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Thread: How We Know The So-Called “Civil War” Was Not Over Slavery

  1. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by 1stvermont View Post
    wow you have a bulletproof argument there how ever would i respond to such an argument, it truly refutes history and historical context. My whole posts are know wrong know......Or maybe you could post on my thread, read my thread, and i will gladly respond to any questions. It should also clear up your misconception on states rights.
    Or you could just post your oh so brilliant argument here. But let me guess. When southern states attack states rights they are really defending states rights. Got it.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.



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  3. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by oyarde View Post
    I think is important to remember nearly all enlisted southerners would have come from farms with out slave labor and most would have been there because of his state being invaded . That said they would certainly been ignorant enough to believe people as property was fine .
    I think it's also important to remember that the confederacy had to institute a draft first, that they ultimately exempted slave owners from that draft, and areas in the south where slavery wasn't profitable tended to secede from confederate states.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.



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  5. #33
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    Or you could just post your oh so brilliant argument here. But let me guess. When southern states attack states rights they are really defending states rights. Got it.
    http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...he-Upper-South
    Quote Originally Posted by 1stvermont View Post
    The Upper South

    “Upper south, which had cried equally against coercion as succession”
    -E Merton Coulter The Confederate States of America Louisiana State university Press

    There were really two major successions from the union. The original seven “Cotton states” [AL, MS,TX,SC,FL,GA,LA] and later the upper south secession of [VA, NC, TENN, ARK, Pro south MO, KY]. The upper south states of VA,NC,Tenn and Ark alone had a larger free population than the deep south representing the majority. There was a difference in general between the The original seven seceding “cotton states” of the deep south, and of the remaining upper southern states. When historians and textbooks talk of the reasons for secession, they almost unanimous point to the cotton states and sadly, the upper south is almost always unrepresented.

    Lincolns Call For Volunteers/ Self Government/ State Sovereignty

    The South maintained with the depth of religious conviction that the Union formed under the Constitution was a Union of consent and not of force; that the original States were not the creatures but the creators of the Union; that these States had gained their independence, their freedom, and their sovereignty from the mother country, and had not surrendered these on entering the Union; that by the express terms of the Constitution all rights and powers not delegated were reserved to the States; and the South challenged the North to find one trace of authority in that Constitution for invading and coercing a sovereign State.-the one for liberty in the union of the States, the other for liberty in the independence of the States.”
    -John B Gordon Confederate General Reminiscences of the Civil War


    The single most important event that caused the upper south to join the confederacy was Lincolns call for volunteers to “suppress” the seven cotton states of the confederacy. Lincoln spoke loud by his actions when he called for volunteers to invade the confederacy of the deep south. His opinion was not that America was a collection of sovereign self governing States joined in a voluntary union by a constitution, but a centralized nation or empire. He made it very clear the deep south could not self govern themselves but were subject to their master the federal government. Lincoln in his inaugural address stated the union created the states, not the states ratifying the union [a very blatant rewrite of history] thus the power and authority lay with the federal government.

    “Northern States of a political school which has persistently claimed that the government thus formed was not a compact between States, but was in effect a national government, set up above and over the States...The creature has been exalted above its creators; the principals have been made subordinate to the agent appointed by themselves.”
    -Jefferson Davis Message to confederate Congress April 29, 1861

    The upper south and many in the north for example saw Lincolns call for volunteers against the cotton states as a major violation of the constitution, a violation of those states sovereignty and a main cause for secession. For example

    “opposing secession changes the nature of government from a voluntary one, in which the people are sovereigns, to a despotism were one part of the people are slaves”
    -New York Journal of commerce 1/12/61

    “The great principles embodied by Jefferson in the declaration is... that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed” Therefore if the southern states wish to secede, “they have a clear right to do so”
    -New York tribune 2/5/61

    Secession is “the very germ of liberty...the right of secession inheres to the people of every sovereign state”
    -Kenosha Wisconsin Democrat 1/11/61

    “the leading and most influncial papers of the union believe that any state of the union has a right to secede”
    -Davenport Iowa Democrat and news 11/17/60


    The southern states and most in the north saw themselves as a collection of sovereign states joined by a contract [The constitution] and if that contract was violated or not upheld, it could and should be discarded. When the southern states felt there contract was violated by the federal government, they felt they had every right to leave. Most both north and south felt no war would come from what was seen by many as a legal right to secession by sovereign states. To the upper south this was a war of self government of sovereign states vs a federal government that was willing to use military force to control its populous by forcing the states to stay in the union. We would no longer be a self governing populous and collection of states, but a nation controlled by a powerful centralized federal government.

    "What we call liberty our founders called bondage...we have not freed the slaves we have extended the plantation, know, we are all slaves"
    -Peter Marshall JR The Great War Debate

    The war “Destroyed voluntary union of the founders and mad all Americans servants rather than masters of their own government”
    -Thomas Dilorenzo author of The Real Lincoln and Lincoln Unmasked

    This also confirmed many southerners fear that Lincoln and the “radical” republicans would drastically transform the American republic. This is why many in the south saw the American civil war as their second war for independence.

    “Southerners would have told you they were fighting for self government. They believed the gathering of power in Washington was against them… When they entered into that Federation they certainly would never have entered into it if they hadn’t believed it would be possible to get out. And when the time came that they wanted to get out, they thought they had every right”
    -Historian Shelby Foote

    Some in the north recognized that this war was one of self governing states vs a controlling central federal government. Before being deported by Lincoln, A northern politician saw Lincolns war and purpose of the war as to

    Overthrow the present form of Federal-republican government, and to establish a strong centralized government in its stead...national banks, bankrupt laws, a vast and permanent public debt, high tariffs, heavy direct taxation, enormous expenditure, gigantic and stupendous peculation . . . No more state lines, no more state governments,but a consolidated monarchy or vast centralized military despotism.” later saying “instead of crushing out the rebellion,” the “effort has been to crush out the spirit of liberty” in the Northern states.
    -Northern Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham D-Ohio spoke of the Reason for Lincolns war 1863

    Each of the upper south states made it clear by their actions and words that Lincolns call for volunteers, state sovereignty, and self government, were the major cause of secession. Slavery was at this time equally protected weather these states joined the union, or the confederacy, in fact as we will see later, more so had they joined the north.

    “The Majority sentiment in the upper south had been unionist until Lincolns call for troops”
    -E. merton Coulter The confederate States of America Louisiana State University Press

    Arkansas Declaration

    “[upper south]Forced to chose between Lincolns demand and what they believed to be morally correct and Honorable..seceded as well”
    -Brevin Alexander Historian Professor of History at Longwood University

    “This convention pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any State that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful and ruinous to the State of Arkansas”

    “The people of this commonwealth are free men not slaves, and will defend to the last extremity, their honor, lives, and property, against northern mendacity and usurpation”
    -Arkansas Governor Henry Rector Response to Lincolns call for Volunteers

    Before Lincolns call for volunteers the people of Arkansas voted to stay in the union by a vote of 23,600 to 17,900. Than on March 4 1861 the Arkansas convention voted 40-35 to stay in the union with the president of the convention a unionist. On May 6th 1861 After Fort Sumtner and Lincolns call for men, Arkansas regathered this time only 5 votes went against secession, 4 of them would relent and join in succession in a short time. The before and after votes, as well as the Arkansas declaration for secession give the clear reasons for joining the confederacy.

    Tennessee

    “Tennessee will not Furnish a man for purposes of coercion, but 50,000 if necessary for the defense of our rights, and those of our southern brothers”
    -Tennessee Governor Isham Harris Response to Lincoln Calling on Tennessee for aid to Suppress the Rebellion in the Cotton States

    On February the 9th the same day that Mississippi left the union, Tennessee voters turned down secession by a 4-1 margin. However after Lincolns call to volunteers Governor Isham Harris wrote President Lincoln saying if the federal government was going to “coerce” the seceded states into returning, Tennessee had no choice but to join its Southern neighbors. Harris recalled the Tennessee legislature on May 6 for another vote this time to join the confederacy. Than on June 8 voters approved the measure by a 2-1 margin.

    Virginia

    “The principle now in contest between north and south is simply that of state sovereignty”
    Richmond Examiner Sep 11 1862

    “A union that can be only maintained by swords and bayonets... has no charm for me”
    -Robert E Lee


    Before Lincolns call for volunteers with slavery equally safe in the north or south, the slave state of Virginia on April 4th 1861 voted by a 2-1 margin to stay in the union. After Lincolns call for volunteers Virginia gathered again and by a vote of 126,000 to 20,400 Virginia left the union. In the minds of Virginians, that reason was Lincolns call to volunteers and the violation of state sovereignty. Virginia did not give a lengthy declaration of why it left the union [The voting showed already] just a short ordinance of secession.

    “the Constitution of the United States has invested Congress with the sole power "to declare war," and until such declaration is made, the President has no authority to call for an extraordinary force to wage offensive war against any foreign Power: and whereas, on the 15th inst., the President of the United States, in plain violation of the Constitution, issued a proclamation calling for a force of seventy-five thousand men, to cause the laws of the United states to be duly executed over a people who are no longer a part of the Union, and in said proclamation threatens to exert this unusual force to compel obedience to his mandates; and whereas, the General Assembly of Virginia, by a majority approaching to entire unanimity, declared at its last session that the State of Virginia would consider such an exertion of force as a virtual declaration of war, to be resisted by all the power at the command of Virginia; and subsequently the Convention now in session, representing the sovereignty of this State, has reaffirmed in substance the same policy, with almost equal unanimity; and whereas, the State of Virginia deeply sympathizes with the Southern States in the wrongs they have suffered, and in the position they have assumed; and having made earnest efforts peaceably to compose the differences which have severed the Union, and having failed in that attempt, through this unwarranted act on the part of the President; and it is believed that the influences which operate to produce this proclamation against the seceded States will be brought to bear upon this commonwealth, if she should exercise her undoubted right to resume the powers granted by her people, and it is due to the honor of Virginia that an improper exercise of force against her people should be repelled. Therefore I, JOHN LETCHER, Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, have thought proper to order all armed volunteer regiments or companies within this State forthwith to hold themselves in readiness for immediate orders, and upon the reception of this proclamation to report to the Adjutant-General of the State their organization and numbers, and prepare themselves for efficient service. Such companies as are not armed and equipped will report that fact, that they may be properly supplied.
    In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the Commonwealth to be affixed, this 17th day of April, 1861, and in the eighty-fifth year of the Commonwealth.
    Governor of Virginia JOHN LETCHER”.
    http://www.nytimes.com/1861/04/22/n....s-norfolk.html


    Virginia ordinance of secession

    “Declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States” [Cotton States the original succession states]

    “It was not for slavery that she [Virginia] deliberately resolved to draw the sword...but for this cornerstone [States Sovereignty] of all constitutional liberty north and south”
    -R.L Dabney 1867 A Defense of Virginia and the South


    Kentucky

    Kentucky originally acted on its sovereignty and remained neutral, however events forced it to join the war. The official Kentucky government was pro north by about about a 3-1 margin but chose to keep its neutrality. However there was gaining support for the south When Lincoln called for volunteers. The Kentucky Governor wrote "President Lincoln, I will send not a man nor a dollar for the wicked purpose of subduing my sister southern states.” Later neutrality would be violated by southern troops and the state would join the union, however a pro south Kentucky government was set up and was accepted by Jeff Davis into the confederacy on December the 10th as the 13th confederate state. States rights was the main cause for the pro south Kentucky government reason for secession.

    Kentucky Declaration For Leaving The Union

    “Whereas, the Federal Constitution, which created the Government of the United States, was declared by the framers thereof to be the supreme law of the land, and was intended to limit and did expressly limit the powers of said Government to certain general specified purposes, and did expressly reserve to the States and people all other powers whatever, and the President and Congress have treated this supreme law of the Union with contempt and usurped to themselves the power to interfere with the rights and liberties of the States and the people against the expressed provisions of the Constitution, and have thus substituted for the highest forms of national liberty and constitutional government a central despotism founded upon the ignorant prejudices of the masses of Northern society, and instead of giving protection with the Constitution to the people of fifteen States of this Union have turned loose upon them the unrestrained and raging passions of mobs and fanatics, and because we now seek to hold our liberties, our property, our homes, and our families under the protection of the reserved powers of the States, have blockaded our ports, invaded our soil, and waged war upon our people for the purpose of subjugating us to their will; and Whereas, our honor and our duty to posterity demand that we shall not relinquish our own liberty and shall not abandon the right of our descendants and the world to the inestimable blessings of constitutional government: Therefore, .... because we may choose to take part in a cause for civil liberty and constitutional government against a sectional majority waging war against the people and institutions of fifteen independent States of the old Federal Union, and have done all these things deliberately against the warnings and vetoes of the Governor and the solemn remonstrances of the minority in the Senate and House of Representatives: Therefore, .....have a right to establish any government which to them may seem best adapted to the preservation of their rights and liberties.”

