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I'm not a civil was buff but I was reading that the south had a lot of trouble getting its act together militarily. On a few occasions anyway. The battalions of Missouri wouldn't support rebels fighting in Tennessee. Lee couldn't get troops from the western confederate states to support his advance into PA.
These states didn't want to let their troops fight in other states and didn't recognize the confederate government's authority to command them.
South Carolina was the first state to secede
Here's part of South Carolina's declaration of secession
Clearly stating that the main reason for secession was the violation of the Constitution's article IV that states that runaway slaves should be returned.
And saying that Northern States passing "State Laws" violated this article.
In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.
Has anybody ever considered that there were literally tens of thousands of people involved in the secession of the South?
Do any of you honestly believe that they ALL had the same reasons for supporting secession?
Does anybody realize that the reasons southerners had for supporting the South just might be all over the map, no matter what the "leaders" put in writing?
Does anybody stop to wonder why the Civil War (an oxymoron if there ever was one) is known by some Southern folks as "The War of Northern Aggression"?
Just as there were numerous people who supported Secession, there were numerous reasons WHY they gave their support!
To try to assign ONE and only one cause to the war is an exercise in futility, silly, and quite possibly just plain stupid!
Has anybody ever considered that there were literally tens of thousands of people involved in the secession of the South?
This is one of those funny quirks about history, when historians ascribe causes to human major events they generally don't base them upon a person by person role call vote but rather on those who have the power to decide the course of those events.
For example, historians point to Holocaust as the result of the Nazi's anti-semitism. Using your thinking that would require that no one involved did so for any other reason than anti-semitism, even though we know that some were simply thugs, psychopaths, thieves, and just going along because it was their "job."
The same could be argued for pretty much every war or do you think that each and every person who fought or support the war against Germany did so because they actually believed that the Nazis were a threat to the U.S., or that fighting in Vietnam would actually keep Vietnam safe for "democracy?" I kind of doubt it. So to argue that it is necessary to glean the motivation of each and every person who fought or supported the Civil war is more than a bit risible for the purpose of determining the cause of the war.
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Does anybody stop to wonder why the Civil War (an oxymoron if there ever was one) is known by some Southern folks as "The War of Northern Aggression"?
Not really since the first know use of the term first appeared on May 26, 1956 in the Augusta Chronicle when quoting South Carolina (big surprise) Governor George Bell Timmerman Jr's argument for the maintenance of segregation. During the period and thereafter the term in common usage in the both the South and the North was, "The War Between the States."
By the way, the term civil war originates from the latin phrase bella civicus: a war between citizens. And while I would agree that there was little civil about the conduct of the war, war's between citizens rarely are.
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To try to assign ONE and only one cause to the war is an exercise in futility, silly, and quite possibly just plain stupid!
I would suggest that the constant attempt to "white wash" the history of the Civil War is what is really futile, silly and not just possibly stupid but actually stupid.
They were definitely in favor of one particular "state's right."
Heck, they favored it so strongly they started a huge treasonous war over the whole issue. A war that resulted in the widespread destruction of many of those states.
The one about humans = property.
And there was a right they believed even more strongly.
The right to leave the Union.
Has anybody ever considered that there were literally tens of thousands of people involved in the secession of the South?
You can say the same thing about anything in history
WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, Iraq War, etc, etc, etc.
I'm sure there's 1000s of reasons why each person did it.
When a state secedes a country, it's done because the politicians in power decided to do it.... Those are the people that signed that declaration of secession.
I'm sure Billy Bob in Louisiana had a different reason, but he wasn't part of the group of people that wrote the declaration of secession.
What counts is what the government of each state wrote in their article of secession since each state government is the one that seceded from the Union
Conversations about the civil war always focus on the actual war
You are rarely gonna hear people debating what events caused the civil war
Ah, I don't see how you've come to that conclusion because that is about all that is discussed here on C-D.
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