The Civil War, and it's causes.

ImaginalDisc said:
This argument always falls apart when you ask, "The states' rights to do what?"
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Well, the correct answer is "own slaves," but the twists and turns people put reality through in order to avoid giving the correct answer is usually entertaining.
 
JoeEllison said:
Well, the correct answer is "own slaves," but the twists and turns people put reality through in order to avoid giving the correct answer is usually entertaining.
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Yeah. I started with a big post trying to premptively unravel those arguments, but I stopped when I realized it was going to invole historic beef and pork prices and gave the whole thing up.
 
JoeEllison said:
Well, the correct answer is "own slaves," but the twists and turns people put reality through in order to avoid giving the correct answer is usually entertaining.
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The basic problem with this argument is that it ignores that there were many other states' rights at issue than just slavery and that slavery was as much an economic issue for the South as it was a moral issue in the North. For instance, as I recall from high school history (so the specifics might be wrong but the generalities have some backing), Congress wanted to decrease tariffs on trade goods that were produced in the South and wanted to levy taxes more heavily on interstate commerce in the South. Furthermore, the representable population (i.e., the population for which congressional representatives could be apportioned) of the South was growing much more slowly than the representable population of the North, thereby threatening to provide the North with the supermajority needed to override a presidential veto on any legislation that benefited the South. There was therefore a perception in the South that, regardless of the specific issue (and, yes, slavery was a huge economic and moral issue), they were losing their constitutionally mandated representation in Congress, which in a of itself is a big deal because political representation was and is still today perceived by the average American to be the most important cause of the Revolutionary War.
 
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mijopaalmc said:
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There was therefore a perception in the South that, regardless of the specific issue (and, yes, slavery was a huge economic and moral issue), they were losing their constitutionally mandated representation in Congress, which in a of itself is a big deal because political representation was and is still today perceived by the average American to be the most important cause of the Revolutionary War.
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Funny, just last evening, over drinks, a co-worker was telling a story of a conversation with one of his children. The child was talking about being taught in school about the Revolutionary War. He asked her, "which Revolutionary War?" The point being that, in his opinion, there were two of them, and the second one (what we call The Civil War) is still being fought. In some sense, I think he's got a point, but not for the same reason he thinks he's got a point. He's a confederate sympathiser licking his wounds, and would no doubt, if I had pursued the conversation, have taken up the case of non-slavery causes of the Confederate states' secessions.

I'm going to enjoy this thread. More later...
 
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ImaginalDisc said:
This argument always falls apart when you ask, "The states' rights to do what?"
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The right of the various states to secede from the Union and establish a separate and independent country. It was the secession of the Confederate states to which President Lincoln objected and against which he fought.

We can debate the reasons that the various southern states seceded and the slavery question was certainly one of those reasons, but it was not the only one. It should also be kept in mind that four slave states, Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland, did not secede from the Union, and remained slave states throughout most of the war; Maryland outlawed slavery in 1864, Kentucky, Delaware and Missouri did so in 1865 (IIRC). West Virginia, a state that was formed from several Virginian counties that resisted secession, was also a slave state throughout the war. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation specifically excluded slaves in these states.
 
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Though there certainly were a multitude of reasons for the civil war, I firmly believe that there would have been no Civil War without the issue of slavery.
 
Or, if no one/group had attempted to break the unwritten contract that bound the states together (and, it was not the South that did that - they just tried to uphold the principal that a broken contract was no longer a binding contract). And, just for the record, I loathe slavery and a lot of Southern ideas around it and recognize that it was indeed the primary cause of the CW. That has no bearing on the contract situation. I am absolutely convinced that the Southern states had every right to secede. And I suspect that if they had not been the first to fire (stupidity on South's part), it probably would not have happened anyway.
 
fuelair said:
Or, if no one/group had attempted to break the unwritten contract that bound the states together (and, it was not the South that did that - they just tried to uphold the principal that a broken contract was no longer a binding contract). And, just for the record, I loathe slavery and a lot of Southern ideas around it and recognize that it was indeed the primary cause of the CW. That has no bearing on the contract situation. I am absolutely convinced that the Southern states had every right to secede. And I suspect that if they had not been the first to fire (stupidity on South's part), it probably would not have happened anyway.
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Can you point to a contract that founded this nation?
 
