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| Why did the American Civil War begin? |
| Slavery, everything else stems from that |
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22% |
[ 18 ] |
| States' Rights |
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18% |
[ 15 ] |
| Struggle between two economic systems |
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10% |
[ 8 ] |
| It began over States' Rights, later Emancipation was important |
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22% |
[ 18 ] |
| A struggle of States' Rights and two economic systems |
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21% |
[ 17 ] |
| Something brilliant for which I'm too dim-witted to have anticipated |
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5% |
[ 4 ] |
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| Total Votes : 80 |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2011 4:17 pm Post subject: |
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| travel zen wrote: |
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| Exactly. History could've easily gone the other way. An imperialist Southern venture extending all the way South to the Tierra del Fuego. The incentive systems could've been similar to the Roman Empire: Confederate Legionnaires get their plantation at the edge of the Empire, with Mestizo slaves to work them. |
Hehe. I had to laugh when I read that. You can't be serious?!!
Even though it was widespread, the idea of slavery even then was sickening to most people. Slavery (forcing humans to do manual labour) was becoming too costly, time consuming and, yes, morally offensive to consumers and industrialists in Europe and the US. Remember that the Brits were a commercial Empire above all else. Money was the absolute bottom line. |
No. Slavery was too costly and time consuming during the mid-life of its American incarnation. Slavery was first introduced partly because the United States South and the West Indies were undeveloped, malaria-ridden infested lands, and the chattel slaves taken from Africa happened to be specially suited to the climate. But at the mid-point of the evolution of slavery, at about the time of the establishment of the American Constitution, slavery was indeed becoming costly.
The popularization of the cotton engine changed everything.
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| The invention of the cotton gin caused massive growth of the production of cotton in the United States, concentrated mostly in the South. The growth of cotton production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850. As a result, the South became even more dependent on plantations and slavery, making plantation agriculture the largest sector of the Southern economy.[7] In addition to the increase in cotton production,the number of slaves rose as well, from around 700,000, before Eli Whitney�s patent, to around 3.2 million in 1850.[8] By 1860 the United States' South was providing eighty percent of Great Britain�s cotton and also providing two-thirds of the world�s supply of cotton |
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Year Slaves in all States
1790 694,207
1800 887,612
1810 1,130,781
1820 1,529,012
1830 1,987,428
1840 2,482,798
1850 3,200,600
1860 3,950,546 |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Slavery_map.jpg |
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travel zen
Joined: 22 Feb 2005
Location: Good old Toronto, Canada
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| Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2011 4:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Yes. Unsustainable. |
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Steelrails
Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System
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| Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2011 6:11 pm Post subject: |
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| travel zen wrote: |
Not even Harry Turtledove would buy that. |
A Guns of the South and How Few Remain reader are we?
Off-Topic- I enjoyed Turtledove's Worldwar series featuring an Alien invasion force with about 2025 level military technology (and WWI doctrine) invading Earth in 1942 (expecting to face medieval forces) and running smackdab into the middle of WWII and not having the easiest go of it as you might imagine.
Back on topic- I think it is always important to differentiate between why people fought and why the war happened. Those are two totally distinct things.
I think people fought for a variety of reasons. I think the war happened because of slavery.
Is it really hard to imagine that a bunch of people, raised on notions of democracy, equality, the universal dignity of man, and Christian compassion looked out on slavery and decided that they should fight a war over it? |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Jan 21, 2011 8:07 am Post subject: |
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| Is it really hard to imagine that a bunch of people, raised on notions of democracy, equality, the universal dignity of man, and Christian compassion looked out on slavery and decided that they should fight a war over it? |
Where was this place in the US?
It was only in some of the northern states that even SOME of the people believed in equality of races. It was not a commonly held belief. The North was almost as racist as the South. Even most northern states did not accept 'the universal dignity of man'.
