Would slavery have ended without the Civil War? (drugs, peace, Americans)

[NJGOAT]

Originally Posted by Rush71

you really believe that?........you actually believe the North invaded 11 nations in the south because of FT. Sumter?

You think if the 11 nations would have ask really nice to leave the Union the North wouldn't have invaded in a war of aggression?......LMAO......keep drinking the kool aid.

No, the North raised an army to put down an inserruction that had the audacity to fire on a Federal garrison and a supply ship.

[ovcatto]

Originally Posted by NJGOAT

No, the North raised an army to put down an inserruction that had the audacity to fire on a Federal garrison and a supply ship.

While the other party to this conversation is on my ignore list, might I add:

Confederate seizures of federal property between November 6, 1860 and June 8, 1861:

South Carolina seizures:

Castle Pinckney
Fort Moultrie
United States Arsenal at Charleston
Fort Johnson

Georgia seizures:

Fort Pulaski
United States Arsenal at Augusta
Oglethorpe Barracks
Fort Jackson
Dahlonega Mint
Alabama seizures:
United States Arsenal at Mount Vernon
Fort Morgan
Fort Gaines

Mississippi seizure:

Fort Massachusetts on Ship Island
Florida seizures:
United States Arsenal at Apalachicola
Fort Marion
Barrancas Barracks
Fort Barrancas
Fort McRee
Pensacola Navy Yard (Warrington Ship Yard)


North Carolina seizures:

Fort Johnston
Fort Caswell
Fort Macon
United States Arsenal at Fayetteville
Charlotte Mint

Louisiana seizures:

United States Arsenal at Baton Rouge
Baton Rouge Barrack
Fort Jackson
Fort Saint Philip
Fort Pike
Fort Macomb
United States paymaster’s office at New Orleans
New Orleans Mint

Texas seizures:

United States Arsenal at San Antonio
San Antonio Barracks
Camp Verde
Fort Clark
Arkansas seizures:
United States Arsenal at Little Rock
United States ordnance stores at Napoleon
United States subsistence stores at Pine Bluff
Fort Smith

Missouri seizures:

United States Arsenal at Liberty
United States ordnance stores at Kansas City

[Rush71]

Originally Posted by NJGOAT

The constitutionality of secession has been debated on here several times. You have presented one side of the argument. Your presentation would lead one to believe that what you are saying is a matter of settled constitutional law and interpretation, but it is not. Unfortunately no court ever heard an argument over the legality of secession until after the Civil War, so their decision is obviously tinged. In it though, they decided that secession was not possible. Here is the other side of the argument...

1. Does the constitution allow for a state to legally secede?

Fact: The constitution is absolutely silent on the matter of secession.

lets look at what the founding fathers had to say about it:

Thomas Jefferson, first inauguration address - "If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it."

Fifteen years later, Jefferson said - "If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation ... to a continuance in the union .... I have no hesitation in saying, 'Let us separate.'"

So, Jefferson believed the states had a right to secede.

During Virginia's ratification convention, the delegates said, "The powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression."

So the Virginian delegates believed it.

In Federalist Paper 39, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, cleared up what "the people" meant, saying the proposed Constitution would be subject to ratification by the people, "not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong." In a word, states were sovereign; the federal government was a creation, an agent, a servant of the states.

In Federalist Paper 45, Madison guaranteed: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."

So James Madison believed it.

And a final thought, the Framers had a deathly fear of federal government abuse. They saw state sovereignty as a protection. That's why they gave us the Ninth and 10th Amendments. They saw secession as the ultimate protection against Washington tyranny.

Ammendment 9 - The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Ammendment 10 (just as a refresher) - 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.

Since secession was not specifically denied by the Constitution to the states, the states, and the people, retained that right.




which makes the rest of your long arguments irrelevant.

[Rush71]

Originally Posted by ovcatto

While the other party to this conversation is on my ignore list, might I add:

ahhhhh, you still mad at me? ..........LOL

[Rush71]

one more time and if the cry baby that has me on his ignore list wants to weigh in go ahead, I won't ignore you.

Abe Lincoln was not an abolitionist and the USA did not go to war to end slavery, nor did the CSA states secede to preserve the "Perculiar Institution".

The right to own Slaves was protected by the US Constitution (Article I, sections 2 and 9, Article IV, section 2, Amendments IV, V, IX and X). Abolition could come only by state law or Constitutional Amendment. Lincoln knew that and said as much throughout the 1860 campaign. As he repeated in his First Inaugural Address, he had neither the desire nor the authority to abolish slavery where it existed. He may have ignored that basic fact when he promulgated the illegal and unconstitutional Emancipation Proclamation, but as a elementary principle of constitutional law, neither the Chief Executive not the Congress could legally abolish slavery or emancipate slaves.

