Confederate plaque in Texas Capitol to come down after vote

You’d think, right?
But in fact, that’s not what Confederates said at the time, which means you’ve let your sympathies and overactive imagination overrule basic historical facts.****

BS. That IS what many were saying at the time. Its just too inconvenient for you PC Revisionists to admit it. The power of industrialization was evident to just about everybody in the West...indeed in the whole world...by the mid 19th century.

Rhett’s and other similar complaints (i.e., Calhoun’s) are only possibly valid if by “the North” they meant every state North of South Carolina.

Otherwise, the facts show that Federal spending was pretty well distributed whenever it didn’t outright favor the South.****

Simply false as numerous sources I’ve posted already amply show.

But those “others” were not political leaders or newspaper editorialists, they were industrialists themselves and most likely Unionists.****

False. On both counts false. Thought leaders in the South well understood the power of industrialization. Look no further than the rapidly industrialization of the Upper South that was taking place at the time.

But the cause for slavery’s decline in Border States was not “industrialization”, but rather precisely the prosperity and huge demand for slaves in Deep South cotton states.
Cotton almost literally sucked slaves out of Border States where slavery was less profitable and into cotton states where it was hugely profitable.****

It was a combination of the two. Industrialization had steadily killed off slavery everywhere else in the Western world though including the Northern states in the first half of the 19th century. So it was not just the profitability of cotton production in the Deep South that was killing off slavery in the Upper South.

At the same time many Northern immigrants moved into states like Maryland and Missouri, thus tilting the pro-slavery electorate more & more towards abolition.

That’s why those states refused to join the Confederacy, even in the face of declared war on the United States.*****

The border states generally tried to stay out of it because they feared internal strife among their own people. Missouri can well be argued to have seceded. Kentucky less so. Maryland was occupied before they had a chance to decide.

True enough and an active debate at the time — whether Northern factory workers or Southern slaves were worse treated?

A case could be made for either, but the key fact remained that Northern workers always could, and often did, pick up and move on to better lives elsewhere, out West for example.****

Some certainly did. This was a big motivation for the Homestead Act. It was a means for factory owners to get cheap labor from Europe since owning land in Europe for those who were not rich was the impossible dream. So they could get people to come and work and live in really terrible conditions for a period of time until they could scrape together a little money and set out for the frontier to acquire their own plot of land.

Slavery was awful. The lot of industrial workers was awful (particularly those in company towns who were paid in scrip or those killed and mangled in horribly unsafe factories or those who died in horrible tenement housing with no sanitation). It can well be argued that the lot of industrial workers was worse. They died at a much higher rate than slaves did just as indentured servants before them died at a much higher rate than slaves did. If you don’t own it, you are much less likely to take care of it - that applies to human property just as with other forms of property.

But it was totally bogus because nothing, noooooothing in 1860 remotely resembled conditions in 1776.
What those alleged “abuses” really amounted to was Democrats being voted out of power in 1860. Just as today, loss of power drove Democrats berserk.***

That’s certainly debatable. Most Southerners felt it was as bad. Yes they had representation unlike in 1775. On the other hand they were in the minority and the taxes laid on them were vastly higher than the taxes that were being laid on the colonies by Parliament.

“Consent of the governed” means constitutional elections, which were held in 1860 just as they had been in every election year for the past 72 years.
No Founder ever proposed or supported unilateral unapproved declaration of secession at pleasure, but that is just what Fire Eaters did in 1860-1.*****

Sure they did.

In his book Life of Webster Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge writes, “It is safe to say that there was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton to Clinton and Mason, who did not regard the new system as an experiment from which each and every State had a right to peaceably withdraw.”

To coerce the states is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised. Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself, a government that can only exist by the sword?” Alexander Hamilton

“The future inhabitants of [both] the Atlantic and Mississippi states will be our sons. We think we see their happiness in their union, and we wish it. Events may prove otherwise; and if they see their interest in separating why should we take sides? God bless them both, and keep them in union if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better.” – Thomas Jefferson

“If any State in the Union will declare that it prefers separation” over “union,” “I have no hesitation in saying, ‘let us separate.’” Thomas Jefferson

And in anticipation of the next attempt to dodge....no neither Jefferson nor any other Founder prior to ratification of the Constitution said states could only secede with the permission of others or if some arbitrary standard of abuses against them had been reached etc etc. They would hardly have said that considering they had just unilaterally seceded from the British Empire 8-9 years earlier.

In fact, of the four living former Presidents — Van Buren, Tyler, Fillmore & Pierce, only Virginian Tyler thought there was an unrestricted “right of secession”.
Neither Democrat President Buchanan nor Republican Lincoln believed Fire Eaters had legitimate cause to secede, but both believed the Union could not stop them militarily, until, unless, except when... secessionists started war and that would make it a rebellion which the Union could constitutionally defeat.

Most presidents in fact DID think states had the right to secede.

