DISUNION!
By Shaun Kenney | Monday, December 20th, 2010 | Catch-AllOn 20 December 1860 — exactly 150 years ago — a room of 169 of the State of South Carolina’s leaders would conclude four days of debate.
The topic? Secession. The vote? In favor…
At a Convention of the People of the State of South Carolina, begun and holden at Columbia on the Seventeenth day of December in the year or our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty and thence continued by adjournment to Charleston, and there by divers adjournments to the Twentieth day of December in the same year –
An Ordinance To dissolve the Union between the State of South Carolina and other States united with her under the compact entitled “The Constitution of the United States of America.”
We, the People of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled do declare and ordain, and it is herby declared and ordained, That the Ordinance adopted by us in Convention, on the twenty-third day of May in the year of our Lord One Thousand Seven hundred and eight eight, whereby the Constitution of the United State of America was ratified, and also all Acts and parts of Acts of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying amendment of the said Constitution, are here by repealed; and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of “The United States of America,” is hereby dissolved.
Done at Charleston, the twentieth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty.
Four days after the Ordinance was passed, the leaders of South Carolina would issue yet another document — the Declaration of Immediate Causes – in which the reasons for secession read:
We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.…We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
Thus was the spark of secession lit, the end of the Jeffersonian “Empire of Liberty” inaugurated, and the lives of 600,000 Americans extinguished. At the end, one half of the nation would be ruined, the other half a world power. An entire class of human beings would be liberated from the bondage of slavery, though the road to equality would be long and, in the eyes of many, is still being traveled.
Most notably, the Commonwealth of Virginia would side with the Deep South — not on the issue of slavery but on Lincoln’s call for 90,000 men to bring the slave states to heel. Thus would Virginia side with secession. 25% of all the battles fought in the War would be fought inside the Commonwealth. Virginia herself would be split in two. The capital of the Confederacy would come to Richmond, and for five bloody years Virginia would become a battleground, dramatically altering the landscape, homes, and families of Virginia.
All that was sparked by one action. 150 years ago today.
Tags:
Contribute for Conservatism!
Share this post
About the author
Shaun Kenney is the Chairman of the Fluvanna County Board of Supervisors, former Communications Director for the Republican Party of Virginia, and an active blogger since 2002. Shaun lives in Thomas Jefferson's backyard with his wife, six children, and a modest attempt at a farm in Kents Store, Virginia.
Comments
49 Responses to "DISUNION!"
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Shaun Kenney. Shaun Kenney said: RT @bearingdrift: Web: DISUNION! http://bit.ly/dJPrkU [...]
Interesting. When you read the proclamation declaring secession, South Carolina is very specific that their dissatisfaction with the Union relates *directly* to the practice of slavery.
How soon before the apologists jump on this thread and try to erase this morally-bankrupt justification?
As a descendant of men of fought for the Confederacy, I have no problem acknowleding that slavery was a main cause of secession…as long as you yankees are willing to admit that the North wasn’t on some altruistic mission of racial equality.
Most of my family didn’t arrive in the United States until the late 19th century. There are other words you can use to describe me, but “Yankee” is likely not one of them.
“Yankee.” Might as well call them Visigoths for the all the relevance that has. Unless you meant the baseball team, in which case that’s a horrible thing to say about anybody.
Well, to those of us whose families got here in the late 1600s, “yankee” is pretty much anybody who got here later.
As someone whose family got here in the early 1600s, I also agree with Ward. The underlying, most fundamental bare bones reason for the war was money. Slavery = money. Slavery was not going anywhere without some kind of major conflict and the only thing surprising about the war is that it took 80+ years before that conflict actually happened. There would not have been a union at all had the north not compromised with the south on the issue at the time.
The north fought the war to preserve the union. The south fought it to preserve their way of life, which included slavery. Almost every major political issue for the preceding thirty years had slavery at its base. It was a wholly destabilizing influence on the United States until we ended it.
Brian: And America’s Original Sin. And I say that as someone who has no clue when his family got here, but knows that both sides always lived in the South. I was raised in Richmond to recognize the statues of the loser generals and know what the direction their horse was facing meant. Never made any sense to me that some Virginians have not gotten over the Civil War, more than 100 years on. The South lost, should have lost and this country and state would be much pooer places to live had the South won.
