The Civil War Began...

[FarmerChick]

yes I will post links easily.
I love this topic and have studied the Civil War for a long time actually. Just something I like LOL

will get that to you in a while...off to do a few things first, big storm coming now, batten down the hatches time.......

 

[FarmerChick]

http://search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A0oG...tp://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/tl1861.html

Note March 1861
no plans to end slavery before war declaired...yet he 'was preceived' to be against slavery

Note Jan 1963
Lincoln went 'along' with the 'tide'


Another from his speech:

"If all earthly power were given me," said Lincoln in a speech delivered in Peoria, Illinois, on October 16, 1854, "I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution [of slavery]. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land." After acknowledging that this plan's "sudden execution is impossible," he asked whether freed blacks should be made "politically and socially our equals?" "My own feelings will not admit of this," he said, "and [even] if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not ... We can not, then, make them equals."5

_____ read more-- http://search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A0oG...tp://www.ihr.org/jhr/v13/v13n5p-4_Morgan.html



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basically pretending one 'knows' about the civil war, one does not know about Lincoln in general and all that 'made this civil war happen'---what is the best outcome of this war, freed people therefore he gets that acknowledgement.



the freedom or relocation of slaves would HURT the South, since it was its major workforce. To handle 'this problem' would cripple the South, so yea, who wouldn't see one side of the battle handling 'this problem' to win


will post more if people want to know......just a pet peeve of mine LOL
this civil war is fascinating between the North and South to me.

 

[lwheelr]

Ok. I HAVE done the research. What I find is that the issues were either ones that could have been worked out otherwise, or they came back to slavery.

For example, the south felt that slaves should entitle a state to more representation in Congress, because they wanted at least a portion of their slaves counted. Slaves having no citizenship, were not allowed to vote or to have any kind of representation, and were not counted for districting for Congressional representation.

The north felt that if this were so, then slaves should be taxed with a poll tax. After all, those slaves were contributing to the productivity of the landholdings, the same way employees contributed to manufacturing productivity.

The south did not want to pay a poll tax, but they did want the representation.

Those two elements were HUGE. This is borne out NOT by what anyone says, or thinks in retrospect (after all, there are many opinions now about what people thought or felt then), but by the fact that both of those issues were addressed in the Confederate Constitution - that there could be no percapita taxation based on anything other than their own means of counting the population, and that slaves counted with 3/5ths accreditation toward the population of a state for purposes of representation.

Several other provisions regarding slavery are listed in the Confederate Constitution - there are at least six separate provisions which mention it directly or mention issues which were solely an issue because of slavery.

Claims to other things being more important than the slave issue fail by that same test. In fact, the only other two major provisions in the Confederate Constitution which might be construed to be issues in and of themselves were only issues because of actions taken by Congress to control slave trade.

Further, the division happened right along slave lines. The only states to separate were those whose economy depended largely on industry involving large slaveholdings.

If other reasons had truly been the reason for the separation of the states, you would have found two things:

1. Some states that did not depend heavily on slave labor for income would have joined the confederacy. None did. Nor did any states which derived income largely from slave driven plantations stay in the Union.

2. Other major issues would be reflected in the Confederate Constitution. Not only are there not really any that cannot be traced back to slavery, but slavery is mentioned many more times than any other. Protection of the institution was clearly a major goal of the new government, and therefore logically the underlying driving force behind the formation of the Confederate Government - otherwise they'd have shown other goals in their organization, and they do not.

The provisions in it are very similar to the US government system, with the exception of one or two minor points, such as the term of presidency being a different length, EXCEPT for the issues revolving around slavery.

Slavery is mentioned by name in at least four provisions of the Confederate Constitution, and is listed as an ongoing right that the government will uphold even through future growth. It isn't a long document, so that many occurrences is rather significant.

If other issues were indeed more important that the issue of slavery, they surely would have found their way into the new law, don't you think?

So the purpose of the WAR, was to preserve the Union. But the principal reason for the conflict in the first place, was in fact, slavery. Because that is the only significant thing they found to be important enough to legally change in establishing their new government.

All the rest was just fueling the fire to get people involved who would not otherwise be involved in the slavery issue. Fanning the flames of discontent to gain their own ends.

 

[lwheelr]

Oh, and I never said the war was about "freeing the slaves". I did state that the principle conflict revolved around slavery. The Confederate Constitution bears that out - it shows clearly that this is what the Confederacy felt was threatened, and that this is what they strove to protect.

The tide of the world was against them, and they knew it. Slave trade had already been stopped in many other nations, and freeing of the slaves was happening as a natural result of that. The judging eye of the world was looking at the US and expecting them to come into the current century. Congress was already passing laws against the importation of slaves and regulating port traffic as a result, in an attempt to put pressure on the south to end slavery state by state. These things were happening in the decades leading up to, and on the brink of the Civil War.

For the poor in the South, it wasn't about slavery. But I doubt most of them really knew what it was about, or what the truth was. Then, as now, they pretty much believed what they were told, and when someone came in and told them that the North was trying to deny them their freedom, they pretty much bought it. How were they to know otherwise? Plantation owners and lawmakers easily controlled the press, and most poor people could not afford a paper when it was new anyway. Most of them could not really even define the "rights" they were fighting for, or how they were being infringed.