“...the act of the people, as forming so many independent States, not as forming one aggregate nation, is obvious from this single consideration, that it is to result neither from the decision of a majority of the people of the Union, nor from that of a majority of the States.... Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own VOLUNTARY act” (Federalist 39).’ James Madison

‘It is indeed true that the term “states” ... means the people composing those political societies, in their highest sovereign capacity.... it follows of necessity that there can be no tribunal, above their authority, to decide, in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated; and consequently, that, as the parties to it, they must themselves decide, in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition Report on the Virginia Resolutions written by James Madison

[the Constitution would be ratified by the people]”not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct independent States to which they respectively belong..”[not by the whole people] James Madison, the Federalist Papers #39

“If they had foreseen it, the probabilities are they would have sanctioned the right of a State or States to withdraw rather than that there should be war between brothers.” (The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, Old Saybrook, Connecticut: Konecky & Konecky, 1992, reprint, p. 131)

“If there had been a desire on the part of any single State to withdraw from the compact at any time while the number of States was limited to the original thirteen, I do not suppose there would have been any to contest the right, no matter how much the determination might have been regretted.” (The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, p. 130)

President John Tyler likewise believed a state had the right to leave the Union. So did President John Quincy Adams who tried to organize the New England states to secede in the 1820’s.

The Northern Federalists’ Hartford Convention declared in 1814 that a state had the right to secede in cases of “absolute necessity” (Alan Brinkley, Richard Current, Frank Freidel, and T. Harry Williams, American History: A Survey, Eighth Edition, New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1991, p. 230).

On March 2, 1861 a constitutional amendment was proposed that would have outlawed secession (See H. Newcomb Morse, “The Foundations and Meaning of Secession,” Stetson Law Review, vol. 15, 1986, pp. 419—36). This is very telling, for it proves that Congress believed that secession was in fact constitutional under the Tenth Amendment. It would not have proposed an amendment outlawing secession if the Constitution already prohibited it.

Sorry, FRiend, but facts are facts, regardless of whether you like them.
Even the young, naïve Congressman Lincoln in 1848 added a restrainer, “having the power”, implying he did not expect every declaration of independence to go peacefully.

LOL! Really weak attempt. Lincoln endorsed the tradition American view that government derived its legitimacy from the consent of the governed and that if any group of people (especially a sovereign state) no longer consented, it had the right to throw off the rule of the central government and become independent. He didn’t say “if they manage to win a bloody war to do it”. It would hardly be a right or a “principle to liberate the world” then. It would simply be a fact on the ground.

But in his March 1861 Inaugural President Lincoln did promise to remain peaceful with secessionists, saying they could only have a war if they themselves started it.****

Then he set about doing exactly that - ie starting it. He did so without congressional authorization. What Southerners called a declaration of war was Lincoln proclaiming he would collect taxes from them BY FORCE. You can’t tax somebody you do not rule over.

FLT-bird: "They seized military and other governmental installations on their own sovereign territory.
As I outlined to him [OIFVeteran], this was no different from what the colonists did when they seceded from the British Empire in 1775...a year before the Declaration of Independence in 1776."

Well... first there was no official "secession" in 1775.
Second, conditions in 1776 and 1860 were in no way analogous, for a long list of reasons -- see the Declaration of Independence for one list.
Especially important: there were no serious actions against the Brits until after Brits revoked Massachusetts' 1691 Charter of self government, May 24, 1774.
Even then, incidents remained very minor until British troops marched to seize American weapons at the militia armory in Concord.
That was a clear act of war, followed soon after by the King's formal Proclamation of Rebellion and Americans responded accordingly.

FLT-bird on "aggressive" vs. "defensive" war: " Its a truism in war which is very inconvenient for your argument."

Hardly, since the real truth is every good offense includes elements of defense and every good defense includes offensive actions.
So whether a war is "offensive" or "defensive" can depend on your start & stop points.
For example, Axis powers fought a defensive war from 1943 onward, just as Confederates fought mostly defensively from 1862 onward.
But in both cases, if you look at the war's beginning, there was nothing "defensive" about it.

FLT-bird: "Straw man argument.
I never said the Brits did not try to put down the colonial secessionists.
They did."

In this case our "straw man" would be DiogenesLamp who's often argued that the civilized Brits refused to spend as much of their blood & treasure defeating Americans as the barbaric Union did to defeat Confederates.
In fact, relatively speaking, Brits spent just as much but, thankfully for us, they had to spread their war over a vastly larger territory than just the circa million square miles of the US Civil War.
Spread too thin, fighting too many opponents, Brits lost.

FLT-bird: "OOOOOOK. I never disputed any of that."

Sorry... it's an important point to DiogenesLamp.

FLT-bird: "My point is that once a war starts, those who are fighting a defensive war...ie not seeking territorial aggrandizement...may well adopt aggressive tactics and strategies.
Its the nature of war.
Them adopting aggressive tactics and strategies does not mean they were the aggressors."

