The American Civil War 71 members · 12 stories
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I want to know where y'all stand on this issue. Do you believe the Civil War was about slavery or state's rights? Personally, I believe state's rights.

The Civil War was fought over slavery. Slavery in the 1860s and in the decades prior to the Civil War was the biggest economic factor in the South given that the South was less industrialized than the North. The production and picking of cotton was worth some $4 Billion dollars at the time. Those who owned slaves some 5% of the total population of the white land owning individuals also controlled 75% of the wealth. When the war began the planter class of the South manipulated the rest of the whites who lived there to fight. While many certainly fought for patriotic reasons they were defending a system that kept millions of people in chains. Slavery was not just an economic issue it was also a social, cultural, and political one. It touched upon every fabric of American life back then. It was the one subject politicians before the war couldn't agree on how to handle.

When it comes to the matter of states rights you must ask yourself what exactly were the rights Confederate soldiers were fighting to defend? If it's a states right to decide its own course without much Federal oversight then you have to get to the crux of the issue. What inflamed Southern state governments so badly that they feared Federal overreach? Well the answer is really quite simple, it was slavery. Many Southern state governments feared with the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 that the new President would overturn slavery and abolish it when in reality Abraham Lincoln ran on a platform against the expansion of slavery into the territories the United States had gained through either conquest or land purchases. Abraham Lincoln while personally not liking slavery was willing to let it continue to exist where it was already being practiced. There were many who felt slavery would just decline over time as industrialization spread through the country.

The state's rights issue has become a popular point amongst Neo-Confederates trying to find any reason they can point to that doesn't involve slavery as the main cause of the Civil War. Its a flawed viewpoint as anyone who has read primary sources from the time period will find that people on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line were talking about slavery and how it related to the war.

States rights, but that also meant the statesrights to allow slavery, so both.

Celestias Paladin
Group Contributor

5643505
Have you ever read the various articles of Secession? Slavery was one of the reasons, one of the rights in question.

5643505
5643617
5643620
5643625

Slavery, and in support I offer this side-by-side comparison of the USA and CSA constitutions, and post the author's summary below:

Overall, the CSA constitution does not radically alter the federal system that was established by the United States constitution. It is therefore very debatable as to whether the CSA was a significantly more pro-"states' rights" country (as supporters claim) in any meaningful sense. At least three states rights are explicitly taken away — the freedom of states to grant voting rights to non-citizens, the freedom of states to trade freely with each other, and of course the freedom of states to outlaw slavery within their borders.

States only gain four minor rights under the Confederate system — the power to enter into treaties with other states to regulate waterways, the power to tax foreign and domestic ships that use their waterways, the power to impeach federally-appointed state officials, and the power to distribute "bills of credit."

As previously noted, the CSA constitution does not modify many of the most controversial (from a states' rights perspective) clauses of the American constitution, including the "Supremacy" clause (Art. VI, Sec. 1[3]), the "Commerce" clause (Art. I, Sec. 8[3]) and the "Necessary and Proper" clause (Art. I, Sec. 8[18]). Nor does the CSA take away the federal government's right to suspend habeus corpus or "suppress insurrections."

As far as slave-owning rights go, however, the document is much more effective. Four different clauses entrench the legality of slavery in a number of different ways, and together they virtually guarantee that any sort of anti-slave law or policy would be unconstitutional. People can claim the Civil War was "not about slavery" as much as they want, but the fact remains that anyone who fought for the Confederacy was fighting for a country in which a universal right to own slaves was one of the most entrenched laws of the land.

In the end, however, many of the most interesting changes introduced in the CSA constitution have nothing to do with federalism or slavery at all. The president's term limit and line-item veto, along with the various fiscal restraints, and the ability of cabinet members to answer questions on the floor of Congress are all innovative, neutral ideals whose merits may still be worth pondering today.

5643617

The winner writes the history books. Don't let the Feds and the Left tell you it was all about slavery. And Lincoln was a racist. Have a look at these links.
http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/05/05/not-great-emancipator-10-racists-quotes-abraham-lincoln-said-black-people/3/

The War of Northern Aggression was less about slavery than many would think. I've got more links to provide.
http://www.cracked.com/article_19223_6-civil-war-myths-everyone-believes-that-are-total-b.s..htmlhttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?125433-Real-reasons-for-the-Civil-War

And I have a song to share as well...

5643720
Are you from the North by any chance? That would explain the answers I've received so far...

5643746
Look, I'm not trying to defend slavery. I'm defending the right of any State to secede from the Union. Didn't you read my Lincoln article? He didn't give a rat's ass about black people. He was more concerned with bringing the Southern states back under the dominion of the Federal government.

Eagle
Group Contributor

5643505
Both, honestly

Though everyone here is going to say it's just slavery, and not the point that Lincoln's whole task was to preserve the union with or without slavery. Generally forgets stuff like the Nullification Crisis with Jackson serving as a forewarning that had little to do with slavery.

