Why is it that "State's Rights" always seems to be fighting for the wrong side... pro-slavery, pro-segregation, etc.? I don't like any tyranny, be it federal, state, or the local dog catcher.
I wonder when we are going to hear the lie about how the South owned fewer slaves than the North? (HINT: read the census data, it ain't even close).
And it is kind of hard to reconcile the "slavery didn't matter" line with the actual statements of the Southern politicians.
Message of Jefferson Davis to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America, from J.D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy, Including Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861-1865
Montgomery, April 29, 1861.
As soon, however, as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves. Fanatical organizations, supplied with money by voluntary subscriptions, were assiduously engaged in exciting amongst the slaves a spirit of discontent and revolt; means were furnished for their escape from their owners, and agents secretly employed to entice them to abscond; the constitutional provisions for their rendition to their owners was first evaded, then openly denounced as a violation of conscientious obligation and religious duty; men were taught that it was a merit to elude, disobey, and violently oppose the execution of the laws enacted to secure the performance of the promise contained in the constitutional compact; owners of slaves were mobbed and even murdered in open day solely for applying to a magistrate for the arrest of a fugitive slave; the dogmas of these voluntary organizations soon obtained control of the Legislatures of many of the Northern States, and laws were passed providing for the punishment, by ruinous fines and long-continued imprisonment in jails and penitentiaries, of citizens of the Southern States who should dare to ask aid of the officers of the law for the recovery of their property. Emboldened by success, the theater of agitation and aggression against the clearly expressed constitutional rights of the Southern States was transferred to the Congress; Senators and Representatives were sent to the common councils of the nation, whose chief title to this distinction consisted in the display of a spirit of ultra fanaticism, and whose business was not "to promote the general welfare or insure domestic tranquillity," but to awaken the bitterest hatred against the citizens of sister States by violent denunciation of their institutions; the transaction of public affairs was impeded by repeated efforts to usurp powers not delegated by the Constitution, for the purpose of impairing the security of property in slaves, and reducing those States which held slaves to a condition of inferiority. Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government, with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by all the States in common, whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of thus rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless, and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party, thus organized, succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States.
The protection of slavery seemed to be a paramout concern of Jefferson Davis. In total, he mentioned "slave," slaves," or "slavery" no fewer than 23 times in that speech (of which my quote is only a small part).
As another example among many, again citing the primary source material (as opposed to barmy revisionist "historians"), in The Address of the people of South Carolina, assembled in Convention, to the people of the Slaveholding States of the United States (one of two official pronouncements produced by South Carolina's Secession Convention), "slave" and its derivatives come up no less than 30 times. Its closing declaration is:
We ask you to join us in forming a confederacy of Slaveholding States.
That's an awful lot of talking about slavery for slavery to not matter to 'em.
That's an awful lot of talking about slavery for slavery to not matter to 'em.
Wars are not fought for ideals such as abolition. They are fought for economic reasons. Ideals are used to rally support. The South went to war primarily over taxes. The US had 24% of the population (South) supplying 72% of the Fedreral income.
The South went to war primarily over taxes.
Curious, then, that the representatives of the Southern states in 1860 hardly talked about taxes at all, but loved to talk about the threat to their "property in slaves," miscegenation, etc.
Were the Southerners that rare breed that only talked about what they didn't care about?
Slavery was never an issue for the average southern person.
The average Southern person didn't cause the war to take place, either. So what was an issue to them is of only tangental importance. Their political leaders, on the other hand, were obsessed with the preservation of slave power, because it hit them in their own wallets. It's like saying slavery wasn't an issue for the average Northern person, either. Both statements are true, but so what? That says nothing about the issue's impact on events.
Anyway, secession was moronic. It caused the exact OPPOSITE of the desired outcome to take place: total abolition of slavery, total subjugation of the South to a vastly increased central government, utter economic collapse, and so on. It accelerated and radicalized the trends that the Southerners supposedly wanted to prevent, and at vastly greater cost for everyone involved. And anybody with half a brain would have realized that this was the case at the time (a fair number of Southerners did, including Robert E. Lee).
Take Lincoln's most radical rhetoric from 1860. Double its intensity. Even if you assume that he could actually implement a program on that basis in an undivided Union during his term (unlikely with all the Southern Democrats and more moderate Republicans that would still be in congress in this hypothetical), the end result would be maybe 10% of utterly radical changes that resulted from secession and war, none of the physical devastation and death toll... but we're supposed to believe that secession wasn't idiotic?!
The South went to war primarily over taxes.
Curious, then, that the representatives of the Southern states in 1860 hardly talked about taxes at all, but loved to talk about the threat to their "property in slaves," miscegenation, etc.
You got me. LOL
The South just wanted out of the Union. The North went to war over taxes.
Here's a question for you. A slaveholding confederation
of states has separated from a "mother country" in which slavery is
outlawed, and they go to war. Name the newly-independent nation and
the "mother country" whose army invades with fire & sword to conquer it.
Answer: The American Colonies and England.
I'd be a gunrunning privateer. Whoever pays the most, wins.
but they did so to preserve their "right" to own people.
Actually, the South didn't just cecede over owning people. It was primarily over taxes, which the North was jacking up on Cotton, and states rights. Slavery is just a convienent and evil thing to blame.
Constitution applies to everyone. That simple.
Nope, it sure doesn't. It actually gave the South extra votes in the house of Representatives by counting slaves as 3/5ths of a person for census purposes. The 13th amendment to the Constitution is what abolished slavery.
An American civil war in the era of the 24-hour news cycle would be far too great a television event to actually miss.
GOOD call.