Bighunter43 said:
There is no doubt slavery was the leading cause of the war, and that's non-negotiable. Even Lincoln stated in his 2nd Inaugural Address: " slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest! All new that this was somehow the cause of the war!"
I'm not sure I agree with the slavery equals socialism analogy. I do agree that socialism would probably lead to a split of some sort today, however this nation has never been "socialist". What I'm saying is slavery existed when the country began, and the South was so dependent on it that they viewed any attempt to limit it or take it away as a threat to their very livelihood. The South was fighting because of "losing" something that they depended on. While turning socialist might cause a war today,I think a better analogy might be a threat in the 2nd Amendment....passing legislation to take that away would definitely lead to a war.
BQ78 said:
Smoke draw:
There absolutely was an immediate threat to the south by the election of Lincoln. In order to have the political power to maintain slavery rights in an expanding country, the south would need to export slavery into the territories. While Lincoln was no threat to slavery where it existed, expansion into the territories was something Lincoln absolutely opposed and would have pulled out the stops to stop. The south knew if slavery was restricted to only 14 states, eventually the other states would be able to out-vote them on the issue.
who?mikejones said:
History is complicated and big events rarely just happen. Pressure builds and many small events take place which in turn leads to a big event. Over the course of a build up, perspectives change. The situation changes. It very hard to honestly look back without a modern bias to see the situation for what it was.
who?mikejones said:
Btw. I wouldnt say wrong, i would say incomplete. I think most peoples understanding about most historical subjects is at best topical and incomplete.
Even someone like Watson has an incomplete understanding of a subject such as the civil war, even if he acts like he knows all the relevant information.
History is complicated and big events rarely just happen. Pressure builds and many small events take place which in turn leads to a big event. Over the course of a build up, perspectives change. The situation changes. It very hard to honestly look back without a modern bias to see the situation for what it was.
Edit- clarity and fat fingers
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Slavery led to secession
Lincoln's refusal to allow it led to war
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The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slave-holding States.
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In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color--a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.
If you read the Texas secession ordinance, they clearly think that there is a massive group of abolitionists in the North, even though we know with hindsight that they were relatively small. But this was an age of partisan "fake news" in which things were often blown out of proportion and there was little opportunity to counter-act it. If Lincoln had been able to go on CNN (probably remotely, since he wouldn't travel to their headquarters in Atlanta)Quote:
Was there any real threat to slavery for the South. The author of the article above stated clearly that northerners were hardly abolitionist, so what major threats to slavery were the south concerned with?
he would have said, "Hey dudes, chill. I have no intention to abolish slavery."CanyonAg77 said:
I think he may have run himself off again. I other words, did something to earn a permaban on that nickname, as he has with others.
Edit: Did a search, his last post was mid December, on the thread about idiot profs planning to withhold grades until a Confederate statue (Silent Sam) was removed. Maybe at UNC?
Regardless, seems like his Bat Signal, which means I would not be shocked if he said something bannable, as he did as "sapper".
Can you recommend a book on John Brown that gives a good picture of the trial and political atmosphere that came about due to his actions?Bighunter43 said:
Well said Alan. I particularly like that you mentioned JOHN BROWN, as I feel that the reaction to his raid by some in the North fueled the abolitionist narrative, and fanned the flames in the South that the North was "out to get them" and put an end to slavery. Just like the media today, particularly CNN spreading their liberal propaganda, most people of the pre-Civil War looked to the papers as their MAIN source of information, and Southern newspapers didn't hold back when it came to their reaction! Here are two very good examples:
1.) North Carolina Register.....Dec. 9, 1859: "We give today the full accounts of the scenes attending the traitor, murderer and thief John Brown. He died, as he lived, a hardened criminal. When his wretched associates shall have paid the penalty of their crimes, we hope their allies and sympathizers in the North will realize the South has the power to protect her soil and property, and will exercise it in spite of all the measures which can leveled at her by the abolitionists and their supporters!"
2.) Charleston Spirit....Dec. 7, 1859: "Republican leaders contributed to Brown's Harper Ferry enterprise as they had before contributed to keep him at his bloody work in Kansas. Since his arrest and conviction, not only has the bloody murderer been soothed by individual expressions of sympathy and regard, but in New England public meetings, presided over by very prominent Republicans, have endorsed the murderer's conduct and have taken measures to provide for his family as a special mark for the admiration of this man!"