5643770
Yes, thank you! That was the point I've been trying to drive home. I'm not denying the South had slaves, I just don't buy the thing about the North being 100% anti-slavery. Delaware and Maryland didn't outlaw slavery until AFTER the war.

Besides the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation only outlawed slavery in the South. And if you read sources outside of public school textbooks, you'll find that Lincoln did this for the purpose of starting slave riots in the South.

Eagle
Group Contributor

5643781
The two were sort of one in the same, slavery was one of the biggest issues that was being debated on whether states had individual rights to do. Secession was another key one that tended to appear from the beginning as well.

5643720
Taking single sources like this is a serious issue. History is all about examining all the sources. Had this been in any history class I'd taken since high school it would've failed miserably.

I believe that slavery was the primary cause, especially when one looks at pre-war history. Kansas was set one fire because of the issue. The Cornerstone speech made by Confederate Vice President Stephens also outlines that the United States was founded on a supposedly false idea that all men are created equal; Stephens claimed that the opposite was true, and that the Confederacy was founded "on this great moral... and philosophical truth."

Of course, states rights (namely the right for states to choose slavery or not) was up for grabs (especially since - I am not joking - a Confederate general was named States Rights Gist). So was expansion of slavery and the different lifestyles (agrarian vs industrial, religious (South) vs supposedly non-religious (North), etc.).

I think the whole States rights thing gets blown up a bit, because few people today like slavery. But they go too far and try to put a modern face on people of 150 years ago.

5643844
Well, at least all of us here can have a mature conversation without a lot of the stuff I see on YouTube comments. Let's keep it that way and not be this guy...

5643730 Don't let whom tell me about why the war was fought? Here is some info about myself. I am 26 years old, I have a Bachelors Of Arts Degree In History. I researched the topic of why soldiers fought in the Civil War for an entire year reading countless primary and secondary sources on this topic. On top of that, I am a Civil War reenactor and have studied the Civil War since I was seven years old. I have dedicated nearly two decades of my life to studying the Civil War. So when it comes to the fact that the Civil War was fought over slavery soldiers and politicians in their own words wrote about the subject extensively. I have formed this fact through countless hours of intense study not from someone feeding me this information.

For the soldiers, it depended on how they felt.

Lee was anti Slavery and anti Succession, but he was for Virginia.

Many Union Generals were indifferent.

5643881
And yet, you still believe that the War of Northern Aggression was over slavery...

5643904 Indeed because that is what the sources from the soldiers and the politicians were writing about.

Eagle
Group Contributor

5643881

Bachelors Of Arts Degree In History

Bachelor of arts degree? What?

I also don't hold credentials like that up much because I've come across many a degree-holder that's all to happy to ignore some sources to further their own side.

5643927 BA In History. Also I don't ignore sources of soldiers who felt that the war wasn't over slavery. Many of those who fought for the North had no opinion of slavery and neither did they care to serve in the Army after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by Lincoln. Many soldiers who fought for the Union felt they were fighting to preserve the country and many others after the Proclamation only came around to ending slavery as a means to hasten the end of the war. However, the underlying cause of the war was slavery. It was a festering issue that politicians could not agree upon. The issue inflamed people so badly that various congressmen began carrying weapons into the Senate because they feared they would be attacked by another senator with opposing views. As I stated before slavery touched upon every aspect of American life prior to 1861, it was the biggest political, social, cultural, economic, and moral issue of its day.

5643927

Exactly. I looked at both sides and concluded that the North and South were wrong on a lot of stuff and I'll leave it at that. Just as long as no one says to take down the Confederate flag, I'm cool with them having a different opinion.

I think it's clear what's in the other hand...

Eagle
Group Contributor

5643944

BA In History

You said bachelor of arts degree in history, I'm not even sure what that is.

You've also completely missed the point in that it was the biggest but not the only issue. As I said above, you've missed the point of taking in all the sources and options, and if you do have a BA in history then it's disappointing that you only mention slavery. Not mentioning the role tariffs played in souring relations is a huge misstep, along with taking in the industrial/agricultural difference and the holes in the constitution that led to secession.

You're supposed to take in everything; slavery, state's rights, economics, trade and law, the mass immigration in the north that led to a counter for the labor of slavery. Resting on a single source makes for a horrid paper.

5643972 A Bachelor Of Arts degree is what you earn when you attend a four-year college and participate in an undergraduate program. You can obtain this degree with any field of study some get one in art or literature. I got mine in history.

Eagle
Group Contributor

5644025
What college do you go to where History is listed under the Arts school?

5644027

I attended a small college in my home state where I obtained the degree. It is a fairly standard degree offered in many states.

5644071 I have an Associates of Arts in History. Not as big as yours, but most of my knowledge comes from being in the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War.

5644114 That's pretty cool!

5644114
And I get my knowledge from my own research and my dad's, since he's part of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

5643944
Well, even if I disagree with you, I respect your opinion. No hard feelings, eh?

5644338 an UN-charted Veterans Organization. It's one where anyone can join while mine is fully chartered and you have to prove your ancestry.