No abolition amendment was ever introduced before 1864 for a very simple reason. The was insufficient support in the north for ratification. The south would not even have had to vote to defeat it. In 1864, with the CSA states absent, Congress considered an abolition amendment for the very first time. It was defeated. Had it been passed in Congress, it would never have been ratified at the polls or in convention. In March, 1861, the Republican dominated northern majority in Congress passed the Corwin Amendment. If ratified, Corwin would have become Amendment XIII. By its terms, Corwin would have prohibited any future attempt to propose an abolition amendment. Rather than to stick around to ratify Corwin, the CSA states seceded. Why would they have seceded to protect a right that was guaranteed, especially when Lincoln and the northern states wanted to extend that guarantee into perpetuity? It is axiomatic that the CSA states did not secede over the slavery issue.

Consider the problems if some four million people, angry, homeless, uneducated, unwanted, penniless, with no means of support and no marketable job skills were unloosed on society. Who would care for them? Who would foot the bill? Who would put down the hordes of rampaging freed slaves set on revenge or marauding, rioting and looting just to obtain the means to survive? How were the owners to be compensated for the wrongful governmental taking of their property. Given the total absence of a labor force in the south, the plantation owners needed the slaves to run the farms and the lion's share of southern fortunes were tied up in the human chattel and in the land that would lie fallow without the slaves to work it. The north relied on those slaves at least as much, if not more, than did the south. Abolitionists were always a minority faction, albeit a vocal one, and they had very few viable solutions for the chaos they were trying to create.

Preserve the Union? Not so. When Great Britain granted independence to the colonies by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, thirteen new nations were created. Those nations joined together into an alliance, a confederation of nations, under the Articles of Confederation. When the Articles proved to be an abysmal failure, the compact was scrapped and a new one was drafted at the Philadelphia (Constitutional) Convention in 1787. The member nations who allied with the new confederation, the USA, did not surrender their independence, sovereignty and autonomy and opt to become subservient political subdivisions of a single nation. They created a FEDERAL, not a NATIONAL, government and the delegated only limited powers to that government over only expressly delineated and enumerated areas of common interest. They, and each of them, otherwise retained full independence, sovereignty and autonomy. The right to secede from the confederation was an implicit, if not express, given.

The right to secede for a government that fails to serve, defend and protect the rights and interests of the governed is the very core principle of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison understood there was a right of secession when they authored the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798. The New England states knew it when the threatened to secede in 1803 and again in 1812 and yet again in 1814 and still yet again in 1815. States on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line understood they had the right when they threatened to secede in 1820/21 over the illegal and unconstitutional Missouri Compromises. They also knew it when, especially in New England, they threatened secession of the Taney Court decision in the Dred Scott case. South Carolina understood it in 1837 when she threatened secession during the Tariff Act/ Nullification Acts crisis. Abe Lincoln understood the right when he argued in support of it on the floor of Congress on January 12, 1848.

The south had been totally disenfranchised and had no voice in the federal government, as the 1860 election so painfully proved. Lincoln was elected without carrying a single southern state and without having even appeared on the ballot in several. The House, with representation being based on population, had long since been a northern club. Representation in the Senate was ostensibly equal, with 2 senators per state. The north held an overwhelming majority there, especially when slave states like Maryland, Delaware, Missouri and Kentucky voted, as they often did, with the northern block. Although 75% of federal revenues were raised in the south, 75% of federal spending occurred in the north. Northern tariffs were making it all but impossible for southern planters to trade on the international market, then northern money and industrial interests were setting bargain basement prices on southern goods. Those same interests were making it impossible for the south to industrialize or expand its economic base. The southern crops, especially cotton, rice and tobacco, and the taxes they produced, were necessary to fuel the northern money machines. In addition, northern states refused to give full faith and credit to southern laws, and some went so far as to render it criminally punishable to do so or to obey the strictures of the US Constitution.

Having had enough, the democratically elected representatives of the people of the southern states passed the Ordinances of Secession. The people, in full accordance and compliance with constitution strictures and due process of law, ratified the Ordinances at the polls or in convention. Taking the words and principles of the Declaration of Independence to heart, and remembering history and the words of the Founders and Framers, they simply reclaimed the independence, sovereignty and autonomy the had never surrendered. The remaining nations in the USA confederation responded by launching an invasion, a war of aggression, with the goal being the conquest and annexation of the CSA nations. It was NOT a civil war. The democratically elected, free and independent governments of the people, by the people, for the people of the CSA perished from the earth.

