Slavery did too cause the Civil War.

December 24, 2007 in history and current events

I know everyone’s having a grand time debating the causes of the Civil War all over again, so I thought I would light my own piece of touch-paper: just because Lincoln did not mean to fight a war to end slavery, doesn’t mean slavery didn’t cause the Civil War.

On a basic theory of causation, we’re talking about that x without which no y, where y is the Civil War. It is profoundly difficult to believe any Civil War would have occurred without slavery, or if you want to be precise, without slavery concentrated in one part of the country. Even if you think some version of the states’-rights debate would have occurred without a geographically concentrated slave interest (which I don’t) it’s hard to believe it would have come to war.

And yes, I’ll concede that that imaginary American republic — the one without slavery, which preserved a compact theory of the Union — might have been a nice place to live. But we don’t live there.

We live here, where the war was about ending slavery. Don’t take my word for it, consider an astute student of the war:

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.

Does this mean that the war was necessary to end slavery? No; Paul could be right that slavery would, eventually have gone away. Does this mean the war was the best way to end slavery — where “best” means cheapest, most painless, most just? Probably not — in theory, it would have been much better to have an immediate and peaceful emancipation.

But of course we don’t live in theory, we live in America. And it pretty much appears that in this country, forcible emancipation had become by the middle nineteenth century, the only plausible kind of immediate emancipation. And, you know, justice delayed is justice denied. The need of ending slavery was not only the first but the final cause of the Civil War.

So you’re in favor either of force or of indefinitely continued slavery. Note that yes, prior to the outbreak of war, Lincoln and most white people favored indefinitely continued slavery. Would we be morally better than they, were we transported back then? Perhaps not. Should we be better, having as we do the luxury of hindsight, and knowing what penalty our forebears paid for their comfortable positions? Yes. Is Ron Paul acting as if he had this luxury? No, and I don’t know why not.

By the the time you get to the Civil Rights Act, Paul is onto entirely untenable positions. With the conclusion of the Civil War you had the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. That was what you bought with your 600,000 dead — a new Union devoted to — in the frank words of the Civil Rights Act of 1866,

All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens.

All persons shall have the same rights as white persons — Congress of the United States, 1866. That was what you bought with your war, with (to repeat) your 600,000 dead, with the wrenching crisis of the Union: a new Constitution and racial justice.

Only, you didn’t: because Andrew Johnson and a bunch of weak-kneed Republicans fumbled it away in the face of racist resistance, because the Supreme Court helped gut those amendments, leaving them all but meaningless, thus necessitating a century-long march toward reclaiming the civil rights recognized in 1866. Was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 wrong, Mr. Paul? No, because the side that thought so lost the Civil War.

Only our collective betrayal of that war, our shared desecration of the memory of the dead, in which we participate every time we deny the purpose of the war and the meaning of the victory the United States Army and Navy won in it, has made the absurd position of Ron Paul possible.

And a Merry Christmas to you!

120 comments

December 24, 2007 at 4:30 pm

Rick B

I think you have it exactly right. The existance of slavery was the cause of the Civil War. And I think there are two clear reasons for that.

First, had the slave owners simply remained in control of their own states, the threat of slavery would not have been considered so bad by the North. But the slavers were aggressive, and tried to push the legality of slavery as far West and North as they could make it go. They not only wanted “Their special institution”, they wanted it spread to where it hadn’t been before. Normal political reactions to such aggressiveness will cause or intensify opposition.

The Second reason to consider that slavery caused the Civil War includes your analysis and my first point. The attack on Fort Sumpter was purely Southern aggressiveness caused by the distaste of the South for the northern abolitionists and for Lincoln’s election, but it was a local rebellion. There was no real reason for Lincoln to have considered it any more significant than Shay’s Rebellion during George Washington’s administration. Lincoln took the very rational decision to put down the rebellion, just as Washington had done seven decades earlier.

The difference is that putting down Shay’s Rebellion did not spread the rebellion. Putting down the rebellion in South Carolina caused a spread of the rebellion across the entire South and Texas. What was the difference between the two incidents? Slavery as the basis for a society. The rest of the slave states saw the federal government effort to put down the local rebellion in South Carolina as an attack on all of them and on their way of life. The only unique factor of their way of life was slavery.

There is no reasonable way to look at the beginning of the Civil War and try to say that slavery was not its’ cause. None.

December 24, 2007 at 6:45 pm

jay boilswater

What about them Injuns? Did the ’66 act apply to them? You are talking about one white vested interest opposing another, resulting in a “Civil War” – Millions of natives were exterminated before, during and after this conflict. What history do you practice here?

December 24, 2007 at 7:07 pm

anon

Ok. So why didn’t the end of slavery end the civil war if, as you say, the south won the last victory of the civil war, the end of reconstruction? The irony seems to be that defeating slavery did not end the war, even if the existence of slavery provoked it. If so, then the claim that the war was fought over slavery (and its abolition) makes sense only because its abolition only continued the war through other channels. And given that it was not only southerners (but northerners who probably wished McClellan had been voted president in 1864) who helped dis-enfranchise the freed slaves, we can see how truly radical Lincon’s gesture was within American history. A little over twenty years after his death, his “victory” had been surrendered and would remain so for nearly a hundred years. Martin Luther King, LBJ, the Civil Rights Act made it possible for Colin Powell or Condi Rice or Clarence Thomas to work for a party that aligns itself with those who pine for Ole’ Dixie and preach “states’ rights.” Clearly, other African Americans have benefitted from the Civil Rights act and its enforcement and in ways not so cynical. Perhaps this is what “equality” means in American–the chance to sell out to the highest bidder. Yet, no one really can imagine a true return to legal slavery–though the immigrants who pick our fruit in Florida or California may be tantamount to slaves. I agree that w/o slavery the Civil War would not have happened, yet it seems we do not need slavery, or its legal return, for the North and the South, the Blue and the Red states, to fight as if the War continues. Why is that?

December 24, 2007 at 9:36 pm

eric

What about them Injuns?

I’m pretty confident that nobody has ever suggested either that the Civil War was started because of anything to do with Indians nor that it settled anything much to do with the Indians. As I’m sure you know, the native peoples enjoyed, or if you prefer suffered from, a unique jurisprudence to do with their citizenship that extended well into the twentieth century.

So why didn’t the end of slavery end the civil war if, as you say, the south won the last victory of the civil war, the end of reconstruction?

I’m pretty sure these are non sequiturs. Legal slavery ended with the thirteenth amendment. What this had to do with the south winning reconstruction, I’m not sure. And I didn’t say that was the last victory of the civil war; the last victory of the civil war, on this reading, would be the full enforcement at law of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 — which would have happened in the 1960s, at the earliest.

yet it seems we do not need slavery, or its legal return, for the North and the South, the Blue and the Red states, to fight as if the War continues. Why is that?

I tried to suggest in the post that it’s because neo-Confederates, states’-righters, and others, continue to pretend that the war had nothing to do with slavery.

December 24, 2007 at 9:59 pm

Indeed it’s odd that discussions of the war imagine we can live history backward and argue that because we can all now agree slavery’s bad, somehow it couldn’t have been the issue then. It would seem essential to understanding the war to follow the story from at least the Missouri compromise forward, noticing how politics and history worked people into bloodyminded antagonisms that eventuated in war. But of course it’s impossible for anyone who wants some sort of romantic tie to the Confederacy to admit that its cause had anything to do with holding humans in bondage.

December 25, 2007 at 12:10 am

historyguy

I’m trying to remember what teacher and year it was, in my primary education in CA in the late 50’s and early 60’s, maybe it was at late as high school, but one teacher clearly explained to us that it what slavery that caused what “c” above referred to as “the bloodyminded antagonisms” among the regions and classes, but that the eruption of the dispute into secession then transferred those emotions onto the ground of Union Vs Confederacy.

