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...............
slavery was abolished in the Western Hemisphere around the same time (give or take) as the Civil WAr.
I often wonder how long it would have survived if the South had been allowed to leave peacefully.
“I’m a southern, but I despise slavery.”
BUT?! This southern boy wants to know what the word “but” means in that sentence. I’m giving you a chance to rephrase FRiend on the assumption you just chose your words poorly.
“Slavery didn’t become the war’s focus for Northerners until later...”
The Abolitionist Movement, Bloody Kansas, John Brown, The Compromise of 1860, The Missouri Compromise, the Underground Railroad, the 3/5 Compromise, the first Republican Platform of “Free Soil and Abolition”
I tend to think people knew what the war’s focus was.
Remember, when people speak of state’s rights in this context, they’re speaking about the states right to keep and sell human beings, among other things. If we believe in Natural Law, then there are no state’s rights in the context of slavery, or the “Southern way of life.”
funny you mention that as Lincoln said the same about the “negro”
He himself said that the “negro” was not equal to the white man .
I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race
My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land.” After acknowledging that this plan’s “sudden execution is impossible,” he asked whether freed blacks should be made “politically and socially our equals?” “My own feelings will not admit of this,” he said, “and [even] if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not ... We can not, then, make them equals.”
asked myself that a few times and I think within the next 30 years.
Attitudes were changing and lets not forget tat most in the south were not slave owners ,which some thing some forget like the elft forgets that there were black slave wowners
1858: "We profess to have no taste for running and catching , at least I profess no taste for that job at all. Why then do Iyield support to a fugitive slave law? Because I do not understand that the Constitution, which guarantees that right, can be supported without it.” (Lincoln, 1953, v3, p317, see also p91 and p94))
1859: How long, in the government of a God, great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagogism as this." (Lincoln, 1953, v3, p399)
1860: “(Douglas’s comment) ‘In the struggle between the white man and the negro,’ assumes that there is a struggle, in which either the white man must enslave the negro or the negro must enslave the white.There is no such struggle! This good earth is plenty broad enough for white man and negro both, and there is no need of either pushing the other off.” (Lincoln, 1953, v4, p20)
1862: (To an audience of free Blacks.) “I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence…I need not recount to you the effects upon white men, growing out of the institution of Slavery. I believe in its general evil effects on the white race.” (Lincoln, 1953, v5, p37-3)
1862:"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... I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free." (Appelman, p29)
How 'bout we see what Lincoln had to say on the matter!!!
Well said. I’m originally from the Midwest but did all of my growing up in the South (in Calirado now). Excellent people in the South (most with better manners), and northerners aren’t any smarter for sure. [See Oly, Sven, all...little ethnic humor from the past there. See “Fargo,” or better yet, “Stealing Harvard.”]
great film wasn;t it.
Remember the reb and the yank met for coffee and baccy at the river ?
I thought that was a very powerful moment in the film.
I disagree. The north went to war to save the union and ended up freeing the slaves.
The south went to war to protect the Particular Institution and ended up losing everything.
If you have problems with what I said, mash that abuse button under my post and get me zotted.
Welcome to Free Republic.
/johnny
from England, lived up north and down south and love it down here, I really do love it.
Not got a dog in the race but what I heard up north about the war and down here about the war are very different.
I used ot hear all the time southerners are stupid, dumb hicks and still fighting the war.
I moved down here and found that it was all B/S and if anyone is fighting the war it was those up there who still keep trying to stop the rebel flag flying.
The people on the whole are so friendly and polite, all the kids here say yes sir and no mam etc.
Do you miss the midwest if you do not mind me asking?
thought it was clear what yousaid
Just surprised the usual I hate the south trolls are not here yet, they must be having dinner
EDIT.
Yep there is one [sigh] who has just found the thread
People knew that the political conflict was about slavery -- or rather about the expansion of slavery.
But when the war began, Northerners weren't fighting to free the slaves, but to preserve the union.
They could put up with slavery in the South, at least for the first two years of the war. Some slaveowners even supported the union and fought in the army.
A lot of the conflict has to do with the definition of words like "cause" or "reason." There are surface causes -- the reasons that people give for specific actions -- and there are deeper causes beneath the surface, which become much more apparent later on.
You left out “The War for Southern Independence”. ;-P
Well, for more than half the people living on earth, it's already Friday.
Very true about most folks in the south not being slave owners. My first American ancestor (Abraham), who landed in the Northeast from Jersey during the 1600s, had a slave but in the much older, much more moral context (as with all ancient employment of commoners). But he had to make a trip back to Europe, while his slave/employee watched his lands in America (long time). Upon Abraham’s return, he gave the man a large property (very well managed and profitable in his absence) and freed him from the contract. The “slave” became rich and free by the work of his mind, his hands, his own goodness and Abraham’s honesty. I reckon the seven years had past.
To bust another old myth, Abraham’s daughter, Sarah (yep—Sarah, with first two sons Isaac and Jacob), also owned a large piece of land and filed the record for her ownership of that.
later
Then let’s go at it. You are no southerner. You may have been born here, but if you think southerners support slavery, you’re blind, deaf, and weren’t born with the IQ of a creek stone. If this was a bar, you’d already be eating your teeth.
I’ve lived here my whole life (with the exception of a couple military tours abroad) and have never met one ONE individual, man or woman who supports slavery. I have never met another individual, southerner or Yank who thinks southerners support slavery. There is no popular meme to that effect except, apparently, in your fevered mind and the delirious rantings of a VERY few unhinged leftists who, by the way, also think the Earth is flat.
Welcome to reality.
wow your family goes back that far.How did you look up your ancestors?
Not actually true.
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