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"Once faced by southern secession, would it have been more humane for the North to allow the Union to split in two instead of following the course it actually took?"
Sorry, Escort, but I do not see that you have really corrected the problem I identified. Isn't the answer to the above the same "of course" which you provided for the question about the South just accepting the results of the 1860 election?
You are still framing it as a blame question where the answer will lie in which side of the war dispute you support.
If the two sides could have figured out the means for resolving their differences short of war, that would have been far more humane...emphasis on "two sides" not just one or the other.
They obviously were not able to reach a satisfactory compromise on these matters and that is why war was required to find resolution.
There are two questions here:
Did not having the nation splintered into smaller nations, with one of those sections retaining slavery, justify the blood and treasure invested to bring it about?
and
Was having the nation splintered into smaller sections with one section retaining slavery, worth the blood and treasure invested in the attempt to bring that about?
As long as you postulate this as one of those questions rather than the other, than you are really simply restaging the same arguments concerning which side was justified.
This is a good question! To answer it myself -- as IMHO -- have to quote some others. Starting with my friend, Grandstander!
Quote:
So, if you can think of a way to phrase your question which doesn't involve placing the burden of moral blame on one side or the other, then we could address the question.
To be fair though, Grandstander, how COULD such a question be framed as to be totally objective and not at least imply a moral blame one way or another? I have thought about it and can't come up with one. Can you (or anybody else)?
My first real "epiphany"-- so to speak -- in the realm of history was when I was an undergrad back in the late 70's (I flunked out by partying too much and only later went back for the sheepskin! LOL). It was in a "Western Civilizations class and the professor said "Ok, today I am going to give you the British side of what we call the American Revolution."
I was taken a back a bit just by that opening. It had truly never occured to me beforehand that the British even HAD a side! And to the extent (which was next to nothing) I had thought about it at all? I just figured it was covered by the American side. Which was all I had ever been exposed to.
What followed was facinating! It made me appreciate that history is NOT an objective subject just because it can't be. It is made by imperfect people and recorded by the same.
The professor (a courtly old Southern Gentleman type of the old school) told the Revolutionary War from the British point of view and the British side made perfectly good sense from their point of view and interests. That the American Colonists were -- in fact -- not quite the saints and good guys I had always figured they were. They too could be stubborn, ungrateful, and rebellious in a belligerant way. That King George had actually tried to appease them, but they spurned offers and had made their minds up as to secede.
Let me hasten to add that it did NOT -- abolutely NOT -- convert me to a Tory. I still believe the Colonials were right. It just made me think a little more on the subject of history; the epiphany.
Leap ahead to how that applies to the War Between the States.
For many years, like most Southern kids, I just grew up reading what I now recognize was a Northern version of the Southern side. By that I mean that yes, in Texas (and other former Confederate States) the history books are going to be a little more sympathetic to the Southern side than those in Kansas or Massachusetts.
But still...they were essentially the North's take from a slightly Southern viewpoint. It boiled down to that our Confederate great-grandfathers were brave men who fought nobly for a Cause they deeply believed in, and put up a great fight and deserve to be honored as do our symbols.... but that they were wrong, as slavery was always and ever presented as the end and be all. There was an element of pride about how our folks had fought...but an underlying slight sense of "shame" as well.
Anway, that classroom lecture concerning the American Revolution prompted me to really go out and explore and read more about the War Between the States. What I found -- in reading the Southern side FROM the Southern side -- is that, the Southern side all these years had -- in a sense -- been [CENSORED]
That is really wasn't so clear-cut and dried as that the Northern people came righteously down on a moral crusade to "free the slaves" from a horrid netherworld South. And that it was the South that had the best constitutional arguments on its side. Things like that.
I guess I have run on, haven't I? I better re-group and re-form and answer the orginal question, huh? LOL
Sorry, Escort, but I do not see that you have really corrected the problem I identified. Isn't the answer to the above the same "of course" which you provided for the question about the South just accepting the results of the 1860 election?
You are still framing it as a blame question where the answer will lie in which side of the war dispute you support.
If the two sides could have figured out the means for resolving their differences short of war, that would have been far more humane...emphasis on "two sides" not just one or the other.
They obviously were not able to reach a satisfactory compromise on these matters and that is why war was required to find resolution.
There are two questions here:
Did not having the nation splintered into smaller nations, with one of those sections retaining slavery, justify the blood and treasure invested to bring it about?
and
Was having the nation splintered into smaller sections with one section retaining slavery, worth the blood and treasure invested in the attempt to bring that about?
As long as you postulate this as one of those questions rather than the other, than you are really simply restaging the same arguments concerning which side was justified.
Well, we both remain unconvinced as to the other's logic and arguments. I have stated my case, so I won't repeat it. However, I appreciate your civility.
To be fair though, Grandstander, how COULD such a question be framed as to be totally objective and not at least imply a moral blame one way or another? I have thought about it and can't come up with one. Can you (or anybody else)?
Precisely my point...it cannot be so phrased. Thus, the question..."Was it worth it?" is not truly distinguished from "Who was right?"
I would also point out another problem with this approach. The question is being phrased in the "before." That is to say we are being asked what sort of decisions should have been made in 1861 regarding war or no war.
We, however, are answering it in the "after" having knowledge of the outcome of the war, an advantage not enjoyed by the folks on either side in 1861.
Suppose the South had won the war, America wound up permanently divided, slavery continued to exist for some unknown period of time after the war. Then that same question..."Was it worth it?' would be generating very different answers.
