Meme About Slavery Not Being Primary Cause of Civil War

If you claim that tariffs are imposed on exports of raw goods, you deserve a snarky response. And no, 20% is not drastic considering that's what it was at its height - the level of tariffs varied constantly. It should also be added that the South didn't really object

Seriously? Were you reading? South Carolina tried it, but no one bothered to go along. It was political grandstanding and it was treated as such. There was no war, there was just some hot air. The Nullification debates did not come close to a civil war.

Again, you spend two posts talking about how tariffs were imposed on raw exports, then claim they were unsuccessful, but you try to tell me my history's not correct?
OK, the floor is yours. Why did the South not develop heavy industry? I'll even give you a hint - it has to do with the value of capital assets held by the south.

 

Since I was simply giving an example of how policy was shaped by politics with no discussion of "cause", I think it is you that is looking in the wrong place for a cause.

Let's turn it into an analogy. I say "blue fish". You claim that I said "red herring".

That's really deep. Great ability to grasp the obvious there.

So, the South ended the slave trade. Gotcha.

And I said it was the reason where? I am not the one who maintains that there is a single "the reason" for the war so don't try to cram those words into my mouth.

So the South used government power when it benefited them. So did the North. And the West. And the East. Shocking!!

That comment is naive, at best. Ever heard of Ronald Reagan? How about George Bush?

West Virginia was not a state at the beginning of the ACW. And they might have left for additional reasons like, oh, I don't know, maybe they believed in the Union? Or maybe they felt that they were getting screwed over in Richmond? My point is that the people who populated West Virginia (like many other areas of the South) were completely unlike the rich landowners who tended to dominate state legislatures. They did not have "common ideas about government, tariffs and the like".
Furthermore, on the issue of slavery, West Virginia was allowed to retain its slaves when they re-entered the union, so if you are maintaining that they split from the rest of Virginia over slavery, you are not backed up by the facts since they retained slavery.

 

Nullification debates != "didn't really object"

The fact that a state took it seriously enough to debate the issue in a time when states were much more powerful entities than they are now leads me to that conclusion that it was a crisis (to borrow your wording). You did not previously say a civil war, you said a crisis.

We have had this debate before and I think you know what you can do with your smart ass hint.
Your error is in oversimplifying. The analogy to your comment is to say that we build houses because it makes the builders lots of money. Sure it's correct-as far as it goes.
The fact is that the south lacked almost all of the assets needed for the development of widespread heavy industry. The northeast did not have these handicaps. They had access to markets, surplus population already collected into urban cores, growing capital markets and cheap reliable sources of energy.

 

So you're asking why I mindlessly took someone else's opinion rather than thinking for myself like you big brains in Ohio do? Why don't you ask me if I've stopped beating my wife yet?

Let me ask you, why do you just parrot the way your fifth grade teacher taught you that all good little boys and girls should think about the civil war without bothering to think it through very clearly? Certainly it's not a conclusion you could come to by reading and researching it for yourself.

You are making a lot of assumptions about what I think about "the primary cause of the war". I have said nothing on the subject and yet you are making a lot of assertions. Why is that? Do you think you know me that well?

The thing about people who talk about the reasons of war is this. There's a lot of nitwits out there who just parrot what they are told by their 5th grade teacher and they never take the analysis beyond that stage. 5th grade teachers teach it simply because they are teaching it to 5th graders. They are trying their best to take complex, multi-faceted issues and teach it to people who are not yet intellectually ready to deal with those issues. So wars have to have one cause. Well, the truth is that wars rarely have just one cause that covers all of the facets of the conflict. NP made an analogy about being punched in the nose which applies here-if you get punched in the nose the cause of the war is getting punched in the nose. But what if you are the person doing the punching? Why was the punch thrown? What are the other points of view in the room?
To me, that's the interesting part. Pulling all of the threads together and analyzing what their contributions are. IMO it is intellectually lazy to just accept that being punched in the nose started the war even though it might be fashionable to do so. It is lazy to believe that there is only one reason for something when there is reasonable evidence that there might be other reasons.

 

As I have grown older and experienced many things my thought processes have evolved (I'm sure some would say that they have devolved) and I see things differently. There was a time, up until maybe 15 years ago, when I considered myself to be a Constitutionalist and sorta placed many of America's founding fathers on a pedestal.