Sure, but it's pure sophistry to claim Confederates didn't seek "territorial aggrandizement" and therefore weren't aggressors -- they certainly did, from Day One.
Consider this: there was no time after December 20, 1860 when Confederates did not seek to expand their territory, by votes if possible but by any other method if necessary.
You claim Confederates behaved themselves lawfully before declaring war on May 6, 1861, but I've cited numerous times & places where that was just not the case.
The truth is they were as aggressive as they could be and laid claim to as much territory as they thought they could hold.

FLT-bird: "No they didn’t.
They exercised their sovereign rights to seize and control installations on their own territory."

Well, for starters, they didn't wait for states to declare secession before seizing whatever Federal properties they could.
Second, their claims to sovereignty over Federal properties amounted to nothing more than "might makes right".
Third, no serious effort was ever made for peaceful transition with the government body both the US Constitution and Confederate Constitution (identical: Article 4, section 3, item 2 in both) makes responsible for such properties: Congress.

Fourth, weeks before declaring war on May 6, 1861 Jefferson Davis was sending heavy military ordnance to support Confederates fighting in Union Missouri.
That alone should tell you Confederates were fighting a war of aggression even before formally declaring it.

FLT-bird: "Jefferson Davis did what anybody else would have in his place."

Only if they knew, as Davis did, that starting war at Fort Sumter would flip Virginia and maybe the entire Upper South from Union to Confederate thus doubling his white population and war-making economy.
In that sense, it was a No Brainer.

In hindsight though, it appears that long-term success was more likely to follow a more, ah, patient, even conciliatory path.

FLT-bird: "If you’re going to use the 'slaves didn’t consent' argument then the founding of the US was just as illegitimate.
The slaves didn’t consent then either.
Neither did women.
Yet somehow you want to apply this standard only to the CSA and not to the USA."

In fact, African Americans did consent, it this sense: by at least ten to one, more blacks served George Washington's Continental Army than answered Lord Dunmore's or similar British proclamations.
Continental Army blacks served in both integrated units and separate Black companies (1st Rhode Island), plus in numerous service jobs.
In exchange they were promised freedom and their owners, in Rhode Island at least, compensated.

Nothing remotely similar happened in the Confederacy.

FLT-bird: "The Southern states were content to go their own way in peace.
It is Lincoln who wanted a war."

Complete nonsense, as amply reported here.

FLT-bird: "No not for 4 million blacks.
That was never threatened within the US prior to 1861.
Fighting to prevent their own subjugation and enslavement by a tyrannical federal government? True."

"Never threatened"??
That's not what numerous "Reasons for Secession" documents said, indeed, every such document written before Fort Sumter emphasized slavery.

Further, once war started at Fort Sumter, within a few months slavery again became important, in the form of "Contraband of War", and Contraband lead to various acts of Congress, the Emancipation Proclamation and 13th Amendment.
All of those made absolutely clear to every Confederate that defeat in war meant the destruction of their "peculiar institution."

So whichever way you look at it, Civil War was "all about slavery" for both 4 million African Americans and 5-1/2 million white Confederates.

"Clear, obvious, irrefutable!"

DiogenesLamp: "They didn't see the threat in it, and in so many years, that legislation utterly destroyed the slave trade."

I suspect that sentence is a typographical error, or, just as likely, Freudian slip.

Perhaps you'd like to correct it?

Well... first there was no official “secession” in 1775.
Second, conditions in 1776 and 1860 were in no way analogous, for a long list of reasons — see the Declaration of Independence for one list.****

First....yeah. Exactly my point. Second, they are quite analogous. A minority being taxed without limit or control by a tyrannical majority. That was the essence of both situations.

Hardly, since the real truth is every good offense includes elements of defense and every good defense includes offensive actions.
So whether a war is “offensive” or “defensive” can depend on your start & stop points.
For example, Axis powers fought a defensive war from 1943 onward, just as Confederates fought mostly defensively from 1862 onward.
But in both cases, if you look at the war’s beginning, there was nothing “defensive” about it.*****

You have it exactly backwards. The Axis powers were seeking territorial aggrandizement. They were seeking to impose their rule on others who did not consent. In the case of 1861, The Confederates were not seeking territorial aggrandizement and it was the federal government that was seeking to impose its rule on others who did not consent.

Sure, but it’s pure sophistry to claim Confederates didn’t seek “territorial aggrandizement” and therefore weren’t aggressors — they certainly did, from Day One.
Consider this: there was no time after December 20, 1860 when Confederates did not seek to expand their territory, by votes if possible but by any other method if necessary.
You claim Confederates behaved themselves lawfully before declaring war on May 6, 1861, but I’ve cited numerous times & places where that was just not the case.
The truth is they were as aggressive as they could be and laid claim to as much territory as they thought they could hold.****

Yeah uh....this is all 100% BS. The Confederates did not lay claim to any territory outside their sovereign state borders. They acted to take control of installations within their borders....as was their sovereign right and indeed the right of any government that is sovereign.

Well, for starters, they didn’t wait for states to declare secession before seizing whatever Federal properties they could.
Second, their claims to sovereignty over Federal properties amounted to nothing more than “might makes right”.****

NO it wasn’t. Lincoln’s war of aggression launched against the Southern states was the real example of “might makes right”. Sovereign states have the same legal right to lay claim to territory within their borders as any other sovereign government. ie Eminent Domain.

