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The American Civil War Timeline- 150th Anniversary (2 Viewers)

Mjolnirs said:
AcerFC said:
Timmy also brings up a good point that is they were so concerned with a centralized government, why did they form the Confederate states of America? Why did each state not form their own nation?
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Strength in numbers. With Lincoln calling for troops to put down the "insurrection" it was better for the states to unite to defend themselves. Interestingly many of the Southern Governors were restrictive as to where their state militias and their arms could fight.
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I read where the governor of Georgia once proposed that Georgia troops fight autonomously under Georgia generals, even if attached to a larger Confederate army. North Carolina, with its heavy pro-union population in the west, was also an ongoing problem for the South. Yet NC ultimately ended up supplying more troops than any other state, according to some sources.
 
Southern Perspectives, Concluded

Before getting to Northern perspectives, I wanted to conclude the South (for now) with a few comments:

First, the argument for secession was a theoretical idea that Southerners loved to argue, but few believed it would ever come to that. Among those few were Calhoun, and his ideological successor, Robert Barnwell Rhett, publisher and editor of the Charleston Mercury, and one of the first of the "fire-eaters": angry Southerners who tried to push the region to secede. But as we shall see, until the very late 1850s, the ideas of these men were not considered popular. Most influential Southerners preferred working things out with the North.

Second, the specific political desires of Southerners were influenced heavily by the region they were in. The deep South, for instance, was less interested in western expansion than they were in southern expansion: there was a strong movement there for the United States to take over parts or all of central America and create a huge "slaveholding empire." Virgina and North Carolina didn't want this at all; it would threaten their own commerce. Virginia was always concerned that the Northern states would push through a new tarrif that might hamper its international trade. The deep South, aware that such a tarrif would never affect cotton, was disinterested in the topic. Many of the westernmost Southern states, especially Texas, wanted a transcontinental railroad to run through the South, and this was their main issue. Texas also wanted "Indian Territory" (now Oklahoma) resolved. Western Virginia was settled by residents who destested slavery, slaveowners, and anything to do with Richmond.

Third, there were social differences between Southerners, even among the upperclass slaveholders, that would play a significant role in the coming struggle. South Carolinians considered themselves far superior to the "lower classes" down further south. Among the South Carolinians, Charlestonians look down on just about everyone else in the state. Virginians looked down on everyone, and your pedigree depended upon how far back you could trace your bloodline to the original settlers. As foolish as it might seem to believe, a person who had ancestors who had arrived in 1632 might actually have more political clout than someone whose ancestors arrived in 1674, etc.

The Southerners considered themselves a romantic breed. The upper classes were heavily influenced by the writings of Sir Walter Scott (Ivanhoe), and they held tournaments where young men would compete in horsemanship. Chivalry was considered a Southern virtue. Though dueling was in fact illegal, many disputes between men were solved in this manner. There are parts of Gone With The Wind that really were accurate: the great plantation houses really did give huge barbecues and parties that would last days, and Southern hospitality was free flowing. The great balls in Richmond and Charleston were magnificent, gallant affairs. Among African-Americans, house slaves were treated much differently than field hands: many times they were thought of as part of the family and lived very fine and secure lives, much better than the poor white trash whom they despised.

The living conditions of the "poor white trash" was beyond anything imaginable in today's America. You would have to travel to the worst parts of the Third World to witness such poverty. The upper classes of the South despised these people, and the feeling was mutual. But then, the poor whites hated everyone: slaves, slaveowners, northerners, and most of all each other. Just about the only thing they loved to do was fight. And they were extremely good at this, as they would soon demonstrate.

Lastly, it is very important to note that the South was extremely religious. Mostly Protestant (Baptist, Methodist, Anglican) with the exception of Louisana, which was strongly Catholic. In Charleston, a large number of German immigrants were Lutheran. Charleston also featured a large number of Jews, the most Jews in any American city at that time. Southerners tended to be much more tolerant of religious differences than did their Northern counterparts, and Charleston was considered a very cosmopolitan city.

There was no conflict, as least none acknowledged, between religious beliefs and slavery: as I wrote earlier, slavery was thought to be a positive good, and endorsed in the Bible. The use of Africans as slaves was defended by specific Biblical quotations regarding one of Noah's sons, who was dark-skinned and a hewer of wood. What's important to emphasize is that Southerners did not consider themselves either unChristian or immoral by any means. Indeed, when the struggle began they invoked God on their side. Many of the most famous Southern generals were extremely devout men who never went anywhere without a Bible by their side, especially Lee and Jackson.

I bring this up because it has long been argued that Christianity had a role to play in ending slavery in the United States. As we examine Northern perspectives, especially the abolitionist movement, we'll get around to discussing this. But overall, IMO, Christianity's role was neutral, as it has been in almost every war among Christians.

 
tdoss said:
jwb said:
tdoss said:
Exactly how many people owned slaves in the South?

Just wondering...I mean, a lot of people fought and died on the Southern side of this and I honestly can't believe they all did it or was even motivated to go to war so that some guy down the road could keep his slaves.

Just seems odd to me to make that connection.

Unless slavery was more rampant than I have read...maybe every house had a slave or two in the South...not sure...but I'd honestly like to have someone throw out some numbers or percentages in regards to slave ownership.
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Fom what I have read, probably around 20% of the population owned slaves. But what's important to remember is that percentage is probably MUCH higher in regards to people in power. I would guess a good majority of the southern lawmakers (or their families/political allies) owned slaves.

So the people in power vote for the state to secede... and the north is going to invade. At that time, people identified strongly with their state. Much more than their country. There's almost no choice but to fight.
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20% seems high...but I'll run with it.So it's safe to say that a great percentage of those who fought and died on the Southern side were not slave owners or even fighting for the right to own slaves seeing as how they'd never actually own one.

But to say most of those fought because of their statehood...I can accept this premise.

There's more than a few that take it a step further and say that a majority fought for their state's rights.

This is where I stand and most everyone I grew up with stand...black or white...it's understood by most Southerners that the war was about the State's rights and how the gov't in the North was infringing upon them. It wasn't too much earlier that we went through the same thing with England...funny how a great number choose to look at the two very similar circumstances differently nowadays.

And we're seeing it all over again with the gov't running wild and free...until we stage another revolt.

It's my hope and belief that the South will indeed rise again...in the hearts of every true American.
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Well they weren't so gung ho on states rights when Northerners tried to ignore the Fugitive Slave Act.
 
Didn't many of the Civil War generals fight together during the Mexican-American War? I know Grant, Lee & Stonewall Jackson participated. Were there others?

 
Has anybody here read John Keegan's recent The American Civil War: A Military History? It's received surprisingly mixed reviews considering his reputation as a military historian.

James McPherson's NYT review was critical of Keegan's inaccuracies about US geography, which is important given the crucial role geography played in Northern strategy. McPherson and other reviewers have also noted Keegan's misinterpretation of the Gettysburg Address. British reviewers have been more kind to Keegan.

 
Northern perspectives, Part One

As we shall see, the main argument among Northerners throughout the 1850s was between the Free Soilers, who believed that the new territories should be free of slaves, and those who preferred Popular Sovereignity, which was the idea that the majority in any territory should be able to decide whether or not to have slaves. (The Southern approach of a slave code which would reject both of these ideas and make slavery legal in all of the territories was considered extremist in the North and was not popular.)

