Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Maybe the abolitionists were the ones who thought it was about slavery.
And maybe their viewpoint was wrong.
Here is a quote from Alexander Stephens, the Confederate vice-president.
"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. "
Slavery was not the only issue, but it did play a part in all of this.
And on the flip side, I have met many in my life who will not believe nor admit that slavery was not the sole issue and, further, was not bound up into larger questions and points of contention that had existed from day one.
While some will be quick to point out the person who denies slavery played any role at all, there are others who persist in taking the silly position that the War was fought by the righteous North out of an altruistic desire to "free the slaves". I dare say the latter is much more ludicrous than the former.
Anyway, I don't know of any reasonable, intelligent, poster on this thread (or any other along the same general lines) who disputes that slavery was not a major issue. Where the point of contention comes in is just how much a role it played and in what contexts. Certainly it was not moral. The majority of northerners couldn't have cared less about the plight of blacks in the South and they certainly didn't want them amongst them.
Not in the least trying to be patronizing, PL (because I have no right to be in any case), but -- with all due respect -- I think many who speak of the need for federal intervention do not see the whole picture and the latter day consequences. And further, advocate federal intervention only when it involves a subject near and dear to their own desires, hearts, and interests.
Let's just take as a given that ALL of us (pro-South or pro-North) agree that slavery goes against every notion of human freedom and dignity as we see it today. Further, even at struggling odds with the principles of the Declaration of Independence.
But let's consider something else with federal intervention on almost ANY matter. That is to say, we cannot pick and choose just when and where the feds will get involved once the can of worms is opened. Yesterday it might be something you (in the third person sense) approve of. Today or tomorow, the same powers can be used to do the opposite. In either case, the common denominator is that a controlling central government is not a benevolent force, but one controlled by imperfect people who will use it to their own ends. This was what the South feared and it cannot be said that history has proven them (us, if you will,) wrong. The Radicals generally saw the newly freed black man in the South not as someone to assist and help, but a tool for power and control. They insisted on voting rights in the conquered Confederate States...but denied that vote in their own. It is easy to put up a facade of benevolence if you have little chance of actually living by the rules dictated to others.
It was very telling that, when the busing crisis moved up North, into Boston in 1972 (I think it was), as one city councilman frankly admitted "Reconstruction has come home to the North." What he was astutely saying was that (they) had been hypocrites all along. So long as it was a "Southern problem", then it was easy to support federal interventions. It wasn't quite the same when they had to deal with it themselves.
I never said slavery was the only issue. I was just saying that it was one of the major issues.
If what you are saying about the Radicals is true, then there is another question. What would have been best for the newly freed slave? From my own viewpoint, being able to vote and to live as a human being is something important. From what I know of history, the politicians in the South didn't care about the newly freed slaves. The north isn't any better, with the only difference being that in the South, Blacks were getting the right to vote during Reconstruction.
Instead, you're under the slavery system of today--corporate slavery. Government sponsored slavery, wherein everyone winds up working for the government (in terms of paying them money for the privilege of working).
Instead, you're under the slavery system of today--corporate slavery. Government sponsored slavery, wherein everyone winds up working for the government (in terms of paying them money for the privilege of working).
Not always. I could always buy land in the woods and live off of the land myself. My point is under slavery, you have NO choices to do anything. You can always quit your job and do something else by yourself. There are hermits out in the woods living off of the land. Under the slavery system, there was NO escape from it.
No, I'm sorry, but I disagree. The war was the result of a deep political, cultural, and social division between two sections of the country. Democracy, and political systems that identify themselves as democratic, are not as fair and evenly balanced as we would like. Political systems that rely on the votes of constituents invariably favor urban constituents over rural constituents. The founders of our country actually recognized this, though for some reason it is not taught in schools today. But the structure of our government was designed in many ways to offset the inherent imbalance between rural and urban interests.
Initially, the government was successful in addressing this imbalance, but the trend to urbanization, especially as industrialization began to take hold, was so overwhelming that the tensions between rural and urban interests escalated, coalescing around the issue of slavery, but if slavery had not been an issue, other issues would have led to the inevitable struggle. And that's because the division between North and South was not simply political. Look at who settled the North. Dissidents from Europe who wanted to disassociate themselves from Europe. And look at who settled the South. Wealthy Europeans who wanted to capitalize on the land and resources of the "New World", but who also wanted to extend the governments, the cultures, the ways of life of Europe. The large land grants which led to large states with relatively few occupants. It wasn't just the attitude about slavery that divided the South and the North. It was the attitude about everything. It was the attitude about labor itself. It was the attitude about money, how it should be used, how it should be saved, about the very meaning of debt.
