Trump: 'Why was there the Civil War?'

[Free Vulcan]

@DiogenesLamp

Exactly. Slavery was the pretext, but not the sole motive. Does anyone think politicians of that era did things out of sole motive without pretext any more than they do today? It'd be a very naive world view.

[INVAR]

Slavery was an indirect cause of the war.   Money and power was the direct cause.

You can't state that because they got their fingers in their ears while repeating the mantra of 'Slavery' over and over again as a safeguard against your attempt to alter their view of history, even though mankind's entire history points to that root cause of nearly every conflict.

[DiogenesLamp]

This is a debate that will never end.

On one hand, you have the statements and documentation by those in power at the time, on both sides. For example, the Confederate States, to a one, had the issue of Slavery or giving Africans rights as their primary reason. Examples:
http://www.civil-war.net/pages/ordinances_secession.asp

And here we go with the ordinance of secession once again.  Every time this issue comes up,  people point to the Southern states asserted reasons for leaving to explain why the North invaded them.   


No,  you don't get to cite the Southern states claimed reasons for leaving to explain why the North wanted to force them back into the Union.    The only question that matters is why did the North invade them to force them back in?   And if you say "to end slavery",   you are absolutely wrong.   

If you say "To end their independence from the control of Washington and the Crony Capitalists of New England."   You will have it closer to the truth. 

On the other hand, you have tens of thousands of descendants (and wannabe descendants) of those who fought for the South who will insist that is not why their grandpappy fought (and thus not the reason for the war) it was about an invasion by the federal government on their land. Their grandpappy would never have believed and supported slavery.. (so they will say so they can say they didn't have that in their family).

Well I can't speak to that,  because my Family was still in Europe until the 1900s.   They also didn't settle in Confederate State,  so I have no regional affinity for the South.    I can point out that slavery lasted longer in the Union than it did in the Confederacy ,  so if the point of the war was to destroy slavery,  it doesn't make much sense that it would last longer in the Union,  does it? 

To a point, they are both right. The big political reasons didn't matter to the average dirt farmer in the South when he was conscripted, he was just told that big government was invading his land. Most couldn't even read the emancipation proclamation, at that understand it. They didn't have the knowledge or information to understand what they were fighting for other than their own little corner of dirt.

In those days the State was a virtual nation.   It would be like Germany invading France.  The French wouldn't give a crap about the reasons why Germany was invading,  all they knew is those Damned invaders need to be driven out.   


Same thing with the Southern men of that era,  I suspect.   They didn't care a lick that outsiders considered their States to be morally "bad",   all they knew is that it was their state,  and they weren't going to take an invasion of it sitting down.   

[musiclady]

After Lincoln sent a flotilla of Warships off the coast of Charleston to threaten them. 


The British fired the first shot at the Spanish Armada,   so were the British the aggressors?  Or was it the Spanish who sent the Ships of war?

Funny............... just went to Charleston and out to Ft. Sumter, and the Confederate soldiers who fired clearly understood that they were starting the war.......



Incidentally........ I don't know a single person in the North who believes that the War was solely the fault of the South, or of slavery, nor that the Confederate troops were guilty of murdering all the Union soldiers who died in the conflict.

The idea that it was one sided and that the Northern soldiers were villains and murderers and the rebels pure as the driven snow is beyond absurdity.

There were faults on both sides.  But at the end, slavery was gone, and we were one country again....

It was "the United States is"  instead of "the United States are"............. and to me that was a good thing.

You can hate us Yankees for the rest of your days, but your calling the Union soldiers murderers is dirty and low down.

And not the truth.

[musiclady]

You can't state that because they got their fingers in their ears while repeating the mantra of 'Slavery' over and over again as a safeguard against your attempt to alter their view of history, even though mankind's entire history points to that root cause of nearly every conflict.

No educated northerner thinks that slavery was the only cause of the war.

You must only have contact with dumb damn Yankees.   

