Nuthin’ But a Slavery Thang
Edward Ball, author of Slaves in the Family, has a powerful piece in the New York Times about the reasons for the Civil War.
I’ve heard it from women and from men, from sober people and from people liquored up on anti-Washington talk. The North wouldn’t let us govern ourselves, they say, and Congress laid on tariffs that hurt the South. So we rebelled. Secession and the Civil War, in other words, were about small government, limited federal powers and states’ rights.
But a look through the declaration of causes written by South Carolina and four of the 10 states that followed it out of the Union — which, taken together, paint a kind of self-portrait of the Confederacy — reveals a different story. From Georgia to Texas, each state said the reason it was getting out was that the awful Northern states were threatening to do away with slavery.
As we get ready to start honoring the war that freed the slaves, let us remember that this war was not about states’ rights, it was about slavery. Here is the link to South Carolina’s Declaration of Immediate Causes (pdf).
Tags: slavery
just like Tbaggers…. (back then they were called confederates) to ignore all their own faults and hypocrisies and blame it on constitutionally sound elections they lost.
I do think if they try and “run away form home” again, we let the little pricks leave…. then laugh as they beg for immigration amnesty when they cant hack it on their own.
@ a.price…..I like the way you think……
lets encourge the nascent idea already fomenting in Sussex that they should seceed. everything west of Rt 9, bye bye and see how long they last….
Think how much we will save in farm subsidies alone!
Vance Phillips for President, Sam Wilson – Vice president and Bill Colley, court jester
9/12 militia for their military and Jeff Christopher their commander
Oh Plz – now I need a drink, I think the chocolate chip cookies got to me
The problem in talking about “the” cause of the Civil War is that there isn’t just one cause of the Civil War. I can point to several things — tariffs, the shifting locus of power between the states and the national government, the divergence of economic interests between the agricultural South and industrial North, the declining influence of the Southern states as Northern and “Western” (today we’d say “Midwestern”) found themselves allied politically and economically and, of course, slavery. While it is undeniable that slavery was the point of conflict that everyone talked about, it is impossible to discount the others as being part of the mix.
Now one could argue that there were solid constitutional grounds supporting secession in theory, but the ensuing military conflict settled the issue from a practical point of view. But it does remain difficult to argue with Jefferson’s argument that the people have a right to alter or abolish their form of government and institute a new one — and to question whether or not we betray something in our heritage by denying the legitimacy of the decision of the Southern states to do precisely that.
These are conservative talking points, Joe. It can indeed be argued that the constitution didn’t support secession in theory — the document states the union is in perpetuity.
You also are wrong about slavery being “part of the mix.” Several of the states said as much in their secession documents.
South Carolina: “The non-slaveholding states … have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery” and “have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes.”
Mississippi: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world. … There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union.”
Georgia: “A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia.”
And, for a capstone, this portion of a key speech by Alexander Stephens, VP of the Confederacy, at Savannah on March 21, 1861:
“The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. … Those ideas [about slavery in the Constitution, and the feeling among the Founders that slavery would die out] were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”
“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
Here’s the whole speech, so you can’t pretend this is out of context:
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=76
In short, you are peddling discredited bullshit.
+1 @ Geezer
People, save this comment so you are prepared when you run into idiots over the next 6 years.
http://delawareliberal.net//2010/12/19/nuthin-but-a-slavery-thang/#comment-218784
Geezer — please cite the language of the constitution that allegedly “states the union is in perpetuity.”
By the way — why do you treat my comment that argues that slavery was one of several causes of the Civil War as if it denies that slavery had anything to do with the Civil War?
Some people continue to pretend (in spite of the evidence) that slavery was not the cause of the civil war because they make good money pretending. Then, of course, there are the unpaid idiots.
Joe: I realize the concept is beyond you folks, but constitutional arguments are not settled by the constitution alone, but by centuries of case law from the Supreme Court as well. The fact that you folks don’t agree with this does not negate it in the least. The problem is yours, not the country’s.
That said, see the 1869 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Texas v. White. In the opinion by chief justice Salmon P. Chase (a Republican appointed by Lincoln), the court ruled that under the Articles of Confederation, adopted by the states during the American Revolution, “the Union was solemnly declared to ‘be perpetual.’ And when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained ‘to form a more perfect Union.’ It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words. What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?”
The language to which he refers is in Article XIII of the Articles of Confederation: “And the Articles of this confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a congress of the united States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.”
I’ll start listening to you and your autodidact ilk after you take actual Constitutional history courses. Until then you’re simply parrots who think the power of speech has given you the gift of reason.
“why do you treat my comment that argues that slavery was one of several causes of the Civil War as if it denies that slavery had anything to do with the Civil War?”
Because it’s the same apologia that Southerners have been bleating for a century and a half in an attempt to pretend they didn’t agree with what Alexander Stephens said.
All the other issues you brought up sprang from the Southern export economy, which was predicated on large-scale cotton plantation farming and would not exist without chattel slavery. I married into a Southern family and have been listening patiently to these pathetic justifications for nearly 40 years. It usually leads to the charge that Northerners are every bit as racist as Southerners, and probably more so.
