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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 Nov 08, 2007 5:36 pm Post subject: Was the Civil War started b/c of Slavery or States' Rights? |
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CBClark posted this.
| Gopher wrote: |
My understanding is that the North initially fought the Civil War with the single goal of preserving the union. Only later in the war did it become a war to destroy the Southern political-economy and abolish slavery.
Still, "slavery" was the elephant in the room from start to finish. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 5:40 pm Post subject: |
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I'm going to use CBClark's post as evidence that the North fought the war to free the slaves. Bold is mine.
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[Fremont's Sept. 11th] proclamation in part:
"The property, real and personal, of all persons in the state of Missouri who shall take up arms against the United States, or who shall be directly proven to have taken an active part with their enemies in the field, is declared to be confiscated to the public use, and their slaves, if any they have, are hearby declared freemen."
This sent a shock wave throughout the country and in England. Northerners took to the streets cheering. However, Lincoln, to avoid the loss of border states, ordered Fr�mont to rescind the order. |
My interpretation is that Lincoln was entirely interested in winning the war. He waged that war to end the expansion of slavery. Northerners fought and bled to end slavery itself. Lincoln's tactics won the US the war, and upon winning that war, the expected happened: Slavery was abolished. |
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Masta_Don
Joined: 17 Aug 2006
Location: Hyehwa-dong, Seoul
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| Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 5:46 pm Post subject: |
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Are you American?
The war started as an argument about States' rights. |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 7:01 pm Post subject: |
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KEY QUESTION: Who financed the conflict & bloodshed?
Elite european powers are said to have had a hand in manipulating & affecting certain events. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 7:07 pm Post subject: |
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Kuros: you might be reading Civil-War history backwards, with the end result in mind from the start. But what if it did not precisely unfold that way at the time?
Last edited by Gopher on Thu Nov 08, 2007 7:08 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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cbclark4
Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Location: Masan
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| Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 7:08 pm Post subject: |
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With his army surrounded, his men weak and exhausted, Robert E. Lee realized there was little choice but to consider the surrender of his Army to General Grant. After a series of notes between the two leaders, they agreed to meet on April 9, 1865, at the house of Wilmer McLean in the village of Appomattox Courthouse.
AMENDMENT XIII
Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.
Note: A portion of Article IV, section 2, of the Constitution was superseded by the 13th amendment.
Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. |
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djsmnc
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Dave's ESL Cafe
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| Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 7:09 pm Post subject: |
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| I agree with this |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 7:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Kuros: you might be reading Civil-War history backwards, with the end result in mind from the start. But what if it did not precisely unfold that way at the time? |
I'm aware that I'm challenging the popular conciliatory version prevalent in American high school history courses.
I first contend that 'the conflict between two economic systems' theory is just a roundabout way of saying that Slavery was the cause of the Civil War.
I will also argue that moderns do not understand the depth of:
a) the religiousity of many Northerners, who felt that slavery was a sin against the equality of man under God
b) the veniality and greed of many poor Southerners, who were promised their 40 acres and a slave in the new vast Empire stretching from the waters of the Potomac down to Tierra Del Fuego
William Walker's Wars
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| On October 15, 1853 with 45 men, Walker set out on his first filibustering expedition: the conquest of the Mexican territories of Baja California and Sonora. He succeeded in capturing La Paz, the capital of the sparsely populated Baja California, which he declared the capital of a new Republic of Lower California, with himself as president. Although he never gained control of Sonora, less than three months later he pronounced Baja California part of the larger Republic of Sonora. Lack of supplies and an unexpectedly strong resistance by the Mexican government quickly forced Walker to retreat. Back in California, he was put on trial for conducting an illegal war. In the era of Manifest Destiny, his filibustering project was popular in the southern and western United States and the jury took eight minutes to acquit him. |
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| In July 1856, Walker set himself up as president of Nicaragua, after conducting a farcical election. Realizing that his position was becoming precarious, he sought support from the Southerners in the U.S. by recasting his campaign as a fight to spread the institution of black slavery, which many American Southern businessmen saw as the basis of their agrarian economy. With this in mind, Walker revoked Nicaragua's emancipation edict of 1824. This move did increase Walker's popularity in the South and attracted the attention of Pierre Soul�, an influential New Orleans politician, who campaigned to raise support for Walker's war. Nevertheless, Walker's army, thinned by an epidemic of cholera and massive defections, was no match for the Central American coalition and Vanderbilt's agents. |
Gopher, I'm sure you're aware of the historical Southern salivation over Havana.
The Golden Circle
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In the years after the Mexican-American War, many Americans felt that the largely weak and corrupt governments in Latin America should be reformed into democracies, by conquest if necessary[citation needed].
One of the political arguments in favor of the Golden Circle involved slavery. European colonialism and the African slave trade had declined more rapidly in some countries than others, and by 1850 slavery had been abolished in all British and French territories, along with the northern U.S. states. Slavery was, however, still practiced in the Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico, and in the Brazilian Empire. In the years prior to the American Civil War, abolitionism was one of several divisive issues in the country. In the United States, despite the closing of the slave trade, the slave population continued to grow during this time through natural increase.