Maybe I’m too easily influenced, but that view has stuck in my mind, and my (not deep) explorations of the evidence have not turned anything up to overturn that teacher’s view.

I read Sandburg’s life of Lincoln (also a product of the 50’s and 60’s) last year and was impressed that the ease on entry into local news publishing created a climate perhaps even more irresponsible than our blogoshere, in which the most outrageously libellous attacks were routinely launched for the sake of the marginal income of the proprietor.

And Sandburg did a good job of bringing out the vast diversity and complexity of opinion (which I of could would emphasize exists in every era) and the difficulty of building the Republican administration out of various personal and regional factions.

I would emphasize South Carolina’s first run at secession in 1833 — their bloodymindedness about cooperating with the rest of nation was already drawing to a snit that still seems to be alive as we approach 2008. When they expressed it with cannons, it started a war that most contemporaries believed to be about union and secession, admittedly overlaid on a pre-existing bed of controversy over slavery. The slavery controversy was so heated, largely because both sides liked to draw on Biblical/Christian-faith justifications and polemics for their positions, the “faith of our fathers.”

What does it say about our era, that on another blog, most commenters seem be using the word “succession” for “secession” ?? I don’t think we could’ve passed 5th grade with that spelling mistake !

December 25, 2007 at 5:23 am

Phil Burk

The only reason to deny slavery as the source and cause of the civil war is to discount the effect of that institution on the first nine decades of the United States. By doing so a historical revisionists can discount the continued work to complete the original ending of that war, now nearly 150 years later. There’s a political and social agenda at work here, one that should be obvious; it seeks to claim that all persons ARE NOT created equal, by extension that some are less equal and others more equal. Thus a privileged, protected class can be created and continued through legal and social means.

To deny slavery as the root cause of the US Civil War is to deny the fundamental question that vexed our founders and their ancestors: what to do with the institution and how to incorporate it into the political and social structure of the country. The strain of this fundamental question affected nearly every major US political decision of the first half of the 19th century and many of the colonial 18th century as well. To deny slavery its rightful position as the preeminent influence in American political life for the first 90 years of the republic and the hundreds of colonial years before that is to turn your back on what made us essentially American – the gradual evolution of our political (and social!) thought from one that allowed separate and unequal classes of humanity to one that incorporates all of humanity into one united and equal class.

And to think that at this day and time in history among some that such a thought is still a radical and dangerous thing is truly depressing. It is why we continue to refuse to accept certain persons as equals under the law and why the ERA was never passed. I don’t know what I find more depressing, however: the fact that such a reactionary and divisive agenda exists and finds promoters in some or the fact that rest of us will not call it out and identify it for what it truly is – social and political tyranny.

December 25, 2007 at 7:04 am

anon

I’m sorry for the confusion of my first post. Thanks for responding to it anyway. I mixed up ari’s post with yours and hence the “non sequitirs.”

ari had said in his paul post, more or less, that 1876, the second revolution as some call it, was in effect the south’s last victory of the civil war. it lasted almost a hundred years. nor am i sure the 1964 Civil Rights Act has fully swung the pendulum. the public school system in much of America is terrible–in part b/c communities have so effectively, if foolishly, undermined brown v board of education. as it turns out, brown v. board of education or the civil rights act (like roe v. wade) have been terrific opportunities for the neoconfederates to raise money to keep the abstract ideals attributed to the civil war from becoming true–and to win the civil war all over again. has this society become truly integrated? are not elections still decided, in effect, by the same logic that made slaves count as 3/5 of a person? all those african american votes thrown out in florida 2000 and hardly a word about it?

i don’t understand your point about conflicts pesisting b/c neoconfederates pretend the war was not about slavery. were the dixiecrats to say, you know, you’re dadgummed right, the war was in fact about slavery, would the ongoing argument about the meaning of the war go away?

i think what we have are two americas–always have and always will.

i once tried to engage students at ole miss why the confederate flag was a bad symbol for them to rally around–at the very least it hurt recruiting for football. their last championship i believe was in 1963–the year before the civil rights act! i learned quickly that their “tradition” was more powerful than any post-lincoln, post-thurgood marshall, post bear bryant recruited blacks at alabama argument i could muster. they’d rather lose and wave their flag than win and not wave it. in the political arena, though, their interest group wins way more than it loses, imo.

i also learned that their concerns could not be reduced to simple racism–though i wanted to reduce them to that. the racism angle allows us to see how different neoconfederates are from so-called liberals (and also to pat ourselves on our liberal backs for our moral superiority) but it does not finally explain the (white) South’s hatred of the (white) North.

December 25, 2007 at 8:08 am

Larry Cebula

Do not debate the causes of the Civil War on the internet! The neo-Confederate equivalent of the the Bat Signal will go up and the chewing tobacco brigade will arrive shortly, copying and pasting arguments about states rights and conjuring up imaginary black Confederates. This is why every blog about the Civil War has to use comment moderation.

Anon above makes an excellent point near the beginning of his post (though I gave up reading soon after for the lack of capitalization) about 1876 as a Confederate victory. I teach my students that the Civil War lasted from the 1850s to the 1870s and that the white South ultimately prevailed. It was not for nothing that Martin Luther King called the civil rights struggle “the second Civil War.”

December 25, 2007 at 11:11 am

eric

were the dixiecrats to say, you know, you’re dadgummed right, the war was in fact about slavery, would the ongoing argument about the meaning of the war go away?

I’m pretty sure it would, actually. Not that this is possible.

And Larry, we’ll take things as they come. We’re new to this. But hey, William Gibson says we’re his favorite new blog, so.

December 25, 2007 at 1:04 pm

Pardon Me « The Edge of the American West

[…] the causes of the Civil War, though you’ll be unsurprised to hear that I agree entirely with Eric: beneath all of the arguments about states’ rights lurked slavery. Slavery was the reason […]

December 25, 2007 at 5:26 pm

Doug

Very accurate! The idea that the Civil War completed the process begun by the Founding Fathers is an excellent explanation of the South’s resistance to accepting what occurred in 1861-65. They not only lost, but they were acting in defiance of the principles they (or their forbears) had accepted in the 1780’s. By the time of the signing of the Constitution slavery had been declining for about two decades. It was the cotton gin and the expansion into the “New South” of Mississipi, Alabama, Western Tennessee, Louisiana and Texas between 1810 and 1840 that prompted a new growth of the “peculiar institution”.
It was also then that the justifications for slavery became set in stone; paranoid (projections?) fears of blacks males raping white women, the inability of blacks’ to look after themselves and their lack of education (self-fulfilling, those last two).
Many, if not most, Northerners were racist even if they didn’t support slavery. The various laws passed to prevent free blacks settling in certain towns are a testament to that feeling.
My personal view is that a major reason for the growth of Northern opposition to slavery during the 1850’s was the realization that there was nothing to prevent slave-owners from establishing massive latifundia-type farms in the Plains territories, thus crowding out the smaller farmers. One has only to look at the South of that period to see that the smaller farmers had been marginalized in both assets and political power. The Northern farmers didn’t want that to occur to them.
In my opinion, it was a combination of those who fought FOR the Union and those who fought AGAINST slavery (not necessarily the same people) that finally led the North to victory; either cause alone probably wouldn’t have been enough.

