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If I may interject, there is absolutely nothing to simplify. Neither the Republican platform or the President elect, Abraham Lincoln called for the abolishment of slavery in the states where it existed. They simply refused to advance the expansion in the territories!
I find it interesting that then like now, the whole hog wash about states rights was based upon only the rights that they like, while demanding an end to the rights of states they disagree with. The slave states demanded that free states enforce the capture of their slaves with the Fugitive Slave Act. They demanded that law enforcement officials of free states enforce their laws regarding runaway slaves. When the free states refused to use their local officials to enforce federal law, the slave states demanded that the federal government should force the free states to do so. When the free states granted suspected slaves the right to appeal their freedom in local courts the slave states demanded that the federal government prohibit free states from doing so. So then, like now, spare me that one way arguments about "state's rights".
First of all, you are a well recognized "federalist", taking the government position on almost everything today, so it's no surprise that you'd extend that backward historically.
Secondly, States Rights are not "hogwash". It was the entire intent of the constitution to limit federal power, and to preserve that "hogwash". So by saying this, you declare the constitution "hogwash", which isn't surprising, coming from a leftist socialist.
But, if this were as you say ... why did these "contrary" new states align with the South?
You see, the slavery issue was simply a pretense utilized by a shrewd Lincoln ... he needed popular support from the people for military action against the South, and the people were unlikely to accept the economic interests of the industrialists as a good enough reason, given that they had little to gain from it. So he appealed to the sense of morality, as the slave holders in the North were much smaller in number, and generally viewed as elitists by the rest, anyway.
In addition, there were proposals made to the south to drop the outlawing of slavery, including an agreement by the federal authorities not to interfere with the capturing of escaped slaves in either the new states or the states of the north.
This was an exercise of exerting federal authority over the states for economic reasons ... not slavery. The abolishment of slavery was a byproduct, and not the reason or cause. Had the South acquiesced to the economically damaging taxes the federal government wanted to impose, there would have been no war, nor even a peep about slavery.
I'm sorry Ovcatto, but it's not my opinion. Lincoln chose that confrontation at Fort Sumter.
Ah, the walk back.
Your original statement:
But Lincoln was deliberately provoking those hotheads. Because he didn't want secession to be decided by the courts.
To the new statement:
"Lincoln chose that confrontation at Fort Sumter."
Quote:
There are several documents that show this.
Yes, Lincoln did choose to make a stand over the issue of resupplying the soldiers in Fr Sumter. That is a historical fact. It is also a historical fact that Lincoln pledged not to surrender the fort or to reenforce it only to resupply it with food and provisions.
Now that is a damned far cry from Lincoln's actions with regard to Ft. Sumter was designed to deliberately provoking the "hot heads".
So if you have even a citation from Seward, Nicolay, Lincoln, or any cabinet officer that the purpose of not abandoning Sumter or the effort to resupply it was for the expressed intention of provoking the south into open warfare (they were already in open rebellion).
Further, do you have a single source where their was an attempt by a slave holding state to introduce legislation in the U.S. Congress to dissolve their membership in the Union? Do you have a single source that would demonstrate an attempt by a southern state to secede from the union through the courts?
If not what are we left with? Opinion, supposition and in fact just plain old fairy tales or facts?
well, he should have demanded it from the south. I don't care if the southern economy did collapse. He should have demanded it from everyone. It should have been outlawed by force a long time ago. The ending of slavery by force freed my ancestors. If i was a slave back then, the abolition of slavery would have helped me. Why would i care if the southern economy collapsed? I would be free.
But Lincoln was deliberately provoking those hotheads. Because he didn't want secession to be decided by the courts.
To the new statement:
"Lincoln chose that confrontation at Fort Sumter."
Yes, Lincoln did choose to make a stand over the issue of resupplying the soldiers in Fr Sumter. That is a historical fact. It is also a historical fact that Lincoln pledged not to surrender the fort or to reenforce it only to resupply it with food and provisions.
Now that is a damned far cry from Lincoln's actions with regard to Ft. Sumter was designed to deliberately provoking the "hot heads".
So if you have even a citation from Seward, Nicolay, Lincoln, or any cabinet officer that the purpose of not abandoning Sumter or the effort to resupply it was for the expressed intention of provoking the south into open warfare (they were already in open rebellion).
Further, do you have a single source where their was an attempt by a slave holding state to introduce legislation in the U.S. Congress to dissolve their membership in the Union? Do you have a single source that would demonstrate an attempt by a southern state to secede from the union through the courts?
If not what are we left with? Opinion, supposition and in fact just plain old fairy tales or facts?
