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So the official declaration of what a war was about now determines what the war was about for all people involved, even those who opposed it?
So the Iraq war was about weapons of mass dstruction and eveyone involved or who allowed it favored going to war to eliminate WMDs.
The vietnam war was only about protectiing our allies and preventing the forcible spread of communisim.
Now lets look at the War with Mexico, wars on native Americans were all just to stop indian agression; Spanish American war. . . .
The official statement by some leader is the only reason for all wars and for everyone involved.
Huh, I though the world was more complicated than that. This is good to know. This idea especially heps to clarify and simplify understanding of the crusades.
I think the way we are talking about this issue, on an internet forum instead of say in a room together discussing the issues, leads to people acting like this is the Politics and Controversies forum instead of the history forum.
What I mean is that if we are actually together, we would find out that we actually agreed with each other on most issues, whereas here people act that they always have to be right.
It's true, they wanted to preserve slavery
It's wrong to say that "They were fighting for state rights"
Slavery was not under threat,
but Southern states said that the thread to slavery was "Northern states not returning runaway slaves"
What did the same do? Pass federal laws to force Northern states to return runaway slaves.
I'll put it very simple
South = Pushed federal government to protect the institution of slavery = Pro-Big government
North = Passed state laws to protect the free citizens of their states = Pro-State rights
If it were that simple, there would be no discussion ...
"Long before the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter, the U.S. Senate confronted the sectional conflicts that ultimately led to the Civil War, crafting legislative compromises that averted war for several decades. The Senate continued to influence national events throughout the war and its aftermath. This chronology highlights notable dates and events related to the Senate and the Civil War."
There's more to that. Just above your quoted material is ...
"They have, through the mails and hired emissaries, sent seditious pamphlets and papers among us to stir up servile insurrection and bring blood and carnage to our firesides. They have sent hired emissaries among us to burn our towns and distribute arms and poison to our slaves for the same purpose. They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance.
They have refused to vote appropriations for protecting Texas against ruthless savages, for the sole reason that she is a slave-holding State." https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/aboutt.../2feb1861.html
People are messy. Politics are messy. People and their politics, now there's war. It was about economics, it was about the federal government's in ability to protect all the states, it was about slavery (a way of life) it was about all these things and more, and there isn't anything any one can do about it to take that away. Evolution in economics takes time, so does the evolution of social values.
One thing people fail to take into the account is the Bible and how important following Gods laws was to 'many of an' individual during and before that time. When they began to realize (can't wake 'em up to ask 'em) it seems that not everyone (the corruption of the slave trade industry) were on the same page as them, then those values came into question ... but then, not by every one as people are messy.
I am glad you included this. Slavery was the big issue both directly and indirectly. But it looks like the bolded line they are talking about tariffs. And you can also see from the complaints about "refusing to vote appropriations for protecting Texans from ruthless savages" that Texans (and likely other Southerners) saw themselves as being discriminated against by the North.
By the disloyalty of the Northern States and their citizens and the imbecility of the Federal Government, infamous combinations of incendiaries and outlaws have been permitted in those States and the common territory of Kansas to trample upon the federal laws, to war upon the lives and property of Southern citizens in that territory, and finally, by violence and mob law, to usurp the possession of the same as exclusively the property of the Northern States. https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/aboutt.../2feb1861.html
If you have read extensively about the Civil War and as you read through these documents you begin to see that Southerners at the time began to see themselves as a people apart. In 1860, a President was elected without winning a single Southern state and the Congress turned Republican in both houses and so would eventually go the Federal courts. It is not hard to understand why some Southerners would feel like the Federal government was no longer their government.
It is easy for us to pass judgment on people in the past, and in this case rightly so, slavery was abominable. But it is harder for people today to understand the motives of past generations, they are often more complex then they seem. Slavery was the main reason for the war but it was not the only one.
Slavery was the main reason for the war but it was not the only one.
That is the (150 year and still going) debatable part. It depends on whose doing the talking and interpretations on the take away one gets from it. You had mentioned Tariffs, then of course State Rights ... (tariff argument I have yet to dive into) yet I understand the Biblical sense in the definition of sovereignty. The American Revolutionary war in part was to separate the U.S. from the power of The Church of England.
It is all in their way(s) of life and what they came to understand as time happened; evolve into. Where as before the 1500's the church, waged war, collected taxes and determined the government.