For some slavery was a motivating factor and for others not so much. In the election of 1860 Virginia was actually won by John Bell, a former Whig, who was not exactly a huge slavery booster. He won Virginia over John Breckenridge, who was a slavery supporter. John Bell also won Tennessee and Kentucky.
I think that it is interesting though that the Jacksonians and particularly Martin Van Buren had worked very hard to suppress political debate over slavery. Congress had actually put in place a gag order on the issue. This caused the issue to bottle up and helped to take other issues (i.e. state’s rights and tariffs) to a point of explosion.
They didn’t want to discuss such “divisive” social issues.
SO: Yet Congress was not entirely successful in silencing the issue. In particular, the expansion of slavery into new territories was a tinder box issues in the 20 years prior to the war. In fact, Lincoln did not think that the U.S. Govenrment had the power to end slavery, short of amendment the Consitution, which the South obviously could have blocked. But, he did oppose expansion of slavery into new territories. He believed that if slavery could be contained where it existed, it would eventually wither away on its own. That was the threat he posed to the South when elected, not abolition but containment.
One of the puzzles of history was why slavery was so universally supported in the South, despite that fact that very few Southerners were actually slave owners. Kenneth Stampp’s timeless work, “Our Peculiar Institution,” is a worthwhile reading on the subject.
Steven Osborne is absolutely correct. “States rights” was nothing more than a sham attempt to raise the argument of slavery to a higher, more philosophical level rather than trying to justify something that was morally repugnant.
And a glorious day it was. Sadly, yankee revisionist history is still alive and well. God Save and Protect the South.
The biggest piece of yankee revisionism is calling it “The Civil War.” A civil war is when rebels or insurgents attempt to seize the central government by force. No such thing happened in 1861. “The War of Seccession” or “The War of Northern Aggression” would be far more accurate names.
HR: Or the “War of Southern Treason.”
If a rebel province tries to break away from the Central Government and the Central Government resists, that’s also a Civil War. There have been serveral of those in Africa in recent decades.
And, if you attempt to break away from the Central Government and fail, you’re a traitor.
SV,
“History is written by the victors.”
HR: Indeed.
@HisRoc – when I was in elementary school, we were not allowed to call it the Civil War. It was The War Between the States.
~
Interesting how SC intends to celebrate.
Of course, for those of us privileged enough to grow up in Fredericksburg, it was simply called “the War”. It didn’t matter what was going on in Vietnam, or Panama, or the Persian Gulf, or Bosnia… when you mentioned “the War” a native Fredericksburger always knew you were talking about the “recent unpleasantness.”
Folks from outside would always talk about the Civil War, or the War of Northern Aggression, or the War Between the States… for the folks living in Fredericksburg, it was a catastrophe beyond question.
So bad was the War on folks there, that around the turn of the century when most localities in the South were given the opportunity to build monuments, most built them to honor their Civil War dead.
Not Fredericksburg — Fredericksburg chose to honor General Hugh Mercer instead. The Confederate War Monument lies off to the side of Monument Avenue — the bricks ringing the gravesites were salvaged from the buildings and warehouses destroyed during the War. The war, insofar as the citizens were concerned, was better forgotten than remembered.
Just as recently as 2004 I was walking in front of my grandmothers house and noticed a grey lump. Sure enough, it was a Yankee bullet. Most places in Fredericksburg, you can still dig just a little bit beneath the dirt and find a bullet or two. Now how’s that for growing up knowing that 200,000 men fought over the patch of land you called home!
Vivian,
Right you are! Same for me where I grew up in Princess Anne County. (Now I’m really showing my age.)
BTW, Steve Vaughan, if you haven’t read Lincoln’s biography by David Herbert Donald, there is almost an entire chapter devoted to how Lincoln wanted his post-war policies to avoid stigmatizing Southerners as “traitors.” Far from being punished, he wanted all Confederate soldiers of all ranks sent home with their weapon and their horse, if they had one. And he wanted them re-enfranchised as US citizens as soon as they took a loyalty oath. Of course, once he was murdered the Radical Republicans in Congress changed all that.
