Posted on 08/30/2012 2:40:56 PM PDT by PeaRidge
On 6 November 1860, the six-year-old Republican Party elected its first president. During the tense crisis months that followed – the “secession winter” of 1860–61 – practically all observers believed that Lincoln and the Republicans would begin attacking slavery as soon as they took power.
Democrats in the North blamed the Republican Party for the entire sectional crisis. They accused Republicans of plotting to circumvent the Constitutional prohibition against direct federal attacks on slavery. Republicans would instead allegedly try to squeeze slavery to death indirectly, by abolishing it in the territories and in Washington DC, suppressing it in the high seas, and refusing federal enforcement of the Slave Laws. The first to succumb to the Republican program of “ultimate extinction,” Democrats charged, would be the border states where slavery was most vulnerable. For Northern Democrats, this is what caused the crisis; the Republicans were to blame for trying to get around the Constitution.
Southern secessionists said almost exactly the same thing. The Republicans supposedly intended to bypass the Constitution’s protections for slavery by surrounding the South with free states, free territories, and free waters. What Republicans called a “cordon of freedom,” secessionists denounced as an inflammatory circle of fire.
Continued...............
1854 elections, US House of Reps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_1854
Whig & Republicans gain 31 seats.
DEMS were down to 84.
Now look up ‘56 House election.
Check out the 35th US Congress which served from 1857 to 1859, you'll see that I was exactly correct -- Southern Democrats controlled both houses.
Now check out the 36th US Congress which served from 1859 to 1861, you'll see that I was exactly correct -- Southern Democrats still controlled the US Senate, until they seceded and walked out.
DEMS in 1853, 158 seats or 67%, opposition was 32% Whigs, split on slavery
DEMS in 1859, 82 seats or ~35%, opposition was 55% Republican, united on slavery
Looks like their power was slipping away.
And I have too much respect for your posting history to believe that you think we ever invaded the spanish mainland during the Second World War.
With respect to how many times we launched campaigns against the British in Canada during the War of 1812, so what? We invaded the Marianas and Marshals numerous times in 1943-44 because THAT'S WHERE THE ENEMY WAS. Were we supposed to march across the oceans to India, or Australia to fight the British ai 1813?
With respect to Thomas Jefferson's private letters, they expressed to no small degree his bitterness at how impotent he had been to resist British aggression during his administartion. They no more superceded the actual 1812 war aims than, say, do the writings of private citizens of the Confederacy negate the clearly stated aims of the Declarations of Succession of South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, etc.
Of course, but even in 1859 Republicans in the House of Representatives were not the majority, and skillful Democrat diplomacy could still form coalitions to block their most "radical" efforts.
Further, in 1859 Southern Democrats still dominated the Senate, the Supreme Court, the President's cabinet and their Dough-faced Northern Democrat President Buchanan himself.
So the Slave Power's power was still vastly in excess of their population.
Remember, in rough round numbers:
Obviously, for such a small minority to be so dominant for so long required huge political skills -- crafts of negotiation, compromise and deal making -- proficiencies which Southerners developed and exercised to a high art form.
These skills served Southern Democrats well, even when, from time to time, Federalists or Whigs temporarily rose to the majority.
In the end the Slave Power got what it wanted, especially including historically low tariffs, the Compromise of 1850, in which the Federal Government took direct responsibility for enforcing Fugitive Slave laws, and the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scot decision which, in effect, made slavery legal in all states.
Yes, rising Republican popularity presented a significant challenge, but this was well contained in the presidential election of 1856, and could be again in 1860, if Democrats played their cards right.
But in early 1860, after 70+ years of dominating the Republic's poker match, the Slave Power threw in its cards, kicked over the table and began shooting up the joint.
Why?
The answer is Fire Eaters, and that's enough for this post.
:-)
I don't understand why you'd work so hard to deny the obvious.
The US multiple invasion attempts, despite failure after failure, demonstrate the strength of our Founders' motivation to conquer Canada.
How can that be anything less than obvious?
Sure, you can say: it wasn't Canada they wanted, only to defeat the British army.