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Metullus said:
The right of the various states to secede from the Union and establish a separate and independent country. It was the secession of the Confederate states to which President Lincoln objected and against which he fought.

We can debate the reasons that the various southern states seceded and the slavery question was certainly one of those reasons, but it was not the only one. It should also be kept in mind that four slave states, Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland, did not secede from the Union, and remained slave states throughout most of the war; Maryland outlawed slavery in 1864, Kentucky, Delaware and Missouri did so in 1865 (IIRC). West Virginia, a state that was formed from several Virginian counties that resisted secession, was also a slave state throughout the war. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation specifically excluded slaves in these states.
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I'm sorry, but that dog won't hunt.

You're saying that the Southern States seceded over the issue of whether or not they had the right to seceded. They seceded over the issue of slavery, because slavery had become a bloody, divisive issue in the formation of new states and the openly political divide between southern states with (in Northern eyes) disproportionately large power in congress, and other mutual mistrust stemming for economic and social causes which were all a direct result of slavery. That some slave states did not secede speaks more to the complex nature of the divide between the states than idea that slavery was somehow irrelevant.
 
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Metullus said:
The right of the various states to secede from the Union and establish a separate and independent country. It was the secession of the Confederate states to which President Lincoln objected and against which he fought.
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But WAS there a right for states to secede? That is the point, I think. My admittedly limited exposure to the subject has not, to date, confronted me with anything that could convince me that such a right existed.

There was, of course, always the option for individual people who didn´t like the way things were to move to a country where things were more to their liking. They may not be allowed to force their view of things on anyone else, but nobody´s forcing them to stay if they don´t like it.

We can debate the reasons that the various southern states seceded and the slavery question was certainly one of those reasons, but it was not the only one. It should also be kept in mind that four slave states, Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland, did not secede from the Union, and remained slave states throughout most of the war; Maryland outlawed slavery in 1864, Kentucky, Delaware and Missouri did so in 1865 (IIRC). West Virginia, a state that was formed from several Virginian counties that resisted secession, was also a slave state throughout the war. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation specifically excluded slaves in these states.
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Yeah... from what I´ve read so far, I formed the opinion that the Emancipation Proclamation was basically a propaganda move... plus of course a very useful way for throwing a spanner into the works of the Confederate economy by inducing the slaves to leave and/revolt.
 
mijopaalmc said:
Can you point to a contract that founded this nation?
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Did you catch the "unwritten". Got the theory from PBS many (more than 10) years ago. It is an understood in all contracts (agreements written or not) that the rules/agreements binding the parties together may not be changed by one of the parties without the change being agreed to by all or the contract becoming invalid. The Northern States were working to change the rules under the contract without the approval of the Southern parties, thus nullifying the contract. Lincoln/cronies did not want that so they were ready to try to force compliance counter to the rules. Unfortunately, as noted above, the South was stupid enough to give them a technical reason to fight instead of back off.

Again, please note, this only refers to contracts, their rules and understanding appurtenant to same. I still do not support slavery.
 
The reason that I recall (learned this when I went to school in Texas, take that however you like):

The Southern states seceded from the Union was that they though Britain had their back. They wouldn't have seceded otherwise. Britian is a world class consumer of imports with very few worth exporting and was a good portion of the Southern cotton consumer. Around the same time, India began growing high quality cotton.

Although there was a little bit of support, it wasn't what the southern states were expecting. They had known in the beginning that the North would have an advantage, because it would be easy to turn all of those can factories into arms factories, and the south had relatively few industrial resources.

They were relying on Great Britain for those kinds of supplies, and when that fell through they were stuck.

My memory and my teaching may both have been imperfect, but what I gleaned from this was: the South did it because they thought they had a shot at succeeding at seceding, and regardless of their objection to the situation would not have seceded if they had known that Great Britain would have come off as so ambivalent.
 