    North Carolina

    North Carolina will “Be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of the country, and to this war upon the liberties of a free people”
    -North Carolina Governor John Ellis


    Having previously turned down even voting on secession, North Carolina responded to Lincolns call for volunteers by than unanimously adopted a secession ordinance, showing the impact it had on the state.

    “Lincoln has made a call for 75,000 men to be employed for the invasion of the peaceful homes of the South, and for the violent subversion of the liberties of a free people.. whereas, this high-handed act of tyrannical outrage is not only in violation of all constitutional law, in utter disregard of every sentiment of humanity and Christian civilization, and conceived in a spirit of aggression unparalleled by any act of recorded history, but is a direct step towards the subjugation of the whole South, and the conversion of a free Republic, inherited from our fathers, into a military despotism, to be established by worse than foreign enemies on the ruins of our once glorious Constitution of Equal Rights.Now, therefore, I, John W. Ellis, Governor of the State of North-Carolina, for these extraordinary causes, do hereby issue this, my Proclamation, notifying and requesting the Senators and Members of the House of Commons of the General Assembly of North-Carolina, to meet in Special Session at the Capitol, in the City of Raleigh, on Wednesday, the first day of May next. And I furthermore exhort all good citizens throughout the State to be mindful that their first allegiance is due to the Sovereignty which protects their homes and dearest interests, as their first sevice is due for the sacred defence of their hearths, and of the soil which holds the graves of our glorious dead.United action in defence of the sovereignty of North-Carolina and of the rights of the South, becomes now the duty of all.the 17th Day of April, A. D., 1861, and in the eight-fifth year of our independence.
    JOHN W. ELLIS
    http://www.learnnc.org/lp/multimedia/6542


    Missouri

    “Your requisition is illegal, unconstitutional, revolutionary, inhuman, diabolical, and cannot be complied with”
    -Missouri Governor Jackson Response to Lincolns call for Volunteers

    The slave state of Missouri was almost universally pro union. When the south sent delegates to try and convince the state to join the south, they were booed and jeered so that the CSA delegate could not even be heard. On March 21 1861 the Missouri convention voted 98-1 against secession, but in its sovereignty, kept its neutrality. Later many in the state became angry and felt their state sovereignty was violated during the “Camp Jackson Affair” with General Lyon capturing the arsenal in St Louis and when union soldiers opened fire on civilians and pro confederates killing dozens. Many felt the federal government was violating the states neutral position and support for secession grew rapid in the state. Lyon would than push the official Governor and state legislature out of Jefferson city.

    “The events in St Louis pushed many conditional unionist into the ranks of secessionist”
    -James McPherson Battle Cry of Freedom

    This led to a end to neutrality and both a pro confederate and pro union government in the state. Missouri was accepted on November 28th as the 12th confederate state. Pro south Missouri reasons for secession, centered around constitutional violations of the Lincoln administration.

    Missouri Declaration For leaving The Union


    “Has wantonly violated the compact originally made between said Government and the State of Missouri, by invading with hostile armies the soil of the State, attacking and making prisoners the militia while legally assembled under the State laws, forcibly occupying the State capitol, and attempting through the instrumentality of domestic traitors to usurp the State government, seizing and destroying private property, and murdering with fiendish malignity peaceable citizens, men, women, and children, together with other acts of atrocity, indicating a deep-settled hostility toward the people of Missouri and their institutions; and Whereas the present Administration of the Government of the United States has utterly ignored the Constitution, subverted the Government as constructed and intended by its makers, and established a despotic and arbitrary power instead thereof: Now, therefore, Be it enacted by the general assembly of the State of Missouri, That all political ties of every character new existing between the Government of the United States of America and the people and government of the State of Missouri are hereby dissolved, and the State of Missouri, resuming the sovereignty granted by compact to the said United States upon admission of said State into the Federal Union, does again take its place as a free and independent republic amongst the nations of the earth.”

    Preserving America Constitutional Republic

    “The South's concept of republicanism had not changed in three-quarters of a century; the North's had. With complete sincerity the South fought to preserve its version of the republic of the Founding Fathers--a government of limited powers"
    -James M. McPherson Ante-bellum Southern Exceptionalism

    “The war was over the nature of the union”
    -Clyde Wilson professor of History University of South Carolina

    “State sovereignty died at Appomattox”
    -Supreme Court Justice Salmon P Chase 1864-73

    "All that the South has ever desired was the Union as established by our forefathers should be preserved and that the government as originally organized should be administered in purity and truth."
    -Gen. Robert E. Lee Quoted in The enduring Relevance of Robert E Lee

    Lincoln and the republican party had set out to transform the union from a confederation of sovereign states, to a centralized nation controlled by the federal government. Lincoln also sought to expand the central government far beyond the scope of what was intended by the founders. He was dedicated to higher tariffs, centralization, national bank, internal improvements, vast expansion of the central government, and an overall disregard for the 9th/10th amendments and state sovereignty.

    “When the South raised its sword against the Union’s Flag, it was in defense of the Union’s Constitution.”
    -Confederate General John B. Gordon

    “Southerners persistently claim that their rebellion is for the purpose of preserving this form of government”
    -Private John Harper 17 Maine regiment

    It was commonly believed in the south, that it was the north that should secede. As Henry Wise of Virginia said “Logically the union belongs to those who have kept, not those who have broken, its covenants...the north should do the seceding for the south represented more truly the nation which the federal government had set up in 1789.” They saw the growing majority of the north interfering with their culture within their states and violating the constitution. They feared democracy would rule and mod rule would take over America. So they wished to restore America to its original Constitution republic of confederated states as originally created to safeguard individuals liberty from mob rule and democracy. As president pierce said in 1855 “the power is in states alone.”

    “I love the Union and the Constitution, but I would rather leave the Union with the Constitution than remain in the Union without it.”
    -Confederate President Jefferson Davis

    “If centralism is ultimately to prevail; if our entire system of free Institutions as established by our common ancestors is to be subverted, and an Empire is to be established in their stead; if that is to be the last scene of the great tragic drama now being enacted: then, be assured, that we of the South will be acquitted, not only in our own consciences, but in the judgment of mankind, of all responsibility for so terrible a catastrophe, and from all guilt of so great a crime against humanity.”
    -The Vice-President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens

    “If they (the North) prevail, the whole character of the Government will be changed, and instead of a federal republic, the common agent of sovereign and independent States, we shall have a central despotism, with the notion of States forever abolished, deriving its powers from the will, and shaping its policy according to the wishes, of a numerical majority of the people; we shall have, in other words, a supreme, irresponsible democracy. The Government does not now recognize itself as an ordinance of God...They are now fighting the battle of despotism. They have put their Constitution under their feet; they have annulled its most sacred provisions; The future fortunes of our children, and of this continent, would then be determined by a tyranny which has no parallel in history.”
    -Dr. James Henly Thornwell of South Carolina

    “States are sovereign, there was a time when none denied it”
    -Jefferson Davis Farewell speech to senate

    “It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.”
    -Confederate General Patrick Claiborne 1864
    Quote Originally Posted by 1stvermont View Post
    Slavery's Impact on the Upper South

    “Secessionists were well aware that slavery was under no immediate threat within the Union. Indeed, some anti-secessionists, especially those with the largest investment in slave property, argued that slavery was safer under the Union than in a new experiment in government.”
    -Clyde Wilson distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina

    “The condition of slavery in the several states would remain just the same weather it [the rebellion] succeeds or fails”
    -Secretary Seward to US Ambassador to France


    With slavery equally protected north or south and even more so in the north, the upper south states of VA, NC, TENN, ARK, KY, MO makes it hard to conclude slavery had much or anything to do with their reasons for leaving. When the original deep south states left the union, there were more slaves and more slave states remaining in the union, than within the newly formed confederacy. Most upper south state declarations did not even mention slavery or only in passing, and that usually associated with violations of states rights or the constitution. But they heavily spoke on states rights, states sovereignty and Lincolns call for volunteers as the reason for secession. Those states chose to stay with the union before Lincolns call for volunteers, that they saw as a massive violation of state sovereignty.

    “So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interests of the South. So fully am I satisfied of this, as regards Virginia especially, that I would cheerfully have lost all I have lost by the war, and have suffered all I have suffered, to have this object attained.”
    -Robert E Lee 1870


    Slavery was Safer in the Union Than the Confederacy


    “It was necessary to put the South at a moral disadvantage by transforming the contest from a war waged against states fighting for their Independence into a war waged against states fighting for the maintenance and extension of slavery…and the world, it might be hoped, would see it as a moral war, not a political; and the sympathy of nations would begin to run for the North, not for the South.”
    -Woodrow Wilson, “A History of The American People”

    “Howard county [MO] is true to the union” “our slaveholders think it is the sure bulwark of our slave property”
    -Abeil Lenord Whig party leader at the onset of the war

    Slavery in fact was safer in the union than had the confederacy been allowed to form. Slavery was in both the northern and southerner states for the entire civil war. It was constitutionally protected, Lincoln and the north supported the Corwin amendment that would have protected slavery forever in the the U.S constitution.

    “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof[ slavery], including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”
    -Corwin Amendment

    The united states supreme court had ruled in favor of the fugitive slave laws and the use of federal agents to return runaway slaves to their masters. A confederacy would have no protection for runaways north. Slavery was as secure as it had ever been for those southern slave states. Lincoln and the north did not invade the south to end slavery. Lincoln had no problem with the upper south slave states in the union such as Virginia as he called for volunteers to attack the deep south to repress the rebellion [not slavery]. The 1860 republican platform plank 4 said slavery was a state issue and they would not interfere with slavery. Lincoln also said the states had the right to chose on slavery and he would not interfere with slavery.

    “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere Untitled 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 Inaugural address

    After the deep south left the union the federal government decided it would not end slavery in the house on Feb 1861 and senate march 2 1861. On July 22 1861 congress declared “This war is not waged , nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions [slavery] of those states.” October 8th 1861 the newspaper Washington D.C National Intelligence said “The existing war had no direct relation to slavery.”

    “Seven-tenths of our people owned no slaves at all, and to say the least of it, felt no great and enduring enthusiasm for its [slavery’s] preservation, especially when it seemed to them that it was in no danger.’ ”
    -John G. Barrett, The Civil War in North Carolina, p. 3

    Fight to Maintain Slavery? Or put Down Arms to Maintain Slavery?

    “As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty per cent. of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution. No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the Union.”
    -Confederate Major General John B. Gordon Causes of the Civil War

    If the south fought only for slavery,it only had to not fight the war. Slavery was protected and not under attack by Lincoln in the states it already existed. At any time as Lincoln promised, the south just had to lay down arms and come back into the union with slavery intact, yet they chose to fight for another cause.

    “The emancipation proclamation was actually an offer permitting the south to stop fighting and return to the union by January 1st and still keep its slaves”
    -John Canaan The Peninsula campaign

    “We were not fighting for the perpetuation of slavery, but for the principle of States Rights and Free Trade, and in defense of our homes which were being ruthlessly invaded.”
    -Moses Jacob Ezekiel

    Virginia alone freed more slaves prior to civil war than NY, NJ, Pennsylvania,and New England put together. South Carolinian Mary Chestnut said slavery was a curse, yet she supported secession. She and others hoped the war would end with a “Great independent country with no slavery.” On June 1861 Mary Chestnut said “Slavery has got to go of course.”

    Jefferson Davis CSA President/ Abraham Lincoln USA President

    “The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came, and now it must go on unless you acknowledge our right to self government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence.”
    -President Jefferson Davis, CSA

    It is interesting that both the CSA and USA presidents would agree that the war was not over slavery. Yet today we are told slavery was the sole cause of the war. In Jefferson Davis's farewell address to the US congress, his inaugural address in Montgomery as confederate president and second inaugural in Richmond, he explained liberty, states rights, tariffs and the founders were the main reason for states leaving the union. Jefferson barley mention slavery and only in passing in just one of the three important speeches. The south was leaving because Davis said the north fell to simple majority [Democracy not constitutional republic] what Davis called the “Tyranny of unbridled majority.” Near the end of the war Jefferson Davis sent a diplomat to both France and England to try and convince them to recognize the confederacy offering the confederacy would abolish slavery, yet keep their country. Instead what we are told to focus on is not the CSA presidents important speeches, but a speech by vice president Stevens as the sole cause for southern secession. Few things Jeff Davis and Abraham Lincoln would agree upon, but one is the war was not over slavery.

    “So long as I am president . It shall be carried on for the sole purpose of restoring the union”
    -Abraham Lincoln Aug 15 1864

    Europe's Opinion

    “[T]he contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions…are the general opinions of the English nation.”
    -London Times, November 7, 1861

    “I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy.”
    -British Lord Action Correspondence with Robert E Lee


    The vast majority in Europe at the time of the civil war believed the war was not over slavery but either tariffs or states rights. In the book The glittering illusion: English sympathy for the Southern Confederacy
    [http://www.amazon.com/Glittering-Ill...dp/0895265524]

    its shows how the majority of lay people in England supported the confederacy and believed the war was not over slavery. Englishman Sir John Dalberacton convinced many in England to feel sympathy for the CSA because he said they were fighting a tyrannical government and defending states rights. English statesman Richard Cobden pointed out in December 1861, the British “are unani-mous and fanatical”; that subject was free trade.

