The Civil War, and it's causes.

[ImaginalDisc]

ImaginalDisc:

Do you agree that you were mistaken when you said:

I think it's pretty clearly what you wrote, but if I hastily misread you and you meant something else, mea culpa.

 

[Metullus]

I think it's pretty clearly what you wrote, but if I hastily misread you and you meant something else, mea culpa.

It is neither what I wrote nor what I meant. I regret that you misread what I wrote. I appreciate that you are willing to consider the possibility that you misread it.

Do you mind if I ask you in what way my posts were unclear to you? I am not interested in starting a flame war and will understand it if you want to drop the subject - I am not out to count coup - but I was, I thought, taking pains to separate the issues in order to avoid just the sort of misunderstanding we have here encountered.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

It is neither what I wrote nor what I meant. I regret that you misread what I wrote. I appreciate that you are willing to consider the possibility that you misread it.

Do you mind if I ask you in what way my posts were unclear to you? I am not interested in starting a flame war and will understand it if you want to drop the subject - I am not out to count coup - but I was, I thought, taking pains to separate the issues in order to avoid just the sort of misunderstanding we have here encountered.

Your first post clearly, to me, states that the State's Rights in question was the right to seceed as opposed to the right to the insitution of slavery.

Originally Posted by ImaginalDisc
This argument always falls apart when you ask, "The states' rights to do what?"

Your reply.

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.

While it's clear that the most politically unifying banner for the Union was "the preservation of the Union" and it formed the most swiftly stated and most widely supported justification for the war on the part of the North, the ultimate cause of all the strife leading up to the war was unquestionably slavery and without the insitution of slavery the Civil war would not have transpired. The root of the division and conflict was slavery.

 

[drkitten]

It is neither what I wrote nor what I meant. I regret that you misread what I wrote. I appreciate that you are willing to consider the possibility that you misread it.

The basic problem : the right to secede is more or less meaningless in the absence of a desire to secede. The Confederacy indeed chose to secede, and at gunpoint, if necessary, but they didn't do so in a vacuum or simply to prove a point.

There was a very real cause for the secession movement. That cause? I submit that it was slavery. The Southern states wanted to secede because they felt that only through secession could they secure their right to own slaves. Secession was an instrument, not a cause.

And the cause was "slavery."

So when people, like the various neo-Nazis and Ronulans, come along and say that the South was justified in attempting to secede, they're not simply saying that they should have had the right. They're saying that they had the right and the justification.

 

[Metullus]

Your first post clearly, to me, states that the State's Rights in question was the right to seceed as opposed to the right to the insitution of slavery.

Just so you see where I am coming from:

The OP says in part:

So, Jerome da Gnome: You think the primary cause is states rights. Can you explain how you got here?

Which I took to refer to the war and not to the reasons for secession, which, given the thread title, is not, I think, an unreasonable inference.

Your comment in the 2nd post was:

This argument always falls apart when you ask, "The states' rights to do what?"

Since at this point in the thread there had been no mention of secession but only of the war I interpreted your comment to make reference to "states' rights" as the causus belli, and thus my response - the right of secession.

When you later misrepresented my response I took care to respond and segregate the issues of the war and secession and their respective causes.

This you evidently ignored or misread.

 

[Metullus]

The basic problem : the right to secede is more or less meaningless in the absence of a desire to secede.

You might as well say that the right to free speech is more or less meaningless in the absence of a desire to speak. At the time of the Civil War the country was a mere 80+ years old. The hard choices and sacrifices with which the rights to self determination were won were fresh in memory. Rebellion, albeit on a small scale, against the Federal government was not unknown. The possibility of secession, however remote, was always present.

The Confederacy indeed chose to secede, and at gunpoint, if necessary, but they didn't do so in a vacuum or simply to prove a point.

And I know of nobody that has argued that in this thread.

There was a very real cause for the secession movement. That cause? I submit that it was slavery. The Southern states wanted to secede because they felt that only through secession could they secure their right to own slaves. Secession was an instrument, not a cause.

And the cause was "slavery."

With this I do not argue, although I would suggest that, in the view of many if not most southerners, the question of slavery was primarily an economic one, made palatable by prejudice.

So when people, like the various neo-Nazis and Ronulans, come along and say that the South was justified in attempting to secede, they're not simply saying that they should have had the right. They're saying that they had the right and the justification.

To be clear I have never suggested that the south was justified in attempting to secede; I hope that it was not your intent to paint me with that soiled brush. I have merely distinguished between the war and the causes of secession.