Interestingly, the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to Union Slave States, such as Delaware, so these states were allowed to continue slave ownership even as it was made illegal in the Confederate States during the Civil War.
Absolutely true. I’m not claiming that getting rid of slavery was the aim of the northern states, because it wasn’t. The issue is whether slavery was the root cause of the Civil War. Following the lead of many historians, I believe it was.
Since the documents written at the time, referenced by Geezer above, clearly state the cause of secession was slavery, why do we need to rewrite history to pretend it wasn’t? I grew up in Kentucky, also a slave/border state and there is a lot Civil War revisionism.
I agree that the root cause was slavery wrapped in the legal niceties of states’ rights claims.
As I read Alexander Stephens, I kept getting the feeling he would have been right at home on Fox News or Delaware Politics, for that matter.
Wow, A1 wrote something untrollish.
@geezer – “I’ll start listening to you and your autodidact ilk after you take actual Constitutional history courses. Until then you’re simply parrots who think the power of speech has given you the gift of reason.”
WOW – GREAT line! permission to use it? Maybe Republican David might take note over on DP? Sussex county crazies want to seceeed – wonder how Texas v White will apply then?
personally – Im happy to send everything west of Rt 9 afloat, with their right wing rhetoric and no more farm subsidies, clutching their guns and bibles – see how long they last
at least redistricting will give us 2 more reps and one more Senator down here – thank goodness the Dems hold the house!
Sussex council is entirely R with one exception – talk about taxation without representation!
Western Sussex has used Eastern Sussex like a pimp uses his whore – time that relationship changed – and its about to
Geezer — you state that the Constitution states the union is perpetual. You then acknowledge that nowhere does the Constitution state that the Union is perpetual, but instead point to Texas v. White, which uses the Articles of Confederation as the basis for that assertion — despite the fact that the Constitution effectively broke the perpetual union guaranteed by the Articles by implicitly abrogating that document through its provisions starting the new government without the participation of states that had not ratified the new Constitution (in other words, removing them from the union rather than delaying the start of the new government until all of the states had ratified it).
Frankly, <Texas v. White is not a decision based upon sound legal reasoning, but rather it is an ex post facto justification of the status quo that existed after the Civil War. It would have been more accurate for the Supreme Court to state “ewe kicked your ass and are imposing our will on you, so deal with it” rather than pretend there was any legal justification for its decision.
But thank you for conceding to me that the Constitution DOES NOT state that there is a perpetual union, and acknowledging that the Supreme Court got it wrong in Texas v. White. Thank you for acknowledging that there was a legitimate argument for secession that was stronger and more firmly rooted in the Constitution than the argument against secession (which was rooted in the repudiated Articles of Confederation). And since I’ve got degrees in History and Political Science from major state universities, I think it is fair to say that I meet your requirement of not being an autodidact.
I didn’t “acknowledge the SCOTUS got it wrong” in Texas v. White. That’s your, and the Tea Party’s, interpretation.
The Articles were not “repudiated.” They were made “more perfect.” There is nothing in the Constitution granting the right of secession. Indeed, if such a right existed, the union would have no meaning. You are basically arguing for the Balkanization of the country. Don’t get me wrong, I would love it if the South broke off and took people like you with it. But it won’t happen, whatever the Constitution might say.
Too bad those degrees didn’t teach you anything. If you had paid attention you would realize that the Constitution has been honored as much in the breach as the observance from very close to the launch of the nation. Should we stop allowing the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution? As you know, there’s nothing in the document spelling out that function.
Since you have degrees in history and political science, you also know that all these issues have adherents on every side. Thank you for showing that you stand not with the forward-thinking scholars on these issues but with the ignorant masses who seek any justification for their own biases.
SCOTUS decision the Teaparty (american conservative movement) doesn’t like = liberal activists judges
Election the Teaparty doesn’t like = evil acorn conspiracy
Action by the duly elected government the Teaparty doesn’t like = grounds for threats of violence and bloody revolution
@A1 from my understanding since the Supreme Court had basically ok’d slavery by that time (Prigg v. PA, Dred Scott) Lincoln couldn’t apply the Emancipation Proclamation to the states still united under the Constitution. But he COULD apply it to the ones that had rebelled, and claimed to longer be bound by the document.
@geezer – way to go
there is a wonderful book out there “the Founding Lawyers and Americas quest for Justice” Stuart Speicer is the author
maybe Ord Joe should give it a read – he might just come away enlightened and change those apologist ways.
as someone with degrees in History and Poli Sci Joe does not seem to understand the significance of the Hamilton-Madison decision for the Philadelphia convention at Annapolis was in 1786.
Madison kept his Constitutional Convention notes secret for decades for a reason- they had built a better mousetrap – and the Judicial Branch was part of it. Our government was built with power layered not only vertically but horizontally as well, by intelligent design – giving Federal rights, states rights and then rights to the branches – layers – like a 3-d onion..not easy to peel away.
The Articles of Confederation where a mess quite simply and needed to be cleaned up – that was done with the publishing of the Federalist papers to soften things up and sell the product then by the Constitutional COnvention itself.
I failed Poli Sci – found it boring. funny that
The Disunion section of the New York Times is nothing short of remarkable.