The Civil War, and it's causes.

[Metullus]

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.

Do you believe that if there was no slavery and states seceded for other reasons unrelated to slavery there would have been no Civil War?

 

[mijopaalmc]

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

But the problem here is that, with the exception of the land that belonged to the original Thirteen Colonies that was incorporated into the states as they ratified the Constitution, all of the land that became the states of the United States first belonged to the federal government by treaty with other foreign powers. It was then organized by organic act and granted statehood by enabling act, but at no time did the land itself leave the ownership of the federal government. Thus, a state government that declares itself its own sovereign nation "becomes" a nation that is illegally "occupying" the sovereign territory of the United States and is therefore subject to invasion by the United States in order to regain its sovereign territory.

 

[fuelair]

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.

So they pulled a Bay of Pigs on the South.

 

[Loss Leader]

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.

Perhaps there would have been no Civil War but I think that also might have meant no USA. The Civil War settled the question of federalism v. confederation. Before the war, the North wasn't much more interested in a federalist system than the South. They adopted it as a matter of necessity during the fighting. It's that federal system that made us strong enough to become a world power during the first half of the twentieth century.

Had there been no Civil War, I don't think we could have come together as fast or as well to fight in the World Wars.

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.

Completely incorrect. While it may be slightly helpful to think of a contract analogy, the laws of contract have absolutely no bearing on anything related to the Civil War. There are equally good reasons to discard the contract analogy:

1. The terms of the "contract" had been constantly shifting since its inception including the Alien and Sedition Acts, Marbury v. Madison and more;

2. Contracts must be for definite terms and cannot be an agreement to agree. The "contract" between the states left many issues up for future interpretation;

3. The Constitution was not a "contract" between the states but between all the people living in them. The Constitution begins, "We, the people ..." Furthermore, contracts must be signed by every person bound by their terms. The Constitution was not signed by every citizen of the US alive in 1789, let alone 1860.

The Civil War was an act of politics. Law - including contract law - had nothing to do with it.

 

[Hutch]

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.

Just a quick historical note; Missouri actually did secede, the legal elected State Government (pro-Confederate) passed an ordinance of secession, but were busy running for their lives at the time as Union troops were rapidly overrunning the state. And Maryland damn near went out, it took a lot of work (and some shooting) by Lincoln to keep them in. For a few days early in the war, Washington DC was cut off by secession-minded Marylanders in Baltimore.

Kentucky tried to start off by being neutral, of all things, being delicately balance in pro- and anti-slavery populations, and with a governor that was pro-South and a legislature that was pro-Union. It was a very touchy situation, and Kentucky finally came down on the side of the Union by a Conferderate "invasion" (ably countered by one Ulysess Simpson Grant).


More later after I do some reading. Press On.

 

[JoeEllison]

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.

Have you enjoyed the convoluted non-logic involved in supporting the South's "right to secede" in order to maintain ownership of other human beings?

 

[Metullus]

Have you enjoyed the convoluted non-logic involved in supporting the South's "right to secede" in order to maintain ownership of other human beings?

I must have missed those posts.

 

[Metullus]

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

Not quite correct. Texas was an independent republic and never federal land.

 

[Loss Leader]

Not quite correct. Texas was an independent republic and never federal land.

It was also never an independent republic.

 

[Metullus]

Just a quick historical note; Missouri actually did secede, the legal elected State Government (pro-Confederate) passed an ordinance of secession, but were busy running for their lives at the time as Union troops were rapidly overrunning the state. And Maryland damn near went out, it took a lot of work (and some shooting) by Lincoln to keep them in. For a few days early in the war, Washington DC was cut off by secession-minded Marylanders in Baltimore.

Kentucky tried to start off by being neutral, of all things, being delicately balance in pro- and anti-slavery populations, and with a governor that was pro-South and a legislature that was pro-Union. It was a very touchy situation, and Kentucky finally came down on the side of the Union by a Conferderate "invasion" (ably countered by one Ulysess Simpson Grant).


More later after I do some reading. Press On.

You are, of course, correct. The important points are that there were slave states in the Union and in those states, as well as in Confederate states under Union control, slavery was not abolished until very late in the war.

 

[Metullus]

It was also never an independent republic.

I will need to check but as I recall the Republic of Texas was a sovereign country from 1836 to 1845. It had 4 or 5 presidents - I think Sam Houston served twice.

I might, however, be wrong. It has happened before and will certainly happen again.

In any event Texas was never federal land.

 

[mijopaalmc]

While I welcome correction of my shamefully facile knowledge of my own natal country's history, my overarching point is not seriously effected by the fact that Texas may have never been federal lands, because by and large the rest of the United States, with the possible exception of the the original Thirteen Colonies established by royal charter, has been carved into states in the fashion which I summarized above (i.e., it entered the dominion of the United States as unorganized federal government land by treaty with foreign governments, was organized and a certain degree of self-government by organic act, and was was given the same constitutional granted autonomy as other states by enabling act).

 

[Metullus]

While I welcome correction of my shamefully facile knowledge of my own natal country's history, my overarching point is not seriously effected by the fact that Texas may have never been federal lands, because by and large the rest of the United States, with the possible exception of the the original Thirteen Colonies established by royal charter, has been carved into states in the fashion which I summarized above (i.e., it entered the dominion of the United States as unorganized federal government land by treaty with foreign governments, was organized and a certain degree of self-government by organic act, and was was given the same constitutional granted autonomy as other states by enabling act).