While slavery was a motivation, perhaps the overweening motivation, for the succession of the several states, slavery is not the only possible reason that states might have sought to secede before the war. If states had seceded for reasons other than slavery I submit that the Federal government would still have taken action, military if necessary, to resist their secession.

 

[Deus Ex Machina]

I posted this in the Possible Montana Secession? thread, but I thought it was relevant to the topic here:

that was excellent.

Well except for Texas and California?

 

[Deus Ex Machina]

Metellus said:

I would beg to disagree.

Lincoln’s message in the years before his election was anti-slavery, and he was elected on an anti-slavery agenda. Yes, it’s true that in the period immediately after his inauguration he spoke of preserving the Union rather than fighting slavery, but this was in the context of minimising the number of slave states which might secede – in the political realities of the time, if he had led the Union to war in 1861 on the grounds of fighting slavery, the border slave states like Kentucky and Delaware would almost certainly have seceded as well, which would have made the Union’s job much harder.

I beg to differ - Lincoln said

"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that...I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free. "

it would appear that from his end it was not slavery but secession that was the issue.

Whether the secessionist states had a "right" to secede is what the war was fought to decide wasn't it?

It was not fought - at least from what Lincoln says- to free slaves, I don't think that the secessionists were fighting merely to hold on to slaves, after all there were plenty of compromises put forth before the war began that gave them the option of continuing in that odious practice.

But I think the Southern states saw that, as time moved on and new states were added, they would fall further in the minority and would, ultimately be dictated to and that was anathema.

It was, I think, a war that had to be fought in order to decide how the union would proceed.

 

[Kaylee]

Post #51 contains some of the proximate causes for the war. The ultimate cause was, however, slavery. Slavery shaped the economy and culture of the South into something resembling European Feudalism, while the North underwent the industrial revolution. Those two economies were difficult to interface, and created a strong cultural and political divide between the two sides with very different ways of life and created a chasm within the federal legislature that was only widened as each new State sent Senators and Representatives into the political struggle and could potentially swing the balance of power either way.

Claiming that the war was fought over slavery - as though the North was full of nothing but grim jawed abolitionists all singing "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave. . ." while the South was full of plantation dwelling, slave owning, gentleman soldiers who had traded in their white suits for crisp West Point uniforms and then Confederate grey when their State called - is as false as saying it was fought over the issue of secession. There were a myriad of proximate causes and they were so tender and salient that the issue of slavery wasn't even put to rest until well after the war.

However, claiming that the ultimate cause of the war was anything other than slavery is absurd.

If for some reason the South had included more of an manufacturing base in their economy (despite the fact that usually slavery and mechanization didn't mix) and they did not have a difference of opinion with the North over tariffs -- do you (and other who have opinons about the causes of the Civil War) think they still would have attempted to secede from the Union?

More recently, since I've seen this thread and similar threads at JREF, I strongly suspect that the cause of the Civil War has been oversimplified in the typical grade school history textbooks and perhaps even in the typical college-level history textbooks.

For one thing, between 2/3 and 3/4 of Southern families did not own slaves. (http://www.southernhistory.net/modu...=article&sid=9406&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0)
That being the case, why would a majority be willing to go to war for the benefit of a minority (Southern families that did own slaves)? Albeit, even a powerful minority?

So logically, it makes sense that slavery was not the only issue. For the record, I don't doubt that it was an important issue, but I don't understand how a minority of the South could have persuaded the majority of their neighbors to go to war over an economic issue that had nothing to do with them. So therefore, for that reason, I think there must have been other causes.

To answer my own question, although I'm not well versed in history, I would guess that if the North and South had been in agreement on the subject of tariffs, the Southern slaveowners would not have been able to persuade enough of their neighbors to be able to declare war against the North.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

If for some reason the South had included more of an manufacturing base in their economy (despite the fact that usually slavery and mechanization didn't mix) and they did not have a difference of opinion with the North over tariffs -- do you (and other who have opinons about the causes of the Civil War) think they still would have attempted to secede from the Union?

More recently, since I've seen this thread and similar threads at JREF, I strongly suspect that the cause of the Civil War has been oversimplified in the typical grade school history textbooks and perhaps even in the typical college-level history textbooks.

For one thing, between 2/3 and 3/4 of Southern families did not own slaves. (http://www.southernhistory.net/modu...=article&sid=9406&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0)
That being the case, why would a majority be willing to go to war for the benefit of a minority (Southern families that did own slaves)? Albeit, even a powerful minority?

