Posted on 06/06/2020 7:40:09 PM PDT by Meatspace
Thanks, glad to hear it!
The South wanted to protect itself from Northern invasion, I believe. Please correct me if I’m wrong. Seriously, I would appreciate the input. Always stand to be corrected here; lots of smart people here. :)
The South seceded because they saw the writing on the wall for slavery with the Republican victory for the White House. The seceding states made clear in their secession declarations that they were leaving protect slavery and to found a government based on white supremacy.
Lincoln didn't invade the South to end slavery. He made clear in his inaugural address that he supported the Corwin amendment (13th amendment that would have federally protected slavery explicitly), and that he only sought to collect federal taxes (tariffs).
They couldn't allow the South to secede and enact the Republicans plan of high tariffs for 'internal improvements' (graft).
As the war drug on the abolition of slavery was raised as a Northern war aim to maintain support for the war.
Thank you, amorphous!
A few critical events/discoveries stem from the Babylonian era. I’ll be sure to revisit.
This was an ongoing feud between the North and South for years.
In February 1850, Taylor [president Zachary Taylor] told southern leaders who threatened to secede that, “taken in rebellion against the Union, he would hang ... with less reluctance than he had hanged deserters and spies in Mexico.”
It was Taylor’s unexpected opposition to the expansion of slavery (he was from the South and was the last president to own slaves) that had caused an immediate crisis in 1850.
Taylor ran as a Whig candidate in 1848 and he wasn’t a professional politician. Taylor was a career military man and a hero in the war with Mexico. Once he took office in March 1849, it became clear that Taylor, the military man, was more interested in preserving the Union than the art of politics.
Taylor decided to press for statehood for the newly acquitted territories of California and New Mexico, and to let the regions hold their own constitutional conventions. This guaranteed that California and New Mexico would join the Union as anti-slavery states, tipping the balance in the Senate to the North.
One of many ref:
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/a-presidential-death-and-averting-two-constitutional-crises/
>> You need a therapist.
Not to forget we have each other.
He’s an Anti-American, pro dot-Indian POS. Probably from
India.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Thank goodness we have Freerepublic.com. I think it is a lifesaver for many of us.
But antifa flags are ok.
+1
>> “The South seceded because they saw the writing on the wall for slavery with the Republican victory for the White House. The seceding states made clear in their secession declarations that they were leaving protect slavery and to found a government based on white supremacy.”
At that time the vast majority of the people in the North too were racist by today’s standards. With few exceptions they believed in white supremacy too. They also favored tariffs that forced Southerners — an agricultural region (one reason it lost the war) — to support industries in other states. A provision of the Confederate Constitution ended this — “...nor shall any duties or taxes on importations from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry”.
Having said that, yes, the sectional differences over slavery were a major reason for secession — I’d say the root cause — and some prominent Southerners, especially the politicians (who were mostly slaveholders) said so. It’s not an either-or situation, though. It was about states’ rights too, and the sense of alienation from the North that had grown among Southerners over the years.
"...Lee was offered by presidential advisor Francis P. Blair a role as major general to command the defense of the national capital. He replied: 'Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native state?' "
Slavery was important in motivating secession, but that doesn't mean that Confederate soldiers were fighting merely to protect slavery. Would the desire to protect slavery keep them going when bullets were flying around their heads? A more important motivation, I'm sure, was to defend what they considered their homeland.
Today, they attack us.
Tomorrow, we defeat them.
With the help of the Divine Providence of God Almighty who miraculously birthed our nation, so now with his help, we will miraculously restore our Free Constitutional Republic, and the feds and the Left will once again be leashed and limited by its constitutional chain.
In Jesus name, Amen
“The South wanted to protect itself from Northern invasion”
The northern and southern States had been fighting over commerce and taxes for more than 50 years by 1860. Slavery was a significant part of the southern commerce. The northern States attacked slavery and that was seen as an attack on southern commerce. By 1860 there was so much bad blood that the southern States withdrew from the union. The southern States had taken one beating after another in the US Congress concerning taxes and regulations, and they felt further attacks on slavery by the northern States was an attempt to cripple their economy, even though the northern States needed the products from the southern States, of which the railroad was becoming more and more of an important component of that commerce.
Lincoln was injected into the presidential race by his railroad clients who needed the States to stay together for the sake of railroad commerce, especially as it railroads were heavily in debt as they invested in moving out west. Lincoln was by far one of the most prolific railroad attorneys at the time . He had also served in the congress and it was felt he could take the presidency and work to keep the union together. The railroads also had tracks laid north and south and needed commerce between the northern and southern States to pay for those tracks and help pay for the western expansion.
Lincoln was about six months too late. By the time he took office there was no turning back. Lincoln sent northern troops to Ft. Sumter, probably hoping a little force might convince the southern States to stay in the union long enough to effect smooth talking Lincoln’s plan to correct the problems that caused the southern States to want to leave the union.
Didn’t work. War broke out instead. Southerners, who hated slavery because they saw cheaper slaves as replacing them in the fields, were willing to fight the invaders from the north. I’m southern, from Georgia. Lots of stories from ancestors who felt slavery needed to end but it needed to end on southern terms and not through northern interference. It became our side versus their side. Slavery was a key component of southern commerce and one of the key arguments with the northern States, but it came down to States rights and the rights of the people to determine their own destiny. Read about the history of the US and there is plenty to see why the southern States felt beat upon by the northern States.
Another component of States rights and destiny going on at the time was Manifest Destiny, the belief that the US was moving out west and had the God given right and need to do so. It was all the rage and a highly emotional topic. However, the southern States were told by the northern States that slavery wasn’t welcome out west. It didn’t really matter since railroads were the big industries out west and they made the rules more than anyone, but it was seen as one more attempt by the northern States to relegate the southern States to their rule. Most in the south didn’t want slavery out west. The west was for the people to find their own destiny, but since this was a fight of wills, slavery got caught in the middle.
Similar today, we see populous States like California and New York rule our congress and try to force liberalism down the throats of the smaller States. In those States, the liberal cities rule against those outside the cities. California and New York are very conservative outside their cities, but they rule the legislatures through city populations. It has created antagonistic rivalries that we are seeing today.
If the same people who wrote about the Civil War could write today’s history 100 years from now, they could easily write the troubles today are blacks versus whites and how blacks were unfairly treated, which is far from the total story and not even accurate. Unfortunately, they told the story of the Civil War as a fight to abolish slavery, and that missed the point entirely.
That explains it
In an essay I wrote called the Constitution and the Confederacy, I state less that one in a hundred Southerners could have been motivated by slavery. Winston Churchill in volume three of his History of the English Speaking People, begins discussion of the subject by saying, ”An aristocracy of planters living in rural magnificence and almost feudal state, and multitude of smallholders, grew cotton for the world by slave labour. Of the six million white inhabitants of the so-called ‘southern states’ less than three hundred and fifty thousand owned slaves, and only forty thousand controlled plantations requiring a working unit of more than twenty field hands. But the three or four thousand principal slave-owners generally ruled the politics of the South as effectively as the medieval baronage had ruled England.”
That's a misleading statistic. Almost all of those 350,000 slave owners had spouses, so that means up to 700,000 people directly benefited from slavery. Say each of those families had three children and suddenly you are up to 1.8 million people people drew direct benefit from slavery. That's large enough percentage of your population right there to understand why they may rebel to protect their slave property.
And myths are written by the losers.
That's like calling World War II the "War of Polish Aggression".
I completely agree and compliment you for the accompanying reference as evidence for the above conclusion.
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