causes of the American War Between the States

[slzy]

shall we start with lincolns election and work back,or start at the declaration of independence and work forward?

[El Tejon]

War of Southern Treason was caused by slavery.

[Moondoggie]

.....and appeasement.

[wingnutx]

and banjos

[El Tejon]

I can find no references to banjos in Southern parade of horribles, however slavery is there.

[Perd Hapley]

And fried foods.

And funny drawls.

And Southern imitation of European aristocracy.

And the fear of Northerners that the extension of the slave-labor plantation system into the western territories would erode the opportunity of enterprising free white folks going west. 

And NASCAR.

And the Bible Belt.

And the southern fear that the northerners were plotting against them. 

And the northern fear that the southerners were plotting against them.

Not long ago, I wrote two ten-twelve page papers on this topic.  Don't remember much of it.

or start at the declaration of independence and work forward?

Yes, the question of sovereignty was important.  Love him or hate him, Calhoun was kind of a cool guy.  Emperor Jackson even more so.

[charby]

one part was state's rights vs federal government intrusion

[mfree]

Compact theory and the abutment of it by the federal government. The war resulted in it's ultimate death.

[ilbob]

Largely two things - state sovereignty and economics. The northern manufacturing interests arranged for very high tariffs against English goods such as cloth to protect their industries. This had a very serious impact on the south because england did not buy as much cotton from them.

Some in the north wanted to eliminate slavery by strangling it, banning it in any new states, and hoping to gradually kill it off by other means. Some wanted much faster action, but by and large they were not in the mainstream.

Most likely slavery would have ended up being abandoned in another few decades anyway. Increased mechanization was making slavery less and less economical. But it was ingrained in the southern mindset, even though relatively few southerners owned slaves.

Once the south seceded and actually fired on the north (a really stupid thing to do), there was not a lot that could be done to stop the war. The notion of honor had to be satisfied, and the only way to do so was by military action.

Lincoln could have cared less about slavery but was determined not to allow the south to secede, perhaps at least in part because this would interfere with the manifest destiny of the nation. Once they fired on northern troops, he had his justification. once the war started in earnest, it was not going to stop until someone had lost.

[Guest]

The Yankees were ticked off that they proposed secession first, but dropped the ball at the Hartford Convention of 1815.  www.bartleby.com/65/ha/HartfordC.html

"The news of the Treaty of Ghent ending the war and of Andrew Jacksons victory at New Orleans made any recommendation of the convention a dead letter. Its importance, however, was twofold: It continued the view of states rights as the refuge of sectional groups, and it sealed the destruction of the Federalist party, which never regained its lost prestige."

So it appears that they were acting like sore losers nursing a grudge, and it appears it took them almost fifty years to organize an invasion of the South.  

So much for live and let live.

And that's how a collection of states originally joined for their mutual protection eventually became THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT we know and love.

Next week: The history of the IRS.

John

[richyoung]

The question is this simple:  Do States, under the Constitution, have the right to seceed?  The Constitution itself is silent on the subject, so that power is "..reserved to the States, or the people therein."

The South simply tried to exercise the same right of self-determination that the U.S. supports for the Ukraine, Tibet, Taiwan, etc.

[SomeKid]

War of Southern Treason was caused by slavery.

*Spit*

Damn yankees.

El T, it was the War of Northern Aggression.

[ilbob]

The question is this simple:  Do States, under the Constitution, have the right to seceed?  The Constitution itself is silent on the subject, so that power is "..reserved to the States, or the people therein."

The South simply tried to exercise the same right of self-determination that the U.S. supports for the Ukraine, Tibet, Taiwan, etc.

and might well have succeeded if they had not fired the first shots.

[The Rabbi]

Corporatism.

Save your Dixie cups, the South will rise again!

[CAnnoneer]

State autonomy and federal statism clashed inevitably. Statism won. Even Dense Abe realized it eventually.

[Stand_watie]

Yankee devils.

[Perd Hapley]

CAnnoneer, I expected better of you.  What book did you parrot that from?

[mustanger98]

Slavery really had nothing to do with it. Slavery wasn't made a leading issue until 1863 when Lincoln declared it abolished "in the states currently in rebellion" according to him.

During the Lincoln/Douglas debates when they were running for President, the question of slavery vs. abolition was asked. Lincoln said he had no reason to want to abolish slavery. He was for slavery, then he was against it. Sound familiar?

Some anti-Confederate individuals want to cite Gen. Wade Hampton of South Carolina as being a very big white supremacist, although it hasn't yet been brought up in this thread. Whenever I have to confront that, I cite Gen. William T. Sherman of the Union Army... Sherman was a very big white supremacist on the Yankee side and he is quoted as saying "I don't care how equal they are as long as they're separate". The North had segregation long before the War of Northern Aggression. After the war, the South got segregation, yet the South gets blasted as a racist region for it. It makes no sense except in the context that after a war, the victor generally writes what we see published as history.