    Confederate Soldiers

    The confederate solder “Fought because he was provoked, intimidated, and ultimately invaded”
    -James Webb Born Fighting a History of the Scoth-Irish in America

    “To tar the sacrifices of the Confederate soldier as simple acts of racism, and reduce the battle flag under which he fought to nothing more than the symbol of a racist heritage, is one of the great blasphemies of our modern age”.
    -James Webb-Secretary of Navy And Assistant Secretary of Defense

    To think the southern armies were full of non slave owning soldiers leaving their families and risking there lives so a few rich slave owners could keep there slaves is ridiculous. 80% of southern soldiers did not own slaves. In every major battle there were slave owning union soldiers fighting for the north, and non slave owning southern soldiers fighting for the south. In the book What They Fought For, 1861–1865 by James McPherson reported on his reading of hundreds of letters and diaries written by soldiers on both sides of the war on the question of what they believed they were fighting for. McPherson concluded that nearly all Confederate soldiers believed they “fought for liberty and independence from what they regarded as a tyrannical government.”As one Illinois officer explained, “We are fighting for the Union . . . a high and noble sentiment, but after all a sentiment. They are fighting for independence, and are animated by passion and hatred against invaders” “The letters and diaries of many Confederate soldiers bristled with the rhetoric of liberty and self-government and with expressions of a willingness to die for the cause.” An Alabamian solider wrote “When a Southerner homes is threatened the spirit of resistance is irresistible.”

    “Southerners also fought for abstracts- state sovereignty, the right of secession, the constitution as they interpreted it, the concept of a southern nation different from the American nation whose values had been corrupted by Yankees”
    -James McPherson Battle Cry of freedom

    “The south was fighting for independence, the north to restore the union...young southerners rushed to arms to defend home and family while like their revolutionary grandfathers- seeking a new Independence ”
    -James Robertson The Untold civil War Exploring The Human Side Of War National geographic

    In The Confederate war by Gary W Gallagher he quotes multiple soldiers letters home as saying the reason they were fighting was because of what they saw as northern tyranny, oppression and northern invasion. In the book the common solider of the civil war, The average southern soldiers diaries and letters to home barley even mentioned slavery, much less as a reason for fighting. It was because they were defending their homes and families and country, a few said because of power of government. Thousands of Californians [non slave owning state] volunteered for the confederacy. New jersey supplied at least two confederate generals. The confederate soldiers flags mottos talked of liberty, justice, freedom, and god, not of slavery as reason to fight.

    “Believe me no solider on either side gave a damn about slaves, they were fighting for other reasons entirely in their minds. Southerns thought they were fighting the second American revolution norther's thought they were fighting to hold the union together [With a few abolitionist and fire eaters on both sides].”
    -Historian Shelby Foote


    “I was fighting for my home, and he had no business being there”
    -Virginia confederate Solider Frank Potts

    Main References


    -Secession Acts of the Thirteen Confederate States
    http://www.civilwar.org/education/hi...ww.google.com/
    -Confederate States of America - Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union
    http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp
    -Abraham Lincoln First Inaugural Address Monday, March 4, 1861
    -Jefferson Davis' First Inaugural Address Alabama Capitol, Montgomery, February 18, 1861
    -Jefferson Davis' Second Inaugural Address Virginia Capitol, Richmond, February 22, 1862
    -Confederate States of America - Message to Congress April 29, 1861 (Ratification of the Constitution)
    http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_m042961.asp
    -The confederate constitution http://www.libs.uga.edu/hargrett/sel...fed/trans.html -The Confederate States of America, 1861--1865: A History of the South by E.Merton coulter 1950 -The Confederate Constitution of 1861: An Inquiry Into American Constitutionalism By Marshall L. DeRosa University of Missouri Press -Redeeming American Democracy Lessons from the confederate constitution Marshall L. Derosa Pelican press 2007 -The Constitution Of The Confederate States Of America Explained A Clause By Clause Study Of The Souths Magna Carta Lochlainn Seabrook Sea Raven Press 2012
    -From Union to Empire Clyde Wilson The Foundation for American Education Columbia SC 2003
    -The Great Civil War Debate hosted by american vision c-span Peter Marshall Jr. vs Steve Wilkin s
    -The federalist papers
    -Nullification How to resits Federal tyranny in the 21st Century Thomas Woods Regnery Publishing inc Washington D.C 2010
    -The Yankee Problem An American dilemma Clyde N Wilson Shotwell Publishing Columbia South Carolina 2016
    -The fourteenth amendment -Thomas woods https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P56ZeBotFeA
    -The Real Lincoln Thomas J Dilorenzo Three Rivers press NY NY 2002
    - Lincoln Unmasked what your not suppose to know about Dishonest Abe Thomas J Dilorenzo Three rivers Press Crown Forum 2006
    -Lincolns Marxists Al Benson Jr and Walter Kennedy Pelican Press 2011
    -From Union to Empire essays in the Jeffersonian Tradition Clyde Wilson The Foundation for American Education Columbia South Carolina 2003
    -Battle Hymns The Power And Popularity Of Music In The Civil War By Christian Mcwhirter The University Of North Carolina press 2012
    -The states rights tradition nobody knows Thomas Woods https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxjgYploYNg
    -Battle Cry of Freedom James McPherson Oxford university Press
    Gary Gallagher the American civil war great courses in modern history lecture series Teaching company 2000
    -Without Consent or Contract The Rise and Fall of American Slavery Robert William Fogel W.W Norton and company NY London 1989
    -America Civil war Magazine - http://www.historynet.com/americas-civil-war
    -Robert E Lee letter to his wife 1856
    -The life and death of Jefferson Davis 1959
    -Robert E Lee correspondence with British Lord action
    -Woodrow Wilson, A History of The American People 1902
    -Jefferson Davis The rise and fall of the confederate government
    -The Virginia Quarterly Review 1931
    -Alexis de tocqueville Democracy in America 1835-1840
    -Jesse James last rebel of the civil war T.J Stiles Alfred A Knopf 2002
    -Interview with Historian Shelby foote http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/p...mber/foo0int-1
    -Shelby Foote on the confederate flag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9J8P6WfS7w
    -A Defense Of Virginia And The South R.L Dabney 1867 Sprinkle publications
    -Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States Baltimore, MD. Kelly Piet & Co. 1868 -
    http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...D6%3Apage%3D66
    -Major General John B. Gordon Causes of the Civil War. 1903
    -A Constitutional view of the late war between the states: its causes By Alexander Hamilton Stephens 1870
    -The Private Mary Chesnut The Unpublished Diaries C Vann Woodward Elisabeth Muhlenfeld NY Oxford Press 1984
    -The politically incorrect guide to the south Clint Johnson 2007 Regnery publications inc
    -The politically incorrect guide to the civil war H.W Crocker third 2008 Regnery publications inc
    -The politically incorrect guide to American history Thomas e woods 2004 Regnery publications inc
    -The south was Right James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy Pelican 2014 reprint
    -General Stand waties confederate Indians 1959 by Frank Cunnigham University of Oklahoma press
    -Harry V. Jaffa and Thomas J. DiLorenzo | The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtbUAle_7xI
    -The US constitution
    -33 questions about American history you're not suppose to ask Thomas Woods Crown forum NY 2007
    -I'll Take my stand the south and the agrarian tradition by twelve southerners 1930 Louisianan state university press
    -Rutland Free Library Rutland, Vermont
    -Southern Secession and Reconstruction David Livingston Emory University professor
    -Why the war was not About Slavery Clyde Wilson Professor of History at the University of South Carolina
    -Myths of American slavery Walter D Kennedy 2003 Pelican publishing company
    -Myths and Realities of American Slavery John C Perry Burd Street Press 2002
    -Everything You Were Taught About American Slavery Is Wrong Ask A Southerner Lochlainn Seabrook Sea raven press 2014
    -The Civil war PBS series by Ken Burns
    -The American heritage series By Historian David Barton at wallbuilders.com
    -Building on the American heritage series by David Barton 2011
    - Americas godly heritage by David Barton 1992
    -Foundations of freedom by David Barton 2015
    -Warriors of honor- The faith and legacies of Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson 2004
    -Still Standing The stonewall Jackson Story 2007
    -The life of Stonewall Jackson




    ...
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  6. #34
    http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...-Cotton-States
    Quote Originally Posted by 1stvermont View Post
    The Cotton States

    [the south was]"Forced to take up arms to vindicate the political rights, the freedom, equality, and state sovereignty which were the heritage purchased by the blood of our revolutionary sires"
    -Jefferson Davis 1863 quoted in Battle cry of freedom James McPherson Oxford U Press

    The first states to leave the union were the original deep south “cotton states.” Leaving as individual states to later form a confederacy and a constitution. Those states were Alabama, Mississippi, Louisianan, Texas, Georgia, Florida and South Carolina. Even within the deep south cotton states their were multiple reasons that led to secession.

    The Election of A Republican President

    “It [republican party] is, in fact, essentially a revolutionary party”
    -New Orleans Delta


    The election of the new “radical” republican party candidate Abraham Lincoln directly led to the secession of the deep south. This new political party was the first in American history based solely on sectional [northern] interests and boosted by recent immigration to the national stage. This was so clear to north and south that Many in the north blamed the republicans voters for disunion. President Buchanan [who did not believe in legal secession] and other northern democrats and unionist blamed republicans and said the south would be justified if they were elected in resisting.

    This northern sectional party's interests were the antithesis to the southern interests. The republicans were for higher tariffs, protective tariffs, federal internal improvements,in support of the homestead act, [ in 1858 the north supported 114 of 115 the south rejected 64 of 65 votes] a pacific railroad act, and grants to states for agricultural and mechanical collages.

    The republicans were openly big government nationalist who placed authority and sovereignty with the federal government and not with, as they south had maintained from the first, the peoples of the sovereign states. This would play itself out in the fight over slavery in the territories. [see below] The republicans during the civil war and finishing with reconstruction, would radically transform the American union into their new radical version of America. So the south seceded...

    “to save us from a revolution”
    Jeff Davis quoted in battle cry of freedom


    Tariffs

    “The revenues of the General Government are almost entirely derived from duties on importations. It is time that the northern consumer pays his proportion of these duties, but the North as a section receiving back in the increased prices of the rival articles which it manufactures nearly or quite as much as the imposts which it pays thus in effect paying nothing or very little for the support of the government.”
    -Florida causes of Secession

    “The Northern onslaught upon slavery is no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states... the love of money is the root of this...the quarrel between the north and south is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel”
    -Charles Dickens, 1862

    As so often is the case in wars, money, in this case tariffs, had long been a point of conflict between the two sides. In 1824 the government tariff doubled. The south voting against the tariff being raised and the north voted for it, dividing the country along the 1860 civil war lines in 1824 over tariffs. Tariffs supplied the government 90% of it income and even gave a surplus to what the government needed. The majority was paid by the south given its inport/export agrarian economy. This the south thought was unconstitutional for the government to aim at a section or industry of the economy specifically for a tax.

    “High protective tariffs reduced the price of cotton and effective imposed a tax between 10-20% while they raised the income of northern labor and the profits of northern manufacturers”
    -Robert William Fogel The Rise and fall of American Slavery

    "The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole"
    -Daily Chicago Times, December 10, 1860

    Tariffs would be Raised again in 1828. Congress passed what southerners called the tariff of abominations to help northern industry against southern agrarian lifestyle. only 1 out of 105 southerners voted positive, yet the north voted for it [as they received free southern money that was used largely in the north] and it passed. This led South Carolina to first use a threat of secession. South Carolina Senator John Callhoun in the 1820's said of conflict between the north and south over tariffs “The great central interest , around which all others revolved” South Carolina argued they had states rights to reject unconstitutional federal ruling as a sovereign state, something Thomas Jefferson recommended. Over the tariff Mary Chestnut said South Carolina "heated themselves into a fever that only bloodletting could ever cure." The tax had been 15% and the south had been complaining for decades.