Third, no serious effort was ever made for peaceful transition with the government body both the US Constitution and Confederate Constitution (identical: Article 4, section 3, item 2 in both) makes responsible for such properties: Congress.****

Uhh no. The original 7 states peacefully seceded. The Upper South peacefully seceded after Lincoln chose to start a war over it.

Only if they knew, as Davis did, that starting war at Fort Sumter would flip Virginia and maybe the entire Upper South from Union to Confederate thus doubling his white population and war-making economy. In that sense, it was a No Brainer.****

But President Davis didn’t start a war. Lincoln did. If an armed robber comes into your house and you fire to drive him away, you are not the aggressor. The armed robber who entered YOUR HOUSE is the aggressor whether he fired first or not. Same principle.

In hindsight though, it appears that long-term success was more likely to follow a more, ah, patient, even conciliatory path.*****

No it wasn’t. The Southern states had to either fire to drive an invader away or they had to roll over and submit to military occupation and taxation by a foreign power.

In fact, African Americans did consent, it this sense: by at least ten to one, more blacks served George Washington’s Continental Army than answered Lord Dunmore’s or similar British proclamations.
Continental Army blacks served in both integrated units and separate Black companies (1st Rhode Island), plus in numerous service jobs.
In exchange they were promised freedom and their owners, in Rhode Island at least, compensated.

Nothing remotely similar happened in the Confederacy.****

LOL! So the SLAVES “consented” when it was the US...nevermind that many many served in the British Army but of course they did not consent in 1861 - and just nevermind that many thousands of Blacks did serve in the Confederate Army and that they too were promised their freedom and that of their families for military service.

Complete nonsense, as amply reported here.****

No, completely true. They offered peace and free trade. They offered free navigation of the Mississippi. They sent a delegation to Washington DC to work out equitable assumption of the national debt by the Southern states. All the Southern states wanted was to be left alone. It was Lincoln who wanted war.

DiogenesLamp: "I did cite some credible sources when I related to you the strange and mysterious tale of David Porter taking the command of the Sumter expedition..."

The absence of Porter's ship would tell any normal person that Lincoln's mission to resupply Fort Sumter was far from a "war fleet", but for DiogenesLamp it only provides more evidence of Lincoln's evil intentions.

Of course it's all irrelevant, since Jefferson Davis said he intended to start war at Fort Sumter or Fort Pickens or both, regardless of what Lincoln did.

Davis needed war to flip Virginia, doncha' know?

x: "The funny thing is, we spend years trying to convince Diogenes that eventually cotton prices would come down as more countries and colonies got involved and now we have FLT-Bird saying that of course everybody knew that all along. Funny world."

;-)

Great post #523, thanks!

Bull Snipe: "So the millions of bales of cotton that left New Orleans, Mobile, Charleston, Savannah between 1817 and 1860, were all hauled out by Northern ships."

Important to remember that about half of all cotton exported in, say, 1860 shipped directly from New Orleans to customers in Europe.
On their return those ships brought imports which made New Orleans the number 4 US port for Federal tariff revenues, after New York, Boston & almost tied with Philadelphia.

Somehow the 1817 Navigation Act seems to have had no effect on New Orleans.

“Never threatened”??
That’s not what numerous “Reasons for Secession” documents said, indeed, every such document written before Fort Sumter emphasized slavery.****

That is certainly what Lincoln said, that is what numerous elections in Northern states in which abolitionists were drubbed said, that is what the Corwin Amendment said. I’ve already laid out numerous times why the Southern states cited refusal of the Northern states to enforce the fugitive slave clause of the constitution violated the compact.

Further, once war started at Fort Sumter, within a few months slavery again became important, in the form of “Contraband of War”, and Contraband lead to various acts of Congress, the Emancipation Proclamation and 13th Amendment.
All of those made absolutely clear to every Confederate that defeat in war meant the destruction of their “peculiar institution.”

So whichever way you look at it, Civil War was “all about slavery” for both 4 million African Americans and 5-1/2 million white Confederates.*****

No it most certainly was not. The EP was a WAR MEASURE. It was intended to weaken the enemy. The Northern Congress declared numerous times as did Lincoln that they were not waging a war against slavery.

"They didn't see the threat in it, and in so many years, that legislation utterly destroyed the slave trade."

I suspect that sentence is a typographical error, or, just as likely, Freudian slip.

What is wrong with it? William Wilberforce cleverly tricked the pro-slavery forces into allowing the legislation to go through, because they didn't see how it would eventually allow complete and total interdiction of the slave trade by the English navy.

