that there were 250,000 free blacks in the South, these numbers present a problem. Either there was an unusually high rate of volunteerism, 90,000 men out of 250,000 men, women and children, or many of these 90,000 blacks serving the Confederacy were slaves. If most of them were slaves, which most historians think is the case, then they are not exactly willing participants. Even if a couple of thousand free blacks did volunteer and did participate in armed conflicts, it is still a miniscule proportion of the roughly 1 million men who served the Confederacy. Most references to blacks in the Confederate army cite them as servants, cooks, teamsters, etc. Many of them were, and remained, slaves and unless someone can find testimony from them stating their willingness to do so, we must consider the possibility of them being forced labor.
As for Robert E. Lee being "an abolitionist," as Michelle Hamlin stated, the notion is ludicrous. The term abolitionist was a highly pejorative and emotionally charged word, and Lee would have been very insulted to have it applied to him. He did indeed free the slaves inherited from his father-in-law, as required by his father-in-law's will. It is not a true indicator of Lee's personal feelings, although we know he stated he disliked the institution.
This manumission does not make him an abolitionist because he never advocated freeing anyone else's slaves, and is unclear whether he would have freed these particular slaves if it were not required.
If Lee and the South were not fighting for slavery, why in the world did Lee's army hunt down hundreds of free blacks in Pennsylvania and drag them southward in chains? This is an established and accepted fact of the Gettysburg campaign, and taken with Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens' famous speech where he described slavery as the "cornerstone" of southern society, makes any logical person wonder how the South could not be fighting for slavery while fighting to preserve that society. If nothing else, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was designed to make slavery an issue of the war, not on humanitarian terms, but on political, military and economic terms. If the South was not fighting for slavery before January 1, 1863, at which time the proclamation went into effect, they certainly were doing so after that date.
Latter day denials of the facts will not change them. Slavery was part of the war, deeply intertwined in Southern economy and society, and the focal point of much of the debate that led to the war. While it is incorrect to attribute the entire cause of the war to slavery, it is equally incorrect to deny its influence.
And then they amended the Constitution -- ten times!
By the time of the Civil War, they'd amended 12 times.
And two of the amendments, the ones I just pointed you to, protected the Southerners' property rights, and none of them contained the language required to allow the Government to deprive people of their property without either due process or compensation.
Because you were too busy lying down with dogs?
And it did not prohibit them from leaving the Union.
No, it does not. So long as it is done with the consent of the people. All the people.
Present company included?
Yes, there was, in Article IV, Section 2:
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
This clause is an explicit protection of citizens' rights in property from the actions of the States.
Furthermore, since outlawing slavery in the Territories would have constituted a bar to citizens' rights, Congress would have had to amend the Constitution to make the Territories genuinely free of slavery, without violating the rights of citizens.
Congress had no legislative power to declare the First Amendment inoperative in the Territories, or to require citizens to discard their newspapers, books, and Bibles at the gate. Same is true of the Fourth and Fifth.
Congress was not depriving the slave-owner of his slave.
It certainly was, if it created a bar.
And there was no attempt made on the part of Congress to deprive them of their property. They could keep as many slaves as they wanted, just not in the territories. Nothing at all in the Constitution or any of the first 12 amendments to it prevents Congress from outlawing slavery in the territories.
I don't know, I can't see the room you're in.
Roger Taney decided different.
As he should have.
You can't strip people of their rights just because they walk across a political demarc.
Oh please. Now you're getting desperate. If Congress outlawed slavery in the territories, that did not overrule Article IV, Section 2. A runaway slave captured in the Nebraska territory, for example, should be returned to it's owner in the state it ran away from. But nothing in that clause says that Congress cannot outlaw slavery in a territory. The Constitution says the opposite.
Furthermore, since outlawing slavery in the Territories would have constituted a bar to citizens' rights, Congress would have had to amend the Constitution to make the Territories genuinely free of slavery, without violating the rights of citizens.
Say what?
Congress had no legislative power to declare the First Amendment inoperative in the Territories, or to require citizens to discard their newspapers, books, and Bibles at the gate. Same is true of the Fourth and Fifth.
They didn't declare the First, Fourth or Fifth Amendments void in the territories. They declared slavery illegal. Nothing in those amendment specifically protects slavery.
It certainly was, if it created a bar.
Ridiculous. Anyone was free to own a slave in any place it was legal. Nothing prevented Congress from declaring slavery illegal in the territories. Nothing at all.
So, you're saying that Congress did not have the right to outlaw slavery in the territories because Chief Justice Taney and a majority of the court said so?
And all the people that counted were the People of the State involved. That's how we do things around here. In our States -- because we are our States, John Marshall's lying about it in McCullogh vs. Maryland to the contrary notwithstanding.
Marshall had a Framer in the room, Luther Martin -- and Marshall had the gall to spew Hamiltonian buncombe about, well, yeah, elections are held in States and electoral votes cast by States -- but hey, that's just an administrative convenience, for the benefit of our Amalgamated Lumpenproletariat Uberpeople of the Amalgamated State of Marshalldom ...... what a lying, sorry sack. But that's Marshall for you -- "the laws of England are in my mouth!" He wasn't a Federalist, he was a Plantagenet.
We ratified by States, we elect by States, we amend by States, we represent by States. The People is the People of a State, and all the People are the People of the United States -- but States nevertheless, not State. This isn't "the United State of America" or "the Grand United Kingdom of America". Words mean something -- and Ronnie was right.
You don't get a second opinion from your neighbor before you sell your house, and the People don't need to get a second opinion on secession from the Union. They are always free to go -- or they aren't free at all, and we can just bag it.
Yes, it did. The Bill of Rights. You can't declare free speech illegal on one side of town or across a river, when you've ratified an amendment to the Constitution that says it is a right always and everywhere.
The Constitutional question is whether any such power was delegated to the Congress. All powers not delegated were reserved to the States or to the people.
Your argument speciously claims, as it must, that all powers obtain to the Federal government which are not specifically denied to it.
Congress didn't have the right to outlaw slavery, a protected property right, anywhere -- without amending the Constitution.
Taney followed the law, and the logical sequel of his opinion was that slavery was legal everywhere -- Lincoln could see that, too. You know he saw it. Everyone saw it.
Taney followed the logic of the law. Lincoln was right -- there could be no "house divided" on the subject of fundamental rights.
At the risk of poking too obvious a hole in your really dumb analogy, if you didn't need your neighbors opinion to buy the house in the first place then it stands to reason that you don't need it to sell. States, on the other hand, did need the consent of the other states to join the Union.
Exactly. He's grokking Hamilton and channeling Marshall.
Who were both channeling Hobbes.
It was, in Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2.
Not true. Connecticut didn't need Massachusetts's assent, to join the Union.
You keep going back to that Hitlerian "the Union created the States" stuff.
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