Free-soil sentiment in 1847 can be visualized in 3 concentric circles. At the center was a core of abolitionists who considered slavery a sinful violation of human rights that should be immediately expiated. The abolitionist movement was both a religious movement and a non-religious movement. On the religious side was the Congregationalist Church and the Quaker Church, originally, though in the 1840s both the Baptist church and Methodist church separated from their Southern brethren over the issue of slavery. (The Baptists in the South became the Southern Baptist church, which it has remained to this day.)

In the early part of the century a wave of Protestant revivals known as the Second Great Awakening swept the country. In New England, upstate New York, and portions of the old Northwest, this evangelical enthusiasm generated a host of moral and cultural reforms. (It is somewhat ironic that this movement began in New England, because almost all of the ships which brought African slaves to American shores were captained and crewed by New Englanders.) The most dynamic (and divisive) of these reforms was abolitionism. Heirs of the puritan notion of collective accountability that that made every man his brother's keeper, these Yankee reformers repudiated Calvinist predestination, preached the availability of redemption to anyone who truly sought it, urged converts to abjure sin, and worked for the elimination of sins from society. The most heinous social sin was slavery. All people were equal in God's sight; the souls of black folks were as valuable as those of whites; for one of God's children to enslave another was a violation of the Higher Law, even if it was sanctioned by the Constitution.

But abolitionism was also a non-religious movement as well. Unitarians and outright atheists were also extremely prominent among the abolitionists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. These New England secularists were much smaller in number than their religious counterparts, but their writings were highly influential. They were also joined by a group of famous African-Americans, many of them former slaves, who we shall encounter in the narrative. Abolitionists came in all shapes and sizes: there were radicals who believed in aiding a revolution or rebellion; there were peaceful men and women who hoped to convince Southerners through Christianity to do what was right. There were those who aided in the rescue and escape of slaves, and others who wrote and donated funds but took no personal action.

At no time were abolitionists ever representative of the majority of Northerners, any more than fire-eaters were representative of the majority of Southeners. But they were often the loudest, and they always claimed, as most moralists do, to be speaking for a silent majority which agreed with them. Prior to the 1850's, the most powerful book written by an abolitionalist was American Slavery As It Is by Reverend Theoodore S. Weld, first printed in 1839. Made up principally of excerpts from advertisements and articles in Southern newspapers, the book condemned slavery out of the slaveowners' own mouths. Among hundreds of similar items in the book were reward notices for runaway slaves contianing such statements as, "it is probable he will aim for Savannah, as he said he had children in that vicinity," or advertisements like the following from a New Orleans newspaper:

NEGROES FOR SALE

A negro woman 24 years of age, and two children, one eight and the other three years.

Said negroes will be sold separately or together as desired.

 
timschochet said:
The Southern Perspective, Continued

Without further ado, it's time to tackle the issue which continues to be argued into the present day: states rights.

Most Southerners regarded the United States of America as a voluntary agreement between independent parties. As such, any party to this agreement had the right to pull out of the agreement at any time they chose. It's rather ironic to note that this was not originally a Southern idea. The state of Massachussetts threatened secession over the War of 1812, and came close to doing it. But by 1832, States Rights was predominantly a Southern issuie. That was the year that John C. Calhoun proposed the idea of nullification, which meant that any state had the right to invalidate any law that it considered unConstitutional- it did not need the Supreme Court or Congress to declare it so; it could do so itself. (The issue at the time was a tariff.) Calhoun's idea received widespread approval in his home state of South Carolina, but not among the rest of the South at the time. (As a side note, regarding Calhoun, it might interest people to know that his home plantation of Clemson is now the site of the University.)

Though nullification was not popular, the wider issue of States Rights became more popular as the population of the North increased, and the abolitionist movement rose. These events created a threatening question for Southerners: what if a majority of Americans decided to vote for the abolition of slavery someday? In that event, the Southerners decided, a state had the right to leave the Union and go its own way. Eventually, this theory evolved into the idea that a state could leave the union for any reason.

Obviously, this idea is problematic in many ways. If a state can secede from the United States, can a county secede from the state? Can a town secede from the county? Can a person or persons secede from the town? At what point do we decide that one does not have the right to withdraw?

The pragmatic answer to all of these questions is if you can get away with it, then you have the right to do it. The American Revolution is only considered "legal" because we won. Had the British defeated us, it would have been considered illegal and all of the Founding Fathers would have been declared traitors and hung. There are no "rights" that exist unless one is willing to enforce them at the point of a gun. The South lost the Civil War; therefore, practically speaking, the right of a state to leave the Union doesn't exist.

But this doesn't settle the issue. Legal scholars have argued ever since that there is nothing in the Constitution that does not allow a state to secede. It is true that, a few years after the Civil War, the Supreme Court ruled that secession was unconstitutional, but it was a Northern dominated SC without Southern representation. It may very well be that, legally speaking, southern states do have the right to leave.

I'm not going to express an opinion on this. About a year ago, I gave my view on this subject, which was at the time that states did NOT have the right to secede. But I am not a lawyer nor an expert on the Constitution, and Christo, who is both, handed me my head on this subject. I was way in overboard without the proper facts or knowledge to back my position up, and he murdered me. I'm sure Christo is reading this thread, and if any of you believe that secession is unconstitutional and care to back that up, he may choose to engage you on the subject. For my part, I will only add three points:

1. Though as late as last year I believed that secession is unconstitutional, now I am no longer sure one way or the other.

2. Even if you believe that secession is unconstitutional, that does not make the Confederates traitors. I will make that argument in due course.

3. The Southerners belief in the rights of States as opposed to a strong centralized Federal government would contain two great exceptions, one before secession (the Fugitive Slave Act) and one after secession (Jefferson Davis choosing to centralize all power in the Confederacy) both of which created ironic situations which puts doubt (at least in my mind) to how firm this belief really was in the minds of Southerners. Again, we will get to both of these in due course.

There is much more to be written about the Southern perspectives, mainly regarding the different attitudes among regions in the South, and I will get to that and then to Northern perspectives before resuming the timeline. However, if you have a position to make regarding a state's right to secede, now is the time to explain it.
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The concept of the nation state is a relatively new one. Prior to that, you had kingdoms and empires, and they were established by force of conquest. The nation state is essentially a geopolitical entity, usually united by culture, language. ethnic background or history. In the Declaration of Independence, Tomas Jefferson uses the phrase, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." This explicit statement was a new concept, but of course civilization's history was that of rebellion and subjugation. When oppression became too overhwelming, it led to rebellion.Virtually all nations have been formed by force of arms. it is only in the past 50 years or so that international organizations have been generally strong enough to keep nations within their own borders, and stopped them from invading others in order to subjugate them.

The Civil War was a rebellion. Rebellions, if they are to be put down, are squashed by force of arms. To quote James Clavell in Shogun:

Toranaga: There is no mitigating factor for rebellion against your liege lord.

Blackthorne: Unless you win.

Toranaga: Very well, you may have named the one mitigating factor.

 
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Ozymandias said:
The Civil War was a rebellion. Rebellions, if they are to be put down, are squashed by force of arms. To quote James Clavell in Shogun:

Toranaga: There is no mitigating factor for rebellion against your liege lord.

