Civil war-The Causes of Southern Secession [twc01 VS Elfdude] Commentary Thread

[Elfdude]

This thread is for Commentary on Civil war-The Causes of Southern Secession [twc01 VS Elfdude]

Please reference the post number or at least the person you are responding to.

[Admiral Piett]

The American Civil War is an interesting topic because the division wasn't near as clear cut as it is often over simplified. The political allegiances were not strictly geographically defined. For example, there was a sizable number of southerners, both Constitutional Unionists and loyalist 'northern' Democrats that did not accept the arguments of the fire-eaters that political secession was the solution to the issue. Prior to the 1860 election, the radical pro-slavery Democrats and southern nationalists were still a minority in their party. This was especially true in Texas which was being governed by Sam Houston that ardently opposed any notion of secession and warned it would ultimately lead to the apocalypse of the southern gentry the radicals were prophesying. He made an effort to run for the Constitutional Unionist platform, but didn't have much support in the rest of the south so that nomination went to John Bell. The Upper South was also not very impressed by the platforms of the prominent Know Nothings and debated at great length even as the Deep South began to secede. Ultimately, the fears of an end to slavery was inevitable with the Democratic Party's loss had convinced them to throw in their lot with the other seceding states and that was that. The political rallying cause for the separation was indeed slavery.

However, it is interesting to note that protecting slavery was not the rallying call for southerners to take up arms with the Confederate Army in all states. Despite it taking center hold in many state's secession calls and the Confederate Constitution, it is conveniently and deliberately left out of the "Call to Arms" newspaper headings in many (but not all) southern newspapers. The reason for this is that many southern lower-class laborers, farmers, and up and coming middle class tradesmen were ambivalent over the issue. What the papers and new state governments do take great lengths to talk about is threat of northern aggression and invasion. They made very certain to detail an end to states rights, theft of their property, destruction of their homes, and some even went so far as to talk about the dishonor of their women. This is the age old propaganda that plays on the fears of the average population to rouse widespread support even from the lower classes that had no stake in the slavery issue at all and were increasingly indifferent to its future. There was a fair amount of both moderates and outright abolitionists that formed the higher echelons of the Confederate Army and they joined based on the decision of their home states to secede and the fear of harm to their homes and neighbors, even though they opposed secession. The other reason is that secession of the states was chosen by democratic majority and so to support the democratic will of their neighbors, many that opposed the principles of the secession chose to support it.

This fact is what leads some here in the south to suggest that slavery was not the sole cause of secession, since slavery is not that actively spoken about in 'the cause'. However, that can't be misjudged as being proof that the states didn't secede for that reason. It's just not why most average southerners justified joining the fight. My 3x great grandfather in Mississippi didn't own any slaves and from family traditions was not particularly interested ever in owning any, his reasons for joining the Confederate Army were clearly about fear of northern invasion and because his state had chosen, legally in their minds, to form their nation. Though the wealthy southern planters had much more to gain by preserving slavery, ultimately it was the lower and emerging middle-class which had nothing to gain from it that suffered the most for it sadly.

[Elfdude]

I don't think the common man voted for the secession. The vote counts are too wild for that reality to be true, maybe in a few states but it seems clear both from the votes and the prior media accounts leading up to them that the votes were stuffed by voters from different places. This was a huge problem with slave state vs non-slave state being a popular vote and lead to the whole bloody Kansas episode. However, what the common man does or can do is often interpretted as meaningful when it comes to the governing peoples to choose war. My thoughts are that most of the states were controlled by a powerful aristocracy which pushed through the secession to establish themselves as heads and consolidate their power (which was based on slavery) and remove the annoying abolition element from their legislatures. It's the same thing we can see today within corporations who eliminate their long term sustainability for a quick and easy payoff and consolidation of their profits towards the top.

Furthermore I find your assertion that slavery was left out of the rallying cry to be entirely false. Everywhere from secession documents, to the speeches made by politicians to the common man, to the local newspapers and media. At this time every town larger than a thousand people boasted it's own newspaper and reporting. News at this time was staunchly partisan with some papers signing on the side of dems, others on whigs, and others on republicans. The vast majority of papers in the south swung towards the dems.

Perhaps the best documented papers are the Virginia papers. Months before the secession, (almost a decade to be exact) said papers were extolling the virtues of secession. They also FREQUENTLY mentioned slavery and leaned upon racial prejudice heavily just as modern campaigns have and still do. The mythos perpetuated by these sources of media was fairly simple but I would say all of it revolved around the central importance of slavery. These are the reasons most frequently cited in the papers:

- Blacks are barely above animals
- If blacks are given citizenship that means whites are equal
- The economic security of the south depended upon slavery
- A false dichotomy between the north and the south complete with branding designed to peg the north as rich city-folk who are trying to legislate their sensibilities as law

Variation between these themes are common and some drifted less towards the idea that the civil war was about slavery, but I fail to find their justifications to be real so much as post-sequence rationalizations of their moral purity. The ruling classes and the media made no secret about the reasoning for the war. The Northern papers were perhaps much more vocal about this but they also saw freedom and prosperity the southern media did not, however the northern ruling classes were thoroughly split until the attack on Fort Sumter convinced them that this wasn't just states flexing their sovereignty anymore and without the southern legislatures to caucus with the Northern Abolitionists were able for the first time able to win political arguments pushing the Union towards total emancipation.

Unfortunately the quality of this argument is far too low to possibly begin to discuss the resolution you bring up.