Obviously, Southerners took such a dim view of the Republican party and this fanned the flames that MOST of the North were abolitionists and would try to stop slavery. No wonder Lincoln's name didn't appear on the ballot in 10 Southern States!
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I would address a few words to the Southern people. I would say to them: You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws.
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You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to "Black Republicans." In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of "Black Republicanism" as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisitelicense, so to speakamong you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves. . . .
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You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper's Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need not be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious slander.
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Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair; but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held to and made by "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live." You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair.
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Republican doctrines and declarations are accompanied with a continual protest against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common with "our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live," declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do, the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us, in their hearing.
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Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the Republican party was organized. What induced the Southampton insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which, at least, three times as many lives were lost as at Harper's Ferry? You can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton was "got up by Black Republicanism." In the present state of things in the United States, I do not think a general, or even a very extensive slave insurrection, is possible.
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Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves for their masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is true. A plot for an uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated to twenty individuals before some one of them, to save the life of a favorite master or mistress, would divulge it. This is the rule; and the slave revolution in Hayti was not an exception to it, but a case occurring under peculiar circumstances.
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In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, "It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up."
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John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution.
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And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of John Brown, Helper's book, and the like, break up the Republican organization? Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feelingthat sentimentby breaking up the political organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box, into some other channel? What would that other channel probably be? Would the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation?
aalan94 said:
Agree with huisachel that it was the response to John Brown, even more than John Brown, that was a big deal.
John Brown and his gang had hacked people to death with swords in Kansas, and then led an attempted military expedition that was designed to murder white Southerners. He was passionate, but evil, and had been vilified by the North even before, but in his trial, they embraced him.
A couple of comparisons to consider:
1. Imagine if Eric Rudolph, the anti-abortion and Olympics bomber (anti-Abortion being the closest parallel to anti-slavery) had been tried in a pro-abortion state and the anti-abortion states' newspapers treated him like a hero and a martyr, and attacked the abortion states' justice system as if they were the murderers, not him. That's a pretty good reverse of the John Brown trial.
2. Remember that real short-lived story after 9/11 how supposedly some liberal folks were saying about Osama that he actually had redeeming qualities: that he was gentle, poetic, and liked to sip tea. I'm sure the story was about 3 people who had that opinion and that it didn't represent anything worth concerning about. But that sort of story, blown out of perspective, can become a shocking misperception.
3. Trump and Charlottesville. I'm sure Trump does not support actual neo-Nazis running down innocent people (or even people guilty of bad behavior of a minor criminal nature). But his inability to say anything definitive to distance himself from them caused widespread outrage among many quarters of the country. Now, swap Trump and Lincoln. Lincoln gave a speech distancing himself from John Brown, but it's weak and not likely to convince a skeptic (It's so good, I'll paste it entirely below).
Southerners were always paranoid, particularly as slavery evolved into an industrial affair and you had large areas where blacks outnumbered whites. Then they see John Brown, and how the North turns him into a hero and they believe the Republican Party is really just a party of John Browns. It's imperative to understand the Southern mindset to step outside of our hindsight, where Lincoln is seen as a heroic, temperate figure, and imagine him as they saw him. It's as if that crazy Muslim woman in congress was elected president and the conservative media was printing stories that she was supposedly going to implement Sharia. Or Bernie Sanders was elected and was going to launch some great Maoist Cultural Reformation.
To the Southerners, this is what Lincoln's election meant, and while yes, the war was about slavery, the "what" that Slavery represented was starker than simply human bondage. It was a choice between continuing human bondage that they had inherited and could not imagine living without, and not a null, simple emancipation with everyone living with fairies and unicorns, but an alternative in which they seriously believed, that the only possible result of emancipation was full-on race war of blacks and radical abolitionists against them, which could only result in their extinction.
When you think of it in these terms, you realize the near inevitability of the conflict, and while doing nothing to reduce the moral stain of slavery, this recognition allows you to understand, empathetically not sympathetically, their position.
I suspect that if Mexico had been strong and expansionist (like Russia), then the U.S. would have found a very good reason to pump money into the South and transform it. The Marshall Plan was a great thing for the world, but if it wasn't for fear of the Soviets, the Germans would have gotten something like a watered down version of the Morgenthau plan at worst, or simply neglect at best. (By the way, I just finished "Conquerors" by Michael Beschloss on this very topic and it's worth reading...and a separate thread).Quote:
The sad thing is after the war and the killing the Feds not only screwed the south in revenge but also nearly neglected the former slave. Both would have done better had they been former Nazis, than fellow Americans.