    “It does not require extraordinary sagacity to precive that trade is perhaps the controlling motive operating to prevent the return of the seceding states to the union”
    -Boston Transcript March 18 1861

    “The people of the Southern States, whose almost exclusive occupation was agriculture, early perceived a tendency in the Northern States to render the common government subservient to their own purposes by imposing burdens on commerce as a protection to their manufacturing and shipping interests. Long and angry controversies grew out of these attempts, often successful, to benefit one section of the country at the expense of the other....abuse of the powers they had delegated to the Congress, for the purpose of enriching the manufacturing and shipping classes of the North at the expense of the South.... ”
    -Jefferson Davis Message to confederate Congress April 29, 1861 (Ratification of the Constitution)

    The Morrill Tariff Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives on May 10, 1860, on a sectional vote, with nearly all northern representatives in support and nearly all southern representatives in opposition. With the election of Abraham Lincoln whose central campaign objective was to triple the tariff. Tariff was the “keystone” of the republican party “protection for home industry” was the campaign poster of the 1860 republican party. South Carolina did what it had done decades before, and seceded from the Union over the higher tariff rates soon to be imposed on the south by the north. It was not just the south, NYC mayor Fernando Wood wanted to make NYC a “free city” [free trade] and secede from the Union. The debate over tariffs and internal improvements was not just a debate over those items, but a debate over the nature of the federal government. Free trade was a vital aspect of southern agrarian interests. The CSA Constitution allowed for free trade. In Jefferson Davis inaugural speech in Montgomery Alabama he stated the following.

    “An agricultural people, whose chief interest is the export of a commodity required in every manufacturing country, our true policy is peace, and the freest trade, which our necessities will permit. It is alike our interest, and that of all those to whom we would sell and from whom we would buy, that there should be the fewest practicable restrictions upon the interchange of commodities. There can be but little rivalry between ours and any manufacturing or navigating community, such as the Northeastern States of the American Union.”

    “The south was being asked to pay to strengthen northern industry...the tariff would directly damage southern pocketbooks. This conflict played a important role in the division north vs south”
    -Brevin Alexander Professor of History at Longwood University

    “The tariff issue...exacerbated sectional tensions”
    -James McPherson Battle cry of Freedom

    Agrarian South vs Industrial North

    “Ours is an agricultural people, and God grant that we may continue so. We never want to see it otherwise. It is the freest, happiest, most independent , and, with us, the most powerful condition on earth”
    -Montgomery Daily Confederation 1858

    “It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.”
    -Mississippi Declaration for Causes of Secession

    A cause of the war, and some would say the major cause for prominent interest groups. Is northern industrialist vs southern agrarians. The Souths primarily agrarian and agricultural lifestyle and the contrasted growing northern industrial, urban, lifestyle, led to difference of opinion on culture, education, religion, role of government, tariffs, trade policies, internal improvements and many other differences. There were as many factories in the north, as there were factories workers in the south. From Americans agrarian roots the south had “little dynamic change, weather through immigration, the growth of new cities or new industrial manufacturing, was allowed to come in and stir up the pot.”

    “Leisure orientated agrarian society is the antithesis to materialistic northern life”
    -Rapheal Semmes CSA navy commander

    “1850's southern agrarians had mounted a counter attack against the gospel of industrialization”
    -James McPherson Battle cry of freedom

    As argued in the book “I'll Take my Stand the south and the agrarian tradition.” The main cause of the war was the fight over western territories coming into the union. Before the civil war northern big business and industry needed industrial workers for factories for expansion, not farmers and planters. If these states were allowed to decide on their own slave or free, than the south might maintain agrarian, free trade, policies. If they were to all become free, than northern industrialist would dominate congress and high tariffs, internal improvements would rise. Both the industrialist and the southern planters backed politicians in the fight over western territories. Northern politicians thought slavery “Stifled technological progress, inhibited industrialization, and thwarted urbanization” and would lead to the “Destruction of all industry” Something had to happen.

    “The game plan of northern industrialist, who were fighting not for black freedom, but for the freedom to exploit and devolve the American market...The only people who could say “free at last” after the civil war were northern industrialist and their allies”
    -Lerone Vennett JR Forced into Glory Abraham Lincolns White Dream

    The freeing of the slaves was “Only an accident in the violent clash of interests between the Industrial north and the Agricultural south”
    -African American Ralph Bunche

    The industrialist “Hired” politicians to go anti-slavery and pro industrial expansion, fighting hard for western states to go anti slavery. The south wanted agrarian lifestyle, free trade, and states to decide on slavery. So as was said “The south had to be crushed out, it was in the way, it impeded the progress of the machine” if slavery could be abolished, than southern agrarian representation in congress would be reduced. Northern general Sherman said the civil war was a war between agriculturalist vs mechanics. Confederate General Jubal Early said Lees army was defeated by “Steam power, railroads, mechanism, and all the resources of physical science”

    “Great pains have been taken, by the North, to make it appear to the world, that the war was a sort of moral, and religious crusade against slavery. Such was not the fact. The people of the North were, indeed, opposed to slavery, but merely because they thought it stood in the way of their struggle for empire”
    -Raphael Semmes 1868

    The fight over agrarian vs industrial also led to a fight over tariffs. For example The agrarian south opposed high tariffs, but that is how internal improvements were founded for the industrial north. “The more the north became industrialized, the more the need arose for stronger national government to support its growth and finical interests.” The industrialist wanted higher tariffs as well to slow the flow of trade on the Mississippi. They instead wanted trade to flow west through rail supported by higher tariffs and internal improvements.

    “Theodore Weld declared that the South had to be wiped out because it is “the foe to Northern industry—to our mines, our manufactures, our commerce.”
    -Clyde Wilson Professor of History at the University of South Carolina

    In the book Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War by Marc Egnal he said “Economics more than high moral concerns produced the civil war.” The heart of the war was economical differences growing between the protectionist, manufacturing northeast and the free trade agrarian south. In the book I'll take my stand a book on southern agrarian life, the authors argue if no other differences, the war would have still happened over industrial vs agrarian interests. The industrialist won. After the war the north profit went up 45% the south down 15%.

    “Military defeat moved the scepter of wealth from the agrarian south to the industrial north”
    -Robert William Fogel The Rise and Fall of American Slavery

    “If the North triumphs, it is not alone the destruction of our property; it is the prelude to anarchy,infidelity, the ultimate loss of free and responsible government on this continent. It is the triumph of commerce, the banks, factories. ”
    -Confederate Gen. Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson

    “Southern movement was a revolt of conservatism against the modernism of the north” a “Reaction to industry.”
    -E Merton Coulter The Confederate States of America Louisiana State university press

    Loss of Political Power

    “The contest on the part of the north was for supreme control, especially in relation to the fiscal action of the government.. on the other hand southern states, struggling for equality, and seeking to maintain equilibrium in government”
    -Rose Oneal Greehow My Improvement and the first year of Abolition rule in Washington 1863

    “The majority section may legislate imperiously and ruinously to the interests of the minority section not only without injury but to great benefit and advantage of their own section. In proof of this we need only refer to the fishing bounties, the monopoly of the coast navigation which is possessed almost exclusively by the Northern States and in one word the bounties to every employment of northern labor and capital such a government must in the nature of things and the universal principles of human nature and human conduct very soon lead as it has done to a grinding and degrading despotism.”
    -Florida Declaration of Causes of Secession

    The very mature of the government was at stake in the fight over western territories. This political battle even turned to blood in Missouri/Kansas. The south was shown that even when unified, it could still be controlled by the growing urban population of the north and “mob rule” such as in the case with tariffs and the election of Lincoln. Both sides also saw the newer territories become states in the west as vital to control of congress. If these states were allowed to decide on their own slave or free, than the south might maintain agrarian, free trade, policies. If they were to all become free, than northern industrialist would dominate congress and High tariffs and internal improvements would rise.

    “We had had experience of the fact, that our partner-States of the North, who were in a majority, had trampled upon the rights of the Southern minority, and we desired, as the only remedy, to dissolve the partnership......liberty is always destroyed by the multitude, in the name of liberty. Majorities within the limits of constitutional restraints are harmless, but the moment they lose sight of these restraints, the many-headed monster becomes more tyrannical, than the tyrant with a single head; numbers harden its conscience, and embolden it, in the perpetration of crime. And when this majority, in a free government, becomes a faction, or, in other words, represents certain classes and interests to the detriment of other classes, and interests, farewell to public liberty; the people must either become enslaved, or there must be a disruption of the government. ”
    -Confederate Admiral Raphael Semmes 1868

    Between 1800-1850 the House was controlled by the north but the south could block anything from the north in the senate. However with the edition of states like Minnesota 1858 Oregon 1859 and Kansas 1861 for the first time the north controlled the senate. Lincoln said he would not allow any more slave states into the union [Southerns felt a excuse for northern political dominance of both house and senate for his wanted major tariff increases] The south had seen their political power over tariffs in recent decades decline, and now saw the attack on slavery into new territories as a attack on the whole economic system of the south by the majority or mob of the north. The south saw the loss of political power, economic power and rights granted by the constitution under threat from the majority north. a Georgian sated “we are either slaves in the union or free men out of it”

    “Nothing but increasingly galling economical exploitation by the dominate sector and the rapid reduction of the south to political impotence”
    -Robert William Fogel The Rise and Fall of American Slavery

    “Equality and safety in the union are at an end”
    -Howell Cobb of Georgia 1860

    “The South's concept of republicanism had not changed in three-quarters of a century; the North's had. With complete sincerity the South fought to preserve its version of the republic of the Founding Fathers--a government of limited powers that protected the rights of property, including slave property, and whose constituency comprised an independent gentry and yeomanry of the white race undisturbed by large cities, heartless factories, restless free workers, and class conflict. The accession of the Republican party, with its ideology of competitive, egalitarian, free-labor capitalism, was a signal to the South that the Northern majority had turned irrevocably toward this frightening future."
    -James M. McPherson Ante-bellum Southern Exceptionalism

    Two Separate Cultures “Yankees” and American


    “Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain “
    -South Carolina Secession Document

    “The best definition ever given. It was a war of one form of society against another form of society”
    -Historian Shelby Fotte

    “If their was not a slave from Aroostock to the sabine, the north and the south could never permanent agree”
    -Richmond Daily Whig April 23, 1862

    “The Southern people...maintained a species of separate interests, history, and prejudices. These latter became stronger and stronger, till they have led to a war which has developed the fruits of the bitterest kind.”
    -General Sherman to Union Maj. R.M. Sawyer 1864

    The divide between the two sides was much deeper than most today realize. The north and south started growing apart from each other socially, religiously, economically and politically. At times both would refer to each other as a separate race of people usually northern Anglo saxson and southern scotch-Irish. These divides went back to early America. At this time there was not much love north for south or south for north. In some ways the war started politically with the federalist/anti-federalist and the nationalist and compact theorist in the late 1700's. The south being largely anti-federalist/ compact and the north federalist/nationalist . In fact these differences were predicted to lead to the civil war back in 1824. A Congressional committee on northern interference in the south stated

    “The hour is coming or is rabidly approaching, when the states from Virginia to Georgia, from Missouri to Louisianan, must confederate, and as one man say to the union we will no longer submit our retained rights to the sniveling insinuations of bad men on the floor of congress. Our constitutional rights to the dark and strained contraction of design men upon judicial benches. That we detest the doctrine, and disclaim the principle, of unlimited submission to the general [Federal] government.... Let the North, then, form national roads for themselves. Let them guard with tariffs their own interests. Let them deepen their public debt until a high minded aristocracy shall rise out of it. We want none of all those blessings. But in the simplicity of the patriarchal government, we would still remain master and servant under our own vine and our own fig-tree, and confide for safety upon Him who of old time looked down upon this state of things without wrath.”

    “Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or consolidated government; a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting solidly on the basis of the sovereignty of the States, or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, violence, and force must ultimately prevail.”
    -South Carolina Senator John Calhoun 1831

    “Not over slavery but centralization and local sovereign government going back 70 years to federalist and anti federalist...they[ The south] quit the union to save the principles of the constitution"
    - Alexander Hamilton Stephens A constitutional view of the late war between the states: its causes 1870


    The cultures were separating as well. The south was generally conservative in cultural and religion compared to the north. The north was being transformed by large number of European immigrants who often came from the failed socialist revolutions of 1848. The north was also increasingly influenced by New England. Before the 1850's new england was seen as out of the american mainstream and “southern” was the American mainstream. 9 of the first 11 presidents were southern plantation owners, 7 of the first 12 were Virginians [many two term] 9 were southern, and 1 from New York, at that time was “southern” in politics. Washington, jeferson, Jackson were the norm in America. After the war of 1812 New England was often seen with disdain by the rest of America.

    “There is at work in this land a Yankee spirit and an American spirit”
    James Thornwell 1859


    New Englander's settled in western States and New York. New York became half populated by decedents from New England. Once new England could control half the north, the south was taken care of after the war, and new england was no longer outside mainstream, but know the south was out of the mainstream and the problem that needed to be fixed.