It also helps having a history professor in the group and hearing stories of the time through many songs such as "Darling Nelly Gray".


We may not have a large group, but my camp has been more active than many others in my state.

We also work close with the members of the 5th USCT and with other organizations such as the Emancipation organization, who help keep the OLDEST Emancipation Celebration in the USA alive.

And we participate in the OLDEST Bean Dinner in Ohio as well.

5644403
Did you know that some Confederates escaped to Brazil, and that their descendants have re-enactments there?

5644417 Already know of that. Talked to some people from Brazil about it.


The problem with this question is the fact that it is attempting to boil down an enormously complex political, economic, and cultural issue that had a myriad of factors into having just one thing (slavery) or another (state's rights) as a catalyst.

However, if forced to choose between the two, I will be blunt and say that the "Civil War" (itself a misnomer; a civil war is when a group wishes to dislodge the ruling government of a country and take over, with a group loyal to the government fighting them) was indeed an issue of state's rights, if only for the fact that slaveholders in the Union were not held to the same standards that slaveholders in the South were; if slavery were truly the sole raison de la guerre, then how come this issue was not immediately addressed?

That being said, it is important to note that, while not being the main reason, slavery was indeed a reason that the South seceded, or specifically, the spread and extension of slavery. The right of freedom to choose their own economic model was certainly a large concern of the South, but far from the only one.

While this is true, one must also not underestimate the intelligence and foresight of the South in this matter; slavery was indeed one of the big issues that the South wished to decide for themselves, and they did indeed recognize the crossroads that were imminent in their very near future. Slavery as an economic model was rapidly becoming untenable; the cost of upkeep for a slave (if one wished their investment to be worthwhile) was rather expensive, for one, and for another it was also becoming dangerous, since the slave population was beginning to vastly outweigh the population of whites in the South (the lessons of Sparta and its Helots had not been forgotten). The Southern leaders were no fools. They knew and understood that the days of plantations built on the backs of slaves were coming to an end; they were merely allowing those days to run their course, all the while planning upon adopting another economic model that did not rely upon slave labor.

Putting it rather simply, they did not wish to slam on the economic brakes and switch to something else; that would have crippled them, and any professor of economics will tell you that a smooth transition to a different system while phasing out the old one at a measured pace is the least damaging route.

Even President Jefferson Davis believed that slavery was fast dying; he actually defied Southern law by teaching his slaves to read and write against the day when they would need those skills to survive (read: be free), which shows that he felt the day when his slaves would no longer be so was just around the corner.

What must also be understood about the slavery issue is not just the South's countless points-of-view regarding it, of which there were far more than one. Hell, even many slaveowners hated it; they just believed that their slaves were better off under their ownership, which entailed treatment that, contrary to Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, was usually extremely well; as has been said, slaves were expensive from a pragmatic point of view, and while less than a white man, they were still regarded as people, and indeed beloved family members, by most slaveholders. Abuses did happen, but they were not as cancerous and widespread as Stowe believed, and led others to believe than they were as freedmen in the North. To quote James Fenimore Cooper (a Northerner) on the matter...

"It is an evil, certainly, but in a comparative sense, not as great an evil as is usually imagined. There is scarcely a nation of Europe that does not possess institutions that inflict as gross privations and wrongs, as slavery."

John Adams was firmly of the opinion that the issue of slavery was not one of real substance, but one of rhetoric, and he wrote in the 1830’s…

“…that in some countries the laboring poor were called freemen, in others they were called slaves, but that the difference as to the state was imaginary only… That the condition of the laboring poor in most countries, that of the fisherman particularly in the Northern States, is as abject as that of the slaves.”

What must be understood is also the average Northerner's point-of-view regarding it.

Frankly, and not to put too bald a point on it, they really didn't give a shit.

While it is true that there are an equal number of views regarding slavery up North as there were down South, the vast majority of those views, similar to the average Southerner's take on the matter, was "Meh." It really did not affect them or their problems; they had no more concern for what the rich people did with their money than we do today.

However, there were two factors that were at play here that are usually glossed over.

The first was the clash of cultures between North and South.

Allow me to deviate a bit here. The term "Yankee" was originally used, not as a blanket term for all Northerners, but to describe a specific breed of Northerner native to New England. The people of that region, and I do apologize if I offend anyone here, have historically been regarded as pompous, arrogant, greedy, hypocritical, and unpleasant, and even quite a few of the Founding Fathers held that opinion of them, such as George Washington (a Southerner) had very few kind things to say about New Englanders under his command, and Thomas Jefferson (a Southerner) in 1798, shortly before his election said...

"It is true we are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and that they ride us very hard, cruelly insulting our feelings, as well as exhausting our strength and substance."

Circa the same time, he also said that New England people were...

”...marked with such a perversity of character…"

...That they were divided from the rest of Americans.