Blackthorne: Unless you win.

Toranaga: Very well, you may have named the one mitigating factor.
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It's funny that you make that quote, because I thought of making it myself. Great minds think alike! However, it doesn't solve the question from a legal standpoint. In your opinion, does the Constitution of the United States make the act of secession illegal?

 
My understanding is that it came down to money, as it normally does. The Southern states felt they were being taken advantage of by being forced to sell their cotton to the North at cheap prices and then paying too much for finished cotton products from the North.

 
cstu said:
My understanding is that it came down to money, as it normally does. The Southern states felt they were being taken advantage of by being forced to sell their cotton to the North at cheap prices and then paying too much for finished cotton products from the North.
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hmm
 
BobbyLayne said:
cstu said:
My understanding is that it came down to money, as it normally does. The Southern states felt they were being taken advantage of by being forced to sell their cotton to the North at cheap prices and then paying too much for finished cotton products from the North.
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hmm
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Thanks for the link.In that case the South would have had a real interest in maintaining the slavery which was so profitable to them.

 
timschochet said:
Ozymandias said:
The Civil War was a rebellion. Rebellions, if they are to be put down, are squashed by force of arms. To quote James Clavell in Shogun:

Toranaga: There is no mitigating factor for rebellion against your liege lord.

Blackthorne: Unless you win.

Toranaga: Very well, you may have named the one mitigating factor.
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It's funny that you make that quote, because I thought of making it myself. Great minds think alike! However, it doesn't solve the question from a legal standpoint. In your opinion, does the Constitution of the United States make the act of secession illegal?
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Yes. The only thing that ends up justifying it, is to be successful.But so is civil disobedience illegal. In the latter case, those who commit it are seeking to overturn, through illegal action, something that they consider to be unjust.

 
Northern Perspectives, Continued

I wrote earlier, quoting McPherson, that the Free-Soil sentiment of 1847 can be visualized in three concentric circles, of which at the center were the abolitionists. Surrounding and drawing ideological nourishment from them was a larger circle of antislavery people who looked upon bondage as an evil-by which they meant that it was it was socially repressive, economically backward, and politically harmful to the interests of the free states. This circle comprised mainly Whigs (and some Democrats) from the Yankee belt of states and regions north of the 41st parallel who regarded this issue as more important than any other in American politics.

The outer circle contained all those who had voted for the Wilmot Proviso but did not necessarily consider it as the most crucial matter facing the country and were open to compromise. This outer circle included such Whigs as Congressman Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, who believed slavery "an unqualified evil to the Negro, the white man, and the State" which "deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world- enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites." But Lincoln also believed that "the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than to abate its evils" by uniting the South in defense of the institution. The outer circle also included Democrats, like Martin Van Buren, who cared little about the consequences of slavery for the slaves and had been allied with the "slave power" until it had blocked Van Buren's nomination in 1844.

All free soilers- except perhaps some of the Van Burenites- concurred with the following set of propositions: free labor was more efficient than slave labor because it was movtivated by the inducement of wages and the ambition for upward mobility rahter than by the coercion of the lash; slavery undermined the dignity of manuel work by associating it with servility an thereby degraded white labor whenever bondage existed; slavery inhibited education and social improvements and kept poor whites as well as slaves in ignorance; the institution therefore mired all southerners except the slaveowning gentry in poverty and repressed the development of a diversified economy; therefore, slavery must be kept out of the new territories so that free labor could flourish there.

Many of these men who were not abolitionists had any love for negroes; indeed, some of them felt exactly the opposite. As David Wilmot himself put it, "The negro race already occupy enough of this fair continent...I would preserve for free white labor a fair country...where the sons of toil, of my own race and own color, can live without the disgrace which association with negro slavery brings upon free labor."

Northerners who disagreed with free soilers were divided into essentially three groups: those who believed in popular sovereignity, whom we have already discussed briefly (and will in more detail later on), Irish immigrants, and the Know Nothings.

Irish Immigrants had arrived in great numbers as a result of the Famine (1841-1845). They settled in the North, mostly in New York and Boston. Very quickly they despised Blacks and opposed any end to slavery for the simple reason that they feared freed slaves would migrate North and compete for jobs. Though victims themselves of anti-Catholic treatment (usually started by Protestant Irish immigrants from Ulster) they blamed African-Americans for the coming Civil War. In the middle of that war they would engage in the worst race riot in American history, as we shall see.

The Know-Nothings were nativists who were anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, temperence (anti-liquor) and rose from the wreckage of the two party system which collapsed over slavery. Officially known as the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, they were pledged to vote for native born Protestants for public office. As befits most populist movements, many of these men were new voters of the middle classes. They perceived immigration, not slavery, to be the main threat to the future of America. Though not sympathetic to Southern interestes, they were not motivated to help their opponents either. In the 1850s they would be elected in significant numbers so that Free Soilers and future Republicans would be forced to work with them.

In 1848 the war hero Zachary Taylor was elected President, and almost immediately the question of the Wilmot Proviso came to a head. The California Gold Rush only heightened the problem. How to handle slavery in the territories? Tempers flared on all sides. It would take the actions of an old pro of the Senate, Henry Clay, to avoid constant turmoil for the time being by proposing a series of compromises designed to appease both Southerners and Free Soilers. We will examine those next.

 
Ozymandia/timschochet/whoever,

One thing I have never quite understood is what exactly happened to the Whig party?

Was the division over the 1852 Presidential ticket too broad of a schism to repair?

Why did so many ex-Whigs (i.e., Lincoln) feel compelled to distance themselves from their former party?

What about their policy made them so unpopular?

How did the resultant Republican Party differ from the Whig Party?

May be jumping ahead here (haven't covered the Compromise of 1850, 1854 Nebraska-Kansas Act, Bleeding Kansas, Lincoln-Douglas, John Brown, et al), but if anyone understands the machinations and could break it down, I think it would be instructive.

While the two-party system seems entrenched, it is not completely out of the realm of possibility that one of the major parties loses its grip one day and is replaced by a more palpable alternative.

 
BobbyLayne said:
Ozymandia/timschochet/whoever,One thing I have never quite understood is what exactly happened to the Whig party?Was the division over the 1852 Presidential ticket too broad of a schism to repair?Why did so many ex-Whigs (i.e., Lincoln) feel compelled to distance themselves from their former party?What about their policy made them so unpopular?How did the resultant Republican Party differ from the Whig Party?May be jumping ahead here (haven't covered the Compromise of 1850, 1854 Nebraska-Kansas Act, Bleeding Kansas, Lincoln-Douglas, John Brown, et al), but if anyone understands the machinations and could break it down, I think it would be instructive. While the two-party system seems entrenched, it is not completely out of the realm of possibility that one of the major parties loses its grip one day and is replaced by a more palpable alternative.
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It'a fine question, and we'll get to it more in detail as we go through the narrative. The main thing to realize is that it wasn't exactly that the Whig party died while the Democratic party survived: as we shall see, both parties effectively died when the main issue in the country, beginning in 1847, became slavery. At that point all disputes became sectional rather than party based. The Democratic party that existed after the Civil War had very little to do with the Democratic party that had existed before the war; that party was as dead as the Whigs. Only the name survived.
 