[DiogenesLamp]

Yep. The die for civil war was cast in 1789. The only thing that could've prevented it was the very thing delayed by the availability of slaves, technological advancement.

England gave up slavery without a Civil War.  So did a bunch of countries.   It was a far bigger industry in the Caribbean and Brazil than it ever was in the United States,  and yet there wasn't so much blood shed to end it in any of those other nations. 

 
Yes,  technological advancement would have eventually ended slavery,  but the war wasn't about ending slavery,  it was about ending Independence from Washington for the Southern states. 

Lincoln had every intention of letting them keep slavery if they would just stop fighting.   They fought to the end,  and so he deliberately destroyed their capital and the  foundation of their economy.


Money and power is why the war was fought.   

[kevindavis007]

Funny............... just went to Charleston and out to Ft. Sumter, and the Confederate soldiers who fired clearly understood that they were starting the war.......



Incidentally........ I don't know a single person in the North who believes that the War was solely the fault of the South, or of slavery, nor that the Confederate troops were guilty of murdering all the Union soldiers who died in the conflict.

The idea that it was one sided and that the Northern soldiers were villains and murderers and the rebels pure as the driven snow is beyond absurdity.

There were faults on both sides.  But at the end, slavery was gone, and we were one country again....

It was "the United States is"  instead of "the United States are"............. and to me that was a good thing.

You can hate us Yankees for the rest of your days, but your calling the Union soldiers murderers is dirty and low down.

And not the truth.

FWIW, I had ancestors who have fought for the CSA.. I'm still glad that the Union side won.

[mirraflake]

Funny............... just went to Charleston and out to Ft. Sumter,

Was there  a month ago. Ft Sumter, USS yorktown, Historic Home tours Charleston, 2-3 plantation tours etc etc

@musiclady

[r9etb]

Well this is sorta true.   If the South was worthless land from which no money was being put into the treasury,  they would have kissed it goodbye and said "good riddance."   However,  it was the  source from which most of the trade wealth came,  and it was just too important economically to let it go. 


Because of slaves,  the South was producing a lot of money for the Union,  and they weren't going to let it go without a fight.   

Slavery was an indirect cause of the war.   Money and power was the direct cause.

That explanation completely ignores the succession of Sectional Crises that precipitated the Civil War, all of which were rooted in the question of expanding slavery into new territories -- a subject about which both sides were demonstrably willing to fight. 

The sectional issues would not have been resolved, even if Lincoln had permitted the secession to continue.  For example, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 limited the expansion of slavery to territories below the Mason-Dixon Line.  That was fine, to a point -- but eventually the Slave Territories below the M-D Line ran out of arable land.  Clearly that was unsustainable from the perspective of the slave states: to expand their plantation system, they had to expand north of the Mason-Dixon Line.  Meanwhile, north of the Line, the Free states were expanding westward into an agricultural gold-mine, and they weren't going to give that over to slave-holders. 

And you also, of course, leave out the fact of slavery in and of itself.  To defend the South on the terms the South itself defined, you're in the position of having to defend the continuation of slavery.  There are no two ways about it. 

From the perspective of the North, the abolition of slavery is easily justified as a matter of the same basic human rights that were laid out in the Declaration of Independence, and in the writings of the Founders themselves.  It's an easy case to make, because it is a moral case.

As for the South, you're left trying to make economic excuses for the continuation of slavery, with the inevitable conclusion that, "oh, eventually they'd have stopped enslaving people because of technology," or some such. 

And as for the Southern economy itself -- they made no bones about the fact that, to them, slavery and the economy were inextricably bound together.

[DiogenesLamp]

1%'s of the South started all the crap just like 1 %'sa re doing today. They brought in  slaves for cheap labor. When the slaves learned the skilled trades-barrell making, woodworking, brick laying, carriage wheel making it dragged down the labor rate for whites doing these jobs.