December 25, 2007 at 7:23 pm

yojoe

Does it matter why the war was fought? This is not asked in a sophomoric manner, but what do we gain from determining the reason for the war.

yojoe

December 26, 2007 at 7:18 am

Rich

As a child I remember the World Book Encyclopedia had a large entry on the War Between the States. This was one of those buzz phrases used for many years to take slavery out of the the Civil war equation. Yes, I agree with the thesis that slavery was the root cause of the war, and I recognize while the North won the war the South won the peace. That said, I have often wondered whether Lincoln’s decision to prosecute the war was the right choice. Now, don’t get me wrong, I greatly admire the man and do not mean in any way to detract from his memory. It’s just that with the advantage of 20/20 hindsight was the war the best course for the nation? Think of this country’s twentieth century politics dominated by the antidemocratic forces of the South combined with the like minded of the North and you may get an idea of what I am saying. Would it have been better to have one liberal democracy in the North than one conservative empire combining North and South? Secondly, would Lincoln have better served history by approaching the dissolution of the USA in the manner that Gorbachev approached the fragmentation of the USSR in the next century? Lastly, was holding a disintegrating union together by force, regardless of the righteousness of the abolitionist cause, doomed at the outset by it’s inherent undemocratic nature?

December 26, 2007 at 11:56 am

If a plane crashes and kills a couple hundred people, yojoe, is it worth the trouble to figure out how come it crashed?

December 26, 2007 at 12:26 pm

Ben Alpers

There’s a political and social agenda at work here, one that should be obvious; it seeks to claim that all persons ARE NOT created equal, by extension that some are less equal and others more equal. Thus a privileged, protected class can be created and continued through legal and social means.

And on this point, the antebellum defenders of slavery were a lot more honest than the neo-Confederates.

See, for example, John C. Calhoun’s “Disquisition on Government” (1849), George Fitzhugh’s Sociology for he South (1854), and Confederate VP Alexander Stephens infamous “Cornerstone Speech” (1861).

They’re all worth reading. It’s worth stressing that, in his own way, emphasizes not only slavery, but also the racial inferiority of the slaves. Calhoun, who is arguing on the level of Constitutional principle, is cagiest on this point, stressing the more general argument that “nothing can be more unfounded and false” than “the prevalent opinion that all men are born free and equal.”

But the text I show students who are wedded to neo-Confederate views of the origins of the Civil War and the meaning of the Confederacy is Alexander Stephens Cornerstone Speech, given in March, 1861. It is the one of the most forthright Confederate statements on the cause secession. As a bonus, Stephens also, correctly, notes the much more central role that modern racism played in the defense of slavery in the mid-19th century than it had in the late 18th century. Here are, as we now say, the nut ‘graphs:

The new [Confederate] 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. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, 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 cornerstone 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.

December 26, 2007 at 12:45 pm

Jaffanator

Wawaweewa huzzah! Bless you, young man for taking those Paulian Paulbots to task as they blaspheme the emancipator. I post more wisdom linked that you too may be enriched from its greatness. Onward to defeat Paul and his neo-nazi calhounite hordes!

December 26, 2007 at 2:40 pm

Nova Dave

(Cross posting since this thread seems more relevant)
Historical revisionists always amaze me. Their arguments almost universally contradict the actual contemporaneous historical record. Southerners (and Northerners) made no secret of their thoughts and feelings. It’s all there in their writings, speeches, newspaper articles, diaries, letters, you name it. The South was completely unwilling to compromise on the issue of slavery in any way, shape or form. Nearly all Southerners thought they were superior to the black man, so much so that it was OK to own them and treat them as farm implements (many even made the argument that black people felt no pain and had no emotions about having their families broken up at slave auctions!). In fairness, most Northern whites (and Europeans) also thought they were superior to blacks. The difference was that most Northerners thought slavery was immoral and backward.
Southerners felt they had the right to own slaves anywhere, including new territories in the west. Again, this is all well documented historical fact, not speculation. To claim that they could have been talked into gradually having their slaves bought from them is nonsense. There is nothing in the historical record that supports this. It would have required Southern plantation owners to voluntarily dissolve their entire way of life and basis of their wealth. In any case, who would have paid the bill? There was no federal income tax before the Civil War.
Feelings were intense and uncompromising on both sides. The Missouri Compromise and Kansas-Nebraska act did little to achieve reconciliation. But the fact remains that the South seceded, the South began seizing Federal property, and the South fired on Fort Sumter. Lincoln was not willing to go to war over slavery (as he clearly stated), but was willing to fight to preserve the Union, especially in the face of Southern aggression. Again, this is historical fact, not me guessing or putting words in anyone’s mouth.
The bloodiness and bitterness of the Civil War surprised nearly everyone (except perhaps Sherman, who was thought to be mentally ill); it was only after years of slaughter that Northerners began to believe that it had to be about more than preserving the Union. There had to be a higher purpose. It’s why Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation when he did. By late 1863, public opinion in the North had clearly shifted. Lincoln wanted to make it clear that they were now fighting for a higher moral purpose, that the slaughter was justified.
The idea that the South had the right to secede from the Union as if it were a bad real estate deal holds little water. There are no historical precedents for provinces being able to legally secede from a country if they don’t get their way. Yes, it’s been tried (see Biafra, East Pakistan), but always results in bloody Civil Wars and is usually unsuccessful. In fact, Virginia was reluctant to ratify the Constitution for those very reasons – she felt she would be giving up power, subsidizing smaller states, and there was no mechanism for orderly dissolution.
This whole “states rights” malarkey boils down to the “right” of a small number of powerful plantation owners to become wealthy through slave labor. Period. End of story. The rest is obfuscation and window dressing. The fact that they propagandized poor Southern whites into fighting their war for them shows the power of an obedient press using fear tactics (blacks will marry our white women! They’ll take your jobs and farms! Yankees will own everything!). Again, this is all historical record. If you want to understand how the Civil War came about, read what the people AT THAT TIME were thinking and writing. It’s no mystery and doesn’t require any disingenuous revisionism.

December 26, 2007 at 3:45 pm

Rich

Nova Dave,
I have little sympathy for the cause of the southern slave empire, but it seems to me that if the states voluntarily joined a union they should have been able to voluntarily leave. Certainly the seizure of federal property was neither justified nor called for, but don’t you think that could have been negotiated in the light of a peaceful solution of the issue? I am always reminded of the Mafia, where once you join there is no leaving alive, when I think of the preservation of the union. Given how the preservation turned out to be a southern conservative victory, what is it that the North won?
Rich

December 26, 2007 at 4:34 pm

John Foster

Slavery was legal in the north when the war started.

December 26, 2007 at 4:36 pm

John Foster

Myth- The Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves.

December 26, 2007 at 4:44 pm

ari

Yojoe, please see this post for a partial answer to your question. Thanks for coming by the blog. And please come again.

December 26, 2007 at 4:47 pm

John Foster

The American Civil War (1861–1865) was a civil war between the United States of America (the “Union”) and the Southern slave states of the newly-formed Confederate States of America under Jefferson Davis. The Union included all of the free states and the five slaveholding border states and was led by Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party.

Note that there were slaves in the north and that they were not free.

December 26, 2007 at 4:51 pm

John Foster

Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison did not receive the Republican nomination. Instead Abraham Lincoln, who did NOT oppose slavery, was selected.

December 26, 2007 at 5:52 pm

ari

John, what are you going on about? To whom are you talking?

December 26, 2007 at 6:54 pm

mattski

I have not seen Paul’s “thought experiment” carried beyond the notion of ‘buying the slaves freedom’, presumably by the federal gov’t.

Lincoln’s “peaceful alternative” was, apparently, to accept secession. At that point, what means or incentive did the Union have to purchase the freedom of the Confederacies slaves? Isn’t that more than a little preposterous?

Had Lincoln accepted secession the Confederacy would have won its central goal, protecting slavery as an institution. Doesn’t Paul owe us an explanation of how the Confederacy would have let go of slavery?

December 27, 2007 at 7:42 am

Liberty A.C.E.

To quote Bill Clinton, “It’s the economy stupid”.