The Compromise of 1850 Part One

Henry Clay had been a major political figure since before the War of 1812. Now an old man, he sought to solve the growing sectional dispute by forging a compromise similar to the Missouri Compromise, which he had also been a part of. The solution he came up had several parts:

1. California would be admitted as a state without any restriction or condition on the subject of slavery.

2 All boundary disputes between Texas and New Mexico woul be settled in favor of New Mexico; Texas would be compesentated for its loss of land by federal assumption of debts it had assumed during its years as an independent Republic. (This would prevent an additional slave state being forged out of Texas, which some Southerners desired.)

3. The slave trade would be abolished in the District of Columbia, but slavery itself would be guaranteed within the District.

4. Congress would have no power over interstate slave trade and would enact a tougher Fugitive Slave Law, which would place upon the Federal Government the responsibility of returning runaway slaves to their rightful owners.

5. The issues of Kansas and Nebraska would be put aside for later.

This was a grabbag for both sides, and also a way of putting off the real question, as Clay had maneuvered to do his entire political life. The debate in the Senate over these proposals was the most famous in the history of Congress. Daniel Webster, Clay's old foe, and a man sympathetic to Free Soil, now spoke out in favor of the Compromise. "I wish to speak today, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American," he said. "I speak today for the preservation of the Union. Hear me for my cause." Having opposed the Mexican War and supported the Wilmot Proviso, Webster now urged Northerners to bury the passions of the past. Do not "taunt or reproach" the South with the Proviso. Nature would exclude slavery from New Mexico. "I would not take pains uselessly to reaffirm an ordinance of nature, nor to re-enact the will of God." As for disunion, Webster warned fire-eaters that it could no more take place "without convulsion" than the heavenly bodies (could) rush from their spheres, and jostle each other in the realms of space, without causing the wreck of the universe!"

Webster's speech appealed to a broad range of Americans who by March 1850 were rallying in support of compromise. But two other speeches, coming from opposite ends of the sectional divide, would have greater long range influence.

 
Ozymandias said:
Bruce Catton is also excellent. The Coming Fury, Terrible Swift Sword, and Never Call Retreat are his three volumes on the Civil War. He also wrote about Grant, the Army of the Potomac, and the windup of the war in A Stillness at Appomattox.
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:porked: His books are still the best I've read on the subject. I recommend those over the ones Tim's using as his source material.
 
timschochet said:
The Compromise of 1850 Part One

1. California would be admitted as a state without any restriction or condition on the subject of slavery.
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It should be noted that for nearly 50 years, states had generally been admitted in pairs - one free, and one slave - to maintain equal balance of power in the Senate.Texas was a slave state, and the settled portion was rich in cotton, therefore dependent upon slave labor. The mountain west portion did not seem hospitable to cotton or slavery.

When California came in alone, it sent one pro-slavery and one anti-slavery senator to Washington, D.C. Thus, the admission but did not change the balance in the senate.

The free/slave states were balanced at the end of the War of 1812. This balance of free and slave states within the federal legislature (primarily, the concern was in the Senate, as each state gets two) was considered of paramount importance if the Union were to be preserved.

The list of states admitted 1812-1861:

Slave States Year Free States Year

Mississippi 1817 Indiana 1816

Alabama 1819 Illinois 1818

Missouri 1821 Maine 1820

Arkansas 1836 Michigan 1837

Florida 1845 Iowa 1846

Texas 1845 Wisconsin 1848

California (One pro-slavery Senator) 1850

Kansas (blocked as a slave state 1858) Minnesota 1858

No Slave State Oregon 1859

No Slave State Kansas 1861
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The Compromise of 1850 Part Two

John C. Calhoun was dying and too ill to speak. The great man, who had served his country in every capacity other than POTUS, and whom neither his friends nor enemies ever doubted his incredible sense of honor and integrity, now sat back wrapped in heavy flannels, staring with contempt at his fellow senators in silence as James Mason from Virginia read Calhoun's prepared remarks:

The great and primary cause of danger, said Calhoun (through Mason), "is that the equilibrium between the two sections has been destroyed." The North had grown faster than the South in population, wealth, and power. This had happened because of discriminatory legislation favoring the North: the Northwest Ordinance and Compromise of 1820 which excluded Southern property from a vast domain; (by "property", of course, he meant slaves)

tarrifs and federal aid to internal improvements (Calhoun neglected to mention that he had once supported these measures) to foster Northern enterprises at Southern expense. Yankees had wantonly attacked Southern institutions until one by one the bonds of union had snapped: the Methodist and Baptist denominations had separated into northern and southern churches; soon "nothing will be left to hold the States together except force." And it was all the fault of the Yankees, trying to increase their own power, while hurling insult after insult to the dignity and honor of every Southerner. It was not to be borne! The South would depart before suffering further indignity.

What could be done to forstall this fate? Because the North had always been the aggressor, it must cease criticizing slavery, return fugitive slaves, give the South equal rights in the territories, and consent to a constitutional amendment "which will restore to the South, ion substance, the power she possessed of protecting herself before the equilibrium between the two sections was destroyed." California was the test case, Admission of this free state would serve notice of a purpose to "destroy irretrievably the equilibrium between the two sections." In such circumstances southern states could not "remain in the Union consistently with their honor and safety."

John C. Calhoun died shortly after this speech was delivered, at age 68, on March 31, 1850. He died as the most revered Southerner (and South Carolinian) of his time. No man was a greater defender of slavery, and no single man would have a greater influence in pushing the South towards an irrevocable decision to leave the Union. Calhoun believed slavery to be a positive good, and said of it:

All societies, are ruled by an elite group which enjoys the fruits of the labor of a less-privileged group. I may say with truth, that in few countries so much is left to the share of the laborer, and so little exacted from him, or where there is more kind attention paid to him in sickness or infirmities of age. Compare his condition with the tenants of the poor houses in the more civilized portions of Europe—look at the sick, and the old and infirm slave, on one hand, in the midst of his family and friends, under the kind superintending care of his master and mistress, and compare it with the forlorn and wretched condition of the pauper in the poorhouse.

He was buried in St. Philip's Church yard in Charleston, South Carolina.

 
The Compromise of 1850 Concluded

William H. Seward spoke for Americans at the opposite pole from Calhoun. Like Calhoun, Seward was opposed to the proposed compromise. But that was probably the only area that they did agree. Seward, the Senator from New York, said that slavery was an unjust, backward, and dying institution. Its days were numbered. "You cannot roll back the tide of social progress." Not only did the Constitution sanction the power of Congress to exclude slavery from the territories, but also "there is a higher law than the Constitution", the law of God in whose sight all persons are equal. The present crisis "embraces the fearful issue whether the Union shall stand, and slavery, uner the steady, peaceful action of moral, social, and political causes, be removed by gradual voluntary effort, and with compensation; or whether the Union shall be dissolved and civil war ensue, bringing on violent but complete and immediate emancipation."

These were violent words, and though they included the possibilty of financial compensation for emancipation, Southerners recognized Seward's main thrust: slavery would be ended by force if no other means were possible. Seward's "Higher Law" speech spoke to their worst fears. Clay, worried that his compromise would fail, called it "wild, reckless, and abominable." Even Taylor disclamed it. But Seward's sentiments represented opinion in the upper North as accurately as Calhoun's expressed those in the lower South. Nevertheless, men from the upper South and lower North continued to work feverishly for a settlement between the two extremes.