As I've thought about things more and more, though, I have changed. I just kinda came up with my theory on the Civil War over the last two days. And even the posts arguing that it was about slavery scream to me that it was not. The only path to real, monumental power in the political system America had was through the federal government. The more I think about it the more clear it becomes to me that a civil war was a foregone conclusion.

 

Nah.

 

Most of those heading the Confederacy abandoned their farms at the onset of the war; those doing the fighting for the Confederacy - common soldiers and officers - had no interest in slavery. Therefore, your point is invalidated. Further, how you can try to equate the Third Reich with the South is mind boggling. Again, though slavery may have been one of the issues to prompt secession of the South it surely was not the issue the drove it to war. The South was defending itself from invasion by the North and saw states rights as prominent.

Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond was just one of the South's many heavy industries; it wasn't heavy industry the South lacked during the war but an efficient rail/transport system.

 

Your an apologist for those who wanted to keep slavery in the U.S.

Despicable.

And don't give me that "heritage over hatred" crap, either.

You people amaze me sometimes. Exhibit A for keeping the Voting Rights Act in effect.

 

"Widespread" is the operative word here. A single instance of something does not equate to "widespread". The South lacked both heavy industry and efficient transport, among other things. Sadly, you are making the same mistake that others make-looking for a single, simple explanation. Looked at objectively, the South lacked in so many areas that the emergence of even marginally competent leadership in the North made the war only a matter of time.

 

What's fascinating is that you apply my analogy correctly here, yet get the answer wrong. The punch in the face wasn't slavery - slavery is the answer to "why did you get punched in the face".
You are right, sometimes things are complex. But other times, they are not. For instance, why did World War II start in 1940? Its not an especially complicated question.

South Carolina was the ONLY state that objected and it was opposed by all other Southern states. South Carolina was also the home of John C. Calhoun, the main opponent of the tariff in the Senate, who hoped to defeat Jackson in the next Presidential election (and who authored much of the pro-nullification papers in South Carolina). It was a political stunt that never seriously threatened the integrity of the Union.

But there was no crisis. Here is what other southern states thought of the South Carolina political gambit:

You're putting the cart before the horse. The reason the North had much of that is because farming wasn't nearly as profitable. For instance, in 1860 the richest state per capita in the United States was Arkansas! (No, really.) Given how wealthy Southern farmers grew in the middle part of the 19th century (the early part of the 19th century saw a decline in farm profits and a decline in protection of slavery, not coincidentally), why would they have decided to throw money into constructing manufacturing plants that were, by the North's own admission unable to compete with Europe's? (If they could, tariffs would have been unnecessary.) If I lived next to a diamond mine, I wouldn't open a hot dog stand, I'd mine diamonds. Which is what the South did by raising crops. In addition, the South had more advanced capital markets than you think, but they were mostly based on the two great capital investments of the South - land and slaves. Most of a South planter's wealth was tied up in his slaves, by far his most important and high value investment. The South also didn't really lack cheap energy - there were rivers in the South too. It just wasn't efficient to create factories when raw goods sold so well. The South transportation network is also underestimated - they managed to transport raw goods to ports quite capably, after all.
Your answer is to why the North was eventually successful at industrializing, not why the South didn't try. It simply didn't need to.

Yet you used my same analogy above (although you got it wrong). Imagine, today, if you could channel the spirit of Alexander Stephens, described by many in the North as the Confederacy's leading light, and ask - just answer me one question - why did the South ultimately secede? He'd look at you strangely and say "slavery - duh. I kept saying so in my speeches!" And Stephens was a moderate Confederate.

Sigh. If only you were capable of the same.

Whom do you think the ending of the slave trade benefited most? Southern slave owners, of course.

Occum's razor screams "slavery" - as does every single speech made during the secession.

Glad we agree it wasn't states rights.

They were talking about government in general, not the Federal Government.

That just begs the question - why did they agree with the Union when the eastern Virginians did not?

Again, why? In what way were they being screwed over? (OK, I'm cheating - I know the answer. It was slavery. Although I only know that because that's what the West Virginians were saying at the time!)

Actually, that's the funny thing - they did. West Virginia contributed about as many men to Southern forces at it did to Northern during the Civil War. However, the West Virginians, as the Virginia constitutional debates clearly show, felt that the set-up of Virginia with respect to slaves was untenable. There was no fundamental difference between West Virginia and Virginia other than on slavery.

