Has anyone read Kennedy's The South Was Right or DiLorenzo's The Real Lincoln? After reading these, it is hard to refute the subject of this thread. Yes, slavery is bad. No, the War of Northern Aggression was not about slavery. It was the 2nd American Revolution, and like the first, was about the right of secession and consent of the governed.

Lincoln was the anti-Jefferson and should be known not just as a tyrant but the Great Centralizer (and not the Great Emancipator). The War of Northern Aggression was about opposing tyrannical government, the national government going beyond its Constitutional boundaries. When the South militarily lost, it paved the way to America's age of imperialism, which our foreign enemies say is ongoing, and to the behemouth leviathon we have today involving itself in every aspect of life from cradle to grave.

I happen to disagree with this. Slavery defined the economic and socio-political splits that made the civil war possible. No slavery, no civil war.


Slavery, which the Confederate government clearly endorsed and supported, is clearly tyranny. The Confederate government would inevitably had to use its machinery to enforce slavery, and that would have harmed democratic institutions.


Given that slavery advocates were keen on the idea of expanding slavery into other states and even other countries (IIRC Cuba was targetted for such), I think it's wrong to claim imperialism was a fundamentally Union thing.

This is what we have been indoctrinated to accept but is not supported by the facts. Lincoln said in his inaugural address it was not about slavery and also said he would continue with what caused the States to secede - high tariffs causing the smaller populated South to bear 85% the cost of financing the federal government. So, the War of Northern Aggression, like all wars, was fought over money, not slavery.

Think about it for one minute Smilin' dave. About 3% of the population was abolitionist and Lincoln consistently talked of slavery as something to compromise on - as it should have been since the North were the slave traders bringing the slaves to America and selling them to the South. Slavery had been a part of the human experience since the dawn of time. People in the northern US did not suddenly wake up with a moral conscience. Did you even read The Real Lincoln?



When I speak of tyranny, I am talking legally. Slavery was legal in the USA when Lincoln was elected. However, the tyranny was of the northern dominated Congress passing tariffs that were not equal across the nation as prescribed by the Constitution. I know you want to say slavery itself is tyranny - and you are right from a moral not legal perspective. Do not forget, Lincoln did not want to free the slaves. His power base were the industrial workers in the north. The last thing they wanted was competition for their labor. Lincoln came up with the Emancipation 3 years after he was elected and only as a political ploy to keep England and France from recognizing the CSA,



The Southern States were only concerned about expanding slavery to keep the balance of power in the US Congress.You changed the subject of my point. The subject is American imperialism. You are speculating that the CSA would have been equally imperialistic but this is just not supported by the importance they placed on State's Rights. The Real Lincoln does a great job of detailing how 9 other countries ended slavery by a process of compensated emancipation. The idea of selling a slave at market value for life worth of use only to want to outlaw the use is not exactly fair to the slaver buyers now is it? The South also wanted to end slavery - but not on terms that would harm them economically. The South Was Right details various sources that wanted 2 generations AFTER the North stopped selling them.

So committed to ending slavery, the CSA Constitution was the first in the world to put limits on slavery as they did at Article I Section 9, tying its continuation to Northern importation only.

Putting the South's opposition to imperialism aside, the fact is after the war, the issue of the supremacy of the central power to the States was put aside and their was no stopping America's imperial age that some say continues to this day.

I think you misunderstand my point. The specific issue of slavery wasn’t the only thing driving the Civil War, but what it did define all other issues. Why did tariffs hurt the South? Plantation economy, which is unsustainable without slavery, and the social dimension of African-American slaves was precisely why no one really wanted to dismantle slavery, even if it made economic sense.


...If you want to compare notes on who didn’t read what, have you read Barrington Moore’s The Social Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship? Chapter three from memory (maybe chapter four) is specifically about the American Civil War. Like you, Moore defines the war and subsequent Reconstruction in somewhat revolutionary terms. On the other hand, Moore makes the case that slavery is why the differences between North and South could not be resolved in any way other than conflict.


Well if it’s a law, it can’t be tyranny. Except federal law?


Some elements of the US Constitution (“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for example) actually made slavery unconstitutional, so it was both.


The Europeans were not going to intervene to support the CSA, slavery or not. Lincoln knew this. He did however realise that slavery, which created that famous ‘house divided’, would continue to divide the country even if he did win the war. Hence, emancipation.


The balance in favour of slavery. Are you now agreeing that a slave state, no matter where it is, will always have something in common with the Southern states?

You’re also missing the economic dimension. Plantation economies had to continue to expand to new areas, to maximise the short term profitability for the plantation and to get the most out of the slave population.


So what exactly was the Ostend Manifesto? Because it looks like an attempt to turn Cuba into a slave state, at the expense of Spain and the Cuban people.


Did it mention that in many countries (Russia off the top of my head) the abolition of slavery through compensation alone didn’t actually change anything for the former slave, both socially and economically?


Prior to succession the United States had legally banned all importation of slaves. So not only was that measure not new, it was a step backwards.


At least in today’s age US imperialistic behaviour is notionally about freedom. A CSA victory guarantees a nation that will annex others explicitly to perpetuate slavery. Where the US is for some a beacon of hope, the CSA would have been seen as a symbol of tyranny, where a section of its population lived under the heel of the rest of the population and their government.