The man who made it happen was an ambitious, 5'4" Democrat from Illinois whose capacity for liquor was exceeded only by his capacity for work. During the decade that was to come, there would be no more famous political figure in the nation than "The Little Giant", Stephen A. Douglas, as he consistently sought for a means to bridge the gap between the two sections, this also as a means to the presidency for himself. Douglas made Clay's compromise work by having it voted on in different parts; that way, each side could vote for the parts they agreed on and each part would pass with a small majority. While this relieved the nation anxiously seeking to avoid conflict, it did not resolve the issues that Calhoun and Seward had raised; as we shall see, it only delayed them, and not for too much longer.

 
I will try to tackle at least one part of the narrative each weeknight, unless it is a long subject involving several posts. I can't say how much or little will be covered on the weekend at this point.

Here is a list of subjects I plan to cover in the coming days and weeks leading to the start of the conflict:

The Fugitive Slave Act

Uncle Tom's Cabin

The Kansas-Nebraska Act

The Republican Party

Bleeding Kansas

The Brooks/Sumner Affair

Dred Scott

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

John Brown

The election of 1860

The secession of South Carolina

The secession of the lower southern states.

The selection of Jefferson Davis and creation of the CSA.

All of this needs to be covered, in detail, before we can get to the battles, and it's only a very brief description of the events leading up to the Civil War. I will be leaving tons of stuff out, but if I don't, we may never get there. The items I have listed here will take long enough as it is.

 
timschochet said:
I will try to tackle at least one part of the narrative each weeknight, unless it is a long subject involving several posts. I can't say how much or little will be covered on the weekend at this point.

Here is a list of subjects I plan to cover in the coming days and weeks leading to the start of the conflict:

The Fugitive Slave Act

Uncle Tom's Cabin

The Kansas-Nebraska Act

The Republican Party

Bleeding Kansas

The Brooks/Sumner Affair

Dred Scott

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

John Brown

The election of 1860

The secession of South Carolina

The secession of the lower southern states.

The selection of Jefferson Davis and creation of the CSA.

All of this needs to be covered, in detail, before we can get to the battles, and it's only a very brief description of the events leading up to the Civil War. I will be leaving tons of stuff out, but if I don't, we may never get there. The items I have listed here will take long enough as it is.
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FMTTWake me up when the Star of the West sails

:goodposting:

One thought that occurs to me, as you study the 1850s, you begin to realize it was a time in our history when the extremists - the abolitionists and the fire-eaters - drove the debate

I sometimes think that is true today, though in reality I think its more stylistic than substantive

 
The Fugitive Slave Act Part One

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was a giveaway to the South in return for allowing California in as a free state, and it was in response to 20 years of personal liberty laws in the North which helped runaway slaves legally seek their freedom. It is ironic that, while in all other areas Southerners were huge proponents of states' rights and opposed to federal power, here was one issue where they wanted strong federal action, especially in the upper North.

The new law put the burden of proof on captured blacks but gave them no legal power to prove their freedom. Instead, a claimant could bring an alleged fugitive before a federal commissioner to prove ownership by an affidavat from a slave-state court or from the testimony of white witnesses. If the commissioner decided against the claimant he would receive the a fee of 5 dollars; if in favor, 10 dollars. This provision, supposedly justified by the paper work needed to remand a fugitive to the South, became notorious among abolitionists as a bribe to commissioners. The law also required U.S. marshals and deputies to help slaveowners capture their property and fined them $1,000 if they refused. It empowered marshals to deputize to citizens on the spot to aid in seizing a fugitive, and imposed stiff criminal penalties on anyone who harbored a fugitive or obstructed his capture. All expenses were to be paid out of the federal treasury.

With the passage of this law, all hell broke loose in the country, and the sectional anger it unleashed would sharpen over the next ten years until it reached the breaking point. Over the next couple of posts I will describe only a few of the most noteworthy events that resulted from the attempted enforcement of the law (as in all aspects of this topic of the Civil War and the road which led to it, there is always a ton more I am leaving out):

In September, 1850, federal marshals arrested a black porter who had lived in New York City for 3 years and took him before a commissioner who refused to record the man's insistence that his mother was a free Negro, and remanded him to his claimant owner in Baltimore. Several months later slave catchers seized a prosperous black tailor who had resided in Poughkeepsie for many years and carried him back to South Carolina. In February 1851 agents arrested a black man in sothern Indiana, while his horrified wife and children looked on, and returned him to an owner who had claimed him as a slave who had run away 19 years earlier. A Maryland man asserted ownership of a Philadelphia woman who he said had run away 22 years previously. For good measure, he also clamed her 6 children.

This quick seizure of blacks who had long lived in the North sent a wave of panic through northern Negro communities. Many black people fled to Canada- an estimated 3,000 in the last 3 months of 1850 alone. During the 1850's the Negro population of Ontario doubled to 11,000.

 
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timschochet said:
Calhoun believed slavery to be a positive good, and said of it:

All societies, are ruled by an elite group which enjoys the fruits of the labor of a less-privileged group. I may say with truth, that in few countries so much is left to the share of the laborer, and so little exacted from him, or where there is more kind attention paid to him in sickness or infirmities of age. Compare his condition with the tenants of the poor houses in the more civilized portions of Europe—look at the sick, and the old and infirm slave, on one hand, in the midst of his family and friends, under the kind superintending care of his master and mistress, and compare it with the forlorn and wretched condition of the pauper in the poorhouse.
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It's so hard to believe that a scant 150 years ago (which isn't all that long ago), many thought that it was perfectly fine to own other humans. To be able to buy and sell them, to break apart families, etc etc. This was a right. And people who thought that way were championed and elected. It's almost astonishing, really.

 
The Fugitive Slave Act, Part Two

In Boston lived a young couple, William and Ellen Craft, whose initial escape from slavery in Georgia 2 years earlier ha become celebrated in the antislavery press. Light-skinned enough to pass for white, Ellen had cut her hair short, dressed in male attire, ad impersonated a sickly white gentlemen going north for medical treatment accompanied by "his" servant (William). They had thus traveled to freedom. A skilled cabinetmaker, William Craft found work in Boston. He and his wife joined the church of Theodore Parker, head of the local vigilance committee, whose congregation included several other fugitive slaves.

The publicity surrounding the Crafts naturally attracted their former owner's attention. As soon as the fugitive slave bill became law, he sent 2 agents to recapture them. This was like throwing a rubber ball against a brick wall. Boston was the communication center of abolitionism. Under the "higher law" doctrine, blacks and whites there ha vowed to resist the Fugitive Slave Act. "We must trample this law under our feet," said Wendell Phillips. It "is to be denounced, resisted, disobeyed," declared the local antislavery society. "As moral and religious men, we cannot obey an immoral and irreligious statue." When the slave catchers arrived in Boston on October 25, 1850, they vowed to get the Crafts "if we have to stay here to all eternity, and if there are not men enough in Massachusetts to take them, we will bring them some from the South." In fact, they stayed 5 days and brought no one. Parker hid Ellen Craft in his house, where he kept a loaded revolver on his desk. William went to ground in the house of a black abolitionist who kept 2 kegs of gunpowder on his front porch and veritable arsenal in the kitchen. Members of the vigilance committee put up posters around town describing the "man-stealers", harassed them in the streets, and warned them on October 30 that their safety could not be assured if they remained any longer. They left on the afternoon train.