First, that's simply not applicable - there was no requirement to divest of slaves when a slave joined the Union or if one was a member of the Union. The United States was a country in which slavery was perfectly legal, including in Northern territories, as Dred Scot demonstrated. Second, West Virginia was not hospitable to plantation farming, and thus there were actually very slaves in West Virginia at the time of secession.

Ultimately, you haven't been able to provide a single remotely good answer as to what else caused the conflict, as the crutch of "states rights" is meaningless - states rights is a means to an end, not the end itself. If US had passed an amendment stating that slavery was legal, do you think the South would have complained of Federal overreach? Of course not! Its not that the South wanted to be left alone, its that they wanted their SLAVES left alone. And ALL evidence we have confirms this. Slavery was the South's most important capital asset, their chief source of investment, their most profitable asset. And one that was only increasing in value - records from slave transactions in 1860 routinely demonstrate the growing value of slaves. There is absolutely no surprise that slavery was the reason the Union split. The only surprise is that some still try to find less than ingenious ways around that conclusion.

That's been obvious for some time.

 

Yeah, the same way Germany defended itself from the dastardly Polish attack in 1940. LOL

 

And?

 

Using your "will to power" theory you have managed to come up with an answer to a problem historians have been writing about for 150 years in 2 days, while being obviously ignorant of the facts. Is it a wonder its a bad answer? That Phat Hat was absolutely right - you're applying the same thought process movement conservatives like Rove do to any situation - its the modern intellectual equivalent of Marxism.

 

Did you even remotely bother to read the posts and what it was about before getting all that exercise from jumping to your conclusion? Or are you just the sole arbiter of what someone else has said?

Except that WWII didn't start in 1940. In Asia it started in 1931 or 1937. In Europe, it started in 1939. Pretty much no one except you says 1940. But I forget, you are the only one who counts.

So the only allowable definition of crisis is "something that seriously threatens the integrity of the Union". Pronouncement ex Cathedra!

...

I was going to respond to the rest of your post, but there is really no point. You know better than I do what I said without regard to whether I actually said it or not. So why don't you just post for me.

 

If I may, nicephoras, to posit a response that you've overlooked; the states rights issue that the South believed, correctly, and defended with their cannon and sons, was that the Federal Government exceeded its Constitutional authority over the states. This is and was why the North and South went to war. The North opposed the expansion of slave states for reasons of political control, not because they had moral qualms over slavery.

 

I'm fast.

I'm using the most important fact.

I'm applying common sense and a knowledge of human nature and those trump your naivete.

 

That is unless there were Indians involved, then they were more than happy to have the Feds run them off to somewhere else.

 

Or unless they felt like it their day. Its a stupid argument. The Confederate Constitution was practically identical to the US Constitution, with one giant respect - slavery. If they were so concerned about States Rights, you'd think they would have gone back to the Articles of Confederation. The truth is, the South was perfectly fine with the US sytem.......so long as it included slavery. As they had proven by dominating politics for the previous 60.

 

You'll pardon me if I don't take as gospel the observations on human nature by a 40 year old who lives in a trailer. Oh wait, you don't need to pardon me for being sane.

 

Your "Nicky lives in a trailer" meme might be funny and witty but that doesn't make it true... Regardless of how often you say it.

 

I accept your acknowledgment of defeat (and really, its about time, since any serious scholarship on the Civil War concludes that the three causes of it were slavery, slavery and slavery).
You are, however, correct in that it was 1939 - brain fart by me.

And as far as me saying what you said - I've not done that. I've just shown how slavery caused the civil war. Repeatedly. Hell, I even used primary sources. You, meanwhile, lectured us on tariffs imposed on outgoing raw goods. Right.

 

Okay folks, I can't believe I'm going to get into this one here, but let's step back and take a look at the events leading up to the war and try and make some connections, and at the same time make sure we're asking/answering the same questions (at least what we mean by it).

If we're looking for a specific catalyst for the why and when of the war it was the election of Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election. Lincoln's election was the final straw that compelled South Carlina to secession, which was of course followed immediately by the secession of six more states and the formation of the C.S.A. Then President Lincoln, unwilling to accept the existence of a rival federated republic from South Carolina to the Mexican border and not wanting (for several understandable reasons) to see the pre-1860 union of the states disbanded, precipitated the "crisis" over Ft. Sumter in a way which compelled the C.S.A. - in an effort to demonstrate its legitimacy - to "attack" the United States military. After the Confederate attack, of course, President Lincoln was in a much stronger position to demand (without getting impeached or run out of town) from most but not all the non-seceded states an army of "volunteers" to defeat the "rebellion." After all, nothing gets Americans juiced up for a fight (that we were not previously willing to fight) like getting attacked first.