Worse, since we know the results of the actual outcome, but do not know what the long term results would have been if the outcome had been reversed, we lack a basis for approaching the question fully. What if the nation had fragmented into two sections as a rseult of the war, but then continued to fragment after that? Maybe the midwestern states split from New England and the East Coast, maybe the Southern trans Mississippi states split from the Southern Atlantic coast states and the Confederacy was further splintered. Maybe as a consequence of this there was further civil wars in America.
Maybe the two sides would have staged a second and third civil war.
Maybe the South wins, holds onto their slaves, but then suffers an incredibly bloody slave revolt which winds up with several hundred thousand casualties...we cannot know.
Thus, we are not truly positioned to answer the question apart from the results which we did obtain.
Suppose the South had won the war, America wound up permanently divided, slavery continued to exist for some unknown period of time after the war. Then that same question..."Was it worth it?' would be generating very different answers.
Maybe the South wins, holds onto their slaves, but then suffers an incredibly bloody slave revolt which winds up with several hundred thousand casualties...we cannot know.
Thus, we are not truly positioned to answer the question apart from the results which we did obtain.
Starting from the bottom (so to speak! ) you are correct, of course, in that anything other than what actually happened is only speculation on alternate history.
Just to add though that in the realm of historical alternates, just as the "winners history" is the one most oft presented, and accepted by a sort of social osmosis, so is the alternate vision of the same the one generally embraced.
So to be the Reb, I submit that had the South won? Well, perhaps the two sections would have re-united...and both been the stronger in the long run. The North and West giving in on a stronger acceptance of the "States Rights" clauses of the Constitution...and the South giving in some on the question of future secession.
Or, yeah, they might have remained seperate nations...yet be the strongest of allies (as are the United States and Great Britian today) and have an unguarded border just as we do today with Canada.
The slavery thing is always the problem, in these speculations. IMHO, slavery would have been abolished competely in the South by the turn of the century. In terms of geography, it had pretty well reached its natural limits (so far as the feasibility of plantation type agriculture) in central Texas. Much further west, it would just not have been profitable. So, unless one believes the Southern people were so stubborn as to be not subject to the natural laws of geography, humanity, and evolution of institutions, etc...then it would have gradually faded out just as it did in the North....
slavery would have been abolished competely in the South by the turn of the century. In terms of geography, it had pretty well reached its natural limits (so far as the feasibility of plantation type agriculture) in central Texas. Much further west, it would just not have been profitable. ....
Perhaps so, but then perhaps you are underestimating the capacity of the hierarchy anywhere to creatively exploit those who support the structure. I have ancestors who when they moved from North Carolina to Missouri, brought along the four family slaves. The family shifted from making their living via agriculture, to making their living as shopkeepers, railroad executives and doctors. They turned their slaves into assistant shopkeepers, railroad executive's errand boy, and the doctor's wagon driver. The slaves were ultimately liberated by the 13th amendment, not by any advanced notions of slave liberation from my ancestors.
It certainly would have been interesting to see how the institution of slavery would have ended in an independent Confederacy. Would it have been a state by state process with some..oh, you know, say maybe Mississippi or Alabama, holding out for a long period after the slaves had been freed everywhere else? That would make for a great alternative history novel. You could have it that the freed balcks throughout the South decided to organize to place pressure on the states which maintained slavery, their demonstrations becoming larger and angrier until they provoke a martial response from the local police and rioting erupts. Okay, sure, we'd need to have a young, idealistic northern white guy and girl as the main protagonists, they are down there supporting the protesting blacks and falling in love. I see Denzel as.....
If not state by state, then what? Certainly the Confederate central government had no power to free slaves by executive fiat or Congressional act....and judicial review rested with each state individually. The only way to have freed all of them at once would have been via a Constitutional amendment process. But even there....did the ultimate sovereignty belonging to the states doctrine mean that any state which didn't vote to ratify an amendment may ignore it, even if the rest of the states did ratify it? In our novel Mississippi and Alabama maintain that it does. War clouds form....
Somehow, the republics to the south of the CSA. without exception, had all figured out how to terminate slavery by some legal process, and they all had a modern constitution of some form or other not unlike our own, and in fact, several even officially called themselves "united states', yet, in spite of our unwillingness to this day to concede that they had an enlightenment comparable to our own, elected and seated a central government capable of effecting that which, by all human standards of decency and civilization, must be, even in a heavily agrarian economy.
Should we ask Toussaint Louverture if that is true?
Maybe if you want me to answer, you should elaborate on your point. As I recall, Haiti abolished slavery 60 years before the US Civil war, the year after Toussaint died. One of the first acts of the Republic of Haiti was to abolish slavery. So, to what was that an exception?
Maybe if you want me to answer, you should elaborate on your point. As I recall, Haiti abolished slavery 60 years before the US Civil war, the year after Toussaint died. One of the first acts of the Republic of Haiti was to abolish slavery. So, to what was that an exception?
Is this some deal where you pretend that you don't know that I was obviously referencing the fact that the Republic of Haiti was born in a bloody slave revolt, which hardly squares with your thesis of ending it with a legal process?
If so, instead of the five back and forth posts where I explain this and you keep pretending that it could have been anything else, or you pretend that it wasn't the revolt which ended slavery there,it was the declaration of illegality long after the slave based revolt, or whatever weary stuff you come up with to save face, I'll just rely on this one post to explain the reality of matters.
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