ImaginalDisc said:
I'm sorry, but that dog won't hunt.

You're saying that the Southern States seceded over the issue of whether or not they had the right to seceded. They seceded over the issue of slavery, because slavery had become a bloody, divisive issue in the formation of new states and the openly political divide between southern states with (in Northern eyes) disproportionately large power in congress, and other mutual mistrust stemming for economic and social causes which were all a direct result of slavery. That some slave states did not secede speaks more to the complex nature of the divide between the states than idea that slavery was somehow irrelevant.
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No. I am saying that the war was fought over the question of the right of states to secede from the Union. It was that question, and that question alone, that was settled by the war.

Your question, and the question to which I was responding, was:
This argument always falls apart when you ask, "The states' rights to do what?"
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My response was "to secede." My response is correct.

I also pointed out that several slave states remained in the Union and remained slave states for most or all of the war. If the war itself was over the issue of slavery it is difficult to reconcile the fact that the presumably anti-slavery Union included in its ranks no fewer that 5 slave states.

You might well argue that the issue of slavery was the reason that the Confederate states seceded, but that is a different question from the one you asked and I answered.
 
Chaos said:
But WAS there a right for states to secede? That is the point, I think. My admittedly limited exposure to the subject has not, to date, confronted me with anything that could convince me that such a right existed.
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That is a good question and one of which I have at some point or another in my life come down on both sides. My opinion is that, with one exception, the answer is "no". The exception, of course, is Texas, which, when it became a state, explicitly retained the right to secede.

Chaos said:
There was, of course, always the option for individual people who didn´t like the way things were to move to a country where things were more to their liking. They may not be allowed to force their view of things on anyone else, but nobody´s forcing them to stay if they don´t like it.
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The thing is that prior to the War for Southern Independence most people saw themselves as citizens of their states first and USAians second. They identified themselves as Texans or Virginians or Kentuckians rather than as Americans - not unlike the various German kingdoms / states in the early part of the last century, where many people identified themselves as Bavarians or Hessians or Swabians rather than as Germans. Their first loyalty was to their state and only secondarily to the country.

Chaos said:
Yeah... from what I´ve read so far, I formed the opinion that the Emancipation Proclamation was basically a propaganda move... plus of course a very useful way for throwing a spanner into the works of the Confederate economy by inducing the slaves to leave and/revolt.
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Exactly.
 
Maybe we should back up. Why did they seccede? My answer is in a large part that they were afraid the North would no longer support their interests. Which is not a bad thing, but not good either. The North was slowly growing overwhelmingly antislavery, and Lincoln was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

.. I note with interest someone's nonposting.
 
Tokorona said:
Maybe we should back up. Why did they seccede? My answer is in a large part that they were afraid the North would no longer support their interests. Which is not a bad thing, but not good either. The North was slowly growing overwhelmingly antislavery, and Lincoln was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

.. I note with interest someone's nonposting.
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My take on the principal impetus for secession:

While the moral question represented by slavery played a significant part, what it really boils down to is economics. The Southern states' primary trading partner was Great Britain, to whom they sold cotton (and I think tobacco) for higher prices than they could get from the Northern states and from whom they imported goods more cheaply than similar goods could be obtained from the Northern states. For the cash strapped agricultural economy of the South trade with Britain was a must.

This, of course, did not go over well with the industrialized and industrializing Northern states, who saw trade opportunities that were, in their view, rightly theirs, being stolen. The North needed the cotton but could not meet the prices paid by the far richer British; the North needed the Southern markets but could not match either the prices or, at the time, the quality of imported British goods. To the Northern states a system of tariffs looked good - it would level the playing field and remove the British trade advantage in the South. It would also, or so many Southerners thought, play havoc upon the Southern economy.

In the 1850s Northern states gained in population and influence to the point that they could dictate economic policies in the South, and it was this that led to secession. The election of Lincoln, a Republican, was, as you said, the last straw.
 
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