The irony here is deep; the clear majority of the Founding Fathers were, in fact, Southerners. Most the battles were fought in the South. The majority of generals and soldiers were Southern men. The self-righteousness of the New England Yankee was felt even during those times.

And yet when we think of the Revolutionary War (itself an act of Secession), images of New England pop up. If one did not know any better, one would swear merely from the impression that George Washington (and indeed, every Founding Father) was a native of Boston and every battle was fought no lower south than Pennsylvania. The self-righteousness of the New England Yankee has even poisoned our impression of our own original heroes.

The difference between Southern and New England cultures can be summed up by looking at a side-by-side comparison of two diaries from prominent contemporaries of each region, the 18th century's own Reverend Cotton Mather of Massachusetts and Colonel William Byrd II of Virginia. Both men were Englishmen born in the Colonies...and they could not be any more different from the other.

Byrd's diaries are filled with raucous stories about his exploits (even the ones that he wasn't so proud of), how much he read, his meeting with friends and neighbors, the love of nature and his travels in the wilderness.

Mather wrote about how evil his associates were when they thought no one was looking, what evil lurked everywhere he looked, how the world failed to see what a blessing he was to it, and complaining about how God wasn't rewarding him for his piety.

Both men were regarded as exemplars of their respective communities. Both men were reviled by their respective opposites.

While the Southern pioneers and those Northerners not afflicted by New England "values" were traveling West after the Louisiana Purchase, the majority of New England (having opposed the purchase of the Louisiana Territory because their influence over the nation's politics would lessen) stayed home and made snippy remarks about how "barbaric" and "crude" the settlers were; after the lands were made safe in the MidWest, they moved there and immediately began treating the "Hoosiers” already present as second-class citizens.

While the rest of the country were facing the fierce unknown and the perils within, the New England crowd were busying themselves with listening to Ralph Waldo Emerson give them a reason for self-aggrandizement by telling them how “self-reliant” they were (himself having become so after getting married to a banker’s terminally-ill daughter) and Thoreau was busily informing them of the great outdoors in their backyards and the native New England individualism present within him while writing about his tiny pond well within sight of Boston in between going home to eat dinner and do laundry as needed (the man lived off of his father’s riches and lived practically next door to his parents).

The War of 1812 came about, and not only did the New England Yankee do business with the enemy, not only did they attempt refuse the President’s constitutional call to arms, but Massachusetts, that jewel of a state, demanded, for decades, that the federal government pay for the expenses of the militia that had been grudgingly raised (but not allowed to leave the borders) and to also pay pensions for their supposed “service”.

And, perhaps most damningly, it was the New England Yankee which talked openly of Secession during that same war.


This arrogance and obsessive self-interest was apparent to even those who left their numbers for a time to live elsewhere and returned, as one woman was soon to learn…

“Where was the patriotism of Massachusetts when the country was at war with the English in 1812? I lived then at the South, and was ashamed of my countrymen who refused to assist in the war. Massachusetts, which was the leading State of New England, refused to let her militia leave the State and when the US troops were withdrawn, to fight in other places, applied to the Federal Government to know whether the expenses of their own militia, who were summoned to defend their own State, would be reimbursed by the Government.

When our capitol at Washington was burned with the President’s House and Treasury buildings, and other public buildings, why did they not go to meet the British? On the contrary, they rejoiced at the English victories, and put every obstacle in the way of the government.

Now they are subscribing millions, and urging every man to go and fight their own countrymen. It is not patriotism; it is hatred to the South and woe is me, that I must live here among such people. God grant you success, It is a righteous war and all the bloodshed will be on the souls of those who brought it on.

I think, however, that you at the South are wrong to undervalue the courage and resources of the Northern States. They are less disposed to fight, but they are not cowardly where their interests are concerned; and will fight for their money. Where their property is at stake they will not hesitate to risk their lives, and at present there is no lack of money.”

The New England Yankee thought of himself and his part of the country as the one, true American and America, and so his values and thoughts were the only ones that mattered. In the early 1810’s, their Congressmen demanded that the government place a high tariff on all imports so that the citizenry of the nation would be forced to “buy American”; the centers of manufacture being in New England at the time meant that they would be the ones who profited the most. Any speech against this was openly decried as treasonous by the New England bloc, and when the Southern Congressmen the low price of cotton, the Southern staple crop, as compared to the high price of New England goods, the New England Yankees informed the Southerners, in Congress no less, that the South’s economic distress was simply due to the South’s lazy attitude and their well-documented inferiority in enterprise to the wise and industrious New England. This pattern of thought dominated New England’s treatment of the South, and it slowly bled out to the rest of the North from there.

In the 1790’s, Jedediah Morse had the first ever “American” geography book published. In it, he extolled the virtues of his native New England peoples, how hardworking, prosperous, Church-centered, and intelligent they were! West of the Hudson, he made sure that those who read his book understood how stupid, slovenly, and lazy everyone who wasn’t a New Englander was, with the lazy and morally-bankrupt inhabiting the South and the low-breed German and Scots-Irish in the middle. The New England stock were real Anglo-Saxon stock with all the wonders associated with that race, the only ones who mattered; hell, it was even in their name!

