Posted on 01/23/2003 6:06:25 PM PST by one2many
Others seem to think it was about slavery, too
As the last and crowning act of insult and outrage upon the people of the South, the citizens of the Northern States, by overwhelming majorities, on the 6th day of November last, elected Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, President and Vice President of the United States. Whilst it may be admitted that the mere election of any man to the Presidency, is not, per se, a sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union; yet, when the issues upon, and circumstances under which he was elected, are properly appreciated and understood, the question arises whether a due regard to the interest, honor, and safety of their citizens, in view of this and all the other antecedent wrongs and outrages, do not render it the imperative duty of the Southern States to resume the powers they have delegated to the Federal Government, and interpose their sovereignty for the protection of their citizens.
What, then are the circumstances under which, and the issues upon which he was elected? His own declarations, and the current history of the times, but too plainly indicate he was elected by a Northern sectional vote, against the most solemn warnings and protestations of the whole South. He stands forth as the representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions, and her interests; as the representative of that party which overrides all Constitutional barriers, ignores the obligations of official oaths, and acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down the sovereignty and equality of the States, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma, the Equality of the Races, white and black." -- Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama to the State of Kentucky, to Gov. Magoffin of Kentucky
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material interest of the world. --Mississppi Declaration of the Causes of Secession
SIR: In obedience to your instructions I repaired to the seat of government of the State of Louisiana to confer with the Governor of that State and with the legislative department on the grave and important state of our political relations with the Federal Government, and the duty of the slave-holding States in the matter of their rights and honor, so menacingly involved in matters connected with the institution of African slavery. --Report from John Winston, Alabama's Secession Commissioner to Louisiana
This was the ground taken, gentlemen, not only by Mississippi, but by other slaveholding States, in view of the then threatened purpose, of a party founded upon the idea of unrelenting and eternal hostility to the institution of slavery, to take possession of the power of the Government and use it to our destruction. It cannot, therefore, be pretended that the Northern people did not have ample warning of the disastrous and fatal consequences that would follow the success of that party in the election, and impartial history will emblazon it to future generations, that it was their folly, their recklessness and their ambition, not ours, which shattered into pieces this great confederated Government, and destroyed this great temple of constitutional liberty which their ancestors and ours erected, in the hope that their descendants might together worship beneath its roof as long as time should last. -- Speech of Fulton Anderson to the Virginia Convention
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. -- Texas Declaration of the causes of secession
What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. -- Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Convention
Gentlemen, I see before me men who have observed all the records of human life, and many, perhaps, who have been chief actors in many of its gravest scenes, and I ask such men if in all their lore of human society they can offer an example like this? South Carolina has 300,000 whites, and 400,000 slaves. These 300,000 whites depend for their whole system of civilization on these 400,000 slaves. Twenty millions of people, with one of the strongest Governments on the face of the earth, decree the extermination of these 400,000 slaves, and then ask, is honor, is interest, is liberty, is right, is justice, is life, worth the struggle?
Gentlemen, I have thus very rapidly endeavored to group before you the causes which have produced the action of the people of South Carolina. -- Speech of John Preston to the Virginia Convention
This new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free negroes, without slavery, or, slavery under our old constitutional bond of union, without Lincoln Black Republicans, or free negroes either, to molest us.
If we take the former, then submission to negro equality is our fate. if the latter, then secession is inevitable --- -- Address of William L. Harris of Mississippi
But I trust I may not be intrusive if I refer for a moment to the circumstances which prompted South Carolina in the act of her own immediate secession, in which some have charged a want of courtesy and respect for her Southern sister States. She had not been disturbed by discord or conflict in the recent canvass for president or vice-president of the United States. She had waited for the result in the calm apprehension that the Black Republican party would succeed. She had, within a year, invited her sister Southern States to a conference with her on our mutual impending danger. Her legislature was called in extra session to cast her vote for president and vice-president, through electors, of the United States and before they adjourned the telegraphic wires conveyed the intelligence that Lincoln was elected by a sectional vote, whose platform was that of the Black Republican party and whose policy was to be the abolition of slavery upon this continent and the elevation of our own slaves to equality with ourselves and our children, and coupled with all this was the act that, from our friends in our sister Southern States, we were urged in the most earnest terms to secede at once, and prepared as we were, with not a dissenting voice in the State, South Carolina struck the blow and we are now satisfied that none have struck too soon, for when we are now threatened with the sword and the bayonet by a Democratic administration for the exercise of this high and inalienable right, what might we meet under the dominion of such a party and such a president as Lincoln and his minions. -- Speech of John McQueen, the Secession Commissioner from South Carolina to Texas
History affords no example of a people who changed their government for more just or substantial reasons. Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity. -- Address of George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention
Very true. But every southern state that seceded made it abundantly clear that they were doing it to protect slavery.
BTW. DiLorenzo is a twisted propagandist.
It was political manuevering to frame the secession crisis in a way The Lincoln saw as favorable to his own cause.
Lincoln's letter to Greeley lays out what his cause was pretty plainly.
Walt
Get back on the porch.
Walt
Not in the least. That "etc." is The Lincoln's rhetorical justification for doing whatever it takes to win - a fact that actually bolster's DiLorenzo's thesis of Abe Lincoln as a skilled political opportunist.
Yeah. Doing what it takes to win.