As I said back at the beginning of this thread, I agree with Lincoln that slavery was 'somehow' connected to everything, but it is impossible to separate the treasonous philosophy of states rights from slavery as the cause of the War. Anyone who reads the history of the movement to establish a new constitution (who is honest) has to admit that the plan of the Founders was to establish a centralized government that held the preponderence of power because they envisioned 'one people'. E Pluribus Unum.
I disagree with the people who narrow the discussion to only slavery. States rights is as much a cause of the War as slavery. It gave the traitors (descendants of the anti-federalists) a political cover for their anti-American agenda. |
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Kepler
Joined: 24 Sep 2007
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| Posted: Fri Jan 21, 2011 9:00 am Post subject: |
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| It was started because of debates about whether slavery should be allowed in the new states that were being formed in the west. Lincoln was against the spread of slavery. Southerners argued that the Constitution granted no power to the federal government to have a say in the matter. They argued that it was a violation of the Tenth Amendment which protected state powers. They also feared that it would set a dangerous precedent- that it was acceptable for the federal government to interfere in the matter and this could be the slippery slope to a federal ban on all slavery in the US one day. Lincoln was known as the anti-slavery candidate in the 1860 presidential election. News that he had won the election was the last straw for many southerners. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri Jan 21, 2011 10:59 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| Quote: |
| Is it really hard to imagine that a bunch of people, raised on notions of democracy, equality, the universal dignity of man, and Christian compassion looked out on slavery and decided that they should fight a war over it? |
I disagree with the people who narrow the discussion to only slavery. States rights is as much a cause of the War as slavery. It gave the traitors (descendants of the anti-federalists) a political cover for their anti-American agenda. |
You need to at least wrestle with the facts.
South Carolina's, Mississippi's, and other States' secession documents specifically mention slavery as their reason for secession.
Leading up to the Civil War, it was the South, not the North, who had dominant power within the Federal government. Southern politicians used Federal coercion time and again. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act was a Southern-backed Federal imposition on Free States. Please witness the Wisconsin Booth affair.
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| Learning that Joshua Glover, a runaway slave, had been captured by his Missouri owner and jailed in Milwaukee under the authority of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Booth rode his horse through the city streets, scattering hand-bills summoning a citizens' meeting and allegedly shouting, "Freemen to the rescue." A mob soon broke into the jail and rescued Glover, who was later spirited off to Canada. The affair placed Booth in the center of a six-year controversy between state and federal authorities that eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Before quiet was restored, the Wisconsin Supreme Court deliberately set itself against the federal government, and the legislature in a series of resolutions denounced the federal court's "arbitrary act of power" in its adverse decision on the Booth case as "void and of no force." |
The Wisconsin Supreme Court (In re Booth,
3 Wis. 1, 1854 WL 100 (Wis. 1854.)) struck down the Fugitive Slave Act for five reasons:
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The act of congress of 1850, commonly called the Fugitive Slave Act, is unconstitutional and void.
1. Because it does not provide for a trial by jury of the fact that the alleged fugitive owes service to the claimant by the laws of another state, and of his escape therefrom.
2. It authorizes a hearing and determination of the claim of the master, and the fact of escape, by commissioners of the United States, who cannot be endowed with judicial powers under the constitution of the United States.
3. The judicial power of the United States can be vested only in courts, or in judges, whose term of office is during good behavior, and whose compensation is fixed and certain.
4. The functions with which United States commissioners are endowed by the act of 1850 are judicial, and therefore repugnant to the constitution.
5. By the said act, any person alleged to be a fugitive may be arrested and deprived of his liberty � without due process of law.� CRAWFORD, J., dissenting. |
The US Supreme Court overruled this in Ableman v. Booth.