@HisRoc –
Their weapon? Wasn’t Sherman condemned for even allowing the soldiers to return their weapons to the state armory? More of a historical point than anything else…
Shaun,
I don’t know of the criticism of Sherman, but I recall that Lincoln did not want the Confederates disarmed. Being a frontiersman himself, he knew that a rifle was an important tool for people living in rural areas, from shooting game to put food on the table to protecting your livestock from predators. In fact, most of the Confederates provided their own rifles when they enlisted. The South had no arms forges and insignificant stockpiles of small arms in the militias, compared to the number of regiments that they had to field. Most of the militia members, in fact, provided their own weapons and the officers bought their own uniforms and horses.
HisRoc is right – one of the absolute worst things that happened to the south during the war was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. I think it was even worse long term than Sherman’s march to the sea.
Thanks for the South Carolina history lesson and great comments.
If you’re interested in the Virginia history, which is different than many believe (secession was actually a really close call), Check out the Library of Virginia’s exhibit, Union or Secession: Virginians Decide (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/news/index.htm).
It’s very well done and worth a trip to the Library the next time you’re in Richmond. In fact, you might make a day trip of it and go just for the guided tour of the exhibition and/or one of the related programs.
Patience, Chris. We’re leading up to Virginia. Trust us.
Yeah — Virginia doesn’t secede until April! Still, this one day at a time approach is a neat history lesson.
I wonder what Senator DeMint thinks about the secession vote being taken so close to Christmas. Were those South Carolinians disrespecting Christians? Just wondering.
Before someone calls me a damned yankee for posing that question, I had ancestors who fought on the side of the United States and others who fought with those in rebellion against their country (they were South Carolinians as a matter of fact).
I do wonder why in the world any thinking South Carolinian would celebrate the vote to secede. Those nitwits took a decision that resulted in the utter devastation of not only South Carolina but the entire South. A devastation from which it took generations to recover. Indeed, some might argue that the recovery is not yet complete.
Celebrate? Pour a glass of whiskey and curse their lack of judgement would be more appropriate.
Dan: Amen.
Virginia ought to fly the state flag at half mast on Secession Day.
Vivian,
The US celebrates secession every year, it’s called the 4th of July.
I don’t understand Bearing Drifts hostility towards the South. I thought this blog had credibility until I learned that it was opposed to Lee-Jackson Day. We have better things to do worry about then Veterans Holidays.
I for one am glad Virginia made the right decision and peacefully seceded from the US. There was much more to the war then slavery. Slavery was one of many causes that related to the federal governments interventions into state affairs, like South Carolina’s Declaration clearly showed. If the authors on this site studied American History they’d realize that.
If anyone wants to understand what the war was really about, from a Northern Abolitionist perspective, I would recommend you check out “No Treason” written in 1867 by Lysander Spooner which can be read online for free here:
http://praxeology.net/LS-NT-0.htm
Political Incorrectness is lovely, isn’t it? If we celebrated more of these events, we would understand them better. Rather than hiding them under a cloak of PC. Even though I believe that some people in this country has done wrong, name a country that doesn’t have those types of people. This country is not that bad. But our PC world has really gotten out of control.
It has gotten to a point at which we’re fighting to celebrate Christmas…Christmas!
HR — History is not written by the victors, it is written by the most persistent. Progressives, liberals and Communists are winning that battle, just listen to how horrible this nation is with the teachings in our colleges, schools and media.
Trevor,
You read too much into this. There’s no “hostility” towards the South. We just advocate that:
1) There is a broader history to celebrate
2) That the meme of “it was more than slavery” is a myth that excuses latent racism – and not necessarily by those who say it.
3) That discussing and learning about this history is a good step towards truly “reconstructing” our still broken Union. Issues of racial inequality, urban blight, education gaps, crime, etc. have a direct correlation to the War between the States, the causes for that war, and the resulting consequences, laws, and racism that boiled-over from it.
Trevor, I have spent most of my life studying American history, and I used to think like you. Then I read more. I suggest reading James McPherson’s pulitzer prize winning history “Battle Cry of Freedom.” All of the issues that lead up the war were, at some level, the result of slavery. While there were plenty of other reasons that fueled dislike of the federal government in the South, that Lincoln and the hated Republicans would attempt to end slavery – even while Lincoln was specifically saying he had no intention of doing that – was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
There’s no reason for us to try to ignore it or deny it. And there’s nothing “anti-southern” about acknowledging it. It’s simply history.