Noah Webster published his dictionary shortly after Morse published his geography; in it he proclaimed that the English spoken by the New England Yankee was the bestest and purest in the world, even more so than the English spoken by the English; he even went so far as to alter the spelling of many words, taking, for example, the “u” out of “colour” and putting the second “s” in “surprize”, rendering it “surprise”.

He went South to sell his books, stopping along the way to make pamphlets he could issue as he went that exhorted people to be more like the people of New England and to request an audience with Thomas Jefferson at his plantation (so he could later say that Jefferson was his personal friend, a typical strategy of those seeking attention). Jefferson wrote a letter to James Madison shortly after the visit, describing Webster as

“…a mere pedagogue of very limited understanding and very strong prejudices and party passions.”

Webster himself sums up the typical New England Yankee self-opinion in his diary…

“O New England! How superior are thy inhabitants in morals, literature, civility, and industry!”

Let this attitude be remembered by all those who simply wish to say that the South seceded unprovoked in a massive temper fit over slavery; the New England Yankee was completely self-obsessed and willing to put an economic stranglehold where they wished simply because they believed they were inherently superior to the rest of America and thus had the right to do so.

However, after the War of 1812, the New England Yankee had to up his game; the stunts pulled during that war did not endear him well to the other groups in America. As such, a massive effort to improve their image came about, a building of a mythology that would still hold fast in the minds and textbooks of America generations later.

Journalists, professors, preachers, schoolteachers, public speakers…anyone who had access to the common man and a sympathetic lean toward the New England Yankee viewpoint began giving him a makeover.

Suddenly, one did not find themselves reading about the battles in the South during the War for Independence; one read only about the battles in New England (and a few other places here and there), and about the New England Founding Fathers (the ones who weren’t from New England were either relegated to footnotes or, if they were too big to camouflage, had their origins glossed over). Historians were claiming that not only had the South not contributed, but it had needed the armies of New England to save it. Daniel Webster, the “Union’s” stalwart champion, waxed eloquent while in Charleston about the multitude of graves in the South belonged to New England soldiers.

Those graves do not exist, nor did they. No New England unit had ever served any time in the South, which is where the War took place after the first few battles up North.

However, there were many Southern units who served in New England, as well as many Tory regiments from New York and Connecticut who fought down South…but those were not talked about.

During the events that led to the Missouri Compromise, Adams wrote to Jefferson…

“I have been so terrified with this phenomenon that I constantly said in former times to the Southern gentlemen, I must leave it to you. I will vote for no measure against your judgements.”

This is in distinct contrast to the commonly-held belief, and indeed recent documentary, depicting Adams as some sort of anti-slavery firebrand.

If you have doubts, here is a little thought exercise…which was the first lasting settlement where the first Thanksgiving was held: Plymouth or Jamestown? Name a few major battles of both New England during the Revolutionary War, and then name some of the South. Before reading this, where would you have said most of the Revolutionary War was fought, or where most of the Founding Fathers were from?

More than likely, you answered Plymouth, perhaps the Battle of Lexington and Concord along with the Battle of Yorktown, and you might have thought of Kettle Creek in Georgia (maybe), and for the last two you probably would have said New England.

This goes to show you how successful the New England project to rewrite or makeover history was.

It also shows you the mentality of the New England Yankee, who gradually spread out to many of the other Northern states into positions of leadership and persuasion, served as a foil to the mentality of the South, which was its polar opposite. This is not to say that the New England Yankee did not have his good points, or that the Southern Gentleman did not have his bad. However, one was content to leave well enough alone, and the other was more and more inclined to meddle for his own gain.

Now, as has been said, most Northern peoples, aside from New England, were rather ambivalent to the South, if not sympathetic. So how is it that a war that pitted this great nation against itself?

Abolitionists.

There were two types of abolitionists; those who were opposed to slavery and wanted it abolished, and those who opposed slavery, wanted it abolished, and those who practiced it punished.

The latter, the inheritors of the same mentality that created the Salem Witch hysteria, are the ones that should be focused upon.

To these people, slavery was a sin, and sin had to be stamped out, destroyed, its fastnesses left with no stone on top of the other and its fields salted. This religious fanaticism, present in the terrorism of John Brown, found its roots in what was known as the “Burned Over District” of New York. This particular locale was home to many odd religious movements, from Moroni delivering the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith to the free love commune founded by John Humphrey Noyes.

Brown found a crowd for his firebrand teaching about the evil ways of the indolent and lazy Southerner who sipped mint juleps in the shade whilst cracking a whip over the back of some poor black slave child. However, it wasn’t just Brown’s devilish Southerners who were found to be preventing America from becoming closer with God; others reached upon the evils of the Jew, the Mason’s Satanic rites, liquor’s temptations, eating meat, playing cards, and marrying.