I'm inclined to concur. Slavery and the issue of black liberty was so fundamental that it fractured the Union the government of which had hitherto been founded entirely on compromise. The American Civil War was as close as the Republic ever came- with the possible exception of the protests that occurred during the Vietnam War- to total collapse as a result of social forces.

I have come to notice that only and exclusively southern (CSA) apologists make the argument that when it is blindingly clear that the war was precisely and entirely 'about slavery'.





*hmmmmmmmmm

Slavery is not a reason for independent States to resort to conflict. There is still the right of secession/revolution that was ignored by the imperial North - regardless of why they wanted to secede. I guess if you want to turn a blind eye to the fact that 9 other countries resolved their slavery issue by way of emancipated slavery that is your prerogative.

Tyranny of the North was not over slavery but instituting a system of federal taxation where most of the financing was paid for by the South but most of the benefits went to the North. If you want to dismiss this as why the South seceded because the tariffs they paid were due to their slave based economy, that too is your prerogative. I guess the just power to govern remaining with the consent of the governed is of no importance to you.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are not in the Constitution. I thought someone in a history forum would know that!

Derail.



Obvious.



Strawman.



So, hey, slavery for the win!

The immediate cause of the southern secession was the defeat of the Democratic party in the polarized election of 1860 by the new mildly pro-black liberty Republicans. The Republican government of Lincoln threatened the Democratic party's expansionist anti-black liberty ideology.

The states were never independent. The Southern politicians only cried foul about federal government when they didn't dominate it any more. The whole gruesome sideshow in Kansas shows that even new states entering the union couldn't hope to be independent, that there were larger elements in play.


Why did the South fire the first shot, if they were the victim/passive?


I guess if you want to ignore the exchange of one tyranny for another, thats your perogative. Your dismissal of slavery while decrying tyranny, your use of modern judgements (eg. imperialism) while insisting that it was all historically relative... its bizzare.


If you want to ignore why the South was unable to adapt to changing conditions (eg. slavery), that's fine.


My mistake. Isn't the Declaration of Independence used as a sort of preamble for the Constitution?


US history isn't my area of expertise... and I'm still wiping the floor with you.

So... William Walker... hey?

Thought this might of interest in future, the Missisippi Declaration of Succession:
http://www.civilwar.com/confederate-gov ... sippi.html

In their own words, it was about slaves.

Hello, I nay be new here, but I've spent the past few months on other forums debating this issue of slavery and its importance as a cause of the Civil War.

My conclusion and after much research, and as Smilin' Dave has already posted is, you have to look at the events of the time things were occurring, more importantly, read the actual words written by the major players at the time of events.

Every single Declaration of Secession mentions that slavery and the right to have their property or labor returned to them upon escaping as written in the Constitution, since the Constitution never directly mentions the word slavery, was being infringed upon by northern abolitionists. And highlight this as virtually the only right where they felt they were being denied their states rights.

John Brown's raid and the seeming northern support for this and several slave uprisings believed to have been instigated by northerners as well as a Republican victory meaning less expansion of slave holding states which would lead to less southern power in congress all were the primary pressures.

If Lincoln had any faults is was that he refused to be the President in charge of seeing the Country fall apart.

If Lincoln was the cause of it all then why did the first states secede, Dec 1860, and the Confederate States of America come into being, Feb 1861, BEFORE Lincoln was even inaugurated in March of 1861?

I cannot comment on the issue of slavery as I honestly don't know much about it, but I can comment on the following.



My understanding is that the US had a policy of isolating itself from the rest of the world and it continued to keep that policy until Woodrow Wilson (with great difficulty) managed to get the US congress to accept a financial and then military aid (in sending weapons shipments only) to the UK during the Great War. Only later due to the Germans attacking a civilian US vessel (which some people claim to be Wilson's own planning) that the US army entered the war. Infact Woodrow Wilson himself stated many times that he is against European colonialism and will not take part in colonising Africa during or after the Great War. After the war ended, the US indeed went back to their isolationist policy until the Second World War which was the trigger to American imperialism that continues to this day.

Even before Wilson/WWII the US fought the Spanish in Cuba, and snatched up the Phillipines in the process. While Cuba was seen as in the US 'backyard', the Phillipines certainly were not. Also as I was suggested before with William Walker and the other fillibusters, the attraction for some in the US towards the annexation/control of other countries was nothing new.

This is ultimately this issue which Confederate appologists tend to ignore. While slavery may not have been the spark (the cause in the last instance, which pushed an unstable social compromise into collapse) of the Civil War, although to deny that it was a major factor would be to completly ignore the facts, it is impossibly to deny that the conflict was one between the slave states and non-slave states, and that it was the pre-existing tensions and increasingly frail compromises between these two antagonistic social forces which exploded with the onset of war.



This seems to be a political/ethical/legal argument, rather than a historical one, but I really have to call you out on this. You seem to be suggesting that there is no right to violate the sovereignty of an independent state (they were not independent states) if such a state violates the right of its own people. This is (Statist) Absolutism in no uncertain terms, which seems to conflict with your case against Lincoln's centralisation.

I think Bass also needs to differentiate between isolationism and non-interventionism because the latter only means avoiding alliances with other powers, mainly European ones whilst the former restricts trade and immigration in addition to non-interventionism. The US adhered to the Monroe doctrine which they invoked to justify the occupation of Cuba and other interventions in the Americas.