When you have two regions that are so very different, you have two regions that also feel very strongly about not having the other side dictate to it. Which is why you had New England as the first states who entertained the idea of secession. Secession wasn't a new idea. It had been introduced into the political discourse almost immediately after the Constitution was ratified.
The issue that divided our country to begin with was not slavery, but the balance of power between the federal government and the state governments. The first union, under the Articles of Confederation, allied the states almost as independent countries working together cooperatively, much like the European Union or the African Union. And if you look at the African Union, you will see why the Articles were largely ineffective, and a new Constitution was drawn up to provide more cohesion and power to the central government. However, how much power was THE question of the first half of the 19th Century. Which is why the first political parties were not pro-slavery and anti-slavery, the first political parties were Federalists and Anti-Federalists.
The North was not innocent in regards to the development of slavery. They could not profit from slavery in terms of labor because, at the start of our country the North as well as the South was largely agrarian. However, the farms of the North were primarily small, in part because of the topography of the region, and in part because good soil was not plentiful in the region. The demand for labor was in the South, and the crops grown in the South, cotton, tobacco, sugar, were all particularly labor intensive. The North saw that, and profitted handsomely by supplying the slaves to the South. And as the North became increasingly industrialized, another characteristic arose. The economies of industrial centers versus agrarian ones are notably distinct from one another, in that industrialized areas tend to be over-capitalized but resource-poor, and agrarian areas tend to under-capitalized but resource rich. In other words, farmers tend to be land-rich, but have little money at hand, while industrialists tend to have lots of money, and are always seeking ways to invest the money to maximize their revenue stream. Farmers aren't seeking ways to invest the money, the money goes to the farm. Farmers are always scrambling for ways to keep the farm running. But the farm itself has value, so large-scale farmers borrow money to put in crops, and use the future crops as security against that loan. What happened in the early 19th Century, though, was that Northern bankers didn't just loan money to growers against the future value of the crops, they loaned money using property itself as security. And they were quite willing to include slaves as property in those transactions. So you had an increasing amount of the wealth in the South being vested in the institution of slavery. And that was not just the doing of the South, but was also actively pursued by the North. Which, then, was also quite willing to insure the property of Southerners for a small fee. And what you see was that the South's dependence on slavery was not just for labor purposes, it was intertwined with the economy in multiple ways, and the North profited from that web of interdependence while being removed from it.
What you ended up with was a South that generated the bulk of the tax revenue that supported the federal government, increasingly mired in a morally repugnant institution financially, which profited the North in a two-fold manner. And you had a South that was increasingly aware of a political trend where eventually their voice in the central government would be more and more muted. Because a government that represents its citizens proportionally is going to be dominated by the densest-population centers. And where were the densest populations? All in the North.
Along comes 1860. How do Presidents win elections prior to 1860? Yes, there is the electoral college, but there aren't national elections the way we know them today. Candidates for President didn't run nationwide, they run regional campaigns, and then there is a sort of negotiation after the election when the electors in the electoral college, or, if necessary, in Congress, hash out who will serve in the Oval Office. The South, because of its size has always had a meaningful voice in these negotiations. In part, because of its economic importance to the federal government, that voice has even been amplified. But in 1860, something changes. In 1860, a new party, just formed a few years ago, the Republican Party, puts forth a candidate, Abraham Lincoln, and they win the election without any need of Southern electoral consent at all. Lincoln wasn't on a single ballot in the South, Lincoln doesn't get a single Southern elector. And he's headed to the White House.
Now, the Southern press has been whipping up a frenzy about Lincoln and the Republicans, how they are anti-slavery and how bad they are for the South. Lincoln, attempting to be moderate, has said that he will not try to abolish slavery. However, the Republican party owes much of its success as well as its political platform to the abolition movement. And the one thing that is made clear by Lincoln's election isn't about slavery at all. It's about power. Political power in a representative democracy will gravitate to urban interests. And in 1860, the President who is elected gains office without any reference to rural interests. Without any reference, at all, to Southern interests. What does that mean? To the South, it means that when the federal government is talking about tariffs, about taxes, they can enact those taxes without reference to Southern interests. It means that when the federal government weighs in on laws about taxes, slavery, OR ANYTHING ELSE, they can enact those laws regardless of how much the South opposes those laws. And the Republicans, regardless of what Lincoln says, have been talking about abolishing slavery.