    “The north changed radically after the founders of the united states, especially in the 1850's”
    -Dr. Clyde Wilson Professor of History University of South Carolina

    “Southern society has never generated any of the loathsome isms, which northern soil breeds...the north has its Mormons, her various sects of Communists, her free lovers, her spiritualists, and a multitude of corrupt visoniaries”
    -R.L Dabney A defense of Virginia and the South 1867

    “It was a profound conservative movement. It was in fact a counterrevolution against the excess of northern demagoguery, mob rule, and dangerous fanaticism imported from Europe”
    -E. merton Coulter The confederate States of America Louisiana State University Press

    “The central issue in the civil war, to which all other questions including slavery and centralization were subordinate, was the movement of American society into modernization. Modernization among other things, implies economic, political, and cultural centralization and nationalism. To modernization the south provided a formidable obstacle”
    -Clyde Wilson From Union to Empire

    Northern Violations of the Constitution

    “announce a revolution in the government and to substitute an aggregate popular majority for the written constitution without which no single state would have voted its adoption not forming in truth a federal union but a consolidated despotism that worst of despotisms that of an unrestricted sectional and hostile majority, we do not intend to be misunderstood, we do not controvert the right of a majority to govern within the grant of powers in the Constitution.
    -Florida Declaration of causes of secession

    “The north sought to convert a union of brotherhood and mutual benefit into a “nation” which they would dominate in their own interests”
    -Clyde Wilson University of South Carolina Professor

    “We are fighting for the god given rights of liberty and independence as handed down to us in the constitution by our fathers”
    -Confederate General John B Gordon to Pennsylvanian woman at York 1863

    “I believe most solemley that it is for constitutional liberty”
    -Confederate General Leonidas Polk June 22 1861 Reasons for Southern Secession

    The south saw the north as violating the constitution in many ways. The south thought their liberties threatened by a growing northern majority and political influence. Had the constitution not been violated, and their rights maintained, there would have been no need to separate. The south saw the tariffs aimed at certain industry [southern export] as a violation of the constitution. They saw the north's attempt to use that money to benefit the Norths wanted internal improvements as another violation of the constitution. The federal government under the control of Lincoln sought to violate the 10th amendment and states rights by not allowing the western states to decide on slavery, instead the federal government would overpower the states, and violate the constitution to the benefit of northern polices. The south complained that many northern states the refusal to obey the fugitive slave laws were a violation of the constitution and recognizance of southern property.

    “If the south did not protect itself against the north, its whole way of life would be destroyed”
    -E Merton Coulter The Confederate States of America Louisiana State university Press

    “Northern population was increasing, by immigration and other causes, in a greater ratio than the population of the South. By degrees, as the Northern States gained preponderance in the National Congress, self-interest taught their people to yield ready assent to any plausible advocacy of their right as a majority to govern the minority without control. They learned to listen with impatience to the suggestion of any constitutional impediment to the exercise of their will, and so utterly have the principles of the Constitution been corrupted in the Northern mind that, in the inaugural address delivered by President Lincoln in March last, he asserts as an axiom, which he plainly deems to be undeniable, of constitutional authority, that the theory of the Constitution requires that in all cases the majority shall govern; and in another memorable instance the same Chief Magistrate did not hesitate to liken the relations between a State and the United States to those which exist between a county and the State in which it is situated and by which it was created.”
    -Jefferson Davis Message to Congress April 29, 1861 (Ratification of the Constitution)

    The Confederate Constitution

    “It was clear from the actions of the Montgomery convention that the goal of the new converts to secessionist was not to establish a slaveholders reactionary utopia. What they really wanted was to create the union as it had been before the rise of the new Republican party”
    -Robert Divine T.H Bren George Fredrickson and R Williams America Past and Present

    “The CSA framers placed the government firmly under the heads of the states”
    -Marshall L. Derosa Redeeming American Democracy Lessons from the Confederate Constitution

    The CSA constitution limits central [ federal] power. The south thought to keep government weak and poor, so that states would do the majority of governing. Each state being sovereign had only one vote on the confederate constitution ratification regardless of population. A main change in the CSA constitution from the United states version of “we the people of the US in order to form a more perfect union.... CSA version reads “we the people of the confederate states, each state acting in its sovereign and independent character ...” The confederacy formed a decentralized government. The states had the right to recall powers delegated [ not granted] to congress. In the CSA 10th amendment In uncertainties in ruling between states and CSA government, the states would override the federal government. All power to amend the Constitution was taken out of congress and given to the states. “centralization and its corrupting influence were held in check.”

    “The CSA congress can have no such power over states officers. The state governments are an essential part of the political system, upon the separate and independent sovereignty of the states the foundation of the confederacy”
    -1864 Virginia supreme Court Case

    Some USA federal court cases were moved to the states in the CSA version. Confederate officials working only in a state are subject to impeachment by that state. The Confederate states also gain the power to make river-related treaties with each other. In the US, the federal government regulates bodies of water that overlap multiple states. CSA had Fewer members of congress. The states of the CSA had the right to coin money. The confederates had the idea that the country capital would not be permanent [ Even Richmond the second capital was never suppose to be I entered this revolution permanent] but float from state to state to avoid centralizing power. The CSA Presidents could not be reelected, not wanting politicians to say what was needed for reelection. Later during the war President Jeff Davis complained that he did not have the control like Lincoln to fight the war, because of local and states rights.

    “The confederacy was founded upon decentralization”
    -Ken Burns The Civil War PBS documentary

    CSA Weak Federal Government and Fiscal Responsibility

    The CSA constitution removed the term “general welfare” from the US preamble as they felt it was misused by Lincoln and earlier whigs to say the federal government had powers for internal improvements.“The confederacy was founded on the proposition that the central government should stay out of its citizens pockets.” The CSA allowed for fair trade, had uniform tax code and restricted ominous bills. No corporate bailouts, or government subsides. The post office must be self sufficient within two years. The CSA President had line item veto on spending, No cost overrun contracts were allowed. Congress could not foster any one branch of industry.
    Quote Originally Posted by 1stvermont View Post
    Slavery's Impact on the Cotton States

    “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery”
    -Mississippi Declaration for Causes of secession

    “The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization.”
    -Georgia Secession Document


    Slavery had varying degrees of influence on the deep south reasons for secession, from none at all, to the main reason. No question there were some in the south that were willing to leave the union simply to keep slavery. The south thought slavery was a constitutional, biblical, and state right. The south viewed slaves as any other legal property the federal could not interfere with. If they tried to do so, it was tyrannical. In the cotton states they had more financial gain and loss riding on slavery and were more apt to maintain slavery and their economy. No better example than Mississippi who very much seems to have left the union for the protection of their economic system of slavery. With 4 billion dollars worth of value and the whole economic system of the state dependent on slavery, they wished to defend their economic system that had brought them so much wealth. However even in Mississippi, slavery was not the sole cause.

    “Let not slavery prove a barrier to our independence...although slavery is one of the principles that we started to fight for... if it proves an insurmountable obstacle to the achievement of our liberty and separate nationality, away with it”
    -The Jackson Mississippian 1864 quoted in McPherson's Battle cry of Freedom p 833

    Western States Free or Slave? Slavery was not the Cause but the Occasion/ States Rights


    “Slavery is no more the cause of this war than gold is the cause of robbery”
    -Joel Parker 1863 New jersey Governor

    “Slavery, although the occasion, was not the producing cause of dissolution”
    -Rose Oneal Greehow- My improvement and the first year of abolition Rule in Washington 1863

    The war was not a war of slavery versus freedom, it was a war between those who preferred a federated nation to those who preferred a confederation of sovereign states. Slavery was the ink thrown into the pool to confuse the issue”
    -Andrew Nelson lytle the Virginia Quarterly Review 1931

    “The struggle over the expansion of slavery into the territories....was almost a purely political issue”
    -Robert William Fogel The rise and Fall of American Slavery

    The major impact slavery had on the war and what some north and south would have said the war was over is the extension of slavery into the new western territories. This has led some to falsely conclude the deep south left the union only to maintain slavery.

    “The people who say slavery had nothing to do with the war are just as wrong as the people who say slavery had everything to do with the war”
    -Historian Shelby Foote

    Slavery's involvement in southern secession is often overstated because slavery was the “occasion” to witch the fight over states rights was fought. Just as Calhoun had said of the tariff of abomination was “The occasion, rather than the real cause” that cause was federal power expansion. The deep south saw the republicans as violating the 9th and 10th amendment – and Dred Scott v. Sandford 1857 Supreme Court ruling for trying to decide the fate of slavery by federal control rather than state. The Democratic plank 9 of the 1852 elections [and carried on to 1860] plainly stated that a attack on slavery was a attack on states rights, the two issues could not be separated.

    “That Congress has no power under the constitution to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several States, and that such States are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs not prohibited by the constitution; that all efforts of the abolitionists or others made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences; and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our political institutions.
    -Democrat plank 9 1852

    “slavery was not the cause, but the occasion of strife...Rights of the states were the bulwarks of the liberties of the people but that emancipation by federal aggression would lead to the destruction of all other rights”
    -R.L Dabney A Defense Of Virginia And The South 1867

    It would be hard to accept that southerners were willing to leave the country they loved and fight a war simply to have slavery extended into new territories where it would simply provide more competition to southern slave states domination on cotton. In 1843 many rich southern planters and no less than Calhoun voted against Texas for statehood because they said it would reduce the price of cotton. Instead they would want a monopoly within the south where they lived. By leaving the union the south was giving up federal protection for there runaway slaves under the fugitive slave laws, as well as giving up there right to bring there slaves into the united states territories something they fought so hard for. Because the issue was much deeper as it involved states rights, constitutional protection, and the nature of the union.

    “The conflict over the extension of slavery was a contest of political power between the north and the south which had grown steadily apart in economics, religion, customs, values, and ways of life...”
    -Clyde Wilson professor at university of South Carolina

    “After the bombardment of ft Sumter...patriots signed up to fight for states rights or union”
    -John Cannon The Wilderness Campaign Combined Books PA

    The war was fought to “Preserve the sovereignty of their respective States.”
    -Raphael Semmes Confederate Admiral 1868

    The fight over new western territories was also a battle over the very nature of the federal government. The republicans and Lincoln said they would not allow new states, the rights granted in the constitution. Were these states coming into the union allowed their state sovereignty and states rights as had all previous states, or was the federal government allowed to violate those rights and dictate the states? Where states sovereign or subject to a federal master? Thomas Jefferson commenting on federal intrusion in the Missouri compromise stated “ this certainly is the exclusive right of every state, which nothing in the constitution has taken from them and given to the general government. could congress, for example say that the Non-freemen of Connecticut, shall be freemen, or that they shall not emigrate into any other state?" What the south asked for was that these new states coming in be allowed on their own to chose.

    “That when the settlers in a Territory, having an adequate population, form a State Constitution, the right of sovereignty commences, and being consummated by admission into the Union, they stand on an equal footing with the people of other States, and the State thus organized ought to be admitted into the Federal Union, whether its Constitution prohibits or recognizes the institution of slavery.”
    -Southern Democrat Party Platform 1860

    “It is not slavery that [Thomas] Jefferson fears as “the death kneel of the union” it is antislavery, the notion that has been raised for the first time that congress could tamper with the institutions of new states as a condition for admission”
    -Clyde Wilson from Union to Empire

    “The south saw the attack on the issue of slavery not so much as an attempt to end slavery in the united states as much as an attempt to end southern influence in the national government”
    -Walter D Kennedy Myths of American slavery

    This political battle even turned to blood in Missouri/Kansas. Republicans backed by the industrialist pushed for western territories to be free. If these states were free they would than industrialize and want rail laid to connect these distant lands to the east. They would support high tariffs and internal improvements and give the north more political power. Yet if these states were allowed to decide on their own slave or free, than the south might maintain agrarian, free trade, policies. British historian Marc Egnal said the fight over the extension of slavery was “more on economical policy” But of more concern to many in the south was that of states rights.

    “When the Government of the United States disregarded and attempted to trample upon the rights of the States, Georgia set its power at defiance and seceded from the Union rather than submit to the consolidation of all power in the hands of the Central or Federal Government..her sovereignty the principles for the support of which Georgia entered into this revolution.
    -Georgia Governor Joseph E Brown 1862

    “The war was at first was not about slavery, but was a struggle over the limits of states rights and the powers of the government in washington”
    -David G Martin PHD in History from Princeton University

    SC secession document

    http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp

    South Carolina was the first state to seceded from the union, It being a deep south “cotton state” gives the reasons for secession. If read in full it gives a good example of slavery as a states rights issue. Slavery was an occasion that states rights were fought over, not the sole cause. The cause of dissolving the union is given right off the bat “Declared that the frequent violations of the constitution by the united sates, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union.” The document is a states rights succession document. The writers of the document wanted that to stand out, that is why the first thing noticed at a glance of the document you will see “FREE AND INDEPENDANT STATES” capitalized three times in the document to stand out. South Carolina was also letting it be known in their declaration of Independence, that it was “FREE AND INDEPANDANT STATES” and state rights, that they were declaring independence. The document goes into the history of states rights in America mentions the failure of the federal government in upholding the constitution and its interfering with states rights. South Carolina said if they were to stay in the union the “constitution will then no longer exists, equal rights of the states will be lost” and that the federal government would become its enemy. While slavery is mentioned four or five times, states rights, independent state, and state sovereignty is mentioned sixteen times. States rights are mentioned not in connection with slavery, yet slavery is always mentioned in connection with states rights. Just as southern democrats had been saying for decades in there political party planks, an attack on slavery was an attack on states rights. Just as South Carolina when it first threatened to success was over states rights, that time [1830's] over tariffs, not slavery.