Why did the USA want the CSA back in the fold? There were many reasons. The southern cash cow was necessary. The USA did not want competition for the theft of Native American lands in the west. The USA did not want a potential enemy nation or confederation of nations on its southern or western border, especially if that (those) nations allied with the likes of The United Kingdom, France, Prussia or Spain. If the CSA states were allowed to secede, the floodgates might open elsewhere, especially given the number of times the New England states had threatened to do it, but folks in some of the western states weren't terribly happy with some of the policies coming out of Washington. There was good reason to worry that the map of North America would come to resemble the ever changing map of Europe, complete with the constant petty wars that were the tradition there. Industrialization had made it desirable that the USA be a single nation with subservient political subdivisions called states, rather than a federation of states (think "nation-state", as did the Founders and Framers).

The Constitution was set aside. The basic precepts of the Declaration of Independence were forgotten. The oaths of office of every government official and military officers (to defend, protect and serve the constitution) were cast aside. It was not about slavery. It was about money and power.

So why pass Amendment XIII after the war? That was not a human rights decision. Ratification of the Amendment was coerced for the same reason Lincoln issued the EP (and why congress had done the same then months earlier, equally illegally and unconstitutionally, with the Confiscation Acts). Emancipation, and later, abolition, were tools of war. They were intended to destroy the southern economy, the southern financial base, southern society and the southern way of life. During the war, they were intended as weapons. After the war, the goals were the same to insure that the south would not soon rise again.

There is a lot more. You won't find it in your text. Remember, "history" is written by the victors. That does not mean that the myths and legends comport with the "truth" or the "facts". The bottom line is, the war was not about slavery. The war did not, and could not, abolish slavery. When the war ended, the constitution was unchanged - until ratification of Amendment XIII was coerced. The war did bring to and end the government the Founders and Framers had tried to establish, and the all powerful central NATIONAL government they had tried to avoid and prevent came into being, the independence of the member nations was lost for all time, and the Declaration of Independence became just so many empty words. So it goes.

[Nema98]

It would have died rightly so anyways, sooner or later. Due to some other factors, but that is a good question that really makes you think!

[Larry Caldwell]

Originally Posted by Rush71

so it was the Southern nations that invaded the Northern nations? "fact"? ...LOL

For 10 points and a bottle of beer, what state is Gettysburg in? They really don't teach history in southern schools, do they?

[Rush71]

Originally Posted by Larry Caldwell

For 10 points and a bottle of beer, what state is Gettysburg in? They really don't teach history in southern schools, do they?

is that the only battle of the war ? you must have been in the top of your class. Keep the beer and burn your public school GED. Most of the important battles of that war were fought in the west but you don't know that because you are too lazy to research. You also believe Columbus discovered America because they told you that in school too. LMAO!


of the 35 top casualties battles of the war, only 1 was fought in the North. Virginia is top of the list of # of battles with highest casualties.....try again, Im sure there is some book in Myrtle Creek, Oregon that can help you because I'm trying here.....

[ParadigmizedFactions]

Originally Posted by Toyman at Jewel Lake

I read a book recently that got me thinking. The discussion of slavery was a very small part of the book, but the author's premise was that slavery was a dying institution and would have ended fairly soon had the civil war not been fought. Initially (1600s era) (according to him) slaves weren't brought over to be "cheap labor", there was simply no labor to be had and slaves were the only "production option" available. By the mid 1800s, slaves were not cheap (purchase costs were several thousand dollars, in 1850 era dollars), the owner had to pay for their food and shelter, provide for them when they were too young or too old to work, etc. As such, there was a considerable cost. Once a good supply of "free" manual labor (primarily immigrants) was available, they could be hired for a cost lower than what the actual cost of slaves were. There was no need for the business owner to pay for their food, shelter, the raising of their kids or care for them in old age. As such, employees were less expensive than slaves in the long run, and the institution had pretty well "run it's course". The premise was that slavery would have ended because it wasn't economically viable by the mid-late 1800s.

Is there any truth to this premise? And if so, when would slavery have "died out" on it's own, without the slaughter of the civil war, and the decades of harm it did?

None of the above is a justification for slavery, it's abhorent. I'm simply interested with the historical implications.

YES. I think it would have eventually ended without the Civil War.

Hell places like Bolivia and Ecuador still practiced slavery virtually until the 20th centuries. Slavery still goes on in many Arabic speaking countries. Also look at the Arab slave trade.

[Led Zeppelin]

There is no way slavery would have survived in the South beyond the end of the 19th century. Eventually, the South would have been ostracized and probably boycotted so heavily by the entire world that the economics alone would have induced change.

Moreover, the rise of the militant Left and its various radical subcomponents would have ensured a constant ongoing source of terrorism, subversion, and general political chaos against the South which would have heaped additional incentive on them. Black slaves would have been covertly armed and encouraged to wage constant war and labor strikes. I can think of countless bad scenarios for slave owners. No one outside the South would buy their products. It would have been impossibly difficult to continue. The Union would have shut them off. Most of the civilized world would have. Not to mention the rise of the modern technological world.