From my knowledge of this subject, I advise everybody to pay a good bit more attention to ilbob's post and a lot less to the posts making fun of Southerners.

[Perd Hapley]

During the Lincoln/Douglas debates when they were running for President, the question of slavery vs. abolition was asked. Lincoln said he had no reason to want to abolish slavery. He was for slavery, then he was against it. Sound familiar?

The question was asked again and again during those debates.  If any of you haven't read them, you should.  They're a really neat window into 19th century politics.  Whatever slavery's importance might have been among the casus belli, it was a very important issue to Northerners and Southerners.  I don't think you're giving it it's due importance, mustanger.

[mustanger98]

If only 5% of Southerners owned slaves, then what were the other 95% of the Southern population (minus those where were neutral or yankee sympathizers) fighting for? Not for slavery because it didn't benefit them. One Confederate soldier was quoted as answering that question as "because you are here". And as someone else already mentioned, slavery was becoming ecomically un-sound and would've died out shortly. And the North had slave states too and they didn't abolish it till the end of the war if not the end of Reconstruction.

[lupinus]

Slavery was a background issue but not the issue

In the end it was many issues all thrown together, mainly the trampling of states rights and aggrisive acts by the North.

Slavery wasn't made a main issue untill the North was getting its ass handed to them and needed some good PR and a reason to get recruits.

[280plus]

Slavery wasn't made a main issue untill the North was getting its ass handed to them and needed some good PR and a reason to get recruits.

That's the way I see it. The Union made a deal with the slave population that if they would support the North they'd be given their former owners plantations etc, which they were, but not much later, after Lincoln's death the govt renegged on the deal and all the former owners got their property back and the former slaves ended up probably WORSE off than they were as slaves.

[El Tejon]

Not so.  Slavery was THE issue to the South.  Slavery was the motivation behind the Constitution's 3/5 provision, the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, Bloody Kansas, John Brown, the Fugitive Slave Act, inter alia, ad naseum.

Slavery is why they tried to leave the Union as stated by CSA leaders.  Slavery is listed in the Southern states reasons for leaving, those petitions are hanging on the walls of Southern museums (2nd floor at the Texas State Museum in Austin where it is proudly displayed, Slavery is enshrined in the CSA Constitution (with the provision that slavery MUST be recognized by all--i.e. no opting out of Slavery in the CSA).

After the War of Southern Treason, Robert E. Lee acknowledged the war was about Slavery and white supremacy.  The Klu Klux Klan dressed up as the ghosts of Confederate soldiers, not to attack the North but to attack Blacks.

"Trampling of state rights" was the revisionist history created by former CSA generals who wanted to put a politically correct spin on their treason.  Even in the 19th century it was easier for Southerners to say "we were fighting for states rights" rather than saying the truth "we were fighting to keep others enslaved."

[Art Eatman]

Sure, there's no doubt that slavery was a large issue.  A point that some have mentioned:  If slavery was "the cause", all the North had to do was buy the slaves and set them free.  The cost, based on the slave population and the value per slave, would have been much less than the actual cost of the war in dollar terms, and I think it's obvious that there would have been far fewer dead bodies.  But, as we all know, ego usually wins out over reality...

Ask yourself why the 95% of non-slave-owners would suport the Confederate views?  Why would they be willing to enter into a war on behalf of an upper economic class?

That's essentially been an unasked question, seems to me.  It's when you look into the taxing structure of the country and the ancient "Cui bono"? that you start to see a larger picture.  Add to this an attitude of "Who are they to tell us how to live?" and you might better understand the views of the lower economic strata of the South who were the foot-soldiers.

Another factor, seems to me, is that if you enter into a political union that turns out not to be of benefit to you, why must you be forced to stay?  This was not like a contract for repaying a loan, which is indeed an obligation.  It was a joining together of individual states into a union, and it began to be detrimental to the agrarian states because of tariffs (making earning a living more difficult) and the national tax structure.

Even "Civil War" is a misnomer.  The South did not want to conquer and control the North.  Civil Wars have always involved a fight between two groups for control of an entire country.  The Confederates merely wanted to leave the Union.

A question for today:  If a large majority of the citizens of any U.S. state--or states--desire to no longer be part of the U.S., what's wrong with their seceding?  What's morally wrong with that?  I'm not talking about "Is it legal?"  What reasons justify forcing people to remain as part of a political union which has become anathema to them?  I can't accept some variant of, "We want your tax money, so that means you can't secede."  That's not in line with the meaning of liberty, of freedom.

If you're having a party at your house and some get perturbed at insults from others at the party, do you tell the upset folks that they can't go home?

Art

[Leatherneck]

As a corollary to the question Art poses: "What reasons justify forcing people to remain as part of a political union which has become anathema to them?"

Must we in the normal states continue to endure the foolishness of such states as, Oh, California and New Joisy? Or can we kick 'em out? Could we selectively kick out certain portions of those states? Or tell them "Either Marin County/San Francisco has to go or you all have to leave?

TC