    “The bottom line, slavery was a issue but not an absolute cause”
    -John C Perry Myths and realities of American Slavery

    “States rights dogma...produced secession and the confederacy”
    -E Merton Coulter The Confederate States of America Louisiana State University press

    States rights were so important to southerners it became a name, a Brigade general in the confederate army's name was “States Rights Gist.” The town Phillippi Virginia, was named after states rights advocate Supreme court justice Phillip Pendleton Barbour. In the 1820's Georgia armed solders against the federal government over states rights regarding land in Georgia [non slavery issues] and president Adams backed down. States rights was originally used by southerners rejecting federal tariff in the 1830's. The song titled “Bonnie blue flag” some say was more popular than Dixie at the time of the civil war, in it the lyrics speak of southern rights being threatened by northern treachery. The original southern secession movement in the 1820's-30's by founders like Jefferson, Madison, Charles Pickney, John Randalf

    “Gained strength not on the question of slavery. But on constitutional questions....expansion of federal power and over states rights”
    -Robert Wiliima Fogel The Rise and Fall of American Slavery

    Most important, southerners knew consolidation of power in a central government would be Americas worst nightmare and the destruction of republican government.

    "The greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers."
    --Thomas Jefferson

    Abolitionist Ignored the Constitution to try and Abolish Slavery

    “By focusing upon slavery, the bona fide story of the death of real states rights and the beginning of imperial america is overlooked...we stand naked before the awesome power to our federal master”
    -Al Benson Jr and Walter Kennedy Lincolns Marxists

    The north was by and large for keeping the original continual republic of America from its foundation. However some were influenced by various abolitionist works of fiction like Uncle Toms cabin. Because of this They came to view southern slavery as a great moral evil and a biblical sin. Slavery was a vast enough evil in there eyes that the constitution, and state sovereignty had to be overlooked. Speaking of the constitution a famous abolitionist said

    “Covenant with death and an agreement with hell”
    -William Lloyd Garrison

    The sinful slave owning south had to end. The north was also more influenced by the federalist party, with a more centralized view of government. The south who had first hand knowledge of American servitude saw the vast majority as being beneficial to the native African, elevating his position from slavery in Africa. They saw the slaves well treated and cared for. The majority did not see slavery as a great morale evil or a biblical sin. They viewed the northern abolitionist movement more from a political viewpoint.

    “ When abolition overthrow slavery in the south, it also would equally overthrow the constitution”
    -R.L Dabney 1867 A Defense of Virginia and the South

    Fight to Maintain Slavery? Or put Down Arms to Maintain Slavery?


    “As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty per cent. of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution. No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the Union.”
    -Confederate Major General John B. Gordon Causes of the Civil War

    If the south fought only for slavery, with no connection to states rights, it only had to not fight the war. Slavery was protected and not under attack by Lincoln in the states it already existed. At any time as Lincoln promised, the south just had to lay down arms and come back into the union with slavery intact, yet they chose to fight for another cause.

    “The emancipation proclamation was actually an offer permitting the south to stop fighting and return to the union by January 1st and still keep its slaves”
    -John Canaan The Peninsula campaign

    “We were not fighting for the perpetuation of slavery, but for the principle of States Rights and Free Trade, and in defense of our homes which were being ruthlessly invaded.”
    -Moses Jacob Ezekiel
    ...
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  7. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...-Cotton-States

    Fight to Maintain Slavery? Or put Down Arms to Maintain Slavery?

    “As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty per cent. of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution. No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the Union.”
    -Confederate Major General John B. Gordon Causes of the Civil War


    ...
    And this is where the southern apologist argument falls apart. The South had to institute a draft in order to field an army. And as a part of the draft they exempted slave owners. Thus southern whites were forced into slavery themselves on behalf of greedy plantation owners. This is the "libertarian states rights" ideal you are supporting? Well then you can have it.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  8. #36
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    And this is where the southern apologist argument falls apart. The South had to institute a draft in order to field an army. And as a part of the draft they exempted slave owners. Thus southern whites were forced into slavery themselves on behalf of greedy plantation owners. This is the "libertarian states rights" ideal you are supporting? Well then you can have it.
    I have already declared a cease fire with you on this subject, I was just posting the contents of 1stV's threads for you.

    My one parting comment is that ALL nations back then drafted people and exempted the rich and connected.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  9. #37
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Much of what you posted is the tariff argument I already debunked. The Morrill Tariff wasn't passed until after enough Southern states seceded that the anti tariff block didn't have the votes to stop it. Without secession there would not have been a Morrill Tariff.

    As for the "Well I just seceded to protect my sister states that seceded"....what was the main issue of the states that seceded first? Come on...you can say it....it won't kill you. It was slavery.

    And Paul Craig Roberts anti-nullification = states rights argument is just plain laughable.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  10. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    Much of what you posted is the tariff argument I already debunked. The Morrill Tariff wasn't passed until after enough Southern states seceded that the anti tariff block didn't have the votes to stop it. Without secession there would not have been a Morrill Tariff.

    As for the "Well I just seceded to protect my sister states that seceded"....what was the main issue of the states that seceded first? Come on...you can say it....it won't kill you. It was slavery.

    And Paul Craig Roberts anti-nullification = states rights argument is just plain laughable.
    Gunny has already posted why N.C. seceded. One doesn't allow themselves to be partitioned behind battle lines or allow aggressive armies to cross their land to attack another.

  11. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    Much of what you posted is the tariff argument I already debunked. The Morrill Tariff wasn't passed until after enough Southern states seceded that the anti tariff block didn't have the votes to stop it. Without secession there would not have been a Morrill Tariff.

    As for the "Well I just seceded to protect my sister states that seceded"....what was the main issue of the states that seceded first? Come on...you can say it....it won't kill you. It was slavery.

    And Paul Craig Roberts anti-nullification = states rights argument is just plain laughable.
    One last point: Slavery was safe in the Union, Lincoln himself promised to protect it, the situation was extremely complex and not worth our time arguing about.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  12. #40
    Quote Originally Posted by phill4paul View Post
    Gunny has already posted why N.C. seceded. One doesn't allow themselves to be partitioned behind battle lines or allow aggressive armies to cross their land to attack another.
    And yet the southern states had to resort to a draft and had to content with parts of their states seceding from the confederacy, especially the parts of their states that didn't own slaves. Imagine that?

    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    One last point: Slavery was safe in the Union, Lincoln himself promised to protect it, the situation was extremely complex and not worth our time arguing about.
    Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Mississippi and other states either didn't think it was or they were lying their collective butts off for reasons that have never been explained. Is the 2nd amendment safe? Do you think Obama was pro 2nd amendment simply because he gave lip service to it?
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.



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  14. #41
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    I think it's also important to remember that the confederacy had to institute a draft first, that they ultimately exempted slave owners from that draft, and areas in the south where slavery wasn't profitable tended to secede from confederate states.
    War is not always popular with those smart enough to know they are exploited and that is about all I imagine that boils down to . I live now near what was at that time the northern most point of Copperhead strength , yet a couple counties northeast of me at Boggstown that entire area seceded in 1861 and has never repealed that .

  15. #42
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    And yet the southern states had to resort to a draft and had to content with parts of their states seceding from the confederacy, especially the parts of their states that didn't own slaves. Imagine that?



    Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Mississippi and other states either didn't think it was or they were lying their collective butts off for reasons that have never been explained. Is the 2nd amendment safe? Do you think Obama was pro 2nd amendment simply because he gave lip service to it?
    You claim the south could block the Tariff, but not an end to slavery?

    I promise to hit myself if I respond further.
    Last edited by Swordsmyth; 08-25-2017 at 10:00 PM.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  16. #43
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    One last point: Slavery was safe in the Union, Lincoln himself promised to protect it, the situation was extremely complex and not worth our time arguing about.
    It was extremely complex. When we look at it through the binders of the 21st century then anything could be pointed out as the cause. The trouble is we look at it through 21st century blinders.
    It doesn't matter if it were slavery or tariffs. The fact of the matter is that the people of the mid-1800's had a VERY different view of what it believed were Federal limitations versus State sovereignty.
    And unless you can wrap your head around that simple fact then it's easy to point a finger at causes, when the actual cause, above any other, was simply the belief in State > Union.

  17. #44
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    And yet the southern states had to resort to a draft and had to content with parts of their states seceding from the confederacy, especially the parts of their states that didn't own slaves. Imagine that?
    You are aware that the North also had a draft? You are aware that parts of the North such as the 'Tri-Insula' seriously came close to secession? The New York draft riots?
    People all over had different ideas about how they wanted to be governed. Imagine that.

  18. #45
    Quote Originally Posted by phill4paul View Post
    You are aware that the North also had a draft? You are aware that parts of the North such as the 'Tri-Insula' seriously came close to secession? The New York draft riots?
    People all over had different ideas about how they wanted to be governed. Imagine that.
    1) The North had a draft first.

    2) Your argument, unless I'm just not understanding it, is that southerners were so incensed on being invaded that they lined up in droves to volunteer. If that's the case, why the need for the draft? Northerners would have no such self preservation motivation.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  19. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by phill4paul View Post
    It was extremely complex. When we look at it through the binders of the 21st century then anything could be pointed out as the cause. The trouble is we look at it through 21st century blinders.
    It doesn't matter if it were slavery or tariffs. The fact of the matter is that the people of the mid-1800's had a VERY different view of what it believed were Federal limitations versus State sovereignty.
    And unless you can wrap your head around that simple fact then it's easy to point a finger at causes, when the actual cause, above any other, was simply the belief in State > Union.
    The second main cause was a (VALID) belief that the North would use any means (noble or vile) to subjugate and destroy the south, they did not actually believe that such devices as abolition were right but simply that the south was weak to that line of attack.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  20. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    You claim the south could block the Tariff, but not and end to slavery?
    Blocking the tariff was a simple matter of having the votes in the senate to not raise taxes. Forcing the North to continue allowing the expansion of slavery was a much more difficult proposition. Did your American History class just skip over the section about bloody Kansas and the compromises brokered by Daniel Webster? Also the South had absolutely no way to coerce northern states and/or the federal government into enforcing fugitive slave laws. In fact that's what the backwards from Paul Craig Roberts is asserting. Because the North wouldn't uniformly round up escaped slaves and send them South they were violating a "sacred compact" and that was a violation of states rights. So....the North had to be proactively pro slavery in order for the civil war to not happen, therefore the civil war had nothing to do with slavery. That's seriously the argument that was put forward.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  21. #48
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    The second main cause was a (VALID) belief that the North would use any means (noble or vile) to subjugate and destroy the south, they did not actually believe that such devices as abolition were right but simply that the south was weak to that line of attack.
    Yes. The North just wanted to destroy the South.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.



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  23. #49
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    1) The North had a draft first.

    2) Your argument, unless I'm just not understanding it, is that southerners were so incensed on being invaded that they lined up in droves to volunteer. If that's the case, why the need for the draft? Northerners would have no such self preservation motivation.
    1)No, the South had a draft first. In '62. The Union didn't pass an actual draft until '63 although they drafted a War Powers Act in '62.

    2) Southerners did line up, at first, as they did in the North. Something lies within the heart of young men to prove themselves in battle. It doesn't take long for them to change their mind once they get in the thick of it. Remember also that the south was an agrarian culture. There were farms to attend to. The farms that the basic infantryman held. The ones without slaves.

  24. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    On the afternoon of February 28, 1861, President Davis sent his first veto message to the Confederate Congress. Congress had passed legislation enabling the constitutional ban and detailing punishment for those convicted. It spelled out the options for return of the Free Africans to Africa. Davis said he had carefully considered this bill “in relation to the slave trade and to punish persons offending therein”. He objected to the option that if the Free Africans could not be returned to Africa and all other options insuring their freedom could not be met, then these Free Africans could be sold on the internal Slave markets.

    Davis wrote, “This latter provision seems to me in opposition to the policy declared in the Constitution, the prohibition of African Negroes, and in derogation of its mandate to legislate for the effectuation of that object.” He, therefore, vetoed the legislation. There was no attempt to override.

    Establishing the Slave Trade would be a critical leg in upholding a Slave Republic. Instead, here was the first American Constitutional Mandate to end this noxious commerce that New England had begun and was still engaged in at this very time.

    1.9.2 (Congress can bar slaves coming from States remaining in the United States) “Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of or Territory not belonging to this Confederacy.”

    There was no need for this in 1787. All the original States were involved with domestic slavery and New England was heavily into the Transatlantic Slave Trade. In 1861 this was a safeguard against Union slave states outlawing slavery and the owners “selling South”. At this time there were 7 Slave States in the Confederacy and 8 Slave States in the United States.