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[Q]uestions of this kind must always depend upon the Constitution and laws of the United States, and not of a State. The Constitution was not formed merely to guard the States against danger from foreign nations, but mainly to secure union and harmony at home; for if this object could be attained, there would be but little danger from abroad; and to accomplish this purpose, it was felt by the statesmen who framed the Constitution, and by the people who adopted it, that it was necessary that many of the rights of sovereignty which the States then possessed should be ceded to the General Government; and that, in the sphere of action assigned to it, it should be supreme, and strong enough to execute its own laws by its own tribunals, without interruption from a State or from State authorities. And it was evident that anything short of this would be inadequate to the main objects for which the Government was established; and that local interests, local passions or prejudices, incited and fostered by individuals for sinister purposes, would lead to acts of aggression and injustice by one State upon the rights of another, which would ultimately terminate in violence and force, unless there was a common arbiter between them, armed with power enough to protect and guard the rights of all, by appropriate laws, to be carried into execution peacefully by its judicial tribunals.
The language of the Constitution, by which this power is granted, is too plain to admit of doubt or to need comment. It declares that "this Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be passed in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." |
Roger Taney's language is extremely Federalist, and very against State's Rights. One year earlier, in the Dred Scott decision, he was apparently supportive of a State's Rights, in the sense that slaves were given no protection or citizenship under the Federal Constitution. That was because Article III, Section 2, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution provides that "the judicial Power shall extend... to Controversies... between Citizens of different States...." And thus Dred Scott, as something less than a citizen of his State, could not bring suit. And thus,
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| no State can, by any act or law of its own, passed since the adoption of the Constitution, introduce a new member into the political community created by the Constitution of the United States. |
Again, it would be awkward to call the Dred Scott decision a victory for State's Rights. It was a clear victory for slavery, nevertheless.
Ulysses S. Grant:
| U.S. Grant wrote: |
The South claimed the sovereignty of States, but claimed the right to coerce into their confederation such States as they wanted, that is, all the States where slavery existed. They did not seem to think this course inconsistent. The fact is, the Southern slave-owners believed that, in some way, the ownership of slaves conferred a sort of patent of nobility--a right to govern independent of the interest or wishes of those who did not hold such property. They convinced themselves, first, of the divine origin of the institution and, next, that that particular institution was not safe in the hands of any body of legislators but themselves. Meanwhile the Administration of President Buchanan looked helplessly on and proclaimed that the general government had no power to interfere; that the Nation had no power to save its own life.
Mr. Buchanan had in his cabinet two members at least, who were as earnest--to use a mild term--in the cause of secession as Mr. Davis or any Southern statesman. One of them, Floyd, the Secretary of War, scattered the army so that much of it could be captured when hostilities should commence, and distributed the cannon and small arms from Northern arsenals throughout the South so as to be on hand when treason wanted them. The navy was scattered in like manner. The President did not prevent his cabinet preparing for war upon their government, either by destroying its resources or storing them in the South until a de facto government was established with Jefferson Davis as its President, and Montgomery, Alabama, as the Capital. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2011 3:21 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
As I said back at the beginning of this thread, I agree with Lincoln that slavery was 'somehow' connected to everything, but it is impossible to separate the treasonous philosophy of states rights from slavery as the cause of the War. Anyone who reads the history of the movement to establish a new constitution (who is honest) has to admit that the plan of the Founders was to establish a centralized government that held the preponderence of power because they envisioned 'one people'. E Pluribus Unum.
I disagree with the people who narrow the discussion to only slavery. States rights is as much a cause of the War as slavery. It gave the traitors (descendants of the anti-federalists) a political cover for their anti-American agenda. |
Right. Actually the United States was founded as a collective Borg, modeled upon the same social ethics of a termite's nest. This is exactly what the founding father's originally envisioned: an all-powerful central government ('God', ie. Lincoln sitting on a throne surrounded by fascia) ruling over a giant ant colony. States' rights were never even mentioned in the constitution. Ya-ta's pretty much got it covered (as usual). |
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Steelrails
Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 7:47 am Post subject: |
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The Strange Victory of the Palmetto State
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During the debates over the Compromise of 1850, a fairly strong secession movement arose not just in South Carolina but also in Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. Invoking and simultaneously subverting Patrick Henry�s famous revolutionary slogan, the South Carolinian Edward Bryan proclaimed, �Give us slavery or give us death!"