Slavery was a moral outrage. It was a terrible institution. Why should the South be allowed to continue to practice this abomination? It was, without a doubt, something that had to be ended. And I think that that knowledge permeated the Southern political discourse. Because abolition wasn't just a Northern phenomenon, the South had abolitionists. Most of the Southern population didn't even own slaves, had no hopes of ever owning slaves. But, and this is a big BUT, the South's economy had a problem. They couldn't just afford to free the slaves. What happens when you have a loan at the bank on your car, and the car is destroyed? You still owe the bank for the loan. If you have insurance, you can pay back the loan. If you don't, you have to find some other way to pay it back. What happens when you have a loan at the bank on slaves, and the slaves are freed? You still owe the bank for the loan, and the insurance isn't going to pay you for your lost property because it's a government action. You can sell your land, but what happens when landowners all over the region are selling their land? The land becomes worthless.
The Southern feeling was that the North had prospered because of slavery just as the South had, and that if the country needed to give up slavery, then it should accommodate the South just as the North had accommodated itself, by allowing the institution to be abolished over time, with some system in place to reward those freeing their slaves so that there was incentive to do something that would lead to some economic hardship. And in light of the 1860 election, there was a genuine fear that the North wasn't going to accommodate the South, and indeed, that the North was going to force the issue and seize land and property via foreclosures on outstanding loans. It wasn't just a military incursion that the South feared. In fact, the South felt that it had a better chance on a military battlefield than they did on a political or economic battlefield. Hence, secession.
Erudite as ever, thank you for this post. But along these lines of thinking back in that era, and present tense issues, this petty arguing over power for what purpose? The motives behind the desire for that power made all the different IMO. As for rural being under represented, the yeoman farmers run over by economic machinery-- is that not true today? How is it that can be solved? That's a productive discussion, not the ridiculous sibling rivalry most engaged in these conversations about civil war era get hung up about. If there were only one thing in the way of people's ability to listen to them credibly, it would be that one nasty habit.
Poor put upon south was cheated is the lament. But cheated of what? Did the north hold a grudge against Jefferson for interfering with their side of the slave trade equation when he banned it? Answer: they absolutely did not. If this aspect of our origins was in effect building our house on sand, it had to change, or all that hard won liberty would be rendered a joke for posterirty.
Are rural people cheated today as they were then? I think citified people are cheated far more. People with no vested interest or little economic input controlling the board doesn't work very well either. I hear the nagging lament of states rights out of their mouths only when it suits them, but when Repubs want to tinker around with the large scale economy claiming it the remedy for small scale economies like it's a child's erector set and things go to hell in a handbasket, it's the cities that bankroll the whole magilla, shoulder the economic burden of all from day one right to the bitter end, with added insult to injury the spit in the face from the very mindsets causing the mess.
As perennial as the grass- all these arguments posted in so many threads about so called selective attention history (which oddly enough is more of a confession than accusation from those posters)- anyone care to answer who was the economic powerhouse during the civil war era? Was the south really all that and a bag of chips? Or did they have such a grandiose self image that they failed to see who and what had been paying the bills all along?
"Southern pride" never put their own malcontents to bed. How long is this "Great Expectations" pity party going to last?
You can choose not to pay taxes, if you wish to risk being confined for committing a crime.
It's very possible to live life as a non tax payer if you're willing to abide the terms of that arrangement. No, it doesn't involve being charged with a crime. It involves not making money, but going by a barter system and not participating in civilization. Have at it, but you just may come to appreciate why elaborate systems like hospitals and police exist.
It's very possible to live life as a non tax payer if you're willing to abide the terms of that arrangement. No, it doesn't involve being charged with a crime. It involves not making money, but going by a barter system and not participating in civilization. Have at it, but you just may come to appreciate why elaborate systems like hospitals and police exist.
I can't think of anyone that will let you live on "their" property for free. Especially not the government.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
