Posted on 01/11/2019 5:16:40 AM PST by TexasGunLover
The economy of the South was dependent on staple agriculture mostly of the agribusiness plantation form. The Republicans who were just Hamilton's descendents and mostly northern Whigs knew their crony capitalist model which was their true core reason to exist would never attract enough votes to defeat the Democrats. So the GOP spent a decade screaming about slavery to troll for enough voters in the north to give them the edge. Lincoln and Seward could care the less about slavery as long as it stayed in the South and Southerners paid most of the cost of the tariffs on manufactured items. With that dough they could pay off the speculators and bankers and railway interests that were the powerbase of the party.
Unfortunately people in the South believed windbags like Seward and after the events surrounding John Brown believed they were facing an existential threat from the north of the most basic kind. Lincoln never figured that out as did many northerners and were shocked and then outraged when they realized the South was serious about forming its own country and breaking the rice bowls of many northern capitalists.
This I think is the real basis for the secession crisis and the war that followed. It is much to grubby to justify the hideous destruction of the war and the hundreds of thousands of casualties so the ‘glory, glory, hallelujah, version became the default.
Re: John Brown.
It was not just that a lunatic with a band of followers came to a Southern state and tried to start a bloodbath.
It wasn’t even that Northern financiers backed him....after all his little band were equipped with very expensive Sharp’s rifles....not something a threadbare little band of terrorists could afford on their own so everybody immediately knew there were financial backers of this terrorist plot.
The real kicker was that when these terrorist supporters were exposed in New England, the authorities there did little if anything against them.
Imagine today how the US would react if another country OPENLY harbored financial supporters of Al Qaeda and hardly even pretended to act against them. There would be a lot of calls for war against that country. Many would call the government of that country a state sponsor of terrorism. NOW you can more easily understand the mindset of Southerners after this. It was hardly different than how we would react to something similar today.
And as I said, not where it currently existed.
It was not economically viable in places like New Mexico or Arizona anyway so there was no real appetite to spread slavery there once votes in the Senate were no longer needed.
Not all slaves worked the fields.
“When Southern people tell us that they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said the institution exists, and it is very difficult to get rid of in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know what to do as to the existing institution.........
"But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more excuse for permitting slavery to go into our own free territory, than it would for reviving the African slave-trade by law. The law which forbids the bringing of slaves from Africa, and that which has so long forbid the taking of them to Nebraska, can hardly be distinguished on any moral principle; and the repeal of the former could find quite as plausible excuses as that of the latter."
Although I didn't make it clear my reference to the border was related to people whose last names end in "z".
If that is true then why did the Confederate states adopt a Constitution where the federal government mandated slavery would be allowed in all states and territories, mandated that no state could be a non-slave state, and mandated that the states could not end slavery by constitutional amendment? Isn't that an even larger abridgement of the state's sovereignty?
It was known long before the windbags showed up...and it wasn't a belief, it was a fact.
The 'personal liberty laws' were nothing more than Nullification laws, and showed exactly which way the winds had begun blowing.
If the South were to violate any part of the Constitution intentionally and systematically, and persist in so doing, year after year, and no remedy could be had, would the North be any longer bound by the rest of it? And if the North were deliberately, habitually, and of fixed purpose to disregard one part of it, would the South be bound any longer to observe its other obligations? I have not hesitated to say, and I repeat, that if the Northern States refuse, willfully and deliberately, to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provide no remedy, the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact. A bargain cannot be broken on one side and still bind the other side.
Life of Daniel Webster, Speech at Capon Springs / 1851 / Vol 1 / page 518
Georgia: “For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.” - Second sentence.
Mississippi: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery— the greatest material interest of the world.” - Second sentence
South Carolina: “We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.”
I’ve already discussed Texas.
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states
Alabama: “Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of president and vice-president of the United States of America, by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama...”
Virginia: “and the Federal Government having perverted said powers not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slave-holding States.”