Of course this wasn't a real rebellion that Lincoln intended to defeat with his 70,000 volunteers. What had happened politically was much more analogous to the American Revolution (1775-83). The initial Confederate states felt (for whatever reasons) like they no longer wanted to be bound politically to the U.S.A. and the federal government that comprised it, declared their independence from it (seceded), and then tried for four years to defend their declared political independence on the battlefield. In essence the U.S.A. led by Abraham Lincoln, whether justified or not, was playing the role of King George III and Lord North. He (Lincoln) had chosen to wage a war against a portion of the American "empire" that had chosen through its legitimate institutions of self-government to declare political independence from the central government, and rule it if necessary at gunpoint. The Civil War wasn't a civil war at all (with a few exceptions like what was going on internally in Missouri); it was a failed war for independence.

To get back to my main point(s), if Lincoln's election was the catalyst that put into motion the chain of events which explains why this specific war took place, it was his decision to provoke the attack on Ft. Sumter and then use it as a rationale for defeating a "rebellion" that guaranteed war. If Lincoln had made either of two different choices... there would have been no war. Choice #1 would have been to simply abandon Ft. Sumter to the Confederates, recognize the C.S.A.'s right to exist and open diplomatic relations with it, and then engage in a lengthy political effort to work toward a peaceful reunification of the states. Had Lincoln gone this route the C.S.A. might not have grown beyond its original number of 7 states. Choice #2 (assuming Lincoln still provokes the attack on Ft. Sumter) would have been to simply reserve course 180 degrees and declare to the American people that while the attack on Ft. Sumter was deplorable, it had opened up his eyes to the seriousness with which the people of South Carolina and the other cotton states took the principle of "government by consent" and that he was not going to use force after all to coerce other Americans to live under a government that they no longer recognized at gunpoint. In essence... President Lincoln could have taken the high ground and said "I have seen my Lexington and Concord and have learned my lesson. I will not play the role of King George III and Lord North." He might have avoided impeachment and he likely would have gone down forever as that failure of a president who presided over the breakup of the union... but 700,000 Americans would not have died (and with them - ultimately - whatever future checks on federal power the states might still have been able to muster as long as the persumed right of secession as a remedy "of last resorts" to the establishment of a tyrannical government was maintained).

Either way, however, whether there was ultimately a war or not rested squarely in the hands of President Lincoln and the extent to which he was willing to use force to subdue the C.S.A.

Of course, I don't think this (answer above) is what most of us mean when we ask that question "why" there was a "Civil War." Most of us probably mean instead... "why did the South secede," or more precisely "what about the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 compelled the South to secede?" I'll give you guys my take on this later when I get the chance... but I think it's important that we remember that ultimately the war happened because the U.S. government under President Lincoln was unwilling to allow the 7 states of the Confederacy to go their separate way. For some reason... so many of us today just assume that "of course secession would have led to a war... there's no way any president would have allowed a state to leave the union." In reality, however, that secession would lead to war was not a forgone conclusion even in 1861. Many at the time feared that was the likely result of secession, but at least up until Ft. Sumter even a majority of opinion in the North - while in disagreement with secession - was not in favor of waging war against other Americans to nullify it. In fact, even in the spring of 1861 abolitionists in New England were amongst the loudest calling for President Lincoln to "let the South go" because secession would effectively get rid of most of the disease of slavery within in the USA by chopping off the most infected body parts.

 

Most politicians in 1861 fully believed that secession would lead to war, so this isn't true They hoped it would not, but that's hardly the same thing. Its also really disingenuous to talk about the Civil War in the context of the revolutionary war. First, as Yoss completely correctly points out, the South was represented. In fact, there were more Democrats in the Senate than Republicans, the Presidency had generally been dominated by Southerners (although the South could see this turning due to large urban centers in the north) and, very importantly, the Supreme Court was a very blatant 7-2 in favor of the Democrats (see Dred Scot). Second, your argument presupposes that leaving a country is the natural right of any group of people. I don't recall seeing a "never mind" clause in the constitution - its not Netflix. The South agreed to be part of a state and then seceded despite the Northern states' not actually violating any part of any law.