On Feb. 13, three commissioners from South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi arrived simultaneously in that state. South Carolina�s John S. Preston, who had earlier argued, �Slavery is our King � Slavery is our Truth � Slavery is our Divine Right,� now told Virginians that the election of Lincoln meant the �annihilation� of Southern whites. |
South Carolina was so integral to the slave movement, that later, when Sherman marched through Georgia, Georgians would point East and recommend he pillage and destroy South Carolina.
Address of Hon. John S. Preston, Commissioner from South Carolina,
to the Convention of Virginia, February 19, 1861
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| For nearly thirty years, the people of the non-slaveholding States have assailed the institution of African slavery, in every form in which our political connection with them permitted them to approach it. During all that period, large masses of their people, with a persistent fury, maddened by the intoxication of the wildest fanaticism, have associated, with the avowed purpose of effecting the abolition of slavery by the most fearful means which can be suggested to a subject race: arson and murder are the charities of their programme. |
Next Preston complains that the Free States are disobeying the Federal compact:
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| 2. A majority of the non-slaveholding States have not only refused to carry out the provisions of the Constitution and laws to protect slave property, but have made stringent laws to prevent the execution of those provisions. |
And yes, just like many of us do today, millions of Northerners found slavery abhorrant.
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| 5. The most populous, and by far the most potent, of the Confederates has proclaimed, for years, through its representatives in the Federal Senate, that it is a conflict of life and death between slavery and anti-slavery. This is the solemn decree, through its constituted forms, of a State containing near three millions of people, who conduct four-fifths of the commerce of the Republic. Additional millions of people, making majorities in all the States, and many of the States by legislative action, have declared that the institution of slavery, as it exists in the Southern States, is an offence to God, and, therefore, they are bound by the most sacred duty of man to exterminate that institution. They have declared and acted upon the declaration, that the existence of slavery in the Southern States is an offence and a danger to the social institutions of the Northern States, and, therefore, they are bound by the instinct of moral right and of self-preservation to exterminate slavery. |
We don't need a Marxist analysis here. Preston is proud of the idea of slavery, calling the struggle for slavery a struggle for justice.
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| South Carolina has 300,000 whites and 400,000 slaves; the whites depend on their slaves for their order of civilization and their existence. Twenty millions of people, with a powerfully organized Government, and impelled by the most sacred duties, decree that this slavery must be exterminated. I ask you, Virginians, is right, is justice, is existence, worth a struggle? |
Remember that Africans were introduced to the South because of the prevelance of malaria there, and African resistance. Southerners felt dependent upon African labor.
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| Nature forbids African slavery at the North. Southern civilization cannot exist without African slavery. None but an equal race can labor at the North. None but a subject race will labor at the South. Destroy involuntary labor, and Anglo-Saxon civilization must be remitted to the latitudes whence it sprung. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Sat Feb 12, 2011 2:31 am Post subject: |
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You need to at least wrestle with the facts.
South Carolina's, Mississippi's, and other States' secession documents specifically mention slavery as their reason for secession.
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Ummm, I have stated very clearly a couple of times on this thread that I count slavery as a cause of the War. I just refuse to limit the cause of the War to only slavery. I see that as a gambit to distract people from an equally important cause. If it isn't that, then it is just a too simplistic reading of history.
I'm quite aware the bills of secession asserted slavery as their reason. The Confederacy also went on to say this in their preamble of the Confederate constitution: "We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America."
That's a pretty clear assertion of states rights.
(I probably wouldn't care so much, but I doubt a month has gone by in the last two years where some person/group on the right has resurrected the states rights argument in the form of either nullification or interposition. That is not going to end any better than the last time, I fear.