Historians must account for the European financial interests that fanned the sparks of Civil War in order to bankroll the huge war debts incurred by both North and South at usurious interest rates.

Propaganda pushed the issue of slavery to the fore but the actual purpose behind the war…was to drive both sides to accept the same money system Rothschild had fastened on England and the Continent…to bleed the vast productivity of the whole American People.
WILLIAM G. SIMPSON, Which Way Western Man.

Lincoln said he feared the international bankers more than the Confederacy. In an effort to defang Rothschild he prevailed upon Congress to issue $150-million “Greenbacks” – interest- free currency backed by the U.S. Government.

It is to this issue which Ron Paul speaks. He is against punitive taxation collected to pay interest to rich international bankers financing the national debt. Ron Paul genuinely believes in small government, individual Liberty and private property rights, hence his comments to Russert on the Civil Rights Act.

I am from Ohio just north of Interstate 70, on the edge of Appalachia. Folks just to the south of I-70 often fly the Confederate flag. Due to Quaker influence, these good folks worked the Underground Railroad. We believe in miscegenation as well as states rights. Power mongers must pry our guns from our cold dead hands. We love Ron Paul!

He exists as an extension of The Pennsylvania Minority, George Mason, and Walter Williams, who succinctly points out that there is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits secession. Why else were Davis and Lee not convicted of treason? Rugged American individualism defines our being.

Ron Paul is our hero, our shining light, almost single-handedly guarding our liberties that existed long before an American government. The role of government is to defend the borders and deliver the mail. Defense of the border extends to the tentacles of international bankers and international law.

It is for the aforementioned avoidance of consolidation of financial interests that Ron Paul suggested a peaceable resolution to the divisive issues threatening the nation at the time of the Civil War. Why must everyone always play the “race card”?

December 27, 2007 at 9:30 am

ari

I, too, am from Ohio. And where I grew up, we were comfortable calling a racist a racist. We didn’t think of it as “playing the race card” so much as being honest — a great Midwestern virtue. In my view, someone who opposes the Civil Rights Act — saying that property rights trump racial equality — is a racist. Someone who suggests that it would have been okay for slavery to have lingered for a few more years, well, maybe a few more decades, is a racist. Congressman Paul, in other words, is a racist. He may not mean to be racially intolerant; his ideology might just lead him to that dark place. And he might have many redeeming qualities — including having contributed to a national discussion on civil liberties, for which I’m very grateful. But where I grew up in Ohio a man like Ron Paul was and is known as a racist.

December 27, 2007 at 9:34 am

FYI People: Injuns/Indians/Native Americans were profoundly important to both sides during the civil war. The last Confederate General to cease fire was the Cherokee Stand Waite. The Union would not have won the deciding battes of the war without hired Indian scouts to show them the way through the swamp and brush (but you won’t see that in a holywood movie). Those scouts were geographically Southerners. The persecutory Southern laws aganst some tribes caused them to help the North. The laws in the North caused some tribes to favor the South. C’mon people what did you think Natives were doing at the time. Peacefully living off casio money? They didn’t have those yet. Many don’t have them now. And, yes Native peoples were greatly effected by the outcome of the war. Their territories, individual rights, and autonomy as peoples and nations were all effected in many cases negatively (as usual, and yes would have likely still been a bad outcome if the South had won). In case some of y’all don’t know while we are focusing on black and white the eradication of Natives continues. Just for fun allow me to invite you to an Indian home (actual size, due to fractionation of land): A

December 27, 2007 at 9:51 am

I’m midwestern too, from Missouri ( known for show me don’t tell me). Family’s been here since the Spanish were running things and were split N and S during and after the civil war (we supported the North, though hardly saints). Paul’s not a racist (again I’m not a Paul supporter) and you need to open your self-righteous, ideological little mind! There is plenty of grey area for speculation and debate. It does not make one a racist. You shouldn’t use that label hastily, it’s like crying wolf. People do the same when they equate persons to Hitler (which some on this site have already done to Mr.Paul). If your going to attack a candidate show what they have Done or failed to do not what they have Said.

December 27, 2007 at 10:09 am

..and by the way Mr. Ari you shouldn’t manipulate the meaning of someones words. Mr. Paul did not mean what you claim, and it is a midwestern viture to judge a person by their intent, not the (blah, blah) junky words that we all spew out wrongly.

December 27, 2007 at 10:17 am

ari

I, my comment wasn’t directed to you. It was directed to Liberty A.C.E. As to what Congressman Paul meant, I have no way to judge him in this case other than by his words.

December 27, 2007 at 11:03 am

Rich you run into logical problems by imputing agency (choice, decision, will) to something called a “state.” While your view might hold water if the colonies had stuck with the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution created a *union* to which states yielded sovereignty. Even if you evade this by regarding the Constitution as a temporary expedient sitting atop an older system of independent colony-derived “states,” you still have the problem that you are assuming that whites-only state governments had moral authority so speak for units like Georgia.

—

No point arguing with them, but this might be time to investigate the recurrent strain of thought that blames whatever ails us on foreign bankers. Lot of it out there that Paul seems to have whistled up.

December 27, 2007 at 11:34 am

Mr.Ari, you do not have to apply your meaning or personal feelings to his words, that is what I meant. Also, I am sorry if I intruded on a conversation you were having. I’m new to this blogging thingy and haven’t picked up all the ettiquitte. Also, I shouldn’t have singled you out, my apologies sir.

I think it’s clear that Paul is not a racist or that he has a particularly White Southern Revisionist agenda. He is certainly not a neoconfederate (cute word) as some on this site have said. I think he was asked some baited questions and tried to answer honestly. His answers were not politically correct and I will say I don’t agree with much of it personally, but knowing much of the oral histories of my families I do think there is plenty of grey area regarding issues of the Civil war.

I find alot of things contradictary and more complicated than the simple notions given in textbooks and spead as if the undeniable word of god by so many here. As I have mentioned few of you seem to be aware of the significance of Native Americans before, during, and after the war. Also I don’t think anyone has said a word about the lawlessness of troops on both sides causing carnage of civilians along the border, and as I mentioned previously family members killing family members. Oh, and y’all haven’t even really touched on what was happening to slaves running North. Some were sent back South and some put in interment camps (many died of disease), or did labor for the Union military(still treated like slaves, eh).

Both sides were prejudiced, both sides wrongfully conscripted people (a kind of temporary slavery), and both were set on a system of life, liberty, and property for some. That is why I don’t find it absurd for someone to say somthing like mabye a peacable solution to ending the skirmish(which I believe was over economy and slavery being essential to the Southern economy is included in my meaning of economy) might not have been a bad idea.

And for anyone with their head in the mud I do think slavery is wrong and is rightfully abolished.

December 27, 2007 at 5:22 pm

Liberty A.C.E.

Ari, have you even taken the time to read what Ron Paul says about racism on his website? He finds government ill-suited to combat bigotry, a problem of the heart. Can we really change people’s hearts by passing laws and regulations?

Paul sees racism as simply an ugly form of collectivism that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than as individuals. He suggests that the antidote to racism is having a constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims.

Walter Williams, an African American rugged individualist, sees no distinction between human, civil and property rights.

“Creating false distinctions between human rights and property rights plays into the hands of Democrat and Republican party socialists who seek to control our lives. If we buy into the notion that somehow property rights are less important, or are in conflict with, human or civil rights, we give the socialists a freer hand to attack our property.”
WALTER WILLIAMS, HUMAN RIGHTS V. PROPERTY RIGHTS

There is a backlash when folks with a socialist agenda impose their will on everyone by legislation. I bristled and seethed as a school child when the teacher punished the entire class for the actions of one. No one has greater love and respect for my African American brothers than I, (I am white) but I am as disgusted by racial quotas as much as by any other PC agendas fomented by big government. I do not need to be baby set as I live by the Golden Rule.