But do you not understand, without a British army there in 1812, there literally was no "Canada" -- it was all just empty territory with no government and very little population.
If the US had defeated the Brits in Canada in 1812 -- especially after our Founders had tried so hard during the Revolutionary War to conquer or negotiate ownership of Canada -- whatever can you imagine they would have done with Canada?
Seriously, what?
Castlebar: "do you honestly think acquisition of bases on North Africa and in Western Europe was a war aim indeceber 1941?"
Of course not, but Canada in 1812 was a vastly different situation.
And the point of mentioning US bases in North Africa and Europe -- since you brought up the subject -- was to demonstrate how victory in battle can produce numerous benefits, that is, if you consider the cost of constant military vigilance a "benefit".
And, by the way, the US did maintain bases in France for about 20 years after the war.
North Carolina permitted free men of African slavery to vote until 1835. Slavery in the southern states was indeed getting more harsh. Not being a slave was getting more harsh too.
Shame on you. Cowardly and false posts never become the poster.
One of the cruelest slave owners in New Orleans was black
Private corporations also kept slaves, and some corporations were owned by blacks, and bought slaves, often the women and family of the owners.
Many of the slaves were, like Fredrick Douglass, the offspring of their owners, and some owners had as their business model the sale of their children. It was indeed a peculiar institution.
It was interesting to see that the Articles of Confederation explicitly had provisions to admit Canada to our union, but that was not true of the Constitution.
The war of 1812 was supported by a coalition, a substantial part of which hoped to annex Canada. From a naval perspective, operations across the Atlantic without a base would have been very different, and there was some concern that so long as Britain had a forward base, independence was at risk.
It was a global institution as well, many Americans seem to have the impression this was the only country with slavery/ it was also not the last to have it. There were French or British possessions that had slavery right up to the end of the century.
Untrue. Slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire in 1834 and the French Empire in 1848.
The last two "European" territories to abolish slavery were Cuba in 1886 and Brazil in 1888.
You are quite correct that southerners seceded primarily because they were in the process of losing control of the federal government.
The ironic part, of course, is that their loss of control was precipitated primarily by their desperate attempts to tighten it. The Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott decision were attempts to put slavery beyond political discussion. They led directly to the formation of a specifically anti-slavery party, which had not existed before. Up to this point, both parties had included both pro=slavery and anti-slavery groups. For instance, David Wilmost of the Wilmot proviso, was a Democrat. He eventually became a Republican.
In the latter case, southern justices suddenly discovered in the mid-1850s that there was a constitutional right to take slaves anywhere in the country, and reside indefinitely without it having any effect on the slave’s status. This was despite nobody having suspected any such right in the previous 75 years of the Constitution.
This was remarkably similar to pro-abortion justices suddenly discovering in the 1960s that the Constitution held a previously unsuspected right to abortion on demand.
In both cases the Court was attempting to put a political issue out of the realm of politics. Both backfired, making the issue mopre of a political hot button than it had been previously. With minor exceptions, Roe hasn’t led to shooting yet.
i’m sorry I thought you could take a little joke.
This is why I say the Dred Scott decision, in effect made slavery legal in every state, regardless that's state's laws on the subject.
It's a key point that nobody -- nobody -- understands.
In the late 1850s, the Slave Power was on the march, it was victorious, within a hair's breadth, within one more Supreme Court decision of having slavery declared constitutionally legal in every state.
Already in 1857 the Supreme Court said a slave-owner could take his slaves anywhere and maintain ownership.
So what was to prevent a slave-owner who brought slaves to, let's say, New York from selling his slaves to someone else while there?
And that is what had Northerners so outraged and enraged by the time of 1860s election.
What the Slave Power needed to do then was play it cool, give emotions time to settle down, and then work quietly to nail down their successes with further court decisions.
But unfortunately -- or fortunately depending on your point of view -- instead they took a path guaranteed to split the Union and start a Civil War.
The reason is the work of Southern Fire Eaters.