[One aspect this thread has not dealt with was the perceived growth of power of the Slave Power as it was called in the North. There was a real fear that the slave holders would end up with enough power to enslave the northern factory workers.] |
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alljokingaside
Joined: 17 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Sun Feb 13, 2011 9:22 pm Post subject: |
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Ok. This post is wayy too long to backtrack but...
"The Emancipation Proclamation was ridiculed for freeing only the slaves over which the Union had no power."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation
The point was to ride on the wave of moral (and deserved) superiority and abolitionist fervor, garnering support for the righteous union, declaring control of the renegade states, and splitting Southern support from within.
Technological advancements in agriculture that was growing at the time would have made buying, maintaining, feeding, housing, etc vast numbers of slaves unprofitable.
Yes, Lincoln was probably against slavery, but that wasn't his goal. To preserve the Union, that was.
Slavery was more a rallying point, an easy clear cut issue that people could side with or against, a dividing line that made siding with the North (or if you were a poor, ignorant white farmer, insecure yet still somehow superior to the well-to-do Black American, the South) a no-brainer in Lincoln's mind. Maybe even a moral obligation. Southern secession now became an act of rebellion, not a repeat of the declaration of independence. Since rebellion implies "ownership," the North were well within their rights to quell the popular uprising. It became civil war and not a sovereign people's struggle for self-determination.
Also, it undercut any possible support from potential Confederate-friendly nations on the basis of morality.
And since at that point, Southern industry was still dependent on slaves, they'd do what they can to retain that right. With time, and even during that time (if I remember correctly), forces were working against the profitability of mass slave-ownership. Slavery was the pretext with consequence. |
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alljokingaside
Joined: 17 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Sun Feb 13, 2011 9:23 pm Post subject: |
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Ok. This post is wayy too long to backtrack but...
"The Emancipation Proclamation was ridiculed for freeing only the slaves over which the Union had no power."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation
The point was to ride on the wave of moral (and deserved) superiority and abolitionist fervor, garnering support for the righteous union, declaring control of the renegade states, and splitting Southern support from within.
Technological advancements in agriculture that was growing at the time would have made buying, maintaining, feeding, housing, etc vast numbers of slaves unprofitable.
And since at that point, Southern industry was still dependent on slaves, they'd do what they can to retain that right. With time, and even during that time (if I remember correctly), forces were working against the profitability of mass slave-ownership. Slavery was the pretext with consequence.
Yes, Lincoln was probably against slavery, but that wasn't his goal. To preserve the Union, that was.
Slavery was more the rallying point, an easy clear cut issue that people could side with or against, a dividing line that made siding with the North (or if you were a poor, ignorant white farmer, insecure yet still somehow superior to the well-to-do Black American, the South) a no-brainer in Lincoln's mind. Maybe even a moral obligation. Southern secession now became an act of rebellion, not a repeat of the declaration of independence. Since James Dean, the Fonz, and X-Wings weren't around just yet and rebellion wasn't cool, the now termed "rebellion" implied that the North were well within their rights to quell the popular uprising. Probably, it was seen as obligatory. It became civil war and not a sovereign people's struggle for self-determination.
Also, it undercut any possible support from potential Confederate-friendly nations on the basis of morality.
Sorry if this is a repeat. At least, sorry is what I say. |
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mistermasan
Joined: 20 Sep 2007
Location: 10+ yrs on Dave's ESL cafe
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| Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2011 10:44 am Post subject: |
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| in missouri, the war still smolders. st.louis just got local control of her police dept. back from the state capital. the state seized it back circa the war because southern sentiment was too strong in the 'loo. they just got control back. how? by telling the state that if the state wants control the state is going to have to pay for the department. less than a week later the state set the st.louis police department free. only about 150 years after the fact. |
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geldedgoat
Joined: 05 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2011 10:32 pm Post subject: |
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| Unions forces weren't relocated to Fort Sumter as a reaction to South Carolina's slavery, and South Carolina's forces weren't provoked into an attack because of the Union's views on the appropriate treatment of Africans. |
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