December 20, 1860 holds just as deep a place of respect (or should) for every true Southerner as does July 4, 1776 for Americans! Virginia was not forced to join South Carolina but she did so to defend her own honor. The principles of liberty espoused by Thomas Jefferson, and other Sons of Virginia, are diametrically opposed to those of Abraham Lincoln and the like minded radical of his day. Slavery was an issue in the War, no doubt, but northern slave traders had enriched themselves by transporting these slaves (under the Stars and Stripes I might add)and then sought to jerk the economic rug out from under the the South by wanting to eliminate the lifestyle that they had enabled! As horrible as slavery was, it was legal, north and south.
Slavery WAS NOT the main issue of the War, however. All one has to do is look at The Corwin Amendment – the first 13th Amendment proposed to the US Constitution. This amendment, which received 66% approval from the remaining states in the Union, secured slavery in perpetuity. If the 11 Confederate States had simply re-entered the Union and cast their votes for it, this amendment would have received the necessary 3/4 required to amend the Constitution. This closes the slavery argument, once and for all, as the main cause of the War. Retaining the intent of the founders was the South’s desire as they saw the federal government becoming a system of tyranny, much like the one this country had won it’s independence from just over 80 yearsearlier.
My grandfather was very proud that the names of his family members were on some of those Confederate Monuments.
I thought the tariffs on imported goods from the countries that bought southern products was a big factor. Guess not.
JStones, I agree that the date should be one held in respect, but for a different reason – it’s a date where we let our emotions get the better of us and made a mistake that Virginia has continued to pay for 150 years.
The principles of liberty that Lincoln espoused were no different than those of Jefferson. Lincoln was not attempting to end slavery at gunpoint. His first inaugural makes that clear. Slavery was the key issue in the war. And yes, while Northern maritime interests had transported slaves south, none had done so legally since 1808, when the Congressional ban on the importation of slaves went into effect. No Yankee merchant imported slaves legally into the Unites States for almost half a century before the war started.
The Corwin Amendment does not demonstrate what you think it demonstrates. The Corwin Amendment was a last ditch attempt to end the rebellion by resolving the issue that led South Carolina and the deep south to secede. Lincoln himself believed that nothing short of a constitutional amendment was needed and that Congress itself could not simply ban slavery by statute. But by that time, the South simply wanted their independence and they weren’t going to undo what was done. Slavery was the primary reason for secession, but once secession had occurred, the South wanted to fight for its independence regardless.
Tarriffs were one of the usual gripes, but that was more of a northeast vs. southeast issue, not one that was purely north vs. south.
John Jackson,
“HR — History is not written by the victors, it is written by the most persistent. Progressives, liberals and Communists are winning that battle, just listen to how horrible this nation is with the teachings in our colleges, schools and media.”
I’m sorry, but the idea that our colleges and schools are dominated by liberals and Communists is just plain wrong. My wife is a graduate school professor at one of the top 50 universities in the country. She is a card-carrying Democrat, but she will be the first one to tell you that if you attempt to push a political agenda on your students then you do so at your own peril. These young people who are bright enough to matriculate in our best learning institutions are far too smart to be brain-washed or intimidated with ideas that they find faulty–and they will call the good doctor on it in a New York minute.
HisRoc,
I am sure there are many engaging kids pursuing postgraduate and many great professors, including your wife. But…
Only 8% of the US families owned slaves but America is consistently reminded of slavery, only 20% of Americans consider themselves liberals but our laws are nothing but liberal (or should I say controlled by our government). …and it only took 19 Muslims to kill nearly 3,000 people.
Even though they may be a small minority, they can do a lot of damage.
J.R.,
1) You’re free to do that without specifically targeting the celebration of Southern history and heritage.
2)The causes of the war itself are separate from the causes of secession, and the causes of secession were numerous, regardless of whether you think it excuses latent racism. Federal intervention into the instution of slavery was only the latest infringment of state sovereignty.
3) I agree.
Brian, what principles of liberty did Lincoln espouse? He tended to follow the statist policies of Hamilton, not Jefferson.
The cause of the war was separate from the causes of secession. Neither side believed they were fighting for or against slavery. The US was fighting to preserve the Union, and the Confederacy was fighting to defend it’s national sovereignty against a foreign invader. The reason for why the Confederacy was formed was an earlier issue, separate from why they were fighting.