John Brown’s voice was merely the latest among a cacophony of religious-minded weirdness; it merely sang in concordance with the New England-bred viewpoint of the immoral and decadent Southern people, and found willfully listening ears among the New England-born leaders of the Republican Party, such as Horace Greeley in New York, Salmon Chase in Ohio, Lyman Trumbull in Illinois, and Thaddeus Stevens in Pennsylvania.

What is of note is that the particular brand of abolitionism that Brown was speaking of (and began to be parroted around the North) took very little interest in what to actually do with the slaves after they were freed. It did not have any say in the welfare of the slave, nor where they should go or do after their chains were severed (but the general sentiment among the Northerners was “do what you like but don’t do it here”).

Indeed, the main argument for abolitionism seemed to be that it was a sin, sin was bad, and those who sin must be punished and hated. Brown was particularly good at whipping his congregation into a frenzy, and other preachers followed suit, accusing the Southern people of committing every degeneracy imaginable every second of every day, upon which slavery was just the icing on top.

All this without the majority of them having seen the supposed “atrocities”, merely having built them up from isolated incidents, hearsay, and imagination in the echo chamber their communities provided.

As one writer penned in the United States Democratic Review…

“The Abolitionists have throughout committed the fatal mistake of urging a purely moral cause by means, not only foreign to that character, but hostile to it, incompatible with it. Where they had to persuade, they have undertaken to force. Where love was the spirit in which they should have approached the task, they have done it in that of hate.”

Abolitionism of this era seemed less to do with the welfare of the slave and more with creating a monster out of the South; it was a problematic and unprogressive approach to an issue that was reaching a head in the first place. Even Daniel Webster, he of the illusory New England graves in the South, had remarked during the debates leading up to the 1850 Compromise, that the Southerners would not have defended slavery to the extent that they had if the abolitionists had not been so rabid themselves.

But the fervor grew, and by the mid 1850’s, an entire generation that had heard nothing but Abolitionist propaganda surrounding the South and her people had grown up knowing absolutely nothing about those people but that propaganda, and new immigrants, near-totally unknowing of American history and the meaning of the words in the Constitution, saw and heard and believed it.

To borrow a passage from a Confederate prisoner-of-war to his hometown paper…

“They say we are all benighted people, and are trying to pull down that which God himself built up. Many of these bigots express great astonishment at finding the majority of our men could read and write; they have actually been educated to regard the Southern people as grossly illiterate, and little better than savages.”

Again, the culture clash between the North and South raised its head. The religion of the South, while sometimes fiery, did not stir up her people to hatred and malice. The North was marked by its near-Puritanical religious fervor that made much noise but lacked in substance. Northern cities were filthy and packed to the brim, full of starving children and women and men working up to 16 hours a day for little more than pocket change, brothels and pubs on every corner with homeless occupying the alleys between, while the rich one street over were eating fine European food, wasting half of it, and complaining about the quality of brandy on their way to the carriage which would take them to their homes where they would light cigars with hundred-dollar banknotes. The Southern cities, while not as large, were not nearly so squalid; they had their unpleasant spots, to be sure, but Atlanta had not a patch upon the dirt and grime of New York City.

Where the North seemed to put its values into the almighty dollar, which is by itself no bad thing, the South placed its heart into the land and family.

However, the rise of the Abolitionists meant that soon political power, the ability to make their vision of retribution come true, was on its way, and so it was that Abraham Lincoln gained their support, and it was enough, combined with the splitting of the vote between the other candidates, that he would become President and keep his promises.

The South had long been threatening to act should someone who did not represent their interests become President; the aforementioned tariff, which drove down the price of cotton while skyrocketing the cost of manufactured goods, meant that, while those goods (manufactured by the North) stayed at a constant price due to the consumer base being the home citizenry, the cotton prices were at the beck and call of the world economy. Essentially, the North, heavily industrialized, was making a tidy profit that the rest of America was not. This basically provided a grey area for which the Northern businesses could claim Constitutionality (as the federal government could institute levees) while being the near-sole benefactor.

This would be the equivalent of the city council telling everyone in your town that every time they passed over a speed bump in the middle of Main Street, they had to pay 15 cents to the privately-owned street sweepers. Not an issue, just avoid the bump…but then they close all the roads but Main Street, so that you are forced to go over that speed bump.

Luckily, the Polk Administration had relieved some of that tariff, but toward the end of the Mexican War, when new territory was fast being added, a Representative of Pennsylvania introduced legislation that became known as the “Wilmott Proviso”, which stated that slavery would not be allowed to expand West into any of the new territory being won from Mexico. The legislation quickly passed the House, shoved through by a Northern majority pissy about Polk’s gutting of their tariffs, and failed in the Senate, only to pass through the House again the next year.

This was a violation of the Missouri Compromise, which limited slavery to below the 36-30’ parallel (save for Missouri, which was allowed to be a slave state); the terms of the Compromise were that it wouldn’t spread North, but Westward expansion of slave states was another matter.