Ari, why did you only respond to my point regarding racism, and not to my other equally valid thoughts regarding Ron Paul’s constitutionalist views of Liberty, states rights, economics and the Civil War? You showed your hand.

Mr. vertical line above (I?) I would love to share with you historical information about the brutality of border skirmishes, reprisals and such during the Civil War. I live in Dover, Ohio. One of our native sons is none other than William Clark Quantrill, guerilla warrior or most prolific serial killer in American history, if you will. At one time a fraternal organization in Dover used the skull of Quantrill in an initiation ceremony. You folks in Missouri had parts of him out there for a while until the bones were recently returned to rest in the Fourth Street Cemetery in Dover.

Also, I often visit the Underground Railroad Museum in Flushing, Ohio run by a magnificent African American gentleman by the name of Maddox. The Quakers were very influential in the abolitionist movement in and around southeastern Ohio. As a child in the 1960’s, I often pondered the perceptible easing in racial tension by traveling a mere 50 miles to the south. I know now that it was the influence of the peaceful Quaker society.

Like it or not, the Christian religion has influenced American history and politics in one way or another and often for the better. I just read one person’s theory how the Christian Moravian Indians living in Ohio during the Revolutionary War may have influenced Delaware war chiefs not to join with the English at Detroit. Perhaps as many as 10,000 braves did not unite on the warpath due to the level heads of Delaware chiefs White Eyes, Netawotewes and others promoting peace. Such a force would have drawn men and supplies away from the battle with the English in order to protect the Western settlements, perhaps influencing the outcome of the war.

Professionals, any comment? I am new to this form of communication myself, and perhaps out of line.

December 27, 2007 at 6:03 pm

ari

Hi all. I hope you’ll forgive me, but I’m going to have to stop replying to comments on the two main Ron Paul posts for a bit. I’ll check in periodically, but these posts are consuming so much of my time that other things are not getting done. I’ve genuinely enjoyed the back and forth here, and I hope that many of you will take the time to visit us again. Or, if not that, please at least take the time to look at some of our other posts before you go. And you’re welcome to keep commenting, of course. There’s still much to be said, I’m sure; I just need a break. Happy New Year.

December 27, 2007 at 10:28 pm

Justicia

Ron Paul is unquestionably a racist, a defender of property rights at the expense of (black American’s) human rights. His record speaks for itself:

[From http://theinterimissue.blogspot.com/2007/08/blog-post.html%5D

1. Ron Paul explains his opposition to “forced integration” and to affirmative action are the reasons he gives for his vote AGAINST reauthorizing the Civil Rights Act of 1964… http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul188.html  

2. Ron Paul voted AGAINST renewing the Voting Rights Act … http://civilliberty.about.com/od/profiles/ig/2008-Republican-Candidates/Ron-Paul.htm?r=94   

3. Ron Paul also voted against reopening the unsolved murder investigations into race-related killings during the Civil Rights Movement… http://killfile.newsvine.com/_news/2007/06/22/796085-ron-paul-votes-against-re-opening-civil-rights-era-hate-crime-cases  

4. Some of Ron Paul’s comments from his newsletter, regarding black men, are shocking, such as: * “If you’ve ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be,”  * “Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action,”  * “We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers,”   * “Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the `criminal justice system,’ I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal,” http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:TRwF3PNJObcJ:www.chron.com/content/chronicle/aol-metropolitan/96/05/23/paul.html+%22Newsletter+excerpts+offer+ammunition+to+Paul%E2%80%99s+opponent%22&hl=en&amp;ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us  

5. Ron Paul supports lowering the age at which children can be charged and prosecuted as adults, saying (see the above link), “[B]lack males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such.”  

6. Ron Paul’s positions on minorities and civil rights legislation MIGHT be why Ron Paul gets the endorsement of “White Civil Rights – European American Unity and Rights Organization: The Website for Europeans and Americans Wherever They May Live”, the white supremacist group run by David Duke: http://www.whitecivilrights.com/ron-paul-gets-double-the-crowd-in-iowa_864.html  … and more on David Duke’s site in support of Ron Paul’s candidacy… http://www.davidduke.com/general/confirmed-rep-ron-paul-running-for-president-2008_1676.html  [NOT that a person should strictly be judged based on who might peripherally endorse them, but taken alongside his comments and votes on racial issues and immigration, I think the endorsements from white supremacists does in fact inform and educate regarding the implications of his positions.] 

December 28, 2007 at 9:13 am

Hank

‘I mention Rick B’s little irrelevant excursus on third parties (whose role in US history is significantly more vital than he lets on, and whose exclusion has more to do with shallow, rather than deep, legal barriers erected by the major parties) because many Paul critics are less interested in (rightly) criticizing Paul than they are in building a case for progressives to, yet again, support a “lesser evil” party whose commit to war crimes such as torture should give progressive voters pause even if it falls somewhat short of the enthusiasm of most of the leading figures in the greater evil party.’

‘That’s a very smart comment.’

It may be very smart, but it’s not very well written. One long sentence, two parentheses, and the point(s?) of it all getting buried in words.

December 28, 2007 at 9:28 am

Hank

A more substantial comment, if I may: when pondering the role of slavery in the Civil War and secession, people too often ignore one of the most telling moments in the entire drama. It occured before Lincoln’s election, in the spring of 1860, when the Democratic Party convened in Charleston to choose their candidate.

When it came time to hammer out the platform, a rift formed between southern and northern delegates. The southerners demanded that the Party declare its support for the protection of slavery throughout the nation (thus opposing Douglas’s ‘popular sovereignty’ solution to the territories, and even implying the right of slave-owners to take slaves anywhere in the nation).

Northern delegates refused, knowing this would mean the Democrats had indeed become the party of the so-called ‘slave power’ of abolitionist claims, and would destroy the party in the north.

This rift led to the Democrats running two candidates–Douglas and Breckinridge–one committed to popular sovereignty (and thus the right of ‘free’ states to keep slavery out); the other committed to defending the rights of ‘property owners’ to do as they wished with their property, no matter what state governments might say (nice irony there, given their later support for ‘states’ rights’!)

That initial secession in the summer of 1860–of the extreme pro-slavery wing of the Democratic Party–should remove any doubts that slavery was the cause of the Civil War.

December 28, 2007 at 10:00 am

ari

Excellent point, Hank. There’s a useful discussion of that rift in this new book, if people are interested. It’s a very good book, by the way, if a bit dry. (I tried to cram a couple of parantheticals in those sentences, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. So I’ll have to settle for this one.)

December 28, 2007 at 10:13 am

Ben Alpers

It may be very smart, but it’s not very well written. One long sentence, two parentheses, and the point(s?) of it all getting buried in words.

No it’s not very well written, but it was a blog comment for God’s sake! I’m afraid my comments, and e-mails, often have such sentences in them.

Does everything need to be publication worthy at this point?

December 28, 2007 at 10:15 am

ari

If it’s not, don’t bother bringing that mess ’round here. We have standards.

December 28, 2007 at 8:41 pm

Hank

Now Ben, don’t take personal offense. I wasn’t harassing you. I liked what you were saying and wanted to be sure I was getting your meaning. I had to read that graph a few times to do so. The point is it was needlessly obscure.

Nothing I’m posting is worthy of publication here. And I do tend to get lazy, and let my thoughts run ahead of my writing. But the fact is, I’m writing. That presumes an intention to be understood. I appreciate it when people tell me I’m commiting linguacide.

I think, if the blogosphere wants to challenge other (read pulp-based) media for authority, the bloggers will have to stop giving themselves passes so readily and face up to the fact that WRITING IS WRITING, whatever it’s on. This, Ben, is what separates us from the animals.