A radical change of tactics, which involved the introduction of a bill to ban British subjects from aiding or participating in the slave trade to the French colonies, was suggested by maritime lawyer James Stephen.[142] It was a shrewd move, since the majority of British ships were now flying American flags and supplying slaves to foreign colonies with whom Britain was at war.[143] A bill was introduced and approved by the cabinet, and Wilberforce and other abolitionists maintained a self-imposed silence, so as not to draw any attention to the effect of the bill.[144][145] The approach proved successful, and the new Foreign Slave Trade Bill was quickly passed, and received royal assent on 23 May 1806.[

Those are the same five or so quotes from earlier in the thread. The Chicago Times was a very pro-South, Doughface, Copperhead publication, and the North American Review article is more critical of secession than the excerpt might make one think. The idea is that a small group bent on power organized the secession and used slavery to win support. The secessionist elite knew that the people were worried about emancipation and slave uprisings and race mixing and they cynically appealed to those fears.

That doesn't really make things look any better for the Confederacy. Rather than saying that the leaders wanted a slaveholder's republic where their plantations would be secure, and the ordinary Southerners just followed them because they wanted to support their region, it's saying that the leaders were purely bent on power for themselves and the people followed them because the people wanted slavery and fell for demagogic arguments. Not very flattering to the ancestors of some people posting here. And if slavery was what it took to make secession palatable to the masses, then wasn't slavery responsible for secession after all? Isn't it still "no slavery, no secession" in the end?

Revisionism got started in the South shortly after the war (or even while the war was in its closing phases). Slavery came to be regarded as morally indefensible, so one had to claim that something else had made secession and war possible.

Revisionism caught on in the rest of the country in the 1910s. The generation that fought the war was passing away. And the Democrats under Woodrow Wilson were becoming the more liberal and progressive party. In fact, they were becoming the party of the professors.

Progressive historians like Beard were drawn to the Old South as an agrarian region that shared their opposition to industrial capitalism and the Republican party which supported it, so they started to downplay slavery's role in the earlier national conflicts. I don't want to go the whole Dinesh D'Souza route, but Northern progressives and Southern segregationists had much in common from the 1910s through the 1940s (and in some ways even later).

They both disliked Northern corporations and capitalists and the Republican Party. They both looked to a more powerful federal government that would take on the powerful industrial and financial interests of the North and East. And they both (like the rest of country) thought that Republican Reconstruction had been a failure and (partially or entirely) a mistake.

I know less about Genovese. It looks to me like he was attracted to the Old South when he was a Marxist because it seemed like an alternative to the capitalist system that he hated. Historians still argue about the degree to which the Old South did represent a paternalistic, non-capitalist alternative to modernity.

Certainly, slaveowners were involved in market relations, buying and selling, but that's been going on since long before modern capitalism. Books like Genovese's, though, might give clues as to why most Southerners, including most planters and most political leaders weren't likely to think that their future lay with industrialization.

What's missing from the arguments you see here are psychology and culture. People aren't always wholly rational economic beings, and they don't operate in a purely economic framework, unaffected by ideas or their daily environment.

The vast majority of the US population was rural in 1860. The world that most Americans knew in 1860 was farming and farm life. If you'd heard of what was going on in Manchester or Lowell, or even if you'd been there, it was likely to bewilder and horrify you.

You might not want all that noise and smoke and squalor coming to your town. You might not want to lose control of your society to upstart manufacturers or urban mobs. And you might not think it was truly the wave of the future. If you could benefit materially from the growth of industry without importing all of its problems you probably would try to.

Look at how agricultural elites responded to industrialization in other countries, Britain, Prussia, Russia. Those countries did industrialize but the existing landowning elites tried to keep a firm hand on political power. Political and military careers maintained high status to keep mere manufacturers from getting too much power.

And in colonies and out of the way regions, landowners were all too willing to make money supplying industry and the cities with raw materials and food without going industrial and urban themselves. Ireland didn't want to become Britain. Nor did Australia, or Canada. They could make money supplying Britain with wool or grain or timber and remain emptier, freer, more egalitarian, less driven and troubled societies.

The few Southerners who believed industrialization was the way ahead tended to be in favor of tariffs and national banks and public works projects and government subsidies and even government-owned enterprises. They were the heirs of Hamilton and the Whigs.

If you spent years complaining about such policies, as most Southern politicians (who saw themselves as the heirs to Jefferson) did, you weren't going to support such policies. Because of your agrarian, Jeffersonian values, or because you wanted planters or farmers to hold on to the power they had, or because you opposed such developmentalist policies, you weren't likely to be keen on industrializing the South.

Today, society is far better informed and more economic minded and entrepreneurial. We could see that Silicon Valley, say, was the wave of the future. We can also see how that turned out. If you could supply Silicon Valley or invest in it without bringing all its problems to your own home town, wouldn't you do so? Back in the 1850s and 1860s when things were much less clear, wouldn't some of the few people who knew what we now know think the same way? Why build a smoky industrial city with poor housing and drainage and an unruly working class when you could just make a profit supplying the city's material needs?

But in his March 1861 Inaugural President Lincoln did promise to remain peaceful with secessionists, saying they could only have a war if they themselves started it.

Confederate editorials of the time called that a "declaration of war".