So logically, it makes sense that slavery was not the only issue. For the record, I don't doubt that it was an important issue, but I don't understand how a minority of the South could have persuaded the majority of their neighbors to go to war over an economic issue that had nothing to do with them. So therefore, for that reason, I think there must have been other causes.

To answer my own question, although I'm not well versed in history, I would guess that if the North and South had been in agreement on the subject of tariffs, the Southern slaveowners would not have been able to persuade enough of their neighbors to be able to declare war against the North.

I think I covered your objections here.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3495861#post3495861

There's no doubt that issues such as tariffs and the national debt where proximate causes of strife, but the reason that the economy of the South and the North were so divergent and that the power blocks in the Federal government were based on which States allowed slavery and which did not is because the culture and economy of the slave owning states was shaped more by slavery than any single other source.

 

[KoihimeNakamura]

I beg to differ - Lincoln said



it would appear that from his end it was not slavery but secession that was the issue.

Whether the secessionist states had a "right" to secede is what the war was fought to decide wasn't it?

It was not fought - at least from what Lincoln says- to free slaves, I don't think that the secessionists were fighting merely to hold on to slaves, after all there were plenty of compromises put forth before the war began that gave them the option of continuing in that odious practice.

But I think the Southern states saw that, as time moved on and new states were added, they would fall further in the minority and would, ultimately be dictated to and that was anathema.

It was, I think, a war that had to be fought in order to decide how the union would proceed.

Possibly. I will note that eventually, though, Lincoln decided that it w.as worth fighting on to stop slavery

 

[Gazpacho]

I don't think that the secessionists were fighting merely to hold on to slaves, after all there were plenty of compromises put forth before the war began that gave them the option of continuing in that odious practice.

Several compromises were put forth, but none of them had any chance of being adopted. Read the declarations of Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi. There is no doubt what the secessionists were fighting over.

 

[Kaylee]

I think I covered your objections here.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3495861#post3495861

There's no doubt that issues such as tariffs and the national debt where proximate causes of strife, but the reason that the economy of the South and the North were so divergent and that the power blocks in the Federal government were based on which States allowed slavery and which did not is because the culture and economy of the slave owning states was shaped more by slavery than any single other source.

Several compromises were put forth, but none of them had any chance of being adopted. Read the declarations of Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi. There is no doubt what the secessionists were fighting over.

OK, I read them (well skimmed them anyway). Here's a link in case anyone else would like to read them:
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html

I didn’t read the other state’s declarations of secessions, but I’m willing to believe that they read pretty much along the same lines. Of the 4 states whose declarations I’ve read, only Georgia went into other reason besides slavery. Financial protectionism sounds like their term for tariffs. But even so, their statement makes it clear that slavery was the main reason that they were seceding. So FWIW, I now agree, slavery and not tariffs or any other issues was the real issue behind the South’s secession.

So I tried to figure out why the southern majority, who did not own slaves and who were most likely not ever going to be able to, were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, dying in war, for the benefit of the slave-holding minority. Because most people do act in their self-interests, but it certainly doesn't seem that they were doing so.

One source suggested that it was out of fear.
http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h42-cw.html

The article states that most of the southern non-slave owning majority were also poor and posits that they feared no longer being guaranteed that they would not be on the lowest economic rung of society. It also theorizes that they feared what their lives would be like living among freed slaves.

I have read that the British working class was probably the main reason that the British government decided not to actively support the South. The British working class, despite the fact that many of them lost their factory jobs as a result of the Civil War, was strongly against slavery for both moral and economic reasons. They did not fear freed slaves but feared being forced to compete economically with slaves. Californians also were against slavery expanding to their state because many of them did not wish to compete economically with slaves, not just for moral reasons.

I’m pretty sure that at this time, the South had more poverty among free whites than England or California, or the North in general. So it seems that the southern majority of non-slaveholding white families were fearing the wrong thing.

==

I also looked to see if the four slave-holding states (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri) that had elected to stay with the Union had more economic similarities with the Northern states. As far as I can determine, they did not (with the possible exception of Kentucky whose economy was not based on cotton and included selling food, mules, iron products and other goods).

Perhaps the only reason they didn’t secede was because they were border states. It seems reasonable to believe that that was the case and that therefore fear drove their actions as well. Per the same source, Virginia also had a similar economy to Kentucky, but did choose to secede. FWIW, Virginia was a border state also, but all non-border southern slave-holding states did decide to secede.