Hoping you’ll agree, and looking forward to more of your stuff, I remain your grateful reader . . .

Hank

December 28, 2007 at 8:54 pm

Hank

By the way, I’m sure I read about that convention in McPherson, buut for some reason it didn’t stick in my memory. (Don’t know why–it’s not like there’s that much to remember in there.) Where it did get my attention was in a fantastic review of that execrable, moronic movie, GODS & GENERALS, which appeared in, of all places, NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE. Ha. “Common ground,” after all.

December 28, 2007 at 8:58 pm

Hank

Great. After all that, I miss-spell a three letter word. Can we get an edit function?

December 28, 2007 at 9:01 pm

ari

I think Eric’s working on it. He’s the tech guy. I’m the creative spirit.

December 28, 2007 at 9:05 pm

urbino

Ask him to add a “Home” link at the bottom of the page while he’s at it, will ya?

December 28, 2007 at 9:08 pm

ari

I don’t know what that is. But I’ll ask him. Again, I prefer to dance amidst the dewdrops, as wild ponies cavort around me. Eric likes to make technology work.

December 28, 2007 at 10:36 pm

eric

Comment editing, WordPress.com doesn’t allow. But there’s a home link down there now.

December 28, 2007 at 10:41 pm

urbino

Smashing. Thank you.

December 28, 2007 at 11:30 pm

Hank

“I don’t know what that is.”

Who among us does? Let’s eat it anyway.

January 1, 2008 at 12:26 am

kegill

Causation and correlation …. are not the same. And rarely does one thing trigger any event, much less a civil war. This rift has an inflection point with the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

Liberty A.C.E. makes good points about macro-economics, but there are domestic and micro-economic issues as well. There is a good deal more — see http://www.historycentral.com/civilwar/AMERICA/Economics.html

We had an agrarian south and an industrialized north — onerous taxes paid by southerners to finance northern infrastructure. Yes, the war was about “slavery” in the sense that slavery made the economic system of the south “work” … but the issue is not as simple as any here suggest. Nor as black and white (no pun intended) as the person who insists that all southerners felt superior to blacks.

Having been transplanted from the south to the north, I can assure you that racism has no geographic boundary — and the covert racism I experienced in the north was far more insidious, imo, than the overt racism of the south. But slavery wasn’t about racism, it was about economics.

Finally — remember that slavery is rampant throughout the bible. Just a reminder than societal mores do change and it is intellectually dishonest to apply current mores to historical events.

January 1, 2008 at 11:15 am

Hank

“Its [the Confederacy’s] foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition.”

Alexander Stephens

January 2, 2008 at 6:30 pm

silbey

“Yes, the war was about “slavery” in the sense that slavery made the economic system of the south “work””

Scare quotes are your friend.

January 9, 2008 at 7:51 pm

Rich

Hank, FYI, if you used Firefox as a browser instead of the junk Bill Gates gives you then you would have a spell check function built into everything you type on the Net.

January 17, 2008 at 6:28 pm

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May 14, 2008 at 9:59 pm

Christina

I also consider myself an astute student of the Second War for Independence or the War Against Northern Aggression and I will tell you that slavery was an indirect issue of the War and not the cause. The causes go as far back as the unfinished work of our forefathers in the Constitution 60 years prior and many events, including several secession attempts by many states, unfair tariffs by the Northern states, as well as the industrialization of the North. Slavery was on its way out in the South. Only 4.8% of the Southern population owned slaves and of that percentage, many may have only owned 5 – 20 slaves. Daily, these so-called horrible slaveholders violated many laws by permitting slaves to marry, gave them education and religion. Many slave owners worked the fields with their slaves and shared their dinner tables with them. Stonewall Jackson was a fine example. He began a black Sunday school with over 100 students. Several of those students went on to start churches of their own which are still in operation today. Of course, there were bad slave owners, but in most cases, the bond of friendship went far beyond ownership. The slave system that most people are familiar with, the Triangle Trade, existed in 1600s – early 1800s. The import of slaves was stopped by the Constitution by 1808. So, the real cause of war lies with tariffs. If anyone wants to read up on this, check out the Tariff of Abominations of 1832 and the Morrill Tarriff imposed by Lincoln 2 days after his inauguration. Research the Louisiana Purchase, Ostend Manifesto, Nullification Crisis, John Brown Raid, Rise of the Republican Party and election of Lincoln, Missouri Compromise, Kansas-Nebraska Act, Bleeding Kansas, Nat Turner Rebellion, Cyrus McCormick’s Invention of the Reaper, Brooks-Sumner Affair, Fugitive Slave Laws passed – 1850, Dred Scott Decision, Uncle Tom’s Cabin written by an abolitionist woman who never ventured further South than Kentucky, etc. I can keeping naming events. If you research each and every one of these events, not to mention the fact that the South was producing 75% of the GNP and being taxed by the North for it, the last straw was being called horrible slaveholders by bible toting Northerners who were working children in factories for pennies a day. The rumors were too much. People did not travel to dispel myths. Southerners were not going to have their way of life taken away and a split was inevitable. Slavery was not even perceived as a main issue. To answer someone else’s question above, yes, it matters greatly why this war was fought. Revisionist history is all over place. If you read the diaries of the great men who fought these battles, the revisionist history started being written about 1900. The service of Black Confederates is being erased. Nobody wants to acknowledge that freed black men fought for the South and for their rights. And why wouldn’t they? The first legalized case of slavery in America is of a free black man owning a black man in 1655. So, who is not to say that if you came to America, earned your freedom, you would not raise arms against the terrible Union government that was trying to take your rights and land that you fought so hard to get??? Now, places like the new Gettysburg Visitor Center are erasing their memories and saying these Black Confederates were just laborers that showed up at the Gettysburg Reunion in 1913. That’s shameful. History has to be taught correctly to our young generation and maybe this endless cycle of racism in America can be broken so we can live in peace. Other countries want so desperately to terrorize us and break us. We do a great job of it by not even teaching our history correctly to our children. Our forefathers worked so hard to secure our freedom. We have soldiers out there still doing the same. Let’s not waste it.

May 14, 2008 at 10:08 pm

ari

Our forefathers worked so hard to secure our freedom.

This is my very favorite part of the whole comment. It’s as if irony had never been discovered.

May 14, 2008 at 10:18 pm

Vance Maverick

I liked this transition:

Southerners were not going to have their way of life taken away and a split was inevitable. Slavery was not even perceived as a main issue.

If slavery wasn’t the issue, then what’s the “way of life” referred to in the first sentence?

Also, I realize it’s an irrelevant point, but I know of at least one “case” of slavery in America before 1655 — my ancestor Samuel Maverick, who owned slaves in Massachusetts in 1638. And he might have been black, I suppose, but being born in 1602 in England, it seems improbable.

May 14, 2008 at 10:31 pm

ari

Plus there’s that whole first slaves imported into Virginia thing: in 1719. But why allow the facts to get in the way of a wholesale regurgitation of the Lost Cause talking points. Including, who can forget this gem, the great goodness of Stonewall Jackson.

[Update: Andrew, with his fancy “google,” points out that the correct date is 1619. Stickler.

May 14, 2008 at 10:37 pm

andrew

1619. Also. This “google” thing is great.

May 14, 2008 at 10:44 pm

ari

Oh crap. Fixed. See, she’s right: I shouldn’t be allowed to teach the nation’s young people. I’m a menace.

May 15, 2008 at 12:44 am

Hemlock

I spent a half hour quoting the response and listing primary and secondary sources refuting several assertions. Fortunately, I realized how annoyingly didactic my response would have been. Then I happened upon this quote:

“Of course, there were bad slave owners, but in most cases, the bond of friendship went far beyond ownership.”