That statement was not what Southern newspapers (and Democrat newspapers in the North) were calling a declaration of war. It was the rest of the speech that led to Southern and Northern Democrat newspapers to say Lincoln's speech was a declaration of war. The Baltimore Sun of March 7, 1861 reported what the New York Day Book (NYC) did that succinctly summed up Lincoln's speech:

The New York Day Book has put in juxtaposition, as does the Express, the seemingly contradictory passages of the inaugural, and thus translates:

In other words, though you do not recognize me as President, I shall not molest you if you will pay taxes for the support of my government. We must have your money, that we cannot bring ourselves to decline, and if you do not let us have it peacefully, why, we shall be compelled to take it from you by force; in which case you, not we, will be the aggressors. This means coercion and civil war and nothing else.

It has been a long time since I posted a link to my old thread of contemporary newspaper editorials about Lincoln's first inaugural speech. See Link to newspaper editorials about the speech. The link to the text of Lincoln's first inaugural speech in that thread no longer works. Here is a current link to the speech itself: Text of Lincoln's first inaugural speech

I later found another interesting take on what the speech meant. From the Gazette and Sentinel, Plaquemine, Louisiana, March 9, 1861, a newspaper item dated March 5, 1861:

Latest from Montgomery

War considered Inevitable -- The Standing Army -- The War Strength

Montgomery, March 5 -- Since the receipt of the Inaugural address of Mr. Lincoln, it is universally conceded here that war between the Confederate States and the United States is inevitable. Mr. Benjamin said last night, that in his opinion, there would be a clash of Arms within thirty days.

Mr. Conrad concurred in this view of the aspect of affairs. The standing army of the Confederate States will be fixed at ten thousand men. Congress is now engaged in organizing the army. Of course, in case of hostilities, the number of men put in the field will be greater. It is calculated that the States now composing the Confederacy can place 80,000 on a movable war footing.

More from those Southerners who were only concerned about slavery and weren’t at all motivated by the economics.

In a speech delivered in the Virginia Convention of 1788, Patrick Henry had predicted that the South would eventually find itself economically subjugated to the North once the latter had secured to itself a majority in the new federal Government: “This government subjects every thing to the Northern majority. Is there not, then, a settled purpose to check the Southern interest?... How can the Southern members prevent the adoption of the most oppressive mode of taxation in the Southern States, as there is a majority in favor of the Northern States?” Henry’s prediction was not long in being realized. As early as 1789, the first impost bill was introduced in Congress which protected the New England fishing industry and its production of molasses, and exhibited, in the opinion of William Grayson, “a great disposition... for the advancement of commerce and manufactures in preference to agriculture.” Thus, when the Union under the Constitution was but two months old, many Southerners felt that their States were already being obliged to serve the North as “the milch cow out of whom the substance would be extracted.” In a pamphlet published in 1850, Muscoe Russell Garnett of Virginia wrote:
The whole amount of duties collected from the year 1791, to June 30, 1845, after deducting the drawbacks on foreign merchandise exported, was $927,050,097. Of this sum the slaveholding States paid $711,200,000, and the free States only $215,850,097. Had the same amount been paid by the two sections in the constitutional ratio of their federal population, the South would have paid only $394,707,917, and the North $532,342,180. Therefore, the slaveholding States paid $316,492,083 more than their just share, and the free States as much less.

From the days of the illustrious Henry onwards, the South had generally stood in the way of the Northern goal to make such an unjust system of taxation permanent. According to John Taylor of Virginia, a high protective tariff system, like that which existed in Great Britain, was “undoubtedly the best which has ever appeared for extracting money from the people; and commercial restrictions, both upon foreign and domestic commerce, are its most effectual means for accomplishing this object. No equal mode of enriching the party of government, and impoverishing the party of people, has ever been discovered.” Nevertheless, the North clung tenaciously to its protectionist policy and managed to push through the tariff legislation of 1828 which provoked South Carolina to resistance to the general Government and nearly to secession from the Union during the Administration of Andrew Jackson. It should be noted that, by 1828, the public debt was near to extinction and, at the current rate of taxation on imported goods, a twelve to thirteen million dollar annual surplus would have been created in the Treasury. Thus, the excuse for a high tariff system as a source of Government revenue was a flimsy one at best; the so-called “Tariff of Abomination” really served no other purpose than to “rob and plunder nearly one half of the Union, for the benefit of the residue.” James Spence of London explained the effects of such a high tariff on the Southern economy:

This system of protecting Northern manufactures, has an injurious influence, beyond the effect immediately apparent. It is doubly injurious to the Southern States, in raising what they have to buy, and lowering what they have to sell. They are the exporters of the Union, and require that other countries shall take their productions. But other countries will have difficulty in taking them, unless permitted to pay for them in the commodities which are their only means of payment. They are willing to receive cotton, and to pay for it in iron, earthenware, woollens. But if by extravagant duties, these be prohibited from entering the Union, or greatly restricted, the effect must needs be, to restrict the power to buy the products of the South. Our imports of Southern productions, have nearly reached thirty millions sterling a year. Suppose the North to succeed in the object of its desire, and to exclude our manufactures altogether, with what are we to pay? It is plainly impossible for any country to export largely, unless it be willing also, to import largely. Should the Union be restored, and its commerce be conducted under the present tariff, the balance of trade against us must become so great, as either to derange our monetary system, or compel us to restrict our purchases from those, who practically exclude other payment than gold. With the rate of exchange constantly depressed, the South would receive an actual money payment, much below the current value of its products. We should be driven to other markets for our supplies, and thus the exclusion of our manufactures by the North, would result in a compulsory exclusion, on our part, of the products of the South.