This was the dominant reason why most Northern men opposed slavery.  They were afraid of free labor taking away their jobs.    They had no love for Blacks,  they simply regarded them as a potential financial threat to their livelihoods. 


They also resented the idea that wealthy plantation owners were getting ever more wealthy from free labor.   

Same thing is happening today with illegals except we are not bringing them in by the boatload.

Same old same old.

@r9etb

The major corporate interests have always wanted cheap labor,  and at one time they were just fine with slavery.   They've sent many companies over seas just to take advantage of the cheap labor pools that have existed in other countries. 


With some amoral businessmen,  it's always about the bottom line profit. 

[DiogenesLamp]

I love the South.  I was born and raised here.  If someone disparages my beautiful region or the people who live here, I will get right in his/her face.

But I'm not going to tell myself that the Civil War wasn't fought over slavery.   Come on.  Slaveholding was wrong, and we were going to lose because of that alone.

You don't think the 4-1 manpower advantage had more of an effect?   The South had a lot of money but not enough people to adequately oppose the 20 million Northerners which could be called into the conflict.   

At the same time, Yankees might want to think twice about climbing on their moral high horses for a few reasons:

Northern slave ships continued to traffic in the trade well after slavery was outlawed in the North.

Pockets of slavery existed in the North until the end of the war.

And then there was the horrible treatment freed slaves received upon arriving in the North.

Most of the North did not give a crap about slaves.   They were more interested in getting revenge on the South than they were the welfare of black people.   Once former slaves got the right to vote,  suddenly Republican politicians became interested in them,  but mainly because this was one path to political power. 

[DiogenesLamp]

Lincoln had little or nothing to do with the sectional rivalries that led to the Civil War.  The sectional rivalry was fed by a Southern desire for the expansion of slavery into new territories -- and a northern desire to prevent it. 

And if you are wondering why Northern States were willing to tolerate slavery in Southern States,  but absolutely didn't want it in the territories,  it can be explained as a simple matter of power.   Slave states would vote as a coalition to protect their mutual interests,  and the current laws in the United States were favoring the Northern Coalition. 

New States which would vote with the Southern Coalition would upset the protectionist laws then in place and which were currently enriching the robber barons of the North East.   Exporting States wanted Free Trade,  while Industrial states wanted protectionism. 

There was a lot of money on the line depending on whether or not a new state would vote with the Northern Coalition or the Southern one.   


About the slaves themselves,  nobody gave a crap.   The opposition to and the advocacy for new Slave states was fueled by self interests,  not morality.    Sure,  there were some abolitionists for which it was a primary cause,  but they were a small minority compared to the rest of the people involved.   For most it was about the distribution of Washington's power. 

Whatever the economic sins of the north, it was the South that seceded over slavery.  Don't take my word for it -- they said so themselves.

Their reasons for leaving the Union are irrelevant to why the Union invaded to stop them.   The Southern states were merely exercising their right as articulated in the Declaration of Independence,  and even if they had a bad reason,  they still had the right to leave if they chose. 


It is the Union's reasons for invading that matter in this debate,  and their reasons for invading certainly didn't include the intent to abolish slavery. 

[DiogenesLamp]

I am inclined to agree with you. It's far easier to assign blame for which side drew first blood and initiated the steps that led to full-on war. That would be unquestionable the South, who attacked Fort Sumter without direct provocation in April of 1861,

This is incorrect.   Major Anderson,  the Commander of the force at Ft. Sumter,  did himself say that the sending of a task force of Union Warships and soldiers to the coast of Charleston was a violation of the Armistice (which President Buchanan had put in place)  and would be regarded as an act of war by the South.   

Or did you know that Lincoln had sent Warships and soldiers which the South believed were intended to violently reinforce Sumter?    A lot of people don't know about this because it doesn't fit the narrative that "the South started it. "


General Beauregard was ordered to attack the Fort before the guns of those warships could be brought to bear on his forces.   Getting caught between the guns of the Fort and the guns of those warships would have been a militarily fatal move. 