So now move forward to the 1800's with the Protestant saying, our conscience (not the priest or government) will be our guide as God governs our conscience. (today, Ted Cruz, 'vote your conscience')
I don't know which article of the succession to attribute this to, but, 'withdraw from the Union as the U.S. withdrew from Great Britain'. imo, that is the summary of all.
as you said, "Southerners at the time began to see themselves as a people apart."
As much as we look at it, I don't think this debate will ever get put to bed. Unfortunately that is the world we live in ...
"Long before the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter, the U.S. Senate confronted the sectional conflicts that ultimately led to the Civil War, crafting legislative compromises that averted war for several decades. The Senate continued to influence national events throughout the war and its aftermath. This chronology highlights notable dates and events related to the Senate and the Civil War."
We agree on that,
the Civil War was brewing from the time the Constitution was written
On this date in 1787, the Three-fifths Compromise was enacted. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia that year accepted a plan determining a state’s representation in the U.S. House of Representatives. It was ironic that it was a liberal northern delegate, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, who proposed the Three-Fifths Compromise, as a way to gain southern support for a new framework of government. Southern states had wanted representation apportioned by population; after the Virginia Plan was rejected, the Three-Fifths Compromise seemed to guarantee that the South would be strongly represented in the House of Representatives and would have disproportionate power in electing Presidents.
The issue of how to count slaves split the delegates into two groups. The northerners regarded slaves as property who should receive no representation. Southerners demanded that Blacks be counted with whites. The compromise clearly reflected the strength of the pro-slavery forces at the convention. The “Three-fifths Compromise” allowed a state to count three fifths of each Black person in determining political representation in the House.
Rather than halting or slowing the importation of slaves in the south, slavery had been given a new life — a political life. Even when the law stopped the importing of new slaves in 1808, the south continued to increase its overall political status and electoral votes by adding and breeding slaves illegally. The Three-fifths Compromise would not be challenged again until the Dred Scott case in 1856.
That is the (150 year and still going) debatable part. It depends on whose doing the talking and interpretations on the take away one gets from it. You had mentioned Tariffs, then of course State Rights ... (tariff argument I have yet to dive into) yet I understand the Biblical sense in the definition of sovereignty. The American Revolutionary war in part was to separate the U.S. from the power of The Church of England.
It is all in their way(s) of life and what they came to understand as time happened; evolve into. Where as before the 1500's the church, waged war, collected taxes and determined the government.
So now move forward to the 1800's with the Protestant saying, our conscience (not the priest or government) will be our guide as God governs our conscience. (today, Ted Cruz, 'vote your conscience')
I don't know which article of the succession to attribute this to, but, 'withdraw from the Union as the U.S. withdrew from Great Britain'. imo, that is the summary of all.
as you said, "Southerners at the time began to see themselves as a people apart."
As much as we look at it, I don't think this debate will ever get put to bed. Unfortunately that is the world we live in ...
IMHO, slavery was the primary reason (but not the only reason) for the Civil War for both direct and indirect reasons.
The direct reasons are kind of obvious, for instance in November 1860 the anti-slavery party, the Republicans took over the White House and both houses of Congress. And they did so without winning a single Southern state and it looked like they would be in power for a long time to come. And so in December 1860, just a month after Lincoln was elected and before he even took office, South Carolina followed by her Deep South sisters seceded.
The indirect reasons are more complex. I think I was the one who mentioned tariffs so I will talk about that. In general, the South was against tariffs because she had those large plantations that were producing cash crops for export like cotton and tobacco to Europe. In contrast, much of the North was going into the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, like the mill towns of New England and so wanted protective tariffs to protect their industry (something future American leaders would sadly neglect).
Anyway here is the point, what enabled the Southern plantation owners to produce massive amounts of crops for export that made them to be concerned about tariff issues in the first place? Slavery.
Now I don't think that a South Carolina plantation owner was thinking of the tariff issue as being a slave issue directly or indirectly. Rather he saw it as a tariff issue as a TARIFF issue that favored one part of the country like Massachusetts or New York over states like South Carolina, Alabama or Georgia. That is why if you really want to understand history, you have to make an effort to see issues from the perspective of the people at the time, not just looking at it from the moral perspective of today.