Your point is well made and I had no intention of suggesting otherwise. It is interesting to note that of the 10 seceding states, 5 (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, & Texas) would never have been federal land, and thus arguably would not be subject to the strictures you note.

Please note that I do not think any of the states except Texas enjoyed a particular "right" to secession under the Constitution.

 

[Chaos]

*snip*

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.
*snip*

That suggests an interesting analogy.

Namely, that the Civil War was more or less equivalent to the Thirty Years´ War, with the Habsburg emperor (plus Bavaria, plus loyalists) instead of the Union, the various Protestant rebellions as the Confederates, and the struggle of Reformation vs. Counter-Reformation as the Casus Belli. Except that in the Thirty Years´ War, the "rebels" were more or less successful in the end.

 

[bethanythemartian]

I will need to check but as I recall the Republic of Texas was a sovereign country from 1836 to 1845. It had 4 or 5 presidents - I think Sam Houston served twice.

I might, however, be wrong. It has happened before and will certainly happen again.

In any event Texas was never federal land.

Indeed, you're correct. At least, my recollection of Texas history is in line with yours.

It's the reason why the Texan flag is considered one of the six flags that have flown over Texas. It was for a very short time after the war with Mexico for independence succeeded that Texas was its own republic. That's also the reason for one star on the state flag (which is why it's called the Lone Star State, if we're going to get into the duh category here).

And yes, because Texans were so divided over the issue, when they were annexed they did put the 'with room to secede' somewhere in the contract. Still, to this day, many people in Texas wish to break it back off into its own republic.

 

[Gazpacho]

There were two waves of secession.

The first wave was states that undeniably seceded to preserve the institution of slavery. Four of them produced declarations that said this unequivocally. They did not mention tariffs, nor a single "state right" except as it related to the preservation of slavery.

The second wave was slaveholding states that refused Lincoln's demand for troops to suppress the others, because the seceding states had no sins of which they were not themselves guilty.

The Crittenden Compromise^WP was the last effort at avoiding secession. It consisted of several amendments to the constitution, all directly related to slavery.

It was also never an independent republic.

You are mistaken.

I think Sam Houston served twice.

One of the most disgraceful acts of the secessionists was to depose Houston as governor when he defied them.

 

[Loss Leader]

You are mistaken.

Calling oneself an independent nation does not actually make one an independent nation.

 

[Gazpacho]

Calling oneself an independent nation does not actually make one an independent nation.

Texas was independent for 10 years, during which it had a constitution, a legislature, several presidents, and diplomatic contacts with other countries.

PS: When you drill for oil in Texas, the state gets the royalties, not the federal government as in every state that was created from federal territory.

 

[Byzantine Magpie]

Metellus said:

It was the secession of the Confederate states to which President Lincoln objected and against which he fought.

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.

Lincoln benefited in another way from making preservation of the Union the issue – that way he forced the secessionists to fire the first shot, giving the Union the moral high ground. Had abolition been the issue, he would have been morally obliged to invade the secessionist states to free the slaves, and thus would have been cast as the aggressor.

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…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.

With respect, I think this is taking a pedantically narrow view of the issues at stake. Yes, Lincoln said, “You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the Government, while I have the most solemn one to preserve and defend it.” That makes it sound like he was presenting secession as the casus belli. But this is to ignore the wider context of Lincoln’s views, as expressed in the years prior to his election. It also ignores the reason that many people volunteered for the Union armies. Yes, many enlisted to preserve the Union, or because service in the Army paid and fed well, or because they’d get citizenship at the end. But there were many Abolitionists in the Union Army as well, who went to war to end slavery. It was these attitudes which transformed the war from its narrow, technical basis to its broader goal of abolishing slavery.

I’d suggest that a useful comparison would be World War One. The various nations of Europe technically went to war over Austria-Hungary’s aggression against Serbia. Does that mean that Germany, Turkey and Bulgaria supported the right of A-H to invade Serbia, and that Russia, France, Italy, Britain and the USA fought to oppose that right? Of course not. There were all sorts of other issues at stake, but it was A-H’s threat to invade Serbia which started the whole thing off.

While the moral question represented by slavery played a significant part, what it really boils down to is economics.

I won’t argue that economics played a part. But I think you’re wrong to ignore the issue of the creation of new states from out of unorganised Federal territory in the west. Which of these states would be free, and which would allow slaves, and how would this decision be made? Lincoln opposed the spreading of slavery anywhere outside where it existed at the time, which I understand the slave states considered intolerable, because of the long term consequences for the continuation of slavery. This isn’t an economic issue, but a combined political/moral one.

To summarise: Lincoln was morally opposed to slavery, and the people who elected him and who opposed him were well aware of it. The fact that he used secession as the issue to justify the start of the war, rather than slavery, was a consequence of his shaky political position at the time. It wasn’t until the strategic situation had improved (thus reducing his requirement to rely on moderate pro-slave support) that he could cast the war in more stark moral terms.

 

[Loss Leader]

To summarise: Lincoln was morally opposed to slavery, and the people who elected him and who opposed him were well aware of it. The fact that he used secession as the issue to justify the start of the war, rather than slavery, was a consequence of his shaky political position at the time. It wasn’t until the strategic situation had improved (thus reducing his requirement to rely on moderate pro-slave support) that he could cast the war in more stark moral terms.

Well, I don't think he had to justify the start of the war to the nation seeing as the war started when the South began shooting at them.