[INVAR]

Their reasons for leaving the Union are irrelevant to why the Union invaded to stop them.   The Southern states were merely exercising their right as articulated in the Declaration of Independence,  and even if they had a bad reason,  they still had the right to leave if they chose. 


It is the Union's reasons for invading that matter in this debate,  and their reasons for invading certainly didn't include the intent to abolish slavery.

Exactly.  As posted earlier:

"My policy sought only to collect the Revenue (a 40 percent federal sales tax on imports to Southern States under the Morrill Tariff Act of 1861)." - Lincoln's First Message to the U.S. Congress, penned July 4, 1861.

"I have no purpose, directly or in-directly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.  I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so," -  Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1861

"Whereas an insurrection against the Government of the United States has broken out and the laws of the United States for the collection of the revenue cannot be effectually executed therein." - Abraham Lincoln, war declaration April 15th, 1861

[DiogenesLamp]

That would be fine, except that the southern states began seceding over the issue of slavery, months before Lincoln ever took office.

Point of order.  Weren't they seceding because Lincoln was taking office?   Nothing else had changed in their world.   


I think they just believed that a Nation that would elect someone so hostile to their interests would never  be beneficial to them.   From their perspective,  they were paying the vast majority of all the taxes,  most of which were used to subsidize the North. 

[DiogenesLamp]

Last time I checked, there is no escape clause in the Constitution (like there is in the EU Constitution).

The British Empire was a thousand years old when the Founders declared a right of "nature and of nature's God" to independence.    One would think that a nation of only "four score and seven years"  would have even less justification to stand against such a right to independence. 



The Constitution does not need an escape clause.  One is already articulated in the founding document of this nation,  of which the US constitution is merely a daughter document. 


The US Constitution owes all of it's authority to the Declaration.   That is the document that founded the nation. 

[kevindavis007]

The British Empire was a thousand years old when the Founders declared a right of "nature and of nature's God" to independence.    One would think that a nation of only "four score and seven years"  would have even less justification to stand against such a right to independence. 



The Constitution does not need an escape clause.  One is already articulated in the founding document of this nation,  of which the US constitution is merely a daughter document. 


The US Constitution owes all of it's authority to the Declaration.   That is the document that founded the nation.

One of our Founding fathers said otherwise:
https://almostchosenpeople.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/james-madison-on-secession/

[DiogenesLamp]

Oh, pooh.

They said themselves it was about slavery.  No amount of excuse-making will change that fact.

I'm pretty sure it was the election of Lincoln that did it.   All their secessionist statements on slavery were just a big F*** You to the North Eastern Puritans they hated anyways.   


You want a better understanding of why South Carolina left?  Read this:


http://www.civilwarcauses.org/rhett.htm

[DiogenesLamp]

Or, to put your case more honestly, it can't be about slavery, because that would make the Southern cause a whole lot less honorable.

I do not have to speak to the honorableness of the Southern cause,  I speak only of their right to have independence if they wished it.   

You see,  this nation is founded on this idea:

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."


So they had a right to leave,  even if it is for reasons of which others don't approve. 


Just as Freedom of Speech applies to ideas of which we disapprove,  so too does a right to independence apply to societies of which we disapprove. 

[INVAR]

Point of order.  Weren't they seceding because Lincoln was taking office?   Nothing else had changed in their world.

Lincoln was not even on the General Election ballots for President in 1860 in AL-AR-FL-GA-LA-MS-NC-TN-TX, and SC.  The South had no voice in the politics of 1860 outside of leaving the Union as they felt was their only recourse.