Mr. Stephens' Cornerstone Speech just echoed what had already been determined as their main guiding principles at the South Carolina secession convention in 1860. They all identified as 'Slave States' ~ their 'Declaration of the Causes of Secession' all state similar.
"The “anything but slavery” explanations gained traction only after the war, especially after 1890—at exactly the same time that Jim Crow laws became entrenched across the South. Thus when people wrote about secession influenced what they wrote."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dopo
What are those other things?
Everything points to slavery (economy)
Not sure what you're asking here? Race-based slavery was the sine qua non reason for the American Civil War ~ without slavery the War does not happen.
Before the War, some folks were saying things like this about seceding from the United States of America:
Quote:
Reverend Furman of South Carolina insisted that the right to hold slaves was clearly sanctioned by the Holy Scriptures.He emphasized a practical side as well, warning that if Lincoln were elected, “every Negro in South Carolina and every other Southern state will be his own master; nay, more than that, will be the equal of every one of you. If you are tame enough to submit, abolition preachers will be at hand to consummate the marriage of your daughters to black husbands.”
Quote:
As Pastor Dunwody of South Carolina summed up the case: “Thus, God, as he is infinitely wise, just and holy, never could authorize the practice of a moral evil. But god has authorized the practice of slavery, not only by the bare permission of his Providence, but the express provision of his word. Therefore, slavery is not a moral evil.
Quote:
Shortly after Lincoln’s election, Presbyterian minister Benjamin Morgan Palmer, originally from Charleston, gave a sermon entitled, “The South Her Peril and Her Duty.” He announced that the election had brought to the forefront one issue – slavery – that required him to speak out. Slavery, he explained, was a question of morals and religion, and was now the central question in the crisis of the Union. The South, he went on, had a “providential trust to conserve and to perpetuate the institution of slavery as now existing.” The South was defined by slavery, he observed. “It has fashioned our modes of life, and determined all of our habits of thought and feeling, and molded the very type of our civilization.” Abolition, said Palmer, was “undeniably atheistic.” The South “defended the cause of God and religion,” and nothing “is now left but secession.” Some 90,000 copies of a pamphlet incorporating the sermon were distributed.
Quote:
William Harris, Mississippi’s commissioner to Georgia, explained that Lincoln’s election had made the North more defiant than ever. “They have demanded, and now demand equality between the white and negro races, under our constitution; equality in representation, equality in right of suffrage, equality in the honors and emoluments of office, equality in the social circle, equality in the rights of matrimony,” he cautioned, adding that the new administration wanted “freedom to the slave, but eternal degradation for you and me.”
Quote:
Two days before South Carolina seceded, Judge Alexander Hamilton Handy, Mississippi’s commissioner to Maryland, warned that “the first act of the black republican party will be to exclude slavery from all the territories, from the District of Columbia, the arsenals and the forts, by the action of the general government. That would be a recognition that slavery is a sin, and confine the institution to its present limits. The moment that slavery is pronounced a moral evil – a sin – by the general government, that moment the safety of the rights of the south will be entirely gone.”
Quote:
Typical of the commissioner letters is that written by Stephen Hale, an Alabama commissioner, to the Governor of Kentucky, in December 1860. Lincoln’s election, he observed, was “nothing less than an open declaration of war, for the triumph of this new theory of government destroys the property of the south, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans. The slave holder and non-slaveholder must ultimately share the same fate; all be degraded to a position of equality with free negroes, stand side by side with them at the polls, and fraternize in all the social relations of life, or else there will be an eternal war of races, desolating the land with blood, and utterly wasting all the resources of the country.”
After the War, secession was about 'anything but slavery'.
So full disclaimer to get my background where I'm posting from.... I have a "northern perspective and education"
So I've really become interested in the civil war lately and the more I've been learning the more interested I've become.
I remember in school basically being told more or less the war was about slavery and related issues and that's the way it was. Never gave a 2nd thought about it and just thought that's that.
The more I read and learn I'm really challenging what I thought I knew. And I'm curious to get some more opinions on this topic or get some more books or documentaries recommended to me.
I also just visited Gettysburg this year and that's what really got me down the rabbit hole of the civil war.
Looking at everything I've learned so far it seems the cause of the civil war is so much more complex than I realized. Even reading Lincoln's inaugural address in 1861 he specifically mentions not trying to stop slavery in the South and its not his intention (I'm paraphrasing)
And that most people in the South readily admitted that they feel slavery would have naturally ended on its own.
