Chattel slavery was one of the spiritual whitewashed tombs (both North and South) that lurked in the scene. America would have done exceeding well to have abolished it from the start... but didn’t.
In this sense, chattel slavery was the 1 ton elephant in the living room. The South needed it in order even to have a hope of going it alone. The North allowed it for expediency. The bible urged masters to “give up threatening” which would have turned chattel slavery into a voluntary domestic servant employment affair, but somehow the “slave preachers” kept missing that part.
On the North side, it would have been possible to wait out the Confederacy to give in. It never had a viable plan, even with the slaves. A brutal war wasn’t necessary.
The South had cotton the North needed to make into cloth.
If sold to cotton-hungry Europe, they could get a better price; the North didn’t like that.
Slavery was wrong, but the North did to the South what King George did to the American colonies with the Navigation Acts.
Slavery was a factor, sure, but the notion is was ALL about slavery is wrong.
For largely economic reasons, slave states wanted an expansion of slavery to other states so as to increase the market value of a slave. The slave market in officially recognized slave states was already saturated - many children born into slavery were a "surplus" that couldn't be sold because those southern planters who wanted and could afford slaves already had them. For those surplus slaves to have any financial value, demand had to increase - hence the economic need for expansion of slavery. It had nothing to do with spreading slaves "as thinly as possible."
Aw, Jeez, not this sh.........
...At The Beginning.
There, now the title can be transformed into a true statement.
Bump for a good view of the “hilarity ensues” aspect of this thread.
Good luck everyone.
Here we go again with revisionist history writing slavery out of the background for the Civil War, and yet what do we get at the end of the Civil War - the end of slavery.
The end of slavery had an importance all to itself such that other considerations could be assigned lesser importance, no matter how anyone considered them in their own mind.
The north was industrial and industry provides greater return on capital than aqriculture, which is why the north had more capital. That was not “stolen” from the south, “deprived” from the south, it was a condition relative to the different primary economic drivers in each of them.
They invaded the South to stop independence.
It is a bit of a misdirection to frame the question as whether “the war” was about slavery.
SECESSION was about slavery. The pro-slavery radicals in the South had become convinced that slavery could not survive much longer in the Union because growth in the North was far outstripping growth in the South, which meant that the South would eventually be outvoted in Congress on the slavery question. The Union fought the war, at least initially, to preserve the Union. But all recognized that preservation of the Union meant the eventual end of slavery. Lincoln’s house divided speech was on target and most people knew it, even if many preferred not to acknowledge it in the hope of postponing the reckoning.
Part of the calculation for the slavery perpetualists was also the fact that important parts of the South were not strongly attached to the peculiar institution. The plantation aristocracy could not take its own base for granted. Slavery had withered and died in the North in the colonial and early federal periods. By the 1850’s, it was visibly declining in the upper border — so much so that only seven Southern states seceded prior to Fort Sumter, and four slave states fought for the Union. The slavocrats recognized that their time was running out. Secession was a last ditch gamble. Didn’t work out.
The biggest problem with the Civil War was that there was no plan in place afterwards concerning what to do with the freed slaves. Thousands of people without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out were left to their own accord, which caused chaos for decade upon decade, and we are still paying for that today.
Wrong. It was all about slavery. Slave capital was greater than all the railroads and textile mills in the north put together.
CSA Constitution had no fewer than THREE radical clasuses protecting slavery even if states (oh, remember “state’s rights”) voted to prohibit slavery. Nope. all about slavery and Wilson is not entitled to his own facts.
unreconstructed Southern books
The moneyed interests in the South stood to lose billions if slavery was abolished. These interests were the war hawks of the day. The common soldier didn’t own slaves and was fed the line of patriotism, defend your homeland and fought accordingly.
Much like the first Gulf War. The moneyed interests stood to lose billions in oil revenue. The common soldier was fed the line it’s patriotic to defend people from the tyranny of Saddam and do your patriotic duty.
Wars start for reasons that are completely inane to the lives of the soldiers who fight them.
Okay, this guy's an idiot. First off, the "revenue" line attributed to Lincoln comes from one source, a confederate politician, after the war, recounting a conversation he had five years earlier. So, "invariably" actually means "once, maybe, if we trust a former confederate politician's memory and agenda."
Second, the idea that most of the tariff was collected at southern ports has been debunked so many times that even the more-knowledgable Lost Causers don't bring it up. Diogenes is constantly posting the image showing that the vast bulk was collected in New York.
Third, the "most of it was spent in the north" is also BS, because you can look at the federal budget for the years leading up to the war and see where it was spent. Of the $85 million the government spent in 1859, half went to pay for the army and navy, and most of the army was in the west, and Texas in particular. and another $16 million was was spent on the postal service. You can find a detailed breakdown of federal spending for FY 1859 here: Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the State of the Finances for the Year Ending June 30, 1859
This is the history we learned at The Citadel.
Who could be a greater spokesman and authority for the reasons for secession than Jefferson Davis himself?
Read Davis’, resignation from the US Senate, speech:
https://jeffersondavis.rice.edu/archives/documents/jefferson-davis-farewell-address
Jefferson makes NO MENTION of economics, or tariffs, or anything but the issue of SLAVERY:
“When our Constitution was formed, the same idea was rendered more palpable, for there we find provision made for that very class of persons as property; they were not put upon the footing of equality with white men”
“Then, Senators, we recur to the compact which binds us together; we recur to the principles upon which our Government was founded; and when you deny them, and when you deny to us the right to withdraw from a Government which thus perverted threatens to be destructive of our rights, we but tread in the path of our fathers when we proclaim our independence, and take the hazard.”
I always consider it a mistake for Republicans to defend Democrat history. Let Democrats defend their history.
The GOP was born when Christians abandoned the Whig Party out of disgust with the Whig refusal to take sides on the slave issue. They formed a minority party with no chance of winning... and in a very few years slavery was gone. The Whig party evaporated and the slave institution along with it. We blame Democrats for the slave system, but clearly it was the Whig refusal to take sides that held it in place.