This is a consideration of no importance to the Northern manufacturer, whose only thought is the immediate profit he may obtain, by shutting out competition. It may be, however, of very extreme importance to others — to those who have products they are anxious to sell to us, who are desirous to receive in payment, the very goods we wish to dispose of, and yet are debarred from this. Is there not something of the nature of commercial slavery, in the fetters of a system that prevents it? If we consider the terms of the compact, and the gigantic magnitude of Southern trade, it becomes amazing, that even the attempt should be made, to deal with it in such a manner as this.

George McDuffie of South Carolina stated in the House of Representatives, “If the union of these states shall ever be severed, and their liberties subverted, historians who record these disasters will have to ascribe them to measures of this description. I do sincerely believe that neither this government, nor any free government, can exist for a quarter of a century under such a system of legislation.” While the Northern manufacturer enjoyed free trade with the South, the Southern planter was not allowed to enjoy free trade with those countries to which he could market his goods at the most benefit to himself. Furthermore, while the six cotton States — South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas — had less than one-eighth of the representation in Congress, they furnished two-thirds of the exports of the country, much of which was exchanged for imported necessities. Thus, McDuffie noted that because the import tariff effectively hindered Southern commerce, the relation which the Cotton States bore to the protected manufacturing States of the North was now the same as that which the colonies had once borne to Great Britain; under the current system, they had merely changed masters.

Robert Barnwell Rhett, who served in the House of Representatives and then in the Senate, said in 1850: “The great object of free governments is liberty. The great test of liberty in modern times, is to be free in the imposition of taxes, and the expenditure of taxes.... For a people to be free in the imposition and payment of taxes, they must lay them through their representatives.” Consequently, because they were being taxed without corresponding representation, the Southern States had been reduced to the condition of colonies of the North and thus were no longer free. The solution was determined by John Cunningham to exist only in independence:

The legislation of this Union has impoverished them [the Southern States] by taxation and by a diversion of the proceeds of our labor and trade to enriching Northern Cities and States. These results are not only sufficient reasons why we would prosper better out of the union but are of themselves sufficient causes of our secession. Upon the mere score of commercial prosperity, we should insist upon disunion. Let Charleston be relieved from her present constrained vassalage in trade to the North, and be made a free port and my life on it, she will at once expand into a great and controlling city.

In a letter to the Carolina Times in 1857, Representative Laurence Keitt wrote, “I believe that the safety of the South is only in herself.” James H. Hammond likewise stated in 1858, “I have no hesitation in saying that the Plantation States should discard any government that makes a protective tariff its policy.”

John H. Reagan of Texas, who would later become Postmaster-General of the Confederate Government, expressed similar sentiments when addressing the Republican members of the House of Representatives on 15 January 1861:
You are not content with the vast millions of tribute we pay you annually under the operation of our revenue laws, our navigation laws, your fishing bounties, and by making your people our manufacturers, our merchants, our shippers. You are not satisfied with the vast tribute we pay you to build up your great cities, your railroads, your canals. You are not satisfied with the millions of tribute we have been paying you on account of the balance of exchange which you hold against us. You are not satisfied that we of the South are almost reduced to the condition of overseers of northern capitalists. You are not satisfied with all this; but you must wage a relentless crusade against our rights and institutions....

We do not intend that you shall reduce us to such a condition. But I can tell you what your folly and injustice will compel us to do. It will compel us to be free from your domination, and more self-reliant than we have been. It will compel us to assert and maintain our separate independence. It will compel us to manufacture for ourselves, to build up our own commerce, our own great cities, our own railroads and canals; and to use the tribute money we now pay you for these things for the support of a government which will be friendly to all our interests, hostile to none of them

See that last quote....to manufacture for ourselves? Yet some would tell us Southerners weren’t at all interested in industrialization - nevermind that it had taken the western world by storm by the middle of the 19th century.

DiogenesLamp from #522: "They didn't see the threat in it, and in so many years, that legislation utterly destroyed the slave trade."

quoting BJK: "I suspect that sentence is a typographical error, or, just as likely, Freudian slip."

DiogenesLamp: "What is wrong with it?
William Wilberforce cleverly tricked the pro-slavery forces into allowing the legislation to go through..."

William Wilberforce was a Member of Britain's Parliament, from 1780 to 1825.
He had nothing to do with any US Navigation Act, or tricking Southern Congressmen into supporting legislation which hurt their own economic interests.

