Quote:
Originally Posted by dcsldcd
The confederate flag was the flag of the south, not the flag of slavery. It was some people or groups that took it up as a symbol for some other meaning.
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Solidly wrong:
American Civil War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Main articles:
Origins of the American CivilWar and
Timeline of events leading to the American CivilWar
The coexistence of a slave-owning South with an increasingly anti-
slavery North made conflict likely, if not inevitable.
Lincoln did not propose federal laws against
slavery where it already existed, but he had, in his 1858
House Divided Speech, expressed a desire to "arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction."
[1] Much of the political battle in the 1850s focused on the expansion of
slavery into the newly created territories.
[2][3][4] All of the organized territories were likely to become free-soil states, which increased the Southern movement toward secession. Both North and South assumed that if
slavery could not expand it would wither and die.
[5][6][7]
Southern fears of losing control of the federal government to antislavery forces, and Northern resentment of the influence that the
Slave Power already wielded in government, brought the crisis to a head in the late 1850s. Sectional disagreements over the
morality of slavery, the scope of democracy and the economic merits of
free labor vs. slave
plantations caused the
Whig and "
Know-Nothing" parties to collapse, and new ones to arise (the
Free Soil Party in 1848, the
Republicans in 1854, the
Constitutional Union in 1860). In 1860, the last remaining national political party, the
Democratic Party, split along sectional lines.
Both North and South were influenced by the ideas of
Thomas Jefferson. Southerners emphasized, in connection with
slavery, the
states' rights[8][9][10] ideas mentioned in Jefferson's
Kentucky Resolutions. Northerners ranging from the abolitionist
William Lloyd Garrison to the moderate Republican leader
Abraham Lincoln[11] emphasized Jefferson's declaration that
all men are created equal. Lincoln mentioned this proposition in his
Gettysburg Address.
Confederate Vice President
Alexander Stephens said
[12] that
slavery was the chief cause of secession
[13] in his
Cornerstone Speech shortly before the
war. After Confederate defeat, Stephens became one of the most ardent defenders of the
Lost Cause.
[14] There was a striking contrast
[13][15] between Stephens' post-
war states' rights assertion that
slavery did
not cause secession
[14] and his pre-
war Cornerstone Speech. Confederate President Jefferson Davis also switched from saying the
war was
caused by
slavery to saying that states' rights was the cause. While Southerners often used states' rights arguments to defend
slavery, sometimes roles were reversed, as when Southerners demanded national laws to defend their interests with the
Gag Rule and the
Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. On these issues, it was Northerners who wanted to defend the rights of their states.
[16]
Almost all of the inter-regional crises involved
slavery, starting with debates on the
three-fifths clause and a twenty year extension of the
African slave trade in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. There was controversy over adding the slave state of
Missouri to the Union that led to the
Missouri Compromise of 1820, the
Nullification Crisis over the
Tariff of 1828 (although the tariff was low after 1846,
[17] and even the tariff issue was related to
slavery),
[18][19][20] the gag rule that prevented discussion in Congress of petitions for ending
slavery from 1835–1844, the acquisition of
Texas as a
slave state in 1845 and
Manifest Destiny as an argument for gaining new territories where
slavery would become an issue after the
Mexican–American War (1846–1848), which resulted in the
Compromise of 1850.
[21] The
Wilmot Proviso was an attempt by Northern politicians to exclude
slavery from the territories conquered from
Mexico. The extremely popular antislavery novel
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) by
Harriet Beecher Stowe greatly increased Northern opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
[22][23]
The 1854
Ostend Manifesto was an unsuccessful Southern attempt to annex
Cuba as a slave state. The
Second Party System broke down after passage of the
Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, which replaced the Missouri Compromise ban on
slavery with
popular sovereignty, allowing the people of a territory to vote for or against
slavery. The
Bleeding Kansas controversy over the status of
slavery in the
Kansas Territory included massive vote fraud perpetrated by Missouri pro-
slavery Border Ruffians. Vote fraud led pro-South Presidents
Franklin Pierce and
James Buchanan to make attempts (including support for the pro-
slavery Lecompton Constitution) to admit Kansas as a slave state.
[24] Violence over the status of
slavery in Kansas erupted with the
Wakarusa War,
[25] the
Sacking of Lawrence,
[26] the
caning of Republican Charles Sumner by the Southerner Preston Brooks,
[27][28] the
Pottawatomie Massacre,
[29] the
Battle of Black Jack, the
Battle of Osawatomie and the
Marais des Cygnes massacre. The 1857 Supreme Court
Dred Scott decision allowed
slavery in the territories even where the majority opposed
slavery, including Kansas. The
Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 included Northern Democratic leader
Stephen A. Douglas'
Freeport Doctrine. This doctrine was an argument for thwarting the Dred Scott decision which, along with Douglas' defeat of the Lecompton Constitution, divided the Democratic Party between North and South. Northern abolitionist
John Brown's raid at
Harpers Ferry Armory was an attempt to incite slave insurrections in 1859.
[30] The North-South split in the
Democratic Party in 1860 due to the Southern demand for a slave code for the territories completed polarization of the nation between North and South.
Other factors include sectionalism (
caused by the growth of
slavery in the lower South while
slavery was gradually phased out in Northern states) and economic differences between North and South, although most modern historians disagree with the extreme economic determinism of historian
Charles Beard and argue that Northern and Southern economies were largely complementary.
[31] There was the polarizing effect of
slavery that split the largest religious denominations (the
Methodist,
Baptist and
Presbyterian churches)
[32] and controversy
caused by the worst cruelties of
slavery (whippings, mutilations and families split apart). The fact that seven immigrants out of eight settled in the North, plus the fact that twice as many whites left the South for the North as vice versa, contributed to the South's defensive-aggressive political behavior.
[33]
The
election of Lincoln in 1860 was the final trigger for secession.
[34] Efforts at compromise, including the "
Corwin Amendment" and the "
Crittenden Compromise", failed.
Southern leaders feared that Lincoln would stop the expansion of
slavery and put it on a course toward extinction. The slave states, which had already become a minority in the House of Representatives, were now facing a future as a perpetual minority in the Senate and Electoral College against an increasingly powerful North."
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