Yes, a few states cited slavery as a cause for their secession, but they clearly articulated that it was slavery’s relation to state’s rights that caused it to be an issue. Slavery was only the latest state institution the federal government was threatening to intervene in. Practically all of early American history is one big back and forth argument between the strict constructionist, free trade, agrarian based South and the protectionist, loose constructionist, merchant based North. The Southern states were simply doing everything legally possible to defend their Constitutional rights, no matter how immoral they might seem.
Southern Secession was sparked by the federal governments infringment of state’s rights, due to it’s growing desire for consolidated power through nationalism, and it’s rejection of the compact theory of the Constitution, slavery was just a small piece of the growing interventionist puzzle.
Trevor, Lincoln showed no inclination to interfere in internal state business. Lincoln himself said in his first inaugural “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” What examples do you have of him taking a statist approach?
You can’t separate the cause of the war with the causes of secession. It was the secessionists who began the war, after all, by firing on Fort Sumter. The causes of secession for the deep south were fundamentally based on their desire to protect slavery and their unhappiness with the result in the 1860 election. The border states went after Lincoln called up troops in response to South Carolina’s attack on Sumter.
It’s difficult to characterize what each side was fighting for, because there were multiple reasons and multiple causes on both sides. Distilling it down into one reason for each ignores the variety of reasons that people fought.
It wasn’t slavery’s relationship to state’s rights – it was state’s rights relationship to slavery. There were no other significant issues involving “state’s rights” that arose. The Tariff that sparked the first nullification crisis in 1832 was clearly a federal prerogative, and the South was simply unhappy with it. That doesn’t make it a state’s rights issue.
The south did everything legally possible, and when that wasn’t sufficient, we took to everything illegally possible too. That didn’t work either.
Look, if it’s any consolation, I feel your pain. When I was your age, I spent a long time making these same arguments and trying to cast the war between the states in a light that didn’t look so bad towards the south. But I have read too much, from sources biased from both perspectives, and a lot of political history from the time period and before – there’s simply too much evidence that the prime motivation behind all of the political strife and sectionalism, from the founding of the Republic until after the war was the issue of slavery. It was all consuming.
There’s no good reason to pretend otherwise. It’s simply something that needs to be accepted. I don’t think admitting it is a bad thing.
Brian, you make some points that argue that the war was not necessarily over slavery?
1) You bring up my sore spot with Lincoln. He apparently had no inclination to end slavery. He claimed he had no legal authority, eventhough that authority should have been “self-evident”. If the war & secession was primarily over slavery, how do you reconcile that with the idea that Lincoln wouldn’t have stopped it?
2) You make the arguement that, to boil things down to one of the reasons they fought ,was to ignore the many reasons. While I can see that as being a point towards the North making things difficult for the South in some regard with slavery as an undeniable additional motive, it kinda argues against it as a prime mover.
It makes one think that the states felt they had the legal right to secede and a couple got cranky enough to do so. When the North moved troops, wasn’t that impetus for the other southern states to join the rebellion? The arguement then being, the states have no real sovereignty if Federal action moves our blood against those with legal right to secession with which we have no quarrel anyay?
I think of myself as a proud Virginian and admire Lee, but am no “rebel” or even a proud southerner. I have no emotional tie to the Confederacy. I therefore didn’t have the obsessive desire to research that history. Sacriligious for a Virginian, I know. I happen to prefer how things turned out, as I love America, but since the arguements are before us, how would you answer my two points, Brian?
Britt, I can reconcile the idea by simply pointing out some similar things that are happening right now. Look at the birthers. These guys have been given complete evidence that President Obama was born in Hawaii. And even in the face of that evidence, they still maintain that he’s a Kenyan and not qualified to be president. The same thing was going on back in 1860. Lincoln’s personal stance on slavery was well known from the Lincoln/Douglas debates and no amount of Lincoln proclaiming that he wasn’t going to interfere with slavery would satisfy the south that having the White House and Congress in Republican control would not result in slavery being ended.
Lincoln believed that in order to end slavery, there would necessarily need to be a constitutional amendment, as there was no enumerated power that authorized Congress to end the practice. That’s why, besides the politics of it, when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, it only affected southern territory in Union control. He believed he had authority as Commander in Chief to do that there.