President Fillmore denounced the Bostonians, threatened to send in federal troops, and assured the Crafts' owner that if he wanted to try again the government would help him "with all the means which the Constitution and Congress have placed at his disposal." But the vigilance committee put the Crafts on a ship to England. Parker sent a defiant missive to Fillmore by way of a parting shot:

I would rather lie all my life in jail, and starve there, than refuse to protect one of these parishoners of mine. I must reverence the laws of God, come of that what will come. You cannot think that I am to stand by and see my own church carried off to slavery and do nothing.

 
Shall We Compromise? by Henry Ward Beecher

Published February 21, 1850 in The Independent. This article was read to John C. Calhoun, then on his deathbed. "Who writes that?" he asked. The name was given to him. "That man understands the thing. He has gone to the bottom of it. He will be heard from again."

 
The Fugitive Slave Act, Continued

In February 1851 a black waiter, who had taken the name of Shadrach when he escaped from Virginia a year earlier, was seized in a Boston coffeehouse by agents to whom he was serving coffee. They rushed him to the federal courthouse while an angry crowd gathered outside. A handful of deputy federal marshals tried to guard Shadrach. Suddenly a group of black men broke into the courtroom, overwhelmed the marshals, and snatched Shadrach away to put him on the underground railroad to Canada. While Shadrach settled in Montreal, where he opened a restaurant, an uproar ensued behind him in the states.

Abolitionists exulted. "This Shadrach is delivered out of his burning, fiery furnace," wrote Theodore Parker. "I think it is the most noble deed done in Boston since the destruction of the tea in 1773." But conservative Boston papers branded the rescue "an outrage...the triumph of mob law." In Washington, Daniel Webster called it treason, and Henry Clay demanded an investigation to find out "whether we shall have a government of white men or black men in the cities of this country." Determined to snuff out resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act, President Fillmore ordered the district attorney to prosecute all "aiders and abettors of this flagitous offense." A grand jury indicted 4 blacks and 4 whites, but juries refused to convict them. "Massachusetts Safe Yet! The Higher Law Still Respected" proclaimed an antislavery newspaper. But a Savannah editor expressed a more common opinion- perhaps in the North as well as the South- when he denounced Boston as "a black speck on the map- disgraced by the lowest, the meanest, the BLACKEST kind of NULLIFICATION."

The federal government soon got a chance to flex its muscles in Boston. A 17 year old slave named Thomas Sims escaped from Georgia in February 1851 and stowed away on a ship to Boston, where he too found work as a waiter. When his owner traced him, the mayor of Boston decided to allow the police to be deputized by federal marshals to cooperate in Sims's arrest. THis time officials sealed the courthouse with a heavy chain (which abolitionists publicized as a symbol of the Slave Power's reach into the North) and guarded it with police and soldiers. For 9 days in April 1851 vigilance committee lawyers vainly sought writs of habeus corpus and tried other legal maneuvers to free Sims. When the federal commissioner found for his owner, 300 armed deputies and soldiers removed him from the courthouse at 4:00 am and marched him to the navy yard, where 250 U.S. soldiers waited to place him on a ship going south to slavery.

So far the struggle, despite the violent rhetoric, had produced no bloodshed. Most abolitionists had traitionally counseled nonviolence. Some of them, like William Lloyd Garrison, were pacifists. But the Sims recapture changed attitudes. "The only way to make the Fugitive Slave Act a dead letter" said black leader Frederick Douglass, "is to make a half dozen or more dead kidnappers." It seemed only a matter of time before real blood would be shed.

 
jwb said:
timschochet said:
Calhoun believed slavery to be a positive good, and said of it:

All societies, are ruled by an elite group which enjoys the fruits of the labor of a less-privileged group. I may say with truth, that in few countries so much is left to the share of the laborer, and so little exacted from him, or where there is more kind attention paid to him in sickness or infirmities of age. Compare his condition with the tenants of the poor houses in the more civilized portions of Europe—look at the sick, and the old and infirm slave, on one hand, in the midst of his family and friends, under the kind superintending care of his master and mistress, and compare it with the forlorn and wretched condition of the pauper in the poorhouse.
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It's so hard to believe that a scant 150 years ago (which isn't all that long ago), many thought that it was perfectly fine to own other humans. To be able to buy and sell them, to break apart families, etc etc. This was a right. And people who thought that way were championed and elected. It's almost astonishing, really.
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This shift in thinking is why it is difficult for people here in the 21st century to comprehend the actions of many of these 19th century men. Another part of this is that most people at the time, even many opposed to slavery, believed blacks were an inferior race. That this was a mere 150 years ago is astonishing.
 
I was surprised to learn only recently of the strong sentiment among pre-war southern leaders for the acquisition of Cuba and Central America by force. The stated goal was to create an even wider and stronger base for slaveholding, making it that more difficult for the north to eradicate.

Slavery was a mixed bag for the southern economies, IMO. True, it helped create wealth for large landowners but the cost was a pronounced lag behind the north's rapid industrialization and entrenpreneurial innovation. A huge majority of new immigrants settled in northern cities (much to southernor's approval) but, by offering a hostile welcome to Irish and German immigrants, the south missed out on the energetic labors of these new Americans. Their economy remained almost entirely agrarian and, to a certain extent, stagnant because of it. They even failed to build a viable textile manufacturing industry for the processing of their own cotton, largely because even the poorest of their workforce refused to work in factories.

 
For a long time (until well after the ACW began) Lincoln favored colonization of negroes. He was not an radical republican (abolitionist), and at no time did he argue for social equality. Although Lincoln believed in the destruction of slavery, he desired the complete separation of the whites and blacks.

We can look at history through the wrong end of the telescope, and applying our own current views, conclude that so-and-so was racist by todays standards. Imagine if someone were judging you based on the social thinking that rules the day in the year 2160.

Lincoln's prewar racist views were typical of his age. During the Civil War displayed a remarkable capacity for moral and political growth. His conversations with Grant and Sherman in the Spring of 1865 indicate Reconstruction would have taken far different turns had he lived.

ETA: added

 
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How did I miss this?

I was going to tell tim that if you really wanted to start at the beginning you needed to make sure that you started at least in the 1830's but it seems like he caught on to that. However, I woulda rgue that you need to start right at the very beginnning, at the founding, probably with the Revolution and the completion of the DoI and the Constitution. That background is vitally important to understand how we got to the second generation of leaders that took control after the founders all passed, starting with John Quicny Adams.

And initially ,without quoting each post from several days ago you didn't get Jefferson right with his slavery views at all and the struggle with them in the DoI.