The act dates from 1792. It was modified in 1795 to take out the provision that a federal judge had to sign off on there being insurrection or rebellion.
The act requires that U.S. law operate in all the states.
It is therefore a bar to unilateral state secession.
You don't know the history.
Walt
Uh, Walt. I think you got the wrong person in that response. Just letting you know.
Yeah. Doing what it takes to win.
It's always, "mean ol' Lincoln kicked our butts", isn't it?
The rebels were like the Japanese in 1941-45. Any chance they had to win was proportional to U.S. resolve to win. Both were utterly crushed. In the case of the rebels, they couldn't even comprehend what they were getting into.
Walt
...but for the record, that assertion is a logical non-sequitur. It does not necessarily follow from a law requiring operation in all states that secession is barred. If one holds that a seceded state is no longer a state, then U.S. law may continue to operate in all states in absence of its operation in that seceded state.
Don't try and change the subject, Walt. You asserted that the Greeley letter outlines The Lincoln's position "pretty plainly." I responded by noting that the position he outlines in that letter to Greeley is that he will do what it takes to win. That position is consistent with DiLorenzo's thesis, which characterized The Lincoln as a skilled political opportunist.
Not according to David Donald.
"But there were limits to what Lincoln would do to secure a second term.
He did not even consider canceling or postponing the election. Even had that been constitutionally possible, "the election was a necessity." "We can not have free government without elections," he explained; "and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us." He did not postpone the September draft call, even though Republican politicians from all across the North entreated him to do so. Because Indiana failed to permit its soldiers to vote in the field, he was entirely willing to furlough Sherman's regiments so that they could go home and vote in the October state elections -but he made a point of telling Sherman, "They need not remain for the Presidential election, but may return to you at once."
Though it was clear that the election was going to be a very close one, Lincoln did not try to increase the Republican electoral vote by rushing the admission of new states like Colorado and Nebraska, both of which would surely have voted for his reelection. On October 31, in accordance with an act of Congress, he did proclaim Nevada a state, but he showed little interest in the legislation admitting the new state. Despite the suspicion of both Democrats and Radicals, he made no effort to force the readmission of Louisiana, Tennessee, and other Southern states, partially reconstructed but still under military control, so that they could cast their electoral votes for him. He reminded a delegation from Tennessee that it was the Congress, not the Chief Executive, that had the power to decide whether a state's electoral votes were to be counted and announced firmly, “Except it be to give protection against violence, I decline to interfere in any way with the presidential election.”
"Lincoln", pp. 539-40 by David H. Donald
Lincoln was a skilled politician but he did hold to certain principles.
Walt
Mr. Guthrie proposed the following:
"The Union of the States under the Constitution is indissoluble, and no State can secede from the Union, or nullify an act of Congress, or absolve its citizens from their paramount obligation of obedience to the Constitution and laws of the United States."Mr. Field offered:
"The Union of the States, under the Constitution, is indissoluble."And this:
"No State shall withdraw from the Union without the consent of all the States, given in a Convention of the States, convened in pursuance of an act passed by two-thirds of each House of Congress."Mr. Goodrich proposed:
"And no State can secede from the Union, or nullify an act of Congress, or absolve its citizens from their paramount obligations of obedience to the Constitution and laws of the United States."Lucius E. Chittenden, Report of the debates and proceedings in the secret session of the conference convention, for proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States, held at Washington, D.C., in February, A.D. 1861, New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1864, pp. 396-398.
There is much more in the book, it's several hundred pages.
"The Union of the States, under the Constitution, is indissoluble."
Which is pretty much what James Madison said in 1787.
Walt
You are full of horse hockey. You are implying that amendment said that states couldn't end slavery in their borders if they wanted, and that is not true! With a 3/4 majority necessary for an amendment to the US Constitution, no reasonable person in 1860 ever expected slavery to be ended on a national level via amendment. It was a mathematical impossibility then and even with 50 states today, no constitutional amendment can pass if 15 states oppose it. But reasonable people then could expect it to end in the south on a state-by-state basis just as it had in the North. All Lincoln and the Republicans sought was to isolate slavery in the 15 states that then had it. Isolated, it would have become far less profitable and likely become a major economic drain as slave populations expanded faster than white population and slave values dropped as supply outstripped demand. With expansion, the selling of human flesh could have remained profitable indefinitely which is way the south was willing to go to war over expansion.
Quote the book on how tariffs figured in to all of this.
Walt
Not in the least and I defy you to show otherwise. The amendment stated that slavery could not be ended the way it was ended - by amendment.
With a 3/4 majority necessary for an amendment to the US Constitution, no reasonable person in 1860 ever expected slavery to be ended on a national level via amendment.
No, but it was certainly a future possibility as slavery declined economically and more states abandoned it. Eventually there would have been enough states to abolish it, but The Lincoln's amendment would have prohibited that.
...but for the record, that assertion is a logical non-sequitur. It does not necessarily follow from a law requiring operation in all states that secession is barred. If one holds that a seceded state is no longer a state, then U.S. law may continue to operate in all states in absence of its operation in that seceded state.
I'm reminded of the scene in "1984" where Richard Burton's character asks John Heard's character if he has received his latest version of Newspeak.
Walt
As you should be. You've been practicing a tortured form of politically motivated linguistic gymnastics on this thread since you arrived here.
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