It's not a walk back. Lincoln chose a confrontation. I don't know why you think that choosing a path which will end in a confrontation is so far from deliberately provoking hotheads. They are the SAME thing.
Lincoln's cabinet opposed his proposal to re-supply the fort. Anderson wrote letters saying that re-supply was unnecessary, because the fort was buying provisions from the merchants in Charleston. And why resupply this fort at all? What exactly did the fort do? Was its purpose military, or financial? I've read that the primary function of the fort personnel was to collect tariffs on imported goods? Why resupply it? Lincoln's Secretary of War didn't want to resupply it. Lincoln's Secretary of State didn't want to resupply it. Even the fort's commander didn't want the fort resupplied.
Lincoln's letter to the commander of the ships he sent to resupply the fort afterwards, that the mission was successful, suggests that provocation was the mission, not resupply. Lincoln's friend from Illinois, Mr Browning, wrote in his journal that Lincoln had told him that the plan was to provoke the South into initiating conflict.
And again, you ask about secessionists trying to introduce legislation or initiate law cases. Do you not see the illogic in that? Why would secessionists challenge secession? They don't need to introduce legislation into a legislative body they have seceded from. Secessionists aren't going to challenge secession, not in Congress, and not in court. The legal suits would have to be initiated by the Federal government that thought that it had been wronged. What you are arguing doesn't make sense. It wasn't up to the secessionists to sue for secession. Once they declared themselves no longer a part of the United States, they didn't consider themselves a part of the United States. Secessionists suing would be like a husband who divorces his wife suing her for adultery after the divorce is final.
Where are the law cases from the federal government? That's the party with the lawsuit. But they didn't file a lawsuit, because they knew the lawsuit would fail, given the make-up of the Supreme Court. They didn't have a legal path to force the seceded states back into the Union. The Southern States had sent representatives to try to negotiate, and Lincoln refused to meet with them, Seward refused to meet with them. Lincoln rejected negotiation, and he didn't have a legal path. What were his options? The longer this went on, the more chance that foreign countries would recognize the Confederacy. What were his options? He doesn't have the power to declare war, and Congress doesn't want war. What were his options?
It was not one third of all households. A more comprehensive estimate:
Slavery in the antebellum South was not a monolithic system; its nature varied widely across the region. At one extreme one white family in thirty owned slaves in Delaware; in contrast, half of all white families in South Carolina did so. Overall, 26 percent of Southern white families owned slaves. In 1860, families owning more than fifty slaves numbered less than 10,000; those owning more than a hundred numbered less than 3,000 in the whole South. The typical Southern slave owner possessed one or two slaves, and the typical white Southern male owned none.
There's absolutely nothing in your unattributed quote that denies the numbers provided by James G. Randall - over a third of all households in the Confederacy owned slaves and over two fifths of all households in the Deep South owned slaves.
The numbers provided from Randall only covered those states that actually seceded.
In the first paragraph of the quote, I'm guessing that for the statement "Overall, 26 percent of Southern white families owned slaves" the anonymous author has added in the low percentages from the border states where the house-hold ownership of slaves was significantly lower. Those numbers don't count because those states didn't secede. In my opinion, it's as valid as including the number of slave-holding households in New Jersey in the total figure.
Randall himself notes the differences between southern states - 43% households in the Deep South that owned slaves, 36% in the remainder of the seceding states, and 22% in the non-seceding border states.
I did find the source for your quote, Slavery In The Civil War Era, which itself cites the MacMillan Information Now Encyclopedia as it's source - in my opinion it's not quite as authorative as a published historian.
It was not one third of all households. A more comprehensive estimate:
Slavery in the antebellum South was not a monolithic system; its nature varied widely across the region. At one extreme one white family in thirty owned slaves in Delaware; in contrast, half of all white families in South Carolina did so. Overall, 26 percent of Southern white families owned slaves.
In 1860, families owning more than fifty slaves numbered less than 10,000; those owning more than a hundred numbered less than 3,000 in the whole South. The typical Southern slave owner possessed one or two slaves, and the typical white Southern male owned none.
The degree of slavery did vary. Overall though, not a good thing.
Interesting that you mention that the average White male southerner didn't own slaves and that most slave owners owned maybe one or two slaves. This shows the kind of entrenched dynamic that has some resemblance to a banana republic, specifically Mississippi. In Mississippi, the slave population outnumbered the free people. Cotton was the main product. You had mass exploitation of people, namely, the slaves, using mass plantation agriculture. If most slave owners only own maybe one or two slaves, then this would mean that a lion's share of the wealth and money was concentrated in less than one percent of the population.
You are embarrassed by commonsense? Guess it's true that people don't value it any more.
Clothing didn't come from the same source.
So much for your common sense conclusion.
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