It's not clear to me if you are confused or simply confusing, but there does seem to be a mix-up here.

x on FLT-bird's post #507: "Those are the same five or so quotes from earlier in the thread.
The Chicago Times was a very pro-South, Doughface, Copperhead publication, and the North American Review article is more critical of secession than the excerpt might make one think..."

Thanks for a great post, I recommend it to all following this thread.

x referring to my post #553 on Charles Beard: "Revisionism got started in the South shortly after the war (or even while the war was in its closing phases).
Slavery came to be regarded as morally indefensible, so one had to claim that something else had made secession and war possible.
"Revisionism caught on in the rest of the country in the 1910s.
The generation that fought the war was passing away.
And the Democrats under Woodrow Wilson were becoming the more liberal and progressive party.
In fact, they were becoming the party of the professors.

"Progressive historians like Beard were drawn to the Old South as an agrarian region that shared their opposition to industrial capitalism and the Republican party which supported it, so they started to downplay slavery's role in the earlier national conflicts.
I don't want to go the whole Dinesh D'Souza route..."

I'm a D'Souza fan, I like his "route".

Thanks for another great post, I recommend it to all following this thread.

x: "The few Southerners who believed industrialization was the way ahead tended to be in favor of tariffs and national banks and public works projects and government subsidies and even government-owned enterprises.
They were the heirs of Hamilton and the Whigs."

Well said, another great post, recommend to all.

rustbucket: "That statement was not what Southern newspapers (and Democrat newspapers in the North) were calling a declaration of war.
It was the rest of the speech that led to Southern and Northern Democrat newspapers to say Lincoln's speech was a declaration of war."

And thank you for another great post.
Could you offer a tutorial to, ahem, FLT-bird on how to use html formatting?
Nobody on our side can get through to him... ;-)

Does everyone here appreciate that the Constitutional issues in March, 1861, were:

Was secession as practiced then constitutionally legitimate?
Of the six living former or future president, including Buchanan & Lincoln, none supported secession originally, but Virginia Whig John Tyler and Connecticut Democrat Franklin Pierce flipped, after secession was declared.
"Should the Federal government recognize secessionists as valid?"
Tyler & Pierce said "yes", the others -- Van Buren, Fillmore, Buchanan & Lincoln -- said "no".
Fillmore wrote that secessionists should be treated as traitors.
"Could or should the Federal government use military force to stop secession?"
Only New York Whig Fillmore was publicly critical of President Buchanan's inaction on secession.
The rest remained silent or said force, "coercion", should not be used to stop secession.
"If war starts, should the Union defeat the Confederacy?"
Tyler & Pierce effectively said "no".
Van Buren, Fillmore & Buchanan supported Lincoln's war efforts.

Northern Democrats did support the Union, but Franklin Pierce was a personal friend of Jefferson Davis, Pierce vilified Lincoln and was falsely accused of plotting to overthrow the government.

Fair to say, among US Presidents, the vote in 1861 was four to two in favor of Lincoln's policies.

rustbucket quoting New York Day Book:

"In other words, though you do not recognize me as President, I shall not molest you if you will pay taxes for the support of my government.
We must have your money, that we cannot bring ourselves to decline, and if you do not let us have it peacefully, why, we shall be compelled to take it from you by force; in which case you, not we, will be the aggressors.
This means coercion and civil war and nothing else."

The problem with this quote is: that's not at all what Lincoln said.
Lincoln made no direct threat of force, indeed promised no war except if Confederates started it.
Of course anti-Republicans chose to see Lincoln's Inaugural in the worst light, but they could have chosen otherwise.

Lincoln's intentions: "...to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion -- no using of force..."

Lincoln's promise: "The government will not assail you.
You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors."

Lincoln's word "assail" here is important because it refers back to Jefferson Davis' February 1861 Inaugural:

"If a just perception of mutual interest shall permit us peaceably to pursue our separate political career, my most earnest desire will have been fulfilled.
But, if this be denied to us, and the integrity of our territory and jurisdiction be assailed, it will but remain for us, with firm resolve, to appeal to arms and invoke the blessings of Providence on a just cause."

Notice, Davis promised to start war if Confederate "integrity" was "assailed".
Lincoln promised he would not "assail" Confederates and they could only have war if they were aggressors.

At Fort Sumter, Davis felt "assailed" and started war, as he promised.
Lincoln did not consider his resupply mission "assailing" and did see Confederate firing on Fort Sumter as "aggression".
It seems that most Northerners at the time agreed with Lincoln, most Southerners with Davis.

Our Lost Causers tell us that Lincoln did "assail", or at least would have "assailed" with his "war fleet" to Fort Sumter, but the fact remains that from his own words Jefferson Davis intended to take both Forts Sumter & Pickens, by force if necessary, regardless of what Lincoln did, or didn't do.

Davis to Bragg, April 3, 1861:

"There would be to us an advantage in so placing them that an attack by them would be a necessity, but when we are ready to relieve our territory and jurisdiction of the presence of a foreign garrison that advantage is overbalanced by other considerations

Davis needed war to flip Virginia & the Uppoer South, that's the bottom line.