The union still allowed border states like West virginia, Delaware, Kentucky to stay in the union and support the union cause AND remain slave states. That right there says the war did not originally start as a means to end slavery when the union allows its own states to continue on with slavery.
Like 97% of southern soldiers were far to poor to ever have slaves. Even some of the more aristocratic ones, for example Thomas Jackson actually went out of his way to teach slaves to read and write and helped build a Sunday school for them. I couldn't believe when I learned one of the confederates most famous generals was teaching slaves to read and write and with respect. It was quite a surprise for me to learn.
Lincoln only gave the emancipation proclamation addrssing slaves in confederate territory deliberately to undermine the south's economy, and to sow discontent and unrest.
Definitely didn't learn these things in school.
It's really changed how I look at the war.
I am really thinking that American civil war Was the South being angry and feeling mistreated over states rights issues. It's far more complex than I realized. And I am now viewing the confederacy differently than I did before. The North invaded to beat the South back into submission to preserve the union not to stop slavery, that became a method to inflict pain on the southern economy.
I've read/watched all the usuals...the killer angels, God's and generals, gettysburg, glory, (still have to read the last full measure) and I think It's called blue and grey? And others Etc..
If you guys have any interesting points or feedback let me know. I'm always willing to reevaluate and learn.
If you have any book or movie / mini series recommendations let me know
One thing to remember about HISTORY is that everyone involved in any event will tell the story in a different way.. Scholars are usually the ones that write History books but they are relying on information that is often totally wrong.
On this date in 1787, the Three-fifths Compromise was enacted. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia that year accepted a plan determining a state’s representation in the U.S. House of Representatives. It was ironic that it was a liberal northern delegate, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, who proposed the Three-Fifths Compromise, as a way to gain southern support for a new framework of government. Southern states had wanted representation apportioned by population; after the Virginia Plan was rejected, the Three-Fifths Compromise seemed to guarantee that the South would be strongly represented in the House of Representatives and would have disproportionate power in electing Presidents.
The issue of how to count slaves split the delegates into two groups. The northerners regarded slaves as property who should receive no representation. Southerners demanded that Blacks be counted with whites. The compromise clearly reflected the strength of the pro-slavery forces at the convention. The “Three-fifths Compromise” allowed a state to count three fifths of each Black person in determining political representation in the House.
Rather than halting or slowing the importation of slaves in the south, slavery had been given a new life — a political life. Even when the law stopped the importing of new slaves in 1808, the south continued to increase its overall political status and electoral votes by adding and breeding slaves illegally. The Three-fifths Compromise would not be challenged again until the Dred Scott case in 1856.
The first thing that popped for me (I don't know about the other 4 states) on this, the Texas State Constitution of 1861, "it did not legalize the resumption of the African slave trade". So they were adding slaves illegally before then years later decide to stop it? So you made me look:
"The taxes that the Three-Fifths Compromise dealt with were "direct" taxes, as opposed to excise or import taxes. It was not until 1798 that Congress imposed the first genuine direct taxes in American history: a tax on dwelling-houses and a tax on slaves aged 12 to 50.
The Three-Fifths Compromise greatly augmented southern political power. In the Continental Congress, where each state had an equal vote, there were only five states in which slavery was a major institution. Thus the southern states had about 38 percent of the seats in the Continental Congress. Because of the 1787 Three-Fifths Compromise, the southern states had nearly 45 percent of the seats in the first U.S. Congress, which took office in 1790.
It is ironic that it was a liberal northern delegate, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, who proposed the Three-Fifths Compromise, as a way to gain southern support for a new framework of government. Southern states had wanted representation apportioned by population; after the Virginia Plan was rejected, the Three-Fifths Compromise seemed to guarantee that the South would be strongly represented in the House of Representatives and would have disproportionate power in electing Presidents.
Over the long term, the Three-Fifths Compromise did not work as the South anticipated. Since the northern states grew more rapidly than the South, by 1820, southern representation in the House had fallen to 42 percent. Nevertheless, from Jefferson's election as President in 1800 to the 1850s, the three-fifths rule would help to elect slaveholding Presidents. Southern political power increasingly depended on the Senate, the President, and the admission of new slaveholding states."
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