As for #2, as I noted before, slavery was such a fundamental part of political reality in the south, it played a role in nearly every political issue. The southern agrarian, export based economy was made possible by it. The expansion of it into the territories was critical to ensure future slave states entering the union so there would never be the critical 3/4 mass needed to pass a constitutional amendment banning it. Almost every major political fight of the previous 30 years had some kind of tie to slavery. It was foundational to the cause of the war.
That being said, I think it’s an oversimplification to say that the war was fought over slavery or that keeping/ending slavery was the only point – just like I say that we went into Iraq for more than just WMDs. There were a lot of reasons and justifications on both sides of the fight. But by trying to downplay slavery as a justification in order to make what the south did more palatable to those of us with modern day sensibilities, that’s trying to rewrite history. My views on the war have matured enough for me to recognize that.
Ah, that makes sense to me now. Although, you now argue that he did intend to end slavery, but was taking a longer term approach with an amendment that he claimed he would need. With that on the wind, so to speak, the “birthers” in this analogy were probably right. With the fear of new states entering the union breaking the 3/4 threshold they probably saw it as inevitable and decided to secede. I’m still a little disappointed with Lincoln and every President before him. The nation was after all founded on the idea of man being born as equals and with unalienable rights. I can’t quite agree that an amendment was needed.
It could be that slavery was the prime motivation with some states, but not others. I imagine some will need to see evidence of that 3/4 eventuality fear. At that point they may be able to come to grips with it.
I think Lincoln, like most Republicans, wanted to see slavery ended. But I also think that his desire to preserve the union trumped his desire to end slavery. Most of these guys believed that slavery was going to eventually die out – that was a common belief dating back to Jefferson – although there’s no evidence that slavery was any closer to its natural end in 1860 than it was in 1789.
Britt, you have to forgive these guys – like I said before, without a compromise with the South on slavery, there would have been no union to begin with. The southerners made it clear in the constitutional convention that any attempt to end slavery would end with them walking out. Even accepting petitions to end slavery from people in the states was hugely controversial in the first Congresses and sparked some early friction on the subject.
Given the trajectory we were on, there really was no other way to peacefully resolve the issue. It was going to come to war eventually. That we staved it off for almost a century is a miracle in and of itself.
Brian, I actually use to think like you, “if it’s any consolation”. I actually use to defend the belief that the war was over slavery until just a few years ago when I actually studied it and read things like the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution of 1861, The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the Hampton Roads Peace Conference of 1865 where time and time again it was proven that the war was not being fought over slavery.
Lincoln was elected through the nations first truly sectional political party. The policies he ran on were based upon the statist platform of his party. Statist policies such as protectionism, government control of the money supply through a nationalized banking system, and government subsidies for railroad, shipping, and canal building businesses aka internal improvements. These statist policies follow the philosophy of Hamilton, not Jefferson, and most of them were outlawed by the Confederate Constitution. The new Republican Party of his day was only opposed to the expansion of slavery for white supremacist reasons. They were not for equality. Lincoln stated multiple times during the Lincoln Douglass Debates that he was not for the equality of whites and blacks, and that he was only opposed to the expansion of slavery because he wanted the territorys to be reserved for “free white labor”. Even the Republican Party Platform written in 1856 read: “all unoccupied territory of the United States, and such as they may hereafter acquire, shall be reserved for the white Caucasian race, a thing that cannot be except by the exclusion of slavery.”
The only reason slavery was an issue on the national scene, was because it was the root of the debate over geographical equality and superiority in the Union. Whatever region became dominant would then be dominant in Congress and would enforce it’s sectional policies on the other. Why else would they be arguing over whether slavery should be allowed in the deserts of New Mexico? It’s not like anyone could have a plantation there anyways. Alexander Stephens described why they were defending slavery in the new territorys just before the war: “Unless you can create more slave states, the North will outgrow, overstep, and crush you.” The last thing the South wanted was the statist consolidationist policies of the North.
And I agree with you that you can’t say only one issue caused the war, that’s why I don’t go around telling people the war was over slavery.
And it was state’s rights relation to slavery, as to why they defended it where it was already established.
And the Nullification Crisis obviously was a state’s rights issue, since it was over nullification, which can only be a right of the states.