    “Selling South” happened whenever a Northern State outlawed slavery and did not require the masters to free their slaves within their State. The irrefutable truth about Northern abolition is that emancipation was not always required and slaves were often sold South. That brought double relief to the North: 1) their moral feelings felt cleansed, and 2) with fewer Black people about, White people could not be “corrupted”.

    1.9.4 (Congress cannot deny or impair slavery) “No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in Negro slaves shall be passed.”

    This is the Article some claim establishes a Slave Republic. It’s hardly true. Both the 1787 and CSA Constitutions have an Article 1.9 which prohibits the General government to legislate bills of attainder and ex post facto laws. Both have an Article 1.10 which denies the States the power to pass such laws. In both Constitutions Article 1.9 applies only to the General government and Article 1.10 applies only to the States.

    While the CSA 1.9 prohibits the General government legislating against slavery, CSA Article 1.10 does not mention slavery in any regard. It’s entirely committed to ex post facto and other non-slavery related issues, e.g., excessive bail, entering treaties, laying duties on tonnage and so forth.

    So proponents claiming CSA Article 1.9 stops the States from becoming Free States is incorrect. It is solely a prohibition against the General government. If the CSA Founders meant to stop the States from becoming Free States, they would have had to provide that prohibition in Article 1.10.

    The Confederacy’s addition to 1.9 denying power to the General government to disestablish the institution of slavery was done so the prohibition would be explicit. Slavery was already implicitly outside the General government’s power when the CSA Founders abolished ‘dual sovereignty’. Slavery, as with any State creation, resided in the sovereignty of their respective peoples.

    Antebellum Americans in the South, with few exceptions, held slavery a moral evil, an inherited struggle that was also a structural pillar of its culture and wealth. A monumental societal program of practical and civic education beyond the funds of individual States was needed so freed slaves could live successfully as Free people. So personal manumission remained the norm. Jefferson had planned the territories would be a place where free Blacks could go and set up new lives for themselves. But the North would tolerate no assimilation.

    Northern political and commercial houses knew slavery and the Slave Trade was a continuing basis of Northern wealth as well. But that truth never stopped them from espousing their vanity of self-elation. Their wealth and power class never proposed a program of emancipation and assimilation into American society with or without national funds. The cost and human endeavors of Black freedom would remain Southern issues.

    One Northern abolitionist, who understood this peculiar dilemma over the struggle for Black freedom, after visiting Georgia, Virginia and South Carolina in 1854, wrote the following:

    “What had the South done to injure us, except through our sensibilities on the subject of slavery? What have we done to her, but admonish, threaten, and indict her before God, excommunicate her, stir up insurrection among her slaves, endanger her homes, make her Christians and ministers odious in other lands? And now that she has availed herself of a northern measure (the Fugitive Slave laws) for her defense, we are ready to move the country from its foundations. We ought to reflect, whether we have not been enforcing our moral sentiments upon the South in offensive ways, so as to constitute that oppression which makes even a wise man mad.

    “All this time we have overlooked the intrinsic difficulties of the evil which the South has had to contend with; have disagreed among ourselves about sin per se, and about the question of immediate or gradual emancipation, and yet have expected the South to be clear on these points, and to act promptly. …. What has she ever done, except in self-defense, in our long quarrel, which, upon reconciliation, would rankle in our memory, and make it hard for us to forgive and forget? Positively, not one thing. We have been the assailants, she the mark; we the prosecutors, she the defendant; we the accusers, she the self-justifying respondent.

    “Unless we choose to live in perpetual war, we must prevent and punish all attempts to decoy slaves from their masters. Whatever our repugnance to slavery may be, there is a law of the land, a Constitution, to which we must submit, or employ suitable means to change. While it remains, all our appeals to a “higher law” are fanaticism.” Nehemiah Adams, D.D. “A Southside View of Slavery” pp.127-128.

    Rhett and his associates were not aiming to keep slaves in slavery. No one argued against State manumission laws. The hard truth is that the Gulf States had suffered more than their share of abolitionist wrath. The hounds of rabid abolitionism including clergy, urging slaves to revolt and murder for freedom never left Southern ears. Rhett and Cobb wanted to insure the hounds would not return with the admittance of Free States.

    Since the United States and the Confederacy were now separate governments, no fugitive slave laws would apply to both unless a treaty were signed between them. The chances that might happen were less than minimal. North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas would have no obligation to protect the CSA slave owner’s property rights or deliver the slave back.

    For this simple reason (among others) astute observers of the political scene such as Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln’s Treasury Secretary, saw the Gulf States’ secession as the death-knell of slavery. He was more than likely correct. Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens agreed. Hardly assurance to those who insist the Gulf States seceded to create and expand a Slave Empire.

    Much more at: https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/r...-constitution/
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Confederate Emancipation

    Ultimately, of course, Confederate emancipation was a failure, as modern-day critics like Levine love to crow. Instead of solving the problem of slavery themselves, as Southerners had always struggled to do in and out of the Union, slavery was abolished in the worst way possible: as an unintended consequence of a deadly, devastating conquest by outsiders with no interest in the welfare of black or white Southerners. Virginian slaveholder Thomas Jefferson’s fear, that emancipation would be a ‘bloody process…excited and conducted’ by an enemy in wartime, rather than a change ‘brought on by the generous energy of our own minds,’ had come true. The significance of Confederate emancipation is not in its effect, however, but in its intent. As Abbeville Institute Chair Donald Livingston concludes, ‘This failure does not take away from what we learn about the character of the Southern people: that they had the moral and political resources to effect emancipation when the right political circumstances presented themselves.’ Surely, the fact that Southerners were willing to make the sacrifice at all—no other people in history living among slaves had ever considered freeing them, much less arming them!—and not the trite observation of ‘too little, too late,’ is the moral of this heroic story.

    More at: https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/r...-emancipation/
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Let’s consider the war and slavery. Again and again I encounter people who say that the South Carolina secession ordinance mentions the defense of slavery and that one fact proves beyond argument that the war was caused by slavery. The first States to secede did mention a threat to slavery as a motive for secession. They also mentioned decades of economic exploitation and the seizure of the common government for the first time ever by a sectional party declaredly hostile to the Southern States. Were they to be a permanently exploited minority, they asked? This was significant to people who knew that their fathers and grandfathers had founded the Union for the protection and benefit of ALL the States.
    It is no surprise that they mentioned potential interference with slavery as a threat to their everyday life and their social structure. Only a few months before, John Brown and his followers had attempted just that. They murdered a number of people including a free black man who was a respected member of the Harpers Ferry community and a grand-nephew of George Washington because Brown wanted Washington’s sword as a talisman. In Brown’s baggage was a constitution making him dictator of a new black nation and a supply of pikes to be used to stab to death the slave-owner and his wife and children.
    It is significant that not one single slave joined Brown’s attempted blow against slavery. It was entirely an affair of outsiders. Significant also is that six Northern rich men financed Brown and that some elements of the North celebrated him as a saint, an agent of God, ringing the church bells at his execution. Even more significantly, Brown was merely acting out the venomous hatred of Southerners that had characterized some parts of Northern society for many years previously.
    Could this relentless barrage of hatred directed by Northerners against their Southern fellow citizens have perhaps had something to do with the secession impulse? That was the opinion of Horatio Seymour, Democratic governor of New York. In a public address he pointed to the enormity of making war on Southern fellow citizens who had always been exceptionally loyal Americans, but who had been driven to secession by New England fanaticism.
    Secessionists were well aware that slavery was under no immediate threat within the Union. Indeed, some anti-secessionists, especially those with the largest investment in slave property, argued that slavery was safer under the Union than in a new experiment in government.
    Advocates of the “slavery and nothing but slavery” interpretation also like to mention a speech in which Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens is supposed to have said that white supremacy was the “cornerstone” of the Confederacy. The speech was ad hoc and badly reported, but so what? White supremacy was also the cornerstone of the United States. A law of the first Congress established that only white people could be naturalized as citizens. Abraham Lincoln’s Illinois forbade black people to enter the State and deprived those who were there of citizenship rights.
    Instead of quoting two cherry-picked quotations, serious historians will look into more of the vast documentation of the time. For instance, in determining what the war was “about,” why not consider Jefferson Davis’s inaugural address, the resolutions of the Confederate Congress, numerous speeches by Southern spokesmen of the time as they explained their departure from the U.S. Congress and spoke to their constituents about the necessity of secession. Or for that matter look at the entire texts of the secession documents.
    Our advocates of slavery causation practice the same superficial and deceitful tactics in viewing their side of the fight. They rely mostly on a few pretty phrases from a few of Lincoln’s prettier speeches to account for the winning side in the Great Civil War. But what were Northerners really saying?
    I am going to do something radical. I am going to review what Northerners had to say about the war. Not a single Southern source, Southern opinion, or Southern accusation will I present. Just the words of Northerners (and a few foreign observers) on what the war was “about.”
    Abraham Lincoln was at pains to assure the South that he intended no threat to slavery. He said he understood Southerners and that Northerners would be exactly like them living in the same circumstances. He said that while slavery was not a good thing (which most Southerners agreed with) he had no power to interfere with slavery and would not know what to do if he had the power. He acquiesced in a proposed 13th Amendment that would have guaranteed slavery into the 20th century. Later, he famously told Horace Greeley that his purpose was to save the Union, for which he would free all the slaves, some of the slaves, or none of the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation itself promised a continuance of slavery to States that would lay down their arms.
    All Lincoln wanted was to prevent slavery in any territories, future States, which then might become Southern and vote against Northern control of the Treasury and federal legislation. From the anti-slavery perspective this is a highly immoral position. At the time of the Missouri Compromise, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison said that restricting the spread of slavery was a false, politically motivated position. The best thing for the welfare of African Americans and their eventual emancipation was to allow them to spread as thinly as possible.
    Delegation after delegation came to Lincoln in early days to beg him to do something to avoid war. Remember that 61% of the American people had voted against this great hero of democracy, which ought to have led him to a conciliatory frame of mind. He invariably replied that he could not do without “his revenue.” He said nary a word about slavery. Most of “his revenue” was collected at the Southern ports because of the tariff to protect Northern industry and most of it was spent in the North. Lincoln could not do without that revenue and vowed his determination to collect it without interruption by secession. He knew that his political backing rested largely on New England/New York money men and the rising power of the new industrialists of Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago who were aggressively demanding that the federal government sponsor and support them. The revenue also provided the patronage of offices and contracts for his hungry supporters, without which his party would dwindle away.
    Discussing the reaction to secession, the New York Times editorialized: “The commercial bearing of the question has acted upon the North. We were divided and confused until our pockets were touched.” A Manchester, N.H., paper was one of hundreds of others that agreed, saying: “It is very clear that the South gains by this process and we lose. No, we must not let the South go.”
    Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress officially declared that the war WAS NOT AGAINST SLAVERY but to preserve the Union. (By preserving the Union, of course, they actually meant not preserving the real Union but ensuring their control of the federal machinery.)
    At the Hampton Roads peace conference a few months before Appomattox, Lincoln suggested to the Confederate representatives that if they ceased fighting then the Emancipation Proclamation could be left to the courts to survive or fall. Alexander Stephens, unlike Lincoln, really cared about the fate of the black people and asked Lincoln what was to become of them if freed in their present unlettered and propertyless condition. Lincoln’s reply: “Root, hog, or die.” A line from a minstrel song suggesting that they should survive as best they could. Lincoln routinely used the N-word all his life, as did most Northerners.