House Divided Speech
This point is made, not to be pressed immediately but, if acquiesced in for awhile, and apparently endorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred Scott’s master might lawfully do with Dred Scott in the free state of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one, or 1,000 slaves, in Illinois or in any other free state.
We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen — Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance — and when we see these timbers joined together and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, not omitting even scaffolding, or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in — in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.
I was trying to figure out which one. It was France.
1863: In the United States, Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation which declared slaves in Confederate-controlled areas to be freed. Most slaves in “border states” are freed by state action; separate law freed the slaves in Washington, D.C.
1865: December: U.S. abolishes slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution; about 40,000 remaining slaves are affected.[45]
1866: Slavery abolished in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).[46]
1869: Portugal abolishes slavery in the African colonies
1871: Brazil Rio Branco Law declares free the sons and daughters born to slave mothers after 28 September 1871.[47]
1873: Slavery abolished in Puerto Rico
1873: Treaty between Britain and Zanzibar and Madagascar to suppress slave trade [33]
1874: Britain abolishes slavery in the Gold Coast (now Ghana), following its annexation in 1874.[48]
1882: Ottoman firman abolishes all forms of slavery, white or black.[49]
1885: Brazil passes Sexagenarian Law freeing all slaves over the age of 60.
1886: Slavery abolished in Cuba[17]
1888: Brazil passes Golden Law, abolishing slavery without indemnities to slaveowners or aid to newly freed slaves.[50]
1890: Brussels Conference Act – a collection of anti-slavery measures to put an end to the slave trade on land and sea especially in the Congo Basin, the Ottoman Empire and the East African coast
1894: Korea officially abolishes slavery, but it survives in practice until 1930.[51]
——> 1896: France abolishes slavery in Madagascar
1897: Zanzibar abolishes slavery[52] following its becoming a British protectorate
1902: Ethiopian Empire abolishes slavery (though it was not legally and officially abolished by Emperor Haile Selassie in 1942)
1906: China formally abolishes slavery effective 31 January 1910, when all adult slaves were converted into hired labourers and the young were freed upon reaching age 25.[14]
1912: Siam (Thailand), formally abolishes all slavery. The act of selling a person into slavery was abolished in 1897 but slavery itself was not outlawed at that time.[53]
1921: Nepal abolishes slavery[54][55]
1922: Morocco abolishes slavery [56]
1923: Afghanistan abolishes slavery[57]
1924: Iraq abolishes slavery
1924: League of Nations Temporary Slavery Commission
1926, 25 September: Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slaverybound all signatories to end slavery.
1928: Iran abolishes slavery[58]
1928: Domestic slavery practised by local African elites abolished in Sierra Leone[59] Though established as a place for freed slaves, a study found practices of domestic slavery still widespread in rural areas in the 1970s.
1935: Italian General Emilio De Bono proclaims slavery to be abolished in the Ethiopian Empire[60]
1936: Britain abolishes slavery in Northern Nigeria[61]
1945: In the subsequent defeat of Nazi Germany and Japan, workcamps for slave labor (primarily Jewish encampments in Nazi Germany and colonists in Japanese-dominated lands) were gradually closed by the liberators.
1946: Fritz Sauckel, procurer of slave labor for Nazi Germany, convicted at the Nuremberg trials and executed as war criminal.
1948: UN Article 4 of the Declaration of Human Rights bans slavery globally[62]
1952: Qatar abolishes slavery
1959: Slavery in Tibet is abolished by China after the Dalai Lama flees.
1960: Niger abolishes slavery (though it was not made illegal until 2003)[63]
1962: Saudi Arabia abolishes slavery
1962: Yemen abolishes slavery
1963: United Arab Emirates abolishes slavery
1970: Oman abolishes slavery
1981: Mauritania abolishes slavery
BTW- What the heck is Muscat?
True enough. However, Madagascar was not part of the French Empire till 1896, so you can't really blame slavery there on the French before then. :)
Muscat is the capital of Oman. In old books you'll often see "Muscat and Oman" referred to.
“Muscat Love”... here kitty...
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