Gee golly, if the above statement is valid, then Hasbro should start producing slave dolls. Kinda like the classic My Buddy or Kid Sister lines. Also should have a theme song like: “My Slave, In Forced Bondage, We’re Together, Always and Forever, My Slave and me!!!” or something along those lines.

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June 21, 2008 at 9:06 pm

Graymalkin

“Slavery did too cause the Civil War!” Did too! Did too!

My great-great-grandfathers, maternal and paternal, fought for the South. Both were farmers. Like 85% of the men who fought for the South, they neither owned slaves, nor had any vested interest in the institution.
Suggesting that Southern men left their homes and families to fight for the defense of slavery is like suggesting American men today would gladly march into battle to defend the bank accounts of Bill Gates and Donald Trump. The very concept that the vast majority would go to war to protect the “property” of a small minority of rich elites is absurd.
For Northern abolitionists, slavery was an issue. For Northern merchants whose wealth came from participation in the Atlantic Slave Trade, slavery was an issue. For Southern plantation owners, slavery was an issue. For Southern politicians who catered to their wealthiest constituents, slavery was an issue. And, to the federal government, whose treasury swelled with taxes and tariffs gained directly from the slave-labor-produced agrarian South, slavery was definately an issue.
Lincoln said, “If we let the South go, who will pay for government?” Odd, no mention of slavery. Lincoln even considered an amendment protecting slavery if it would lure the South back into the Union.
In 1863 Lincoln played his admitted “last card”: the Emancipation Proclamation. Arguably the finest bit of PR work in the history of the United States. With it, Lincoln could more easily dissuade potential European support of the Confederacy by European countries, something the South desperately desired. The War was thus now “over slavery;” no European country – each having ended slavery peacefully – would support a new nation that sought to perpetuate slavery (even though slavery was already in decline in the South).
Far more examples supporting the fact that, while slavery was an issue, it was NOT “the cause” of the War Between the States exist than there is time to refer to here. I fear that many of you are so well government-educated that such would be pointless. To the Victor goes the Spoils, and chief amongst these is the right to compose the “approved” version of history.
Even the term “civil war” is completely inaccurate in reference to the War for Southern Independence. The South at no time vied for control of the US government, but sought to establish it’s OWN nation, and government (the correlation between “civil war” and “civil rights” is also far from unintentional, thus furthering, emotionally as well as semantically, the idea of Union troops marching South “To Free the Slaves!”).
The Emancipation Proclamation met with the displeasure of Union leaders and enlisted men, who were angered that the “patriotic” war to prevent the South from leaving the Union was now a “war to free the slaves”. The Proclamation helped fuel the fires of dissent amongst Northern enlisted men (or perhaps the increase in dessertion was coincidental?), and intensified draft riots.
Northern newspapers warned of the threat of swarms of freed blacks migrating North. Municipalities enacted laws PREVENTING said migrants from settling in their communities.
Oh, but the war was “over slavery.”
Some may prefer the comfort of perpetuating the fantasy over the cold, hard facts of an ignored history.
Personally, I prefer facts. I know why my ancestors fought: for a free and independent South; a breaking of bonds from an increasingly tyrannical government, and dictatorial president.

Now, you may return to your comfortable, politically-correct version of “history.”

June 21, 2008 at 9:14 pm

ari

I’ve tried to remain civil throughout this thread, even as obnoxious trolls track mud all over this fine establishment. But this is a bridge too far: think, just for a second, about what “caused” means. It doesn’t mean that every Confederate soldier fought for slavery. It means that slavery caused the war. Or, if that’s too complicated for you, you also might want to read the post.

June 21, 2008 at 9:28 pm

Kieran

Personally, I prefer facts. I know why my ancestors fought: for a free and independent South*

*OfferofFreedommaynotapplytoSlavesIndependenceofsouthernpeoplescontingentonestablishmentofnonSlavestatusCannotbeusedinconjunctionwithanyotheroffer.

June 21, 2008 at 9:34 pm

Vance Maverick

I take “Now, you may return” to mean, “My spiel is gespielt, and I won’t be back.”

Again, this one has a fine jolting transition:

Personally, I prefer facts. I know why my ancestors fought….

There’s of course no way “why my ancestors fought” can be a “fact”, unless perhaps the answer is “conscription”, which would shift the locus of relevant intentionality a bit.

June 21, 2008 at 11:19 pm

Ben Alpers

This thread is like a coal seam fire.

My guess is that long after this blog has ceased to publish–its cutting-edge authors having switched entirely over to some bizarre Web 5.0 cross between Twitter and Bloggingheads.tv–this seam will somehow continue to smolder, as neo-Confederate trolls make brief visits, their shouts of “The War Between the States was about FREEDOmmmmmm” echoing through the now empty intertubes.

June 22, 2008 at 11:23 am

Charlieford

“Suggesting that Southern men left their homes and families to fight for the defense of slavery is like suggesting American men today would gladly march into battle to defend the bank accounts of Bill Gates and Donald Trump. The very concept that the vast majority would go to war to protect the “property” of a small minority of rich elites is absurd.” There were many psychological, cultural and political dividends for non-slave-owning whites in the South: a certain equality among whites/superiority to blacks; the so-called defense of white womanhood; the added congressional power of the 3/5 compromise, and etc. But it is also true that non-slaveholding whites were invested in the southern economy, and numerous jobs, as well as almost all income-streams, were tied to slavery, directly or indirectly. Slavery represented 3 billion dollars of wealth in the US (in 1860 dollars); compare that to the 2.2 billion dollars represented by manufacturing and railroads combined, and then recall that the South was only about 1/3 of the population, and you get a sense for how overwhelmingly important slavery was to the region’s economy, and everyone in it, despite obvious inequalities of distribution. On this, see the excellent article by James L. Huston, “Property Rights in Slavery and the Coming of the Civil War,” JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY 65/2 (May 1999): 249-86. See: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2587364

June 22, 2008 at 11:59 am

Cala

Suggesting that Southern men left their homes and families to fight for the defense of slavery is like suggesting American men today would gladly march into battle to defend the bank accounts of Bill Gates and Donald Trump. The very concept that the vast majority would go to war to protect the “property” of a small minority of rich elites is absurd.

Seriously? It’s probably not the nice campfire song version of history, but ‘vast majority going to war to protect property of a small minority’ actually sounds like a good indirect description of many wars.

By this logic, the U.S. must be in Iraq for the liberation of the Iraqi people, for no one would volunteer to be in an army to protect the interests of Halliburton. Proof!

June 22, 2008 at 7:17 pm

silbey

This thread is like a coal seam fire.

For the win.

July 14, 2008 at 9:53 am

Graymalkin,

Poor Southerners were drafted into the Confederate army while rich slave owners were exempt from service. The poor fought the war for the same reason they have fought for thousands of years, manipulation of the masses by the elite to maintain the status quo. Poor Southerners were suckered into fighting against the Union just like we were suckered to start a fight against Iraq. And, Graymalkin, you should also know that many Southerners fought against the Confederacy. In fact, almost every Southern state with the exception of North Carolina sent soldiers to fight for the Federal Army.

The South started the war with its aggression against the Federal government. It seceeded because it wanted to expand slavery into the Western territories. They illegally seceeded from the Union. They attacked Ft. Sumter. Their obstinence created the war and now they are trying to rewrite history so as to not admit that the Confederacy was traitous and their need to perserve slavery at all costs were the real causes of the Civil War.