Kentucky: “a central despotism founded upon the ignorant prejudices of the masses of Northern society, and instead of giving protection with the Constitution to the people of fifteen States of this Union have turned loose upon them the unrestrained and raging passions of mobs and fanatic”
It is ridiculous to pretend slavery was not the root cause - slavery, the defense of it, and the desire to be able to move to California or elsewhere and take one’s slaves with you.
It was about “states rights”, but the only right being violated was the right to expand slavery into other territories. In an attempt to draw the states back in, or to keep the border states from leaving, the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution was proposed:
“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”
It passed Congress and Lincoln said, “I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service ... holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”
But by that time (March 1861), the south wasn’t interested in compromise.
***MLK Boulevard signage throughout Texas?***
The original one on Hwy 244 going west in Tulsa OK was shot to pieces.
“Texas and the other states of the confederacy and the Indian nations seceded to defend slavery. They said so in their Ordinances of secession:”
That is an interesting comment. Can you cite the language in - say the Florida ordinance - where slavery was mentioned?
Cloud Field, Shiloh, Tennessee. I know the area very well.
Not Southern ground. United States National Park. Ground belongs to the Federal Government. Destroying it would be a Federal felony.
Thanks for the picture Bert. Who do you suppose is going to destroy it?
Slavery was not the reason they left the union. Being screwed financially by the north and seeing that there would be a lessening of their political power to do anything about it was the cause.
Union monuments are on avenge 60-75% of monuments at most battlefield sites I’ve seen
Especially Vicksburg which apparently is a place where the federal govt and individual northern states decided to really throw some money around with Triumph level monuments....I’d wager the Alabama white marble alone is 20 million on some of them
It’s really amazing.....and I grew up close to there
I’ve never been to Gettysburg so I don’t know if it has them but Vicksburg has the biggest I’ve seen
One irony
This forum is replete with south haters who for whatever reason ally with progressives over this monument removal and always have despite the fact southern stuff is just easy fruit ...their progressive partners in crime won’t stop there
But most folks don’t know that guess who paid for much of the southern monument recognition back then late 1800s to early 1900s when it was all still fresh and many veterans still alive
The federal government paid for much of it, that’s who.
Now let’s ask ourselves who knew the war and aftermath better....the magnanimous victors a generation or two after the war including those who fought in it
Or neoconservatives and progressives today who think demonizing the south’s past (and present to be truthful) makes them less racist themselves or helps destroy a primary foe ...the white southerner....respectively .
“The federal government paid for much of it, that’s who.”
please provide a source to support the statement that the Federal Government paid for many of the Confederate monuments.
“The South was losing political power for every new state admitted to the union that was not a slave state.”
Ummm...every time a state is admitted, the previous states lose power. ALL of them. Northern states would lose just as much power as southern states.
What you mean is the pro-slavery block would lose power each time a non-slave state entered the Union. Which is true, but only on one issue: SLAVERY. Every time a non-slave state was added, the future of slavery was more in doubt. But that leaves the issue as one of SLAVERY.
Meanwhile, it is important to note this was NOT like the American Revolution. The revolution removed a KING. Taxation without representation. But the South retained representation.
In fact, the South was OVER-represented because every slave counted as 0.6 persons for representation, but no slave could cast a vote. In Alabama, for example, 45% of the total population were slaves. 435,000 slaves. Gave Alabama credit for an additional 260,000 in population, although none of that 260,000 had a vote. With a voting population of 500,000, Alabama got representation for about 750,000 people. Every white voter in Alabama got to cast 1.5 votes!
However, the white population in the South was increasing faster than the black population, so each year the powerful in the South became a little less powerful.
Political power was the key. The South was not concerned with slavery being abolished, especially since the north was offering an amendment to the Constitution to guarantee it’s continuance where it CURRENTLY existed. This was the rub. Current existence would mean that all new states would be in alignment with non-slave holder states interest.
Political power IN PURSUIT OF SLAVERY. Apart from that, the South had excessive political power for its free population.
And political power to keep & expand slavery meant the war WAS about slavery.
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