[TomSea]

Nat Turner's Revolt--August, 1831--Nat Turner's rebellion was the most successful of all slave revolts. Turner, a slave preacher, inspired fellow slaves with his apocalyptic visions of white and black angels fighting in heaven. He gathered up his seven original followers and, without the organization or planning of Prosser and Vesey, launched his rebellion by entering his owner's home and killing the entire family, save for a small infant. They moved from one farm to the next, killing all slave-owning whites they found. As they progressed through Southampton county, other slaves joined in the rebellion. The next day, Turner and his eighty followers were intercepted by the state militia. In the confrontation that followed, Turner escaped and remained free for nearly two months. In those two months though, the militia and white vigilantes instituted a reign of terror over slaves in the region. Hundreds of blacks were killed. White Virginians panicked over fears of a larger slave revolt and soon instituted more restrictive laws regulating slave life. Turner was eventually captured and hung.
http://www.historyguy.com/slave_rebellions_usa.htm#.WQe5xTj8pVI

It was an evil system; and 1860, when that war started wasn't that long ago. There were a number of massacres during this time.

Without works, our faith is dead. Hence, I voted for Trump; I'm not all hung up on same-sex marriage and then, ignore this other.

[Bigun]

Last time I checked, there is no escape clause in the Constitution (like there is in the EU Constitution).

Then you have not read the 9th and tenth amendments.

9th amendment to the Constitution

The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

10th amendment to the Constitution

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Now show me the word or phrase in the Constitution which prohibits a state from leaving the union.

[DiogenesLamp]

Funny............... just went to Charleston and out to Ft. Sumter, and the Confederate soldiers who fired clearly understood that they were starting the war.......

Well you have me at a disadvantage.   I haven't spoken to any Confederate soldiers with a contrary opinon.   :) 

The idea that it was one sided and that the Northern soldiers were villains and murderers and the rebels pure as the driven snow is beyond absurdity.

I don't think anyone spoke of purity.   I think we pointed out that one side invaded the other side's land with an army,  and the invaded side fought  back.   


Generally the people invading other people's land are considered the bad guys. 

There were faults on both sides.  But at the end, slavery was gone, and we were one country again....

It was "the United States is"  instead of "the United States are"............. and to me that was a good thing.

You can hate us Yankees for the rest of your days, but your calling the Union soldiers murderers is dirty and low down.

And not the truth.

I don't think I was calling Union Soldiers murderers directly.   It was more along the lines of the people who were ordering them to invade the South that were the murderers.   The grunts were going to have to do what their superiors ordered,   so the responsibility for the war starts at the Top. 


The Southerners were initially told the Union troops would evacuate Fort Sumter.   Lincoln's cabinet was advising him to do just that,   and it was so certain that this is what he would do that they actually printed this in the March 11, 1861 issue of the "National Republican"  newspaper,  which was basically the Mouthpiece for Lincoln at the time. 

"   THE EVACUATION OF FORT SUMTER

    Late last evening we learned that in a Cabinet meeting, on Saturday, it was determined to evacuate Fort Sumter. If the news is authentic, of which we have no reason to doubt, this measure has been taken as one of conciliation to the border States. The fort has no strategic importance, and it may have been supposed that yielding a point of pride to South Carolina could very well be afforded by a great Government, would satisfy the country generally of the pacific policy of the Administration, and enable it, without the appearance of coercion, to be more stringent in the enforcement of the revenue laws."

Top Left.  Third item down.    Yes,  they really announced it. 


http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82014760/1861-03-11/ed-1/seq-2/

[musiclady]

Was there  a month ago. Ft Sumter, USS yorktown, Historic Home tours Charleston, 2-3 plantation tours etc etc

@musiclady

It's a beautiful place, isn't it?  We were only there for an afternoon, so just drove around, and didn't see any plantations or homes.

Did you take the ferry out to the fort?   Not much there now, but I thought it was fascinating anyway.

@mirraflake

[kevindavis007]

Lincoln was not even on the General Election ballots for President in 1860 in AL-AR-FL-GA-LA-MS-NC-TN-TX, and SC.  The South had no voice in the politics of 1860 outside of leaving the Union as they felt was their only recourse.

He won via the electoral college.. The Right side won get over it.