So yes, you can find other justifications for the Civil War. But none of them were really important enough to go to war over - and the new lawmakers were not sufficiently exercised over them to even mention them in the new laws. This indicates loud and clear that they were just smokescreens for the true motivations, and not really a concern at all - the Confederacy knew that the real issue WAS slavery, and if they controlled THAT issue, all the others would simply melt away.

 

[dacjohns]

 

[FarmerChick]

using the terms that the war WAS to abolish slavery is wrong to me, but yes, I agree using the term that is 'was about slavery'---the financial sides of slavery and not the humanitarian side.

slavery was nothing but money and people were nothing but cargo to be taxed etc....just so happens as things progressed, so did the outcome regarding 'owning humans'....so of course that was a good thing

I think that is where it always gets boggled up for me.

People think it 'was about slavery'--as in the human point.
It was about the financial side and more regarding slavery. People as pawns/property and their situations used to the best of the enemies side for victory.

 

[FarmerJamie]

the inner history geek is trying to get out.....

I think FC has part of it - saying slavery was a part of the issue. The context in which the country was operating was a highly regionalized collection of individual states.

Tallman nailed the crux of the issue: is it "the United States are...." or "the United States is...".

One of my favorite quotes is something like...the South was a united group fighting for disunion and the North was a disjointed group fighting for unity".

New England was abolitionist and heavily relying on industrialization. Going back to the Nullification Crisis in the 1830s, the agrarian South opposed tariffs protecting NE businesses. In many ways, the Midwest initially leaned toward the South with the Mississippi river providing an outlet for Midwest farm products in New Orleans - the growth of the railroads strengthened the Midwest's ties to New England.

As the country expanded, there was a real risk for the South that unless some balance of power could be reached, they would be dictated to by an overwhelming majority in Congress from the industrial north. The 3/5 Compromise, the Missouri Compromise were all attempts to find some balance.

If other reasons had truly been the reason for the separation of the states, you would have found two things:
1. Some states that did not depend heavily on slave labor for income would have joined the confederacy. None did. Nor did any states which derived income largely from slave driven plantations stay in the Union.

Officially, none did, but large contingents of volunteers from the border states did fight for the Confederacy. Here in Ohio, the political fighting was huge about whether or not to support Lincoln and the war. The political shenanigans and sleight -of-hand is amazing if you go back and look at what actually happened.

The Deep South were the hard-core secessionists - the upper South states joined because of loyalty and solidarity once Lincoln made the choice to militarily confront the rebellious deep South.

A tragic part of our history - slavery needed to go, and the result of 600,000 men losing their lives, indirectly led to the women's suffrage movement due to a generation of women not being able to get married and live a life like their mothers. I guess I view this tribulation as the "birth pains" to create the country that helped win two world wars and the peace afterwards.

It's sad that the political bickering of today ignores the sacrifices of the past.

 

[patandchickens]

The thing is, you cannot separate the moral realm of slavery from the practical realm of slavery from the way that pretty much all of Southern culture/economy/way-of-life/etc depended on it.

So there is no way, that I can see, of really definitively saying it was more about slavery than about keeping the whole overall "architecture" of those states' economy and culture and all of that. The former was basically a required utility in order to have the latter.

To me, I would say that the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation did NOT affect anyone outside the rebelling states is pretty much proof that it wasn't primarily about slavery, pure and simple. B/c if it were a general "we are not havin' with this slavery thing any more in this country" thing, abolishing it would have applied equally to EVERYONE right from the outset... not just to those it "needed" to apply to in order to help win the war and then oh we'll sort out the rest later when people have had more time to get used to the idea.

Pat

 

[Dirk Chesterfield]

War was taught to me to be a natural result of people living together with limited resources. The civil war was just a natural extension of this as the north and south had very different resources and there were varying opinions on whether or not it was good that we became one nation

It is my opinion that the American Civil War was perpetrated for economic reasons. The North was "mined out" in regard to easily acquired resources. They were used up in expanding industry. The South was ripe for the picking, being rather sparsely populated and resource rich. Using the issue of slavery was the coupe de grace in terms of politically motivating the Northern population to tacitly support the war.

But it still wasn't a very popular war from the Northern populace's viewpoint, considering the Draft Riots that saw artillery, gatling guns and bayonets used in the streets of NY City against those rioting in opposition of the war draft in 1863. Rioters completely burned down 50 buildings in NYC. The 2000 dead and 8000 wounded in this insurrection are ample evidence that the war was not popular at all.

During so called "Reconstruction" the majority of Southern resources were plundered and shipped to the North. My current state of residence, North Carolina, was absolutely decimated after the war in regard to lumber. Literally huge tracts of land, some as big as entire European countries were strip mined of every single usable tree. All of the old growth forests in the south were completely cut down during this time frame. In my opinion, it isn't a coincidence that the rise of the Robber Barons coincided with the Civil War and Reconstruction. It was the goal of the entire operation. Centralize all power and use it to monopolize huge sectors of the economy. Destroy, burn, decimate, when it's all said and done buy up what is left for pennies on the dollar.

By the way, I was raised in NY and moved to the "New South" in the early 80's. I was taught the victors version of history in school and only learned of the Southern abject destitution after I became an adult.

 

[lwheelr]

The reconstruction period was conducted under different leadership than the war. Lincoln's plan was to let the South gracefully reintegrate. Grant felt that the South should be punished economically so that it was deprived of the ability to raise an army again. Lincoln died. Grant did it his way.