The delicate balance of power between the northern and southern U.S. states was threatened by the proposed Golden Circle. Federalists feared that a new Caribbean-centered coalition would align the new Latin American states with the slave-state side. This would tilt the balance of power southward and weaken U.S. federalism in favor of the pan-American confederalist union. Gold Circlists believed that an alignment with the remaining slaveholding Caribbean territories would reinforce their political strength. |
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cbclark4
Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Location: Masan
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| Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 7:24 pm Post subject: |
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This is what was at stake.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 7:25 pm Post subject: |
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I don't think the two issues can be separated, but I think that States Rights was the fundamental cause of the War. Thirty years earlier the issue was the 'Tariff of Abominations' and South Carolina claimed the right to nullify it on the basis of States Rights. President Jackson forced them to back down.
By the Election of 1860 the issue was slavery and the dividing line was whether the federal government had the authority to regulate slavery in the territories. Add to that the growing sense of Southern identity and the increasing economic differences as important contributing factors. The final factor, in my opinion, was the failure of political leadership in the White House and Congress. The great nationalist leaders, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster had died just after the Compromise of 1850 and no one of equal stature replaced them.
In my opinion, Lincoln was MOST concerned with preserving the Union. He said if he could save the Union by freeing all the slaves he would do it; if he could save the Union by freeing some of the slaves, he would do that and if he could save the Union by freeing none of the slaves he would do it that way. I don't see a reason to doubt his word.
By 1862 it became clear to Lincoln that preserving the Union was not enough and decided emancipation was the way to convert the war into a human rights crusade that would inspire the abolitionists to the degree necessary to win. It was also a way of keeping the Europeans out of the war.
I blame Ronald Reagan for the resurgence of States Rights in the modern world. "Government isn't the solution. It's the problem." (or something like that) |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 7:30 pm Post subject: |
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Kuros: Yes, very well aware of Southern-sponsored filibusters and their strategic aims. Are you aware that the mainstream North saw abolition and the abolitionists as extremely radical until the second year of the war or so?
In any case, here are a few contemporaneous cites from the North to show you where I am coming from...
| Raleigh Register 10 May 1861 wrote: |
| ...we are fighting to preserve our republican institutions...to establish the authority of the Constitution and laws over violence and anarchy...[and for the] great fundamental principle of republican Government -- the right of the majority to rule. |
| Abraham Lincoln 1861 wrote: |
| ...the central idea pervading this struggle...proving that popular government is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose. If we fail it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves. |
Procedings of the American Philosophical Society, 1999. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 7:34 pm Post subject: |
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| cbclark4 wrote: |
This is what was at stake.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people. |
Aren't you a lawyer?
Do you honestly think that millions of Americans died over a Constitutional debate?
My opinion aligns with that of U.S. Grant.
| U.S.Grant wrote: |
THE CAUSE of the great War of the Rebellion against the United Status will have to be attributed to slavery. For some years before the war began it was a trite saying among some politicians that �A state half slave and half free cannot exist.� All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down. I took no part myself in any such view of the case at the time, but since the war is over, reviewing the whole question, I have come to the conclusion that the saying is quite true.
Slavery was an institution that required unusual guarantees for its security wherever it existed; and in a country like ours where the larger portion of it was free territory inhabited by an intelligent and well-to-do population, the people would naturally have but little sympathy with demands upon them for its protection. Hence the people of the South were dependent upon keeping control of the general government to secure the perpetuation of their favorite restitution. They were enabled to maintain this control long after the States where slavery existed had ceased to have the controlling power, through the assistance they received from odd men here and there throughout the Northern States. They saw their power waning, and this led them to encroach upon the prerogatives and independence of the Northern States by enacting such laws as the Fugitive Slave Law. By this law every Northern man was obliged, when properly summoned, to turn out and help apprehend the runaway slave of a Southern man. Northern marshals became slave-catchers, and Northern courts had to contribute to the support and protection of the institution.
This was a degradation which the North would not permit any longer than until they could get the power to expunge such laws from the statute books. Prior to the time of these encroachments the great majority of the people of the North had no particular quarrel with slavery, so long as they were not forced to have it themselves. But they were not willing to play the role of police for the South in the protection of this particular institution. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 7:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
a) the religiousity of many Northerners, who felt that slavery was a sin against the equality of man under God
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This is very true of the abolitionists. I don't to what degree Lincoln believed this at the beginning of the War, but he came to believe it. I think you only need to read the words of his Second Inaugural to get a feeling of the depth of his feelings on this:
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether'.
Compare those words with John Brown's at his trial: "This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to "remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them." I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done as I have always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit; so let it be done!"
And the note he left which was read after his hanging: "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done."
Last edited by Ya-ta Boy on Thu Nov 08, 2007 7:47 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 7:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Kuros: Yes, very well aware of Southern-sponsored filibusters and their strategic aims. Are you aware that the mainstream North saw abolition and the abolitionists as extremely radical until the second year of the war or so? |
Yes, I also saw Ken Burns' Civil War, and recall what Shelby Foote said about the North 'fighting with a hand tied behind its back.' I'm aware that much of the North just wanted to continue on in business, and some of those that engaged in the war did so for profit. But there was also a numerous contingent of religious faithful who fought and killed for the rights of man.
Never underestimate the religious fanaticism of the American faithful! It'd be nice if some returned to their righteous roots, however. |
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cbclark4
Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Location: Masan
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| Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 7:39 pm Post subject: |
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Pre Civil War
Market Revolution - Agriculture v Industry Eli Whitney, Cyrus McCormick
Urbanization - transportaion steam engine wage labor.
States Rights - Nullification Crisis 1832�1833 near civil war.
Debate over Slavery - Self Explanaotry
Westward Expansion - most migrants west were from northeast states and were more 'federalist' in their politics, this would and did upset the balance
http://www.sparknotes.com/history/american/precivilwar/context.html |
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