And the South didn’t start the war. South Carolina only fired upon Fort Sumter because of Lincoln’s aggression which he carried out intending to start war, Federal troops moved into Fort Sumter 6 days after South Carolina seceded. South Carolina would obviously no longer tolerate a US fort on their coast, as the George Washington would have a British one, and so they simply defended themselves and enforced their sovereignty after the occupying force refused to leave.
And what did you mean by South did everything “illegal”? I assume you’re talking about secession?
Under the 10th Amendment secession was perfectly legal, as it was not prohibited to the states in the Constitution. This should be common sense to anyone who understands the 10th Amendment.
Also some states (like Virginia for example) have written in their ratification of the Constitution as a clause that they have the right to withdraw from the Union if it becomes oppressive, so it was only because Virginia reserved the right to secede that it joined the Union in the first place, and since all states are equal in rights it must apply to all states.
oh, by the way, I don’t believe the Republican Party today is the same as Lincoln’s Republican Party since it’s platform, and geographical base is totally different. I get the feeling most of you with Bearing Drift only support him (and all that comes with him) because you want to tie the current Republican Party to him.
So, what “state right” were the Southern states interested in?
Trevor, when did you used to think like me? A few years ago? When you were 15?
I have read all of those documents. You’re still missing the point and taking politically written documents at face value without questioning why they were written the way they were written, or what the drafter’s goals were. Crittenden Johnson was drafted specifically to keep the border states in the Union, and again, no one is arguing that either side fought to end or maintain slavery. The point I’m trying to make is that slavery was the primary cause of the war. Being the cause does not require that either side consciously be fighting to support/end it. But to ignore its primacy in the list of reasons the war was fought is to whitewash history.
I don’t get why you’re trying to turn this into some kind of argument about federalism. You’re acting like having a sound monetary policy (as opposed to the half dozen depressions and recessions we had after Jackson destroyed the Bank of the United States) is a bad thing. Or funding for internal improvements. By the way, funding for internal improvements was the hallmark of the Whig Party – a non-sectional party that had elected multiple presidents before it imploded and to which Lincoln and a large number of Republicans and some Democrats, belonged to prior to 1856. It wasn’t something Republicans invented. And sure, the Republican party may have been sectional in 1856 and 1860, but so was the Democratic. You had two different Democratic nominees in 1860, one in the north and one in the south.
You can’t view the past through modern eyes. It was a different time, so trying to argue that the Republicans were white supremacists is nonsense. Both parties and most Americans at that time period felt that whites were inherently superior to blacks. You’re playing up the whole “wage slavery” nonsense that the Southern Democrats used to attack northerners with.
Speaking of statists and the north and south, it’s interesting to point out that the Confederate government wasn’t that big into state’s rights either. They barred the states from outlawing slavery within their borders in the Constitution – taking away each state’s right to decide the question for themselves. I guess it’s only important to protect state’s rights when you’re talking about anything but slavery.
Stephens is correct – barring slavery’s extension into the territories was a way to ensure that eventually there would be sufficient non-slave states to amend the constitution to ban slavery.
Like I asked before, name a single other state’s rights prerogative that the federal government was infringing upon other than slavery – you can’t, because there were none. The state’s rights / “statist” nonsense was a smokescreen for the true point, which was to the protection of slavery.
The war was not strictly about slavery, but slavery was the #1 reason for the conflict, and trying to turn this into some kind of states’ rights argument ignores the facts. Don’t do it. Don’t start with this revisionist neo-Confederate nonsense.
Arguing that the South didn’t start the war when the South fired first is ridiculously ignorant. Resupplying starving men is not an act of aggression, especially when you’ve told the other side ahead of time that you’re going to do it. They were on federal property.
Secession is not legal. It was not legal then, it is not legal now. The Supreme Court has held that secession is not legal. The 10th Amendment does not say anything about secession nor has it ever been construed that way. Virginia’s reserve clause in ratification was not valid – none of them are, and the fact that Virginia tried to leave the union and failed is evidence enough of their invalidity.
You’re also incorrect about the idea that today’s Republican party is not the same as Lincoln’s Republican party. I already wrote an article blowing up that fiction months ago.
I support Lincoln because I agreed with him that preserving the Union was more important than
Leave your response
The comments section is for meaningful discussion. Readers are reminded to post comments that are germane to the article and write in a common language that steers clear of personal attacks and/or vulgarities.
Please take a moment to review our comment policy.