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South Carolina
Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union
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.
The Civil War is like scripture... it's very easy to cherry-pick the parts that already support your prejudices, and hard to understand how the complete picture invalidates most of those biases.
It's important to understand that for about a hundred years, the narrative was completely controlled by the Southern viewpoint, amplified through the "historical" groups that put up monuments and markers nonstop... sometimes in states that either didn't participate in the war or didn't even exist at the time. If you shout about states's rights and Freedom! long and loud enough while suppressing the descendants of slavery, you get a huge amount of misunderstanding in your favor.
The Civil War is like scripture... it's very easy to cherry-pick the parts that already support your prejudices, and hard to understand how the complete picture invalidates most of those biases.
It's important to understand that for about a hundred years, the narrative was completely controlled by the Southern viewpoint, amplified through the "historical" groups that put up monuments and markers nonstop...
Quietude.. agreed, we all go in to these historical debates with subjective biases, etc. And it is easy to cherry pick facts to support our subjective interpretations. Guess it's just the nature of the beast..
One (objective) point I dispute with u, is your assertion that Southerners monopolized the memorial business. There were Union monuments across the North.. Gettysburg was seeing Union monuments thru the late 1800s, etc. Civil War memory was not "completely controlled" by Confederate vets & sympathizers.
But if your point is more that Confederate memory was more zealous/intense (?).., I get it.
The South was (obviously) more devastated by the war & Reconstruction. Southern land experienced the overwhelming majority of fighting. Their more intense memory makes psychological/emotional sense (to me)..
(peace)
One (objective) point I dispute with u, is your assertion that Southerners monopolized the memorial business.
Didn't say that...
Quote:
But if your point is more that Confederate memory was more zealous/intense (?).., I get it.
Did say that. The efforts by the various Confederate groups to 'mark their territory' were so zealous as to be amusing, were it not for the underlying issues. And the monuments heavily emphasize the rewritten viewpoint and rarely mention slavery or anything related to it; it's all about Our (Lost) Way Of Life, sob.
There aren't a whole lot of Union monuments after about 1880 or in any part of the South. The northern states are covered with Confederate monuments put up as late as the 1940s. Stone Mountain is still being worked on. 'Nuf sed.
Exactly! the issue was never about the over-concentration, and practically-inevitable misuse of government power; it was an argument between several force-minded groups (the slaveholders, the abolitionists, and the emerging developers of an early military-industrial complex) to harness that unjustified power for their own purposes.
Free enterprise wasn't the problem; abuse of power (and the pursuit of more of it) was. But too many people here can't see that.
It wasn't abuse of power
It was as simple as good vs evil
Evil people (slave owners) in the South were losing millions of dollars (todays' money) when slaves ran away to the North.
Good people (anti-slavery people) in the North, refused to send slaves back to their evil owners.
But people keep on trying to re-write history to show people in the South as good people that "fought for their beliefs"
Hiding the fact that their beliefs is that any man, woman or children darker than a toast of bread can be sold as if it was cattle.
I haven't read any of the other comments, but the war did become necessary.
The abolitionists and anti-slavery side tried negotiations and political means to do away with it, only to see it spread further. John Brown initiated the shift towards using force to counter the hostility of the pro-slavery forces, as well as no more backing down or compromising. It then essentially "went to the streets".
It wasn't abuse of power
It was as simple as good vs evil
Evil people (slave owners) in the South were losing millions of dollars (todays' money) when slaves ran away to the North. Good people (anti-slavery people) in the North, refused to send slaves back to their evil owners.
But people keep on trying to re-write history to show people in the South as good people that "fought for their beliefs"
Hiding the fact that their beliefs is that any man, woman or children darker than a toast of bread can be sold as if it was cattle.
So wrong and simplistic.
Evil people (slave owners) were in the North as well as the South. "What would be Union states during the War had 451,021 slaves counted in the 1860 census. Twenty years earlier, in the 1840 census, there were 355,777 slaves counted and in 1850, 415,510. When you look at the census data, New England is the only region where slavery ends rather quickly. In other areas of the north and west, slavery continues until right up to the Civil War. " K.L. Thompson.
Kathleen Logothetis Thompson graduated from Siena College in May 2010 with a B.A. in History and a Certificate in Revolutionary Era Studies. She earned her M.A. in History from West Virginia University in May 2012. Her thesis “A Question of Life or Death: Suicide and Survival in the Union Army” examines wartime suicide among Union soldiers, its causes, and the reasons that army saw a relatively low suicide rate. She is currently pursuing her PhD at West Virginia University with research on mental trauma in the Civil War. In addition, Kathleen was a seasonal interpreter at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park from 2010-2014 and has worked on various other publications and projects.
Bibliography and Further Reading:
Essah, Patience. A House Divided: Slavery and Emancipation in Delaware, 1638-1865. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996.
Gigantino, James J., II. The Ragged Road to Abolition: Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey, 1775-1865. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
Harper, Douglas. “Slavery in the North.” Slavenorth.com.
Litwack, Leon F. North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1961.
Melish, Joanne Pope. Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780-1860. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.
Nash, Gary B., and Jean R. Soderlund. Freedom By Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Rossier, W. S. A Century of Population Growth: From the First to the Twelfth Census of the United State: 1790-1900. www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents. Look at Chapter 14: Statistics of Slaves.
Williams, William H. Slavery and Freedom in Delaware, 1639-1865. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1996.
Multiple sources including the US Census support proof of ownership of slaves in the North until the 13th amendment.
So evil people as you call it were everywhere. If you had a point to make, it is better to be accurate in the history forum.
"What would be Union states during the War had 451,021 slaves counted in the 1860 census.
That's misleading in that all of those were border states, which were in between the Union and the Confederacy in almost every way. What would be the Confederate states were ALL slaveholding and had over eight times as many slaves.
Really, it's stupid to try to game history by making too much out of anomalies in the larger picture. Yes, by gosh, there were black slaveholders. So what?
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