 
Yankee23Fan said:
How did I miss this?I was going to tell tim that if you really wanted to start at the beginning you needed to make sure that you started at least in the 1830's but it seems like he caught on to that. However, I woulda rgue that you need to start right at the very beginnning, at the founding, probably with the Revolution and the completion of the DoI and the Constitution. That background is vitally important to understand how we got to the second generation of leaders that took control after the founders all passed, starting with John Quicny Adams.And initially ,without quoting each post from several days ago you didn't get Jefferson right with his slavery views at all and the struggle with them in the DoI.
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I know, I know. When looking where to start, there is SO much to cover. I'm trying go with the key moments, as you can see, but even that is going to take a mighty long time.Yankee, there was no deliberate intent on my part to get Jefferson wrong. I was using one of my source books. The truth is I am no expert on Jefferson's thoughts on slavery. Perhaps you could give us some thoughts on the matter?
 
roadkill1292 said:
I was surprised to learn only recently of the strong sentiment among pre-war southern leaders for the acquisition of Cuba and Central America by force. The stated goal was to create an even wider and stronger base for slaveholding, making it that more difficult for the north to eradicate.

Slavery was a mixed bag for the southern economies, IMO. True, it helped create wealth for large landowners but the cost was a pronounced lag behind the north's rapid industrialization and entrenpreneurial innovation. A huge majority of new immigrants settled in northern cities (much to southernor's approval) but, by offering a hostile welcome to Irish and German immigrants, the south missed out on the energetic labors of these new Americans. Their economy remained almost entirely agrarian and, to a certain extent, stagnant because of it. They even failed to build a viable textile manufacturing industry for the processing of their own cotton, largely because even the poorest of their workforce refused to work in factories.
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This is generally true. But it's not 100% true. As I mentioned before, Charleston, South Carolina, which would become the base of secessionist activity, was actually a very cosmopolitan city and there were many German immigrants, and a few Irish as well. (It has also always seemed ironic to me that, given the general conception that all Irish immigrants settled in the North, the heroine of Gone With the Wind happens to be Irish.)
 
BobbyLayne said:
For a long time (until well after the ACW began) Lincoln favored colonization of negroes. He was not an radical republican (abolitionist), and at no time did he argue for social equality. Although Lincoln believed in the destruction of slavery, he desired the complete separation of the whites and blacks.

We can look at history through the wrong end of the telescope, and applying our own current views, conclude that so-and-so was racist by todays standards. Imagine if someone were judging you based on the social thinking that rules the day in the year 2160.

Lincoln's prewar racist views were typical of his age. During the Civil War displayed a remarkable capacity for moral and political growth. His conversations with Grant and Sherman in the Spring of 1865 indicate Reconstruction would have taken far different turns had he lived.

ETA: added
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In terms of Lincoln's views on blacks, when we get to his debates with Douglas, these will be covered in some detail.
 
Mjolnirs said:
This shift in thinking is why it is difficult for people here in the 21st century to comprehend the actions of many of these 19th century men. Another part of this is that most people at the time, even many opposed to slavery, believed blacks were an inferior race. That this was a mere 150 years ago is astonishing.
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Except for an extremely small minority among the abolitionists, Americans in general did not regard blacks as equal to white. But this a world attitude among white people. It is important to recognize that in the 19th century, there was no such word as "racism". Some 30 years after the American Civil War, the most famous poet of the English Speaking Peoples, Rudyard Kipling, wrote a poem called "White Man's Burden", in which he explained that it was the responsibility of white men to civilize the rest of the savage world. This view was in opposition to other white men who believed we had no responsibility to do so, and Kipling was considered a liberal.You say that it's astonishing that 150 years ago most people believed that blacks are inferior and some believed they should be slaves. IMO, given workl history and the nature of human beings, what's astonishing is that 150 years later, we don't.

 
timschochet said:
The Southern perspective Part One

At the time of the American Revolution, a good many Southerners viewed slavery as a necessary evil. Men like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, but bemoaned the practice, and spoke of an eventual future where slavery would be eradicated. Jefferson, of course, understood the contradiction between his Declaration of Independence and the fact that he was a slave holder: how could "All men be created equal" yet some were consigned to bondage? If some men, because of the color of their skin, were not created equal, what then of the Declaration? And if you were to take the position that Africans were not human, what then defined humanity? Jefferson has been called a hypocrite, but in truth he grappled with these perplexing issues his entire life and died unable to solve them, but warning doom on his native land unless it could.
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I don't know if you want to, but in order to understand Jefferson and the words of the Declaration of Independence you need to go a lot deeper.The Declaration was John Adams' idea of a public expression of the reasons why the Lee Resolution was introduced and, hopefully, passed by the Congress. The Lee REsolution was simply and brief:

Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances.

That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.

It was important that a Virginian introduce this as the clicks within the congress were pretty clear. The deep South was going to hold together for the most part with South Carolina as the lead; the north was going to form around the leadership of Massachusetts and John Adams, with a very heavy assist from Pennsylvania's Ben Franklin. But the largest "state" with the most people, money, soldiers and military might was Virginia and so it was known and clear that all actions taken must have Virginian support. Once Virginia signed on with Massachusetts almost all of the states fell in line except the Carolinas and Georgia. And all they hald out for was the slavery issue knowing that the leadership of the North was against it.

Once introduced, it was incumbent on the Congress to get it passed as soon as possible and through the debates and deals maked by John Adams and others, the Resolution was finally accepted and passed on July 2, 1776. One of the clear conditions of that passage was the agreement that the south could keep its slaves - they wouldn't have gotten South Carolina without that deal, and North Carolina deferred to the SC and New York was up in the air because their specific state government was a mess.

In order to inform the public as to the reasons why independence was voted for (and frankly, most of the literate public really already knew, but the founders felt that they needed to write to posterity more then anything else) Adams was given the authority to form the council to write the Declaration. It was made up of Adams, Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston and the history suggests that Adams specificaly wanted Jefferson. By that time he actually was involved little with the verbal deabte running through the congress but his writing style was known and respected throughout. It was felt that while Adams could make the argument, no one really liked John too much and his writing style was very attacking and accusatory, not romantic and flowing like Jefferson. Franklin didn't have the time and the other two weren't about to be put in the place of having to deal with the other 3 bigger names. So they imposed upon Jefferson for his writing style and for the fact that, again, they wanted a Virginia to be the figure head.

Jeffersons' writing of the Declaration took the ideas and arguments that Adams made in Congess, and used many an assist from the other great thinkers of the age to come up with the argument. Almost none of it was his own argument, singularly made by Jefferson. However, there was one particular section that was all Jefferson and that was the attack on slavery. It was taken out of the document to appease the Carolina's but Jefferson's argument "against" slavery is very different then understanding the hypocrisy of the institution and the words h used to open the Declaration. That section read:



he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce:[11] and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

This was his charge, not against slavery, but against the King of England. It was the King who forced slavery upon the Americas and punished the landed men of the south with it. It wasn't their fault, it was a weapon of the empire. It wasn't so much that it was a wrong that needed to be ended - it was a wrong inflicted upon the colonies by the king to war with his own subjects and force them all into a continued bondage with each other for his own uses.

Now, Jefferson was avowed Anglofile. He hated the British, but that hate was entirely self serving. He was an aristocrat fully throughout and lived so above his means that he died bankrupt. In fact most of the southern gentlement of the time did because they lived far above their means in a dying economy that perpetuated its own destruction. In order to keep his fancy living of expensive French wine, food and clothes, Jefferson repeatedly took loans from English banks and sold portions of his wife's estate to pay for it. His continued improvements to Montecello cost so much money that by the time he died he barely owned a quarter of the original estate. He ated the fact that th English money men had the audacity to charge compoounding interest on his debts and the debts of his fellow southerners thereby making their expensive lifestyle so terribly deadly. But he never stopped, he just kept going.