The South viewed this as a political move by the Abolitionist Republicans to corner them into a minority within Congress, forever dooming them to governance by a hostile North-and-West in the same country that their ancestors, the mostly-Southern Founding Fathers, had founded for them.

The vast bulk of the soldiers fighting the Mexican-American war were Southern men, and the implications of the Wilmott Proviso was deeply offensive to them and their families, many of whom had happily volunteered, if not their service as soldiers, their goods and time to help the war effort; no thought had been made of insidiously expanding slavery.

The Compromise of 1850 was supposed to have settled all of this; Daniel Webster sacrificed what was left of his favor with Northern Republicans by denouncing the Abolitionists and begging the North to compromise and come together with the South, which was readily accepting it as a peace offering. This proved to be a mistake; as is the politician’s wont, the North took it and prepared to make further demands that the South would have to honor or renege upon the Compromise completely.

A few years after this, the Republicans created new furor when they hysterically decried the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which would allow these two areas to decide whether they would be free or slave states; it was announced that it was a nefarious plot by Southerners to expand slavery past the 36-30’ parallel (the fact that it was drafted by Stephen Douglas of the Douglas-Lincoln debates throws this into doubt, since Douglas later threw all his not-inconsiderable political might behind Lincoln during the War).

A long-bred animosity between North and South, created by Northern hysteria and Southern pride, waited, smoldering just beneath the surface, was ready to ignite at the slightest movement from either side.

Enter President Lincoln, dedicated to Northern economic interests and ready to deliver on his campaign promises to the Abolitionist Republicans.

Exit the South, with the idea that they would recreate their fathers’ Constitution, with a few tweaks, and live as they were supposed to, by making their own decisions without the worry of a hostile group breathing down their necks.

Secession quickly followed, and the Union-held Fort Sumter was holding out in the bay of Charleston, South Carolina. To leave it be was out of the question; whoever held the fort could hold either the coast hostage or keep enemy ships from waltzing into Charleston.

The Confederate soldiers were content to wait the Union soldiers out (they only had so much food in the fortress) , but then received word that Lincoln (who had been avoiding meeting the emissaries of the new Confederate States of America) had sent a ship full of supplies and reinforcements, enough that to allow them to relieve the established Union troops at the fort would make it impossible for them to be dislodged.

The word to fire was given, and so did the War Between the States begin.

5643789

Taking single sources like this is a serious issue. History is all about examining all the sources. Had this been in any history class I'd taken since high school it would've failed miserably.

Was there a flaw in the facts, i.e., did the author misquote the Confederate constitution? If so, please explain.

Do you disagree with the summarized conclusions? If so, please articulate.

Your personal experience means nothing to me. Dispute it with facts from reputable sources, or do not bother.

I shall also present the Corner Stone Speech, made by the CSA vice-president, in which he articulates:

But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.

and

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.

Emphasis mine. I also offer the Mississippi Declaration of Secession, in which the second sentence reads:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.

I also offer the S.C. Declaration of Secession, which spends much of its text decrying the alleged injustices of "non-slaveholding states" and announcing:

A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

Again, emphasis mine. Also noteworthy is the last quoted line, in which one of the points offered against Lincoln is his notion that slavery was bound for eventual extinction. This appears to indicate Southern leaders were hostile to even a gradual end to slavery. Also indicative of this argument is the above-noted CSA constitution, which not only entrenches the slave institution with the following article:

No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.

But also does little to improve "state rights," and indeed, takes some state rights away. Interestingly, it also keeps the clause allowing the USA to "suppress insurrections" - effectively giving the Confederacy the right to fight its own Civil War should, say, Texas declare independence.

The published words of Confederate leaders very plainly list slavery as the singular issue of the revolt. That many issues swirled around the grim conflict goes without saying, but the argument that it was about "State Rights" appears contradicted by the CSA constitution, and to say "it wasn't slavery," appears contradicted by the above writings - made not by Northern propagandists, but by Southern leaders articulating their beliefs and reasons. I am curious what stronger, closer source could possibly be furnished.

Eagle
Group Contributor

5644868

Was there a flaw in the facts, i.e., did the author misquote the Confederate constitution? If so, please explain.

Don't try to spin this, you know that's not what I meant. You're supposed to look at all sources when answering a question, not just one to get the answer you want. You're claiming that slavery is the solitary cause of the war, which any reliable history professor would deny, as it was not at all.

You aren't wrong because your sources are wrong, you are wrong because you've selectivity chosen a few sources covering the same issue to try and argue your own point rather than go over all major sources to find the true answer. You can look into the differences between expanding manufacturing in the north and the agricultural south, the expansion west and emergence of larger agricultural land, the mass immigration in the north that gave a new source of cheap labor, the differing cultures with emphasis on regional nationalism rather than American, the holes in the Constitution such as secession rights that opened the door for it, the tariff issues and the Nullification Crisis.

I'll also assume you'll be an adult and not go writing a rant blog to bring other upon me either.

