The Civil War wasn't about slavery

I don't think anyone takes issue with that. But slavery was in fact a major and deciding issue in the civil war, moreso for the South than the North. Jefferson Davis was said that if an abolitionist president were elected, that he would call for secession. Also of note is that most of the states that seceded did so relatively soon after Lincoln was elected.

Again, I'm not saying it was the only issue. That's plainly wrong. However, revisionist history by some in the south would have us believe that slavery was hardly a consideration.

 

I think the key point is that slavery was a symptom of the philosophical divide and not the core. States Rights versus federal centralization of power was a very, very real issue that may have manifested itself without slavery. If the south had still been agricultural and the north industrial, the same issues of tariffs and free trade might very well have created division.

Emancipation though was not a popular cause in the North to begin the war. It had zealous proponents but many openly worried that freed slaves would come north. They worried that materials from the south would cost more.

With that in mind, it might be more accurate to say that the Civil War didn't start over emancipation rather than that it wasn't about slavery.

 

You forgot Longstreet... who was actually a Democrat (state's rights) from the north (Ohio I think) who was second only to Jackson in his value to Lee.

 

Wow, what a great read. Really puts things in perspective. Thanks. I’m gonna add this piece as part of our childrends homeschool studies about the Civil War.

Btw, after living in the North for 4 years, God has called us back to His promise land of Tennessee and we’ll be leaving at weeks end, living near the hollowed grounds of Shiloh in Savannah.

Another thing that I’ve always wondered was that IF this Civil War was started by the South, then why was every major battle fought in the South and not the North?

 

You either need to brush up on history or geography...then you would change the statement to "almost".

 

He probably forgot about Gettysburg and Antietam... though Maryland probably would have suceded had the Federals not intervened.

 

And Belmont, and Perryville, and Morgan's raids, and Quantrill's raids.

The reason why the war was fought in the South is the strategic equation for this war; all the South had to do was defend successfully and survive, and they got what they wanted. The North had to win and knock out the South in order to preserve the Union.

 

They did say major battles.

Actually his point is valid. The south did have a legitimate right to secede by a plain reading of the founding documents. After seceding, they did have a sovereign right to insist that foreign armies leave their territory (like Fort Sumter).

Now whether it was exactly prudent to start repelling the Federals when they did is probably questionable. But the rights to self determination and individual sovereignty (for free men by the estimation of both groups unfortunately) so deeply held by the Founders were clearly on the side of the southerners.

Might doesn't necessarily make right.

 

Seems that the charges up in the politics forum by Poncho that executive power grabs and abuse started within the last 3 administrations was more than a little overstated, huh?

 

The downfall of our constitutional republic was laid when the delegates, in spite of being so embarrassed by slavery that the word "slave" does not even occur in the Constitution, made the "deal with the devil" and largely ignored and talked around the issue.

I guess one could say that the beginning of the downfall of our republic began the day in 1619 when that Dutch man of war ship stopped at Jamestown and "sold" some African indentured servants. African chattel slavery slowly developed after that.

 

I have spent a lot of time thinking about this issue for the last 50 years or so, and not just as a history teacher. I watched the Civil Rights movement on TV as a child, and read the speeches. I have witnessed racial prejudice up close and personally.

I have thought this through, and I have read a lot of primary source materials over the years.

For us to buy off on the notion that slavery was acceptable to the South because of them being people of their times is not very convincing to me. The United States itself was a cutting edge institution; there were no other true republics in 1789. The Declaration and the Constitution were radical documents to anyone else in the world. And, there was, even among some of the slaveholding southern leaders, a realization that the institution was fundamentally at odds with what we were as a nation from the beginning. Jefferson's own comments show that he was full of dread for the future because of the "Institution." Franklin dedicated the last years of his life pushing for abolition. Our mother country, due to the actions of conservative evangelicals such as John Newton (Amazing Grace) and William Wilberforce, eliminated slavery in 1833 on purely moral grounds. Whereas our republic was cutting edge, we were behind most of the western world in this.

The real tragedy, of course, was the arrogance and overreaction of the leadership of the South, and its unfounded fears. Lincoln, the 39% president without a majority in either house of Congress, and with a majority slaveholding SCOTUS, had not one bit of power to change anything. Had the SC hotheads kept their cool, Lincoln would have been a one-term president, but their actions gave him the stick to beat them with.

I have a unique perspective on this; because of the long generations in my family (my great grandfather was born in 1817, my grandfather in 1856, and my father in 1902), because I know what my great grandfather did during the Civil War, and why he did it. He was a southerner, but also a religious opponent of slavery. He put his body where his mouth was, and at the age of 44, he left his family (14 kids) in the care of his older children, and joined the Union Volunteer cavalry.

When the southern delegates signed the Constitution, and when their states ratified it, the right to secession was gone forever. The supremacy clause and other sections in the Constitution make it plain that the states are inferior in power and therefore cannot secede. Perhaps the real tragedy is that when the SC hotheads first pushed the federals, during the Jackson administration, Henry Clay cobbled together a solution, averting Old Hickory's plan to invade SC and end the debate then and there. Late in life, Jackson said that one of his great regrets in life was that he had not hanged John Calhoun.

Then, of course, there is the whole issue of Reconstruction, which I have nicknamed "The Cold Civil War." It lasted three times as long as the war, and probably did more to hurt the South and African Americans than the war did. Race relations in the US have not gotten over the 99 year delay in fully enforcing the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. The economy and culture of some parts of the South has yet to recover from the effects of the plantation system, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow.

There are no simple answers to this history. The US has not gotten over this yet, which is why so many study this.

 

Slavery existed during the life of Christ and of the Apostles. However, there is no direct condemnation of this social order.

No it wasn't. It is unfounded and absurd to say that the founders intended to enslave the people to an American gov't that systematically violated their rights and violated the very Constitution it was premised upon.

 

The Constitution was promulgated in the name of "We the People," not "We the States," which was one of the Anti-federalist objections by Patrick Henry and others.

The People of the whole USA are therefore superior to any subdivision.

Certainly there were protections against the tyranny of the majority, but from the get-go, this was a consolidated government. The South is to blame for giving old Abe the excuse he wanted to have. They almost pushed fellow southerner Old Hickory to do the same thing.

I'd say firing the first shot at a certain fort in Charleston harbor would have to be constituted as domestic violence.

By the Constitution and their oath, the Confederate leaders were bound to support the Constitution, not to declare it dead because they thought they might lose in a struggle that was far from reaching culmination. The men who violated their solemn oaths to support and defend the Constitution defined themselves thereby. Lincoln's call for volunteers was caused by the attack in Charleston Harbor.

 

No it wasn't. It is unfounded and absurd to say that the founders intended to enslave the people to an American gov't that systematically violated their rights and violated the very Constitution it was premised upon. </font>[/QUOTE]Point of fact, when the South rebelled, the government had not done anything; they had (barely) lost an election. There was a plurality in the Congress for the status quo; there was a pro-slavery majority on SCOTUS. The previous Chief Executive, President Buchanan was on their side, for pity's sake! New President Lincoln was powerless to do anything but make speeches, unless the South gave him the excuse to put on his wartime powers. The beginning of this war resembles the tragic and incompetent stumblings of the European leaders in June and July of 1914.

The South, with only 14% of the US industrial base and with a population deficit of 21 million to nine million (38% of whom were slaves) chose to start a war on the basis of what they thought might be the actions of a president who barely won and only had 39% of the popular votes at that. As the fictional character Rhett Butler said in Gone With the Wind, all the South had was arrogance and slaves, and they had too much and too many of those.