As to those in the south who believe that the civil war wasn't about slavery, or those in the US. This has been a worrying trend since the south was defeated. Initially there was not even the scantest of debate politically about the nature of said war. Throughout the ages this certitude of our population has decayed from almost 100% to about 50% when polled. Personally I find it's little more than historical revisionism the type that always afflicts those who lost the moral high ground to history. No one wants to believe themselves the bad guys and pretty much everyone recognizes slavery is bad today. The thing is that in their rush to believe themselves good, they forget the atrocities that the symbology of that era engender.

[Admiral Piett]

Perhaps I didn't place enough emphasis on the wording of the middle part of my post so you mistook that as saying slavery wasn't mentioned in the Confederate press. What I was referencing and focusing on was the "Call to Arms" mustering across the south, which varied in their direct mentioning of slavery. In many cases, you can see examples that it was alluded to in phrases like "defending the southern way of life" and therefore avoided taking direct mention of the word. One of these days when I visit my father's house, I'll scan some of his old southern newspaper articles and post them to show what I mean.

Estimates were that 1/3rd of those serving in the southern army were slaveholding and a smaller percentage of that owned large numbers. The wealthier landed southerners that did serve were often officers. But many of the wealthy fire-eater Democrats in the south had avoided directly serving and sought to privately keep their families out of serving. That data reflects that there was a disconnect between the wealthy gentry class in the south and the rest of the population. Many of the non-slave holders were poor laborers and often illiterate. The majority of Confederate soldiers that were not serving as officers were the latter. That same element of the army was accountable for very high desertion rates by 1864, as many abandoned 'the cause' to simply defend their homes as was their original intention in the first place.

Here is a very interesting article from Richmond, Virginia in May of 1862 which shows the outright disgust many southerners had for the radical fire-eater politicians that started the war yet get themselves exempted from doing any of the fighting.

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/4933...ll_to_arms_in/

[Elfdude]

I find that article rather ambiguous. I do agree it's attacking fire-spitters but the words under lincoln when at a time abolitionist element was associated with Lincoln makes understanding it a bit difficult.

Here's some other papers which are more characteristic of what I'm mentioning. The articles which are pro-slaves often aren't obvious from their titles.

http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/...003067mets.xml

http://pastispresent.org/2011/good-s...southern-side/

I mean we can go on but for example most newspapers printed this casus beli (cause for war) directly verbatim:


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.

From Alabama Paper:

Free Society! we sicken at the name. What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists? All the Northern men and especially the New England States are devoid of society fitted for well-bred gentlemen. The prevailing class one meet with is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel, and small farmers who do their own drudgery, and yet are hardly fit for association with a Southern gentleman's body servant. This is your free society which Northern hordes are trying to extend into Kansas.


Jefferson Davis:

You too know, that among us, white men have an equality resulting from a presence of a lower caste, which cannot exist where white men fill the position here occupied by the servile race. The mechanic who comes among us, employing the less intellectual labor of the African, takes the position which only a master-workman occupies where all the mechanics are white, and therefore it is that our mechanics hold their position of absolute equality among us.

James Henry Hammond:

The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either. Yours are hired by the day, not cared for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any street of your large towns. Why, you meet more beggars in one day, in any single street of the city of New York, than you would meet in a lifetime in the whole South.


We do not think that whites should be slaves either by law or necessity. Our slaves are black, of another and inferior race. The status in which we have placed them is an elevation. They are elevated from the condition in which God first created them, by being made our slaves. None of that race on the whole face of the globe can be compared with the slaves of the South. They are happy, content, unaspiring, and utterly incapable, from intellectual weakness, ever to give us any trouble by their aspirations. Yours are white, of your own race; you are brothers of one blood. They are your equals in natural endowment of intellect, and they feel galled by their degradation.

Govenor of Georgia:

Among us the poor white laborer is respected as an equal. His family is treated with kindness, consideration and respect. He does not belong to the menial class. The negro is in no sense of the term his equal. He feels and knows this. He belongs to the only true aristocracy, the race of white men. He black no masters boots, and bows the knee to no one save God alone. He receives higher wages for his labor than does the laborer of any other portion of the world, and he raises up his children with the knowledge, that they belong to no inferior cast, but that the highest members of the society in which he lives, will, if their conduct is good, respect and treat them as equals.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...s-over/396482/

There's a consolidated article with dozens of quotes from news papers politicians and great men which help underscore both the southern perception and the reasoning behind the common man's defense of the rich man's system.

1. Slavery was the largest single industry in the country at the time worth at least 3.5 billion and assessed by conservative papers to be worth trillions (propaganda).
2. Wage slaving vs slavery, it was widespread belief that slaves were taken care of better than paid labor of the north (which there was some truth to although how do you assess the dollar value of freedom?)
3. The widespread belief that slavery was one of the greatest institutions in the world, it was the natural order of things and many southerners even thought it should be expanded south to mexico and the caribbean not to mention the areas were already rife with new blood for slaves.

etc. etc.

While I'll agree with you that some articles were arguing different points as to why to support the war. Robert E Lee's support of the war was infamously not about slavery whatsoever but rather his commitment to his home (which many southerners agreed to) which means, despite everything, despite even their opposition to slavery, if the governing powers got themselves into war, the people who lived under their governance would have likely sided with them over foreigners. Don't forget the level of xenophobia and distrust that existed at these times.

Ultimately, it is my opinion, had slavery as an institution not existed the civil war would not have happened, at least not along those lines. There's not a single differentiation point between the north and the south which didn't revolve around slavery TBH and any other wedge issue lacked the 50/50 split necessary to create a real chance at secession. Since the 1930's the government already had shown its willingness to invade a state of the union upon secession to restore its union. By this standard lincoln was a bit of a pacifist compared to andrew jackson.