5644925

You're claiming that slavery is the solitary cause of the war, which any reliable history professor would deny, as it was not at all.

The O.P. gave a choice between two options, I selected the most factually correct one. To say that I said slavery was the "solitary" cause of the war is a lie.

You can look into the differences between expanding manufacturing in the north and the agricultural south, the expansion west and emergence of larger agricultural land, the mass immigration in the north that gave a new source of cheap labor, the differing cultures with emphasis on regional nationalism rather than American, the holes in the Constitution such as secession rights that opened the door for it, the tariff issues and the Nullification Crisis.

My argument is that slavery was not "one problem among many." It was the defining issue of the conflict - the largest by leaps and bounds, and the greatest factor in the "secession fever" that led to war. If you agree, so be it. If you disagree, cite your sources and make the argument. Show me Confederate documents of higher authority or broader scope than the ones I have produced, which define the revolt as one against tariffs or immigration. Show me events that led to greater radicalization than early flashpoints over slavery - Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott, etc.

You aren't wrong because your sources are wrong, you are wrong because you've selectivity chosen a few sources covering the same issue to try and argue your own point rather than go over all major sources to find the true answer.

What truer answer for the motivation for revolt can be found than the written, published words of the Confederate leaders, expressly made to declare their motivation for revolt?

5644925

I'll also assume you'll be an adult and not go writing a rant blog to bring other upon me either.

Please indicate the blog where I am calling others to attack you. I did write a blog last night saying I'd walk away, but that wasn't referencing you. I did plan to, but my need to educate has outweighed my common sense.

Also, please stop presuming to know my thoughts and intentions. Focus on my argument, and engage it with cited evidence. Or agree to disagree and pass on by.

Eagle
Group Contributor

5644978

The O.P. gave a choice between two options, I selected the most factually correct one. To say that I said slavery was the "solitary" cause of the war is a lie.

And I said to you that slavery was not the only cause, to which you replied by dumping further tons of sources only on slavery and asking me if I disapproved of them.

My argument is that slavery was not "one problem among many." It was the defining issue of the conflict - the largest by leaps and bounds, and the greatest factor in the "secession fever" that led to war.

Then bring forth other pieces, to have slavery as a majority is a given but to have it as the only argument says otherwise.

If you agree, so be it.

I already said I agreed, and I already showed several basic areas of US history. You really need citation to know about the mass immigration and Manifest Destiny?

which define the revolt as one against tariffs

I wrote down the bloody Nullification Crisis in which South Carolina threatened to secede during the Jackson days over Tariffs.

or immigration

The fact that immigration served as a clear competitor of cheap labor to slavery in the manufacturing north is a given. They didn't like slavery nor blacks. You can look into the New York Draft Riots and the heavy racism and competition freed slaves faced when they moved north.

5645014

I do not care for your confrontational tone, your demand that I cite additional sources while you have cited none, or the fact that you just noted agreement with my essential crux so I don't even know what we're fucking debating anymore.

Like... maybe you interpreted my entire post as being a direct rebuttal, whereas I intended it more to be general support for my stance? That is my fault if so, I do not generally divide my work into multiple posts for multiple points. I can see how it may have been interpreted as an assault.

Regardless, I believe we are done.

5644025

I have a Bachelors of Arts degree in History as well. Did a research paper over the siege of Vicksburg and took a Military history class. And that's about the extent of my Civil War studies in college. But I am an avid Civil War reader.

Overall I agree with you. Slavery was the primary reason for the war in my opinion. That being said if the war had ended in 1861 or early 1862 with a Confederate surrender I believe slavery would have continued in the South for another generation. During these years Lincoln's goal was to save the Union with or without freeing the slaves.

Eagle
Group Contributor

5645030

I do not care for your confrontational tone,

And I don't care for a condescending attitude. Either way let's get back to the argument.

your demand that I cite additional sources while you have cited none

I just did, nullification crisis, manifest destiny, immigration. Can you really not look at these on wikipedia or something? Just because I don't hotlink them for you doesn't mean I didn't give counters. Here, 1850s in immigration, nullification, Draft Riots, and the west. And don't go with that 'wikipedia doesn't count' claim because this stuff is basic US history, they teach this at beginner's level in college. Either agree or disagree and if you think these are incorrect state why, don't demand that I hand-hold all the way.

fact that you just noted agreement with my essential crux

I agree with your idea but you've failed to properly provide it by citing sources from one single argument. Yours was that slavery was the main, but not only, reason for the war, but your sources are strictly revolving around slavery.

Regardless, I believe we are done.

If you want, though I'm replying at this point more for the sake of anyone reading than to beat down on you.

5645040

Probably one of the sadder things in studying the Civil War were the lost opportunities the North had to end the damn thing earlier than they did. Instead of getting stuck with tunnel vision with the Governments fixation on taking Richmond they should have committed to a course of total war from the onset. Make the South hurt in every way possible especially their wallets. There wasn't any need for the war to have dragged on as long as it did given the North had the means to end it sooner.

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