So, to Jefferson, the English king forced slavery upon him to rule them both, slave and master, and did it to force the south to use slaves to care for the crops that they had to sell to English merchants at a lower cost then they would have liked, all in a convoluted attempt to float and continue debt that the Jefferson's of the world never took any great pains to pay off in any way - simply yelling the people who dared loan them the momney in the first place.

That hate boiled over into the Declaration. But, like a I said, that slavery attack was taken out. No, Jefferson didn't challenge slavery because of some perfect sense of the unity of mankind - he did because of the economic condition he put himself in.

This all, of course, brings to light the next massive economic policy argument Jefferson gets involved in, which is Hamilton's plan for Assumption of state debts for the new federal government. It is in that argument and fight that the seeds of civil war started - in the first Congress, with the first policy before them, and because in order to get to that debate they floored a resolution to declare slavery unjust.

 
timschochet said:
The Southern perspective Part One

What then would happen if slavery were abolished? The answer, Southerners realized, is that Northerners would continue to grow richer, while the South would become a place of mass poverty subjugated by the North. Cities like Boston, Chicago, and especially New York would beocme dominant centers of world commerce, while Richmond, Atlanta, Charleston, and New Orleans would dwindle into unimportance. This was what was behind the antislavery movement, Southerners told themselves. It was an attempt of the North to turn the entire South into slaves. If you grasp this concept, the southern rhetoric of the time becomes more comprehensible.
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And the fact that without that perpetual income of forced labor eventually the loans would be called due and the landed gentlemen would find themselves without great estates to live far far beyond their means and ability in realistic economic terms. They were the first housing bubble in all its form and pagentry.
 
timschochet said:
The Southern Perspective, Continued

2. Even if you believe that secession is unconstitutional, that does not make the Confederates traitors. I will make that argument in due course.
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Yeah, they were. Well, not all of them. Most of them were just criminals, but the leaders of the rebellion were in fact traitors.
3. The Southerners belief in the rights of States as opposed to a strong centralized Federal government would contain two great exceptions, one before secession (the Fugitive Slave Act) and one after secession (Jefferson Davis choosing to centralize all power in the Confederacy) both of which created ironic situations which puts doubt (at least in my mind) to how firm this belief really was in the minds of Southerners. Again, we will get to both of these in due course.
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The believed in states rights so long they weren't getting what they wanted out of the federal government. When the compromises of federal policy were made all of that was legal and just and fair. But as soon as they saw their power base of a political block eroding, then all of the sudden the acts of the national government were in direct contravention of the ideals of the republic.
There is much more to be written about the Southern perspectives, mainly regarding the different attitudes among regions in the South, and I will get to that and then to Northern perspectives before resuming the timeline. However, if you have a position to make regarding a state's right to secede, now is the time to explain it.
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I've made my position on this rather clear throughout the years. They ahd no authority to do what they did in any constitutional sense. Nor, in the end, did they really need it if they truly believed what they were fighting for.
 
AcerFC said:
Tdoss brings up a very interesting point. Is it possible that the average soldier fighting for the confederacy cared less about slavery. I get that the state right issue concerning the elite was slavery but is it possible that Southerners just wanted to leave the union because they wanted to make their own decisions. Timmy also brings up a good point that is they were so concerned with a centralized government, why did they form the Confederate states of America? Why did each state not form their own nation?
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It is not only very possible it's pretty much 100% accurate. The genreal soldier of the confederacy was fighting for his state, not the policies of the confederacy. No one can argue that up until well after the civil war that one's state of residence was the pre-eminent way to describe someone. You were a Virginian or a New Yorker. Very rarely did the common person call themselves an American.
 
Yankee23Fan said:
AcerFC said:
Tdoss brings up a very interesting point. Is it possible that the average soldier fighting for the confederacy cared less about slavery. I get that the state right issue concerning the elite was slavery but is it possible that Southerners just wanted to leave the union because they wanted to make their own decisions. Timmy also brings up a good point that is they were so concerned with a centralized government, why did they form the Confederate states of America? Why did each state not form their own nation?
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It is not only very possible it's pretty much 100% accurate. The genreal soldier of the confederacy was fighting for his state, not the policies of the confederacy. No one can argue that up until well after the civil war that one's state of residence was the pre-eminent way to describe someone. You were a Virginian or a New Yorker. Very rarely did the common person call themselves an American.
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:blackdot: This is spot on with all the research Ive done over the years on my family histories.
 
timschochet said:
As I mentioned before, Charleston, South Carolina, which would become the base of secessionist activity, was actually a very cosmopolitan city and there were many German immigrants,
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My parents and in-laws (as well as myself for a few years) are members of the Charleston Rifle Club. This club was originally formed as the German Rifle Club in 1855 and in their lobby the pictures of all of the past presidents shows an early domination of German surnames. The club changed its name during World War I.
 
BobbyLayne said:
Ozymandia/timschochet/whoever,One thing I have never quite understood is what exactly happened to the Whig party?Was the division over the 1852 Presidential ticket too broad of a schism to repair?Why did so many ex-Whigs (i.e., Lincoln) feel compelled to distance themselves from their former party?What about their policy made them so unpopular?How did the resultant Republican Party differ from the Whig Party?May be jumping ahead here (haven't covered the Compromise of 1850, 1854 Nebraska-Kansas Act, Bleeding Kansas, Lincoln-Douglas, John Brown, et al), but if anyone understands the machinations and could break it down, I think it would be instructive. While the two-party system seems entrenched, it is not completely out of the realm of possibility that one of the major parties loses its grip one day and is replaced by a more palpable alternative.
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It imploded. The party was formed as opposition to Jacksonian Democrats. It was never a cohesive clear singular party. When the question of expansion of slavery came to the edge of all hell breaking loose, the party infighting got so bad that they couldn't even renominate their own party leader for re-election in Millard Fillmore. When the anti-slavery wing of the party nominated Winfield Scott the party died. Most of the leaders of the party switched teams or retired. Lincoln even left politics for a time.The anti-slavery faction that still lived and alot of the loyal voters moved to the new Republicans and anchored themselves around opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It was that public debate that got Lincoln back into politics, got him up against Stephen Douglass and eventually got him the nomination for President. The Whig Party simply didn't have any more party infrastructure to exist at that point in any meaningful way.
 
timschochet said:
BobbyLayne said:
For a long time (until well after the ACW began) Lincoln favored colonization of negroes. He was not an radical republican (abolitionist), and at no time did he argue for social equality. Although Lincoln believed in the destruction of slavery, he desired the complete separation of the whites and blacks.

We can look at history through the wrong end of the telescope, and applying our own current views, conclude that so-and-so was racist by todays standards. Imagine if someone were judging you based on the social thinking that rules the day in the year 2160.

Lincoln's prewar racist views were typical of his age. During the Civil War displayed a remarkable capacity for moral and political growth. His conversations with Grant and Sherman in the Spring of 1865 indicate Reconstruction would have taken far different turns had he lived.

ETA: added
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In terms of Lincoln's views on blacks, when we get to his debates with Douglas, these will be covered in some detail.
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I don't know if you have it listed in your notes or whatever it is you do to do this, but you do need to give at least one poast to Lincolnc's Cooper Union Address.
 
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