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#11
10-03-2007, 06:28 PM
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Re: Secessionists still alive in the American political landscape
[ QUOTE ]
I always chuckle when I hear this. It would be unrecognizable to the people who led secession. They considered slavery the foundation of their unique society, and were very explicit in saying secession was the only way to save slavery, and ergo, their way of life. True, the North's fight was not directly about slavery, but the Confederacy's was. And it was primarily slavery that originally made the regions different, and quarrelsome. [/ QUOTE ] You are correct in saying that secession was almost entirely about slavery. Taking that as a given, it is incorrect to then conclude that the civil war was "about" slavery. It was not, but rather was a war instigated by the North to prevent the South from seceding from the Union. Lincoln himself said the same thing repeatedly. 
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#12
10-03-2007, 06:41 PM
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Re: Secessionists still alive in the American political landscape
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] Slavery had NOTHING to do with it. [/ QUOTE ] To believe that, you have to dismiss what the Confederates said they were fighting for. For example, Jefferson Davis's vice president wrote: "The cornerstone of the Confederacy was 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." You also have to ignore what precipitated secession: the election of a president committed to preventing the expansion of slavery into any new states. The Confederates believed failure to grow would eventually be the end of all slavery. [/ QUOTE ] You are looking at the symptoms of the problem and not the problem itself. The south's economic system was more labor intensive than the north's. At the same time, the north was trying to force legislation which protected its interests over those of the south's. This war was federal vs state rights--slavery was part of that broad picture. Northern states wanted their way of life imposed on the south not for moral reasons, but for economic reasons. Jefferson Davis's VP's statement came out during the Civil War. If you were to look at other leader's statements before, during and after a conflict, you would notice that they say different things about the same topics. Look on how President Bush frames Iraq before going in and how he does now. Politicians are funny like that.
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#13
10-03-2007, 07:10 PM
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Re: Secessionists still alive in the American political landscape
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Ex, While I'm not surprised that this has come up, I dont think it has any legs honestly. I think most people prefer that we remain the "United States of America". I do hope the pendulum swings towards more states rights however. Not holding my breath though. [/ QUOTE ] We would first need a political party that actually supports states rights, and we don't have that. The Libertarian Party comes closest, but only by accident really.
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#14
10-03-2007, 07:13 PM
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Re: Secessionists still alive in the American political landscape
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] The civil war was not about slavery, contrary to popular myth. [/ QUOTE ] I always chuckle when I hear this. It would be unrecognizable to the people who led secession. They considered slavery the foundation of their unique society, and were very explicit in saying secession was the only way to save slavery, and ergo, their way of life. [/ QUOTE ] Whether the secession was about slavery is debatable, but completely irrelevant to what the Civil War was about. The Civil War was 100% about the North ignoring the South's right to seceed and conquering them. Do you support the U.S. conquering every country that has policies it disapproves of? I mean, it would be one thing if they went in and freed the slaves and then left them as their own country, but that's not what they did.
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#15
10-03-2007, 09:26 PM
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Re: Secessionists still alive in the American political landscape
[ QUOTE ]
This war was federal vs state rights. [/ QUOTE ] Slavery was why states' rights were a shooting matter. Slavery sparked the war of Northern aggression, not because they cared about slaves, but because the Southern system was incompatible with industrial growth and empire. Industrialists wanted consumers, not slaves. Northern Free Soil activists saw slavery as a threat to workers' wages. They and vast interests wanted to keep slavery out of new territories, and their victory in the 1860 election prompted secession. To think slavery was just another dispute stemming from the "real" issue of states rights is backwards. Slavery was a fundamentally different economic system, and the myriad regional and states rights disputes grew out of it, not vice versa. They'd been disputing tariffs and such forever without fighting. The sabers came out because Lincoln's election blocked expansion, which was considered the death knell of all slavery, and the society it supported. Take slavery out of the equation, and there would be no war.
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#16
10-03-2007, 09:51 PM
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Re: Secessionists still alive in the American political landscape
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] This war was federal vs state rights. [/ QUOTE ] Slavery was why states' rights were a shooting matter. Slavery sparked the war of Northern aggression, not because they cared about slaves, but because the Southern system was incompatible with industrial growth and empire. Industrialists wanted consumers, not slaves. Northern Free Soil activists saw slavery as a threat to workers' wages. They and vast interests wanted to keep slavery out of new territories, and their victory in the 1860 election prompted secession. To think slavery was just another dispute stemming from the "real" issue of states rights is backwards. Slavery was a fundamentally different economic system, and the myriad regional and states rights disputes grew out of it, not vice versa. They'd been disputing tariffs and such forever without fighting. The sabers came out because Lincoln's election blocked expansion, which was considered the death knell of all slavery, and the society it supported. Take slavery out of the equation, and there would be no war. [/ QUOTE ] Again, you're assuming that once the south secedes, war must have been inevitable. This is simply not the case.
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#17
10-03-2007, 09:51 PM
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Re: Secessionists still alive in the American political landscape
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Take slavery out of the equation, and there would be no war. [/ QUOTE ] Every fire need a spark. The Archduke Ferdinand's assassination served to ignite WW I, but there is lots of evidence to suggest that it would have started anyway. Wars, especially civil wars, do not occur over a single issue. It is more of a festering of a myriad of issues over a period of time that are the true causes of wars. The real causes are lost at the moment but helps fuel the conflicts.
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#18
10-03-2007, 10:35 PM
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Re: Secessionists still alive in the American political landscape
[ QUOTE ]
you're assuming that once the south secedes, war must have been inevitable. [/ QUOTE ] I don't assume that at all. But even if the North chose not to invade, as it could have done, it would have been exceptionally difficult to avoid war later on, as the two nations competed over who got the western territories seized from Mexico. The whole west would have been Bleeding Kansas, and those local clashes would probably bring in the big national patrons. Avoid war over secession, get a war over territory. The fight over what type of empire would win the west was not going away. [ QUOTE ] It is more of a festering of a myriad of issues over a period of time that are the true causes of wars. [/ QUOTE ] Yes, but some issues are more important than others. Imperial rivalry underlay WWI, and in the US, it was rivalry between two distinct economic systems. Slavery was a primary "real" cause. It was connected to everything. And it was not "lost in the moment" -- the forgetting came later, with the sentimentality of the Cult of the Lost Cause.
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