    The South, supposedly fighting for slavery, did not respond to any of these offers for the continuance of slavery. In fact, wise Southerners like Jefferson Davis realized that if war came it would likely disrupt slavery as it had during the first war of independence. That did not in the least alter his desire for the independence and self-government that was the birthright of Americans. Late in the war he sent a special emissary to offer emancipation if European powers would break the illegal blockade.
    Saying that the South was fighting only to defend the evils of slavery is a deceitful back-handed way to suggest that, therefore the North was fighting to rid America of the evils of slavery. Nothing could be further from the truth. First of all, secession did not necessarily require war against the South. That was a choice. Slavery had existed for over two hundred years and there was no Northern majority in favour of emancipation. Emancipation was not the result of a moral crusade against evil but a byproduct of a ruthless war of invasion and conquest. Not one single act of Lincoln and the North in the war was motivated by moral considerations in regard to slavery.
    Even if slavery was a reason for secession, it does not explain why the North made a war of invasion and conquest on a people who only wanted to be let alone to live as they had always lived. The question of why the North made war is not even asked by our current historians. They assume without examination that the North is always right and the South is always evil. They do not look at the abundant Northern evidence that might shed light on the matter.
    When we speak about the causes of war should we not pay some attention to the motives of the attacker and not blame everything on the people who were attacked and conquered? To say that the war was “caused” by the South’s defense of slavery is logically comparable to the assertion that World War II was caused by Poland resisting attack by Germany. People who think this way harbor an unacknowledged assumption: Southerners are not fellow citizens deserving of tolerance but bad people and deserve to be conquered. The South and its people are the property of the North to do with as they wish. Therefore no other justification is needed. That Leninist attitude is very much still alive judging by the abuse I receive in print and by e-mail. The abuse never discusses evidence, only denounces what is called “Neo-Confederate” and “Lost Cause” mythology. These are both political terms of abuse that have no real meaning and are designed to silence your enemy unheard.
    Let us look at the U.S. Senate in February 1863. Senator John Sherman of Ohio, one of the most prominent of the Republican supporters of war against the South, has the floor. He is arguing in favour of a bill to establish a system of national banks and national bank currency. He declared that this bill was the most important business pending before the country. It was so important, he said, that he would see all the slaves remain slaves if it could be passed. Let me repeat this. He would rather leave all the slaves in bondage rather than lose the national bank bill. This was a few weeks after the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
    What about this bill? Don’t be deceived by the terminology. So-called National Banks were to be the property of favoured groups of private capitalists. They were to have as capital interest-bearing government bonds at a 50% discount. The bank notes that they were to issue were to be the national currency. The banks, not the government, had control of this currency. That is, these favoured capitalists had the immense power and profit of controlling the money and credit of the country. Crony capitalism that has been the main feature of the American regime up to this very moment.
    Senator Sherman’s brother, General Sherman, had recently been working his way across Mississippi, not fighting armed enemies but destroying the infrastructure and the food and housing of white women and children and black people. When the houses are burned, the livestock taken away or killed, the barns with tools and seed crops destroyed, fences torn down, stored food and standing crops destroyed, the black people will starve as well as the whites. General Sherman was heard to say: “Damn the *******! I wish they were anywhere but here and could be kept at work.”
    General Sherman was not fighting for the emancipation of black people. He was a proto-fascist who wanted to crush citizens who had the gall to disobey the government.
    The gracious Mrs. General Sherman agreed. She wrote her husband thus:
    “I hope this may not be a war of emancipation but of extermination, & that all under the influence of the foul fiend may be driven like swine into the sea. May we carry fire and sword into their states till not one habitation is left standing.”
    Not a word about the slaves.
    As the war began, the famous abolitionist Theodore Weld declared that the South had to be wiped out because it is “the foe to Northern industry—to our mines, our manufactures, our commerce.” Nothing said about benefit to the slaves. The famous abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher enjoyed a European tour while the rivers of blood were flowing in America. Asked by a British audience why the North did not simply let the South go, Beecher replied, “Why not let the South go? O that the South would go! But then they must leave us their lands.”
    Then there is the Massachusetts Colonel who wrote his governor from the South in January 1862:
    “The thing we seek is permanent dominion. . . . They think we mean to take their slaves? Bah! We must take their ports, their mines, their water power, the very soil they plow . . . .”
    Seizing Southern resources was a common theme among advocates of the Union. Southerners were not fellow citizens of a nation. They were obstacles to be disposed of so Yankees could use their resources to suit themselves. The imperialist impulse was nakedly and unashamedly expressed before, during, and after the war.
    Charles Dickens, who had spent much time in the U.S. a few years before the war, told readers of his monthly magazine in 1862: “The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states.”
    Another British observer, John Stuart Mill, hoped the war would be against slavery and was disappointed. “The North, it seems,” Mill wrote, “have no more objections to slavery than the South have.”


    How about these curiosities from the greatest of Northern intellectuals, Emerson. He records in his journals: “But the secret, the esoteric of abolition—a secret, too, from the abolitionist—is, that the negro and the negro-holder are really of one party.” And again, “The abolitionist wishes to abolish slavery, but because he wishes to abolish the black man.” Emerson had previously predicted that African Americans were like the Dodo, incapable of surviving without care and doomed to disappear. Another abolitionist, James G. Birney, says: “The negroes are part of the enemy.”
    Indeed a staple of Northern discourse was that black people would and should disappear, leaving the field to righteous New England Anglo-Saxons. My friend Howard White remarks: “Whatever his faults regarding slavery, the Southerner never found the existence of Africans in his world per se a scandal. That particular foolishness had its roots in the regions further North.”
    In 1866, Boston had a meeting of abolitionists and strong Unionists. The speaker, a clergymen, compared the South to a sewer. It was to be drained of its present inhabitants and “to be filled up with Yankee immigration . . . and upon that foundation would be constructed a new order of things. To be reconstructed, the South must be Northernized, and until that was done, the work of reconstruction could not be accomplished.” Not a word about a role for African Americans in this program.
    One of the most important aspects of the elimination of slavery is seldom mentioned. The absence of any care or planning for the future of black Americans. The Russian Czar pointed this out to an American visitor as a flaw that invalidated the fruits of emancipation. We could fill ten books with evidence of Northern mistreatment of black people during and after the war. Emancipation as it occurred was not a happy experience. To borrow Kirkpatrick Sale’s term, it was a Hell. I recommend Kirk’s book Emancipation Hell and Paul Graham’s work When the Yankees Come,

    This subject is just beginning to be explored seriously. Wrote one Northerner of Sherman’s men, they “are impatient of darkies, and annoyed to see them pampered, petted and spoiled.” Ambrose Bierce, a hard-fighting Union soldier for the entire war, said that the black people he saw were virtual slaves as the concubines and servants of Union officers. Many black people took to the roads not because of an intangible emancipation but because their homes and living had been destroyed. They collected in camps which had catastrophic rates or mortality. The army asked some Northern governors to take some of these people, at least temporarily. The governors of Massachusetts and Illinois, Lincoln’s most fervid supporters, went ballistic. This was unacceptable. The black people would be uncomfortable in the North and much happier in the South, said the longtime abolitionist Governor Andrew of Massachusetts. Happier in the South than in Massachusetts?
    What about those black soldiers in the Northern army, used mainly for labour and forlorn hopes like the Crater? A historian quotes a Northern observer of U.S. Army activities in occupied coastal Carolina in 1864. Generals declared their intention to recruit “every able-bodied male in the department.” Writes the Northern observer: “The atrocious impressments of boys of fourteen and responsible men with large dependent families, and the shooting down of negroes who resisted, were common occurrences.”

    More at: https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/c...about-slavery/
    ...
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  25. #51
    Quote Originally Posted by phill4paul View Post
    1)No, the South had a draft first. In '62. The Union didn't pass an actual draft until '63 although they drafted a War Powers Act in '62.
    Actually I meant to say the South had the draft first which supports my point. The South couldn't field enough volunteers even though they were fighting on their own turf.

    2) Southerners did line up, at first, as they did in the North. Something lies within the heart of young men to prove themselves in battle. It doesn't take long for them to change their mind once they get in the thick of it. Remember also that the south was an agrarian culture. There were farms to attend to. The farms that the basic infantryman held. The ones without slaves.
    The farms with slaves got exceptions from the draft. The others would get shot as deserters for leaving.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  26. #52
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    And this is where the southern apologist argument falls apart. The South had to institute a draft in order to field an army. And as a part of the draft they exempted slave owners. Thus southern whites were forced into slavery themselves on behalf of greedy plantation owners. This is the "libertarian states rights" ideal you are supporting? Well then you can have it.
    Well it seems my post has been brought into this after all, so I will post. And this is where the northern apologist argument falls apart. Slave owners were not excepted, large plantation owners that were relied on for food for the armies [as well as other important classes just like the north excepted certain classes] that owned 20 or more were. I will also add the south had to turn away volunteers in the beginning of the war and the north instituted a draft to invade fellow americans. So unless your claiming the draft equally enslaved northerners [i agree i hate the draft no matter who does it, i like that North Carolina nullified the csa draft] you have exposed your bias.


    I will also mention this post was nothing but a red harring. You want to ignore the clear evidence for secession on try and make it all about a small side issue.

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dict.../red%20herring
    something that distracts attention from the real issue
    Last edited by 1stvermont; 08-26-2017 at 02:29 PM.

  27. #53
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    Much of what you posted is the tariff argument I already debunked. The Morrill Tariff wasn't passed until after enough Southern states seceded that the anti tariff block didn't have the votes to stop it. Without secession there would not have been a Morrill Tariff.
    Please share with me where you get your history? The Morrill Tariff Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives on May 10, 1860, on a sectional vote, with nearly all northern representatives in support and nearly all southern representatives in opposition. With the election of Abraham Lincoln whose central campaign objective was to triple the tariff. Tariff was the “keystone” of the republican party “protection for home industry” was the campaign poster of the 1860 republican party. South Carolina did what it had done decades before, and seceded from the Union over the higher tariff rates soon to be imposed on the south by the north. It was not just the south, NYC mayor Fernando Wood wanted to make NYC a “free city” [free trade] and secede from the Union. T

    The Morrill Tariff of 1861 was an increased import tariff in the United States, adopted on March 2, 1861,
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Tariff




    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post


    As for the "Well I just seceded to protect my sister states that seceded"....what was the main issue of the states that seceded first? Come on...you can say it....it won't kill you. It was slavery.
    or we could tell the truth about what caused the secession of the cotton states

    http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...-Cotton-States


    But even so, lets pretend the deep south left simply to maintain slavery, that has nothing to do with the reason the upper south left. You are avoiding the question and the cause, that of state sovereignty.

    http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...he-Upper-South

  28. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    And yet the southern states had to resort to a draft and had to content with parts of their states seceding from the confederacy, especially the parts of their states that didn't own slaves. Imagine that?
    as did the north resort to a draft, the south because they were invaded by a larger force, fought longer and harder for the cause than the north ever would have. Clearly the north had the same problem with secession. and west Virginia was stolen, never by a fair election and the election was done after troops went to fight for the south.


    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Mississippi and other states either didn't think it was or they were lying their collective butts off for reasons that have never been explained. Is the 2nd amendment safe? Do you think Obama was pro 2nd amendment simply because he gave lip service to it?
    I would argue they did tell us why they left, you just wont listen

    http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...he-Upper-South
    http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...-Cotton-States

  29. #55
    Quote Originally Posted by phill4paul View Post
    It was extremely complex. When we look at it through the binders of the 21st century then anything could be pointed out as the cause. The trouble is we look at it through 21st century blinders.
    It doesn't matter if it were slavery or tariffs. The fact of the matter is that the people of the mid-1800's had a VERY different view of what it believed were Federal limitations versus State sovereignty.
    And unless you can wrap your head around that simple fact then it's easy to point a finger at causes, when the actual cause, above any other, was simply the belief in State > Union.

    very well said.

    From Union to Empire The Political Effects of the Civil war

    http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?511837-From-Union-to-Empire-The-Political-Effects-of-the-Civil-war

  30. #56
    Quote Originally Posted by phill4paul View Post
    Gunny has already posted why N.C. seceded. One doesn't allow themselves to be partitioned behind battle lines or allow aggressive armies to cross their land to attack another.

    do you have a link for that thread?



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  32. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    1) The North had a draft first.

    2) Your argument, unless I'm just not understanding it, is that southerners were so incensed on being invaded that they lined up in droves to volunteer. If that's the case, why the need for the draft? Northerners would have no such self preservation motivation.
    there was no draft in the south originally, they had to end men back because they could not arm them. Both sides instituted drafts as the war progressed.

  33. #58
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    Blocking the tariff was a simple matter of having the votes in the senate to not raise taxes. Forcing the North to continue allowing the expansion of slavery was a much more difficult proposition. Did your American History class just skip over the section about bloody Kansas and the compromises brokered by Daniel Webster? Also the South had absolutely no way to coerce northern states and/or the federal government into enforcing fugitive slave laws. In fact that's what the backwards from Paul Craig Roberts is asserting. Because the North wouldn't uniformly round up escaped slaves and send them South they were violating a "sacred compact" and that was a violation of states rights. So....the North had to be proactively pro slavery in order for the civil war to not happen, therefore the civil war had nothing to do with slavery. That's seriously the argument that was put forward.
    witch they did not have.


    I suggest sir you stop going to government education for your history, you wont get it there. The south had constitutionally from the beginning protected rights of its property that included recognized slaves property. The north would not allow them their property and would steal it [by not working with federal workers]by not returning slaves. What if a Vermonter went to new york ,they claimed horses were not property and stole it, would that be protecting their individual rights? This is in no way a violation of northern states rights, but a protection of southern states rights to own slaves. The north was not forced to have slavery, neither were southerners, it was optional, but all north or south under the Constitution, had equal rights to own their property, the north violated that with the fugitive slave laws.
    Last edited by 1stvermont; 08-26-2017 at 02:32 PM.

  34. #59
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    Actually I meant to say the South had the draft first which supports my point. The South couldn't field enough volunteers even though they were fighting on their own turf.
    and what was the population north vs south? and how many of lincolns armies were made up of immigrants during the war? who fielded a higher % of men compared to population? i will let you look up those stats.

  35. #60
    Look at the political situation between the Mexican-American War and the Civil War. People weren't killing each other over tariffs, they were killing each other over slavery.
    Stop believing stupid things

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