August 7, 2008 at 12:02 am

Because I can’t help myself, that’s why. « The Edge of the American West

[…] half right. Ending slavery did mean destroying an awful lot of white privilege. Cry me a river. But what caused the war was the South’s effort to expand slavery into new territory, and the unwillingness of the […]

August 28, 2008 at 2:38 pm

The Historian man

I’ve had family that fought for both sides. We need to quit saying oh the Civil War was fought over slavery. You have to remember that there were slave holding states North and South until after the war. So if the war was over slavery and to stop it then why didn’t the northern states not try to free there slaves in 1861 when or before the war started instead of waiting a year till 1862 to do it. Even after the war there were slave holding states North and South. A lot of people don’t think about it but it was pretty much the poor people who fought the actual war, you know people who didn’t even have slaves. So why would they fight to keep slaves that they didn’t even have. Thats like someone getting mad over someone else’s car getting stolen. Thats like saying i’m so mad cause that guy who I don’t even know just got his car stolen. Yeah that would suck for it to happen to anyone, but if it didn’t happen to you would you really care, most people wouldn’t. I’ve included a couple of sites for you to view if you would like. Just copy and paste in your browser. There were all kinds of races that fought in the Civil War Native Americans, African Americans, Chinese, all kinds. All kinds of decents English, Dutch, Irish, English, French. The war was fought by everyone not just a north and not just a south, and it was fought for different ideas, different hopes and different dreams. It was fought brother against brother neighbor against neighbor. Does everybody fight for the same thing no, most likely no. Most everybody has a different reason some may be the same but not all. Deep down we are all the same, all us have different hopes and dreams, and all of us have different things that we hold dear to fight for.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.forrestsescort.org/blacks_files/black5.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.forrestsescort.org/blacks.htm&h=476&w=640&sz=68&hl=en&start=6&um=1&usg=__eYdV_fdnF9-2X5BOsI6AwTNt7Cg=&tbnid=aAloyBP9olSwaM:&tbnh=102&tbnw=137&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dblack%2Bconfederate%2Bsoldiers%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1G1GGLQ_ENUS289%26sa%3DN

http://images.google.com/images?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS289&q=black%20confederate%20soldiers&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

August 28, 2008 at 2:45 pm

ari

Really? Black Confederates? You’ll find all you need to know here.

August 28, 2008 at 2:47 pm

The Historian man

Deep down we are all the same, But we all have different hopes and dreams, and all of us have different things that we hold dear to fight

i messed that up with the first one I forgot the but lol

August 28, 2008 at 2:54 pm

The Historian man

What am i suppose to know ari.

August 28, 2008 at 3:01 pm

ari

THm, I really don’t have time for a long discussion. And I’m sorry about that, especially so because your comment seemed earnest. But the Black Confederate thing is a scam, a memory con cooked up by neo-Confederates looking for one more justification for a way of life that was antiquated even at the time. Anyway, Kevin’s excellent site, linked above, has lots and lots of material on the debate over mythic Black Confederate soldiers.

August 28, 2008 at 3:07 pm

Vance Maverick

And THm, you should read the original post carefully to see what claim is really being advanced. It’s certainly not that each Confederate soldier made a free individual decision to risk his life for the continuance of the peculiar institution.

August 28, 2008 at 3:58 pm

Ben Alpers

Also, THm, you’re correct that the North didn’t fight the Civil War in order to end slavery (at least not at first). The U.S. initially fought the Civil War to preserve the Union. However, the war began because the South attempted to secede in order to preserve slavery and allow its expansion into new territories. That, in a nutshell, is the sense in which slavery caused the Civil War.

Let me second what Vance says: read the post and the thread. And take a gander at two important speeches: Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephen’s “Cornerstone Speech” (1861) and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (1865), each of which, in very different ways, does a fine job of locating the relationship between slavery and the war.

August 28, 2008 at 4:07 pm

kid bitzer

and while you’re at it, thm, read this:

http://americancivilwar.com/documents/williamson_address.html

it’s the confederate leader of louisiana, explaining to a secessionist group in texas why they should secede, and what is at stake in fighting the war. here’s snippet:

“we hope to form a slave-holding confederacy that will secure to us and our remotest posterity the great blessings its authors designed in the Federal Union. With the social balance wheel of slavery to regulate its machinery, we may fondly indulge the hope that our Southern government will be perpetual.”

it was slavery, slavery, slavery, all the way down. don’t get conned by the neo-cons.

September 11, 2008 at 6:56 pm

Jared Myers

“Slavery was undoubtedly the immediate fomenting cause of the woeful American conflict. It was the great political factor around which the passions of the sections had long been gathered–the tallest pine in the political forest around whose top the fiercest lightnings were to blaze and whose trunk was destined to be shivered in the earthquake shocks of war.”

“Reminiscences Of The Civil War”, (Chapter I)
By John B. Gordon, Maj. Gen. CSA

September 11, 2008 at 6:59 pm

Jared Myers

http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=92

read this, and then try to convince me that the South didn’t see this war as a war over slavery

October 8, 2008 at 2:30 am

Eric Roth

A Jeffersonian View of the Civil War
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/miller1.html

October 8, 2008 at 4:42 am

kid bitzer

this is going to come as a surprise to a lot of you, but the account at that lew rockwell site?

it’s full of shit.

who’d a thought it!

October 16, 2008 at 7:30 pm

Morgan Cordray

Slavery is a minor cause of the civil war. It was really taxation without sufficient representation which caused the civil war. The tariff laws imposed on the southern states amounted to about 85% of all tariff taxes to the US. Furthermore president Lincoln actually offered to amend the constitution to include slavery if the south would rejoin the union. Jefferson Davis (president of the confederacy) refused the offer telling him it wasn’t about slavery. As to those documents from the confederacy…. They were a political ploy by the confederate politicians to raise the ire of the heart land. Land taxes weren’t enough to anger the commoners of the south so they told them slavery was at risk…

October 16, 2008 at 7:48 pm

ari

Here we go again.

October 16, 2008 at 8:05 pm

Walt

It’s like an early Christmas present.

October 16, 2008 at 8:44 pm

urbino

Ixnay on the esponsesray.

October 16, 2008 at 9:30 pm

ari

So far so good.

October 30, 2008 at 1:06 pm

Scott

Read about the Morrill Tariff of 1861 and then ask yourselves if the war was caused about slavelry.

November 22, 2008 at 2:10 am

WRBranham V

Your opinions are well stated, but not well supported by facts. You need to learn more facts about your topic.

November 22, 2008 at 6:58 am

silbey

Damn search engines.

November 22, 2008 at 9:13 am

albiondia

Slavelry: high-jinks on the plantation.

November 22, 2008 at 3:55 pm

bitchphd

I hate you all. Discovering this thread (which I had no idea had turned into a lingering thing of beauty) led me down the rosy path of link-clicking until freaking 4:30 am this morning.

November 22, 2008 at 4:46 pm

Charlieford

Where do these idiots come from, and why are they so insistent that slavery had nothing to do with the coming of the war? Do they think Nat Turner rebelled because he didn’t think tariffs were high enough? What was that kerfluffle at Harper’s Ferry all about? Was Frederick Douglass travelling through the south, speaking at its many fine Lyceums? Did the South yawn and say, “No dog in that fight. But if he starts in on tariffs . . .”?

November 22, 2008 at 7:04 pm

J Thomas

I think we can all agree what the Civil War was about.

The Civil War was fought for *freedom*!

November 22, 2008 at 8:16 pm

urbino

And the baby Jesus.

November 22, 2008 at 8:18 pm

kid bitzer

also, nascar.

November 22, 2008 at 8:40 pm

bitchphd

Urban elitists.

November 22, 2008 at 8:49 pm

kid bitzer

look, b, if you think the civil war was fought for urban elitists, i won’t correct you.

i’ll just point out that, if that’s what it took, it was a small price to pay for a nation of decent bagels and good coffee.

November 22, 2008 at 8:51 pm

Charlieford

Are you saying the North hated the South for its freedoms?

November 22, 2008 at 8:59 pm

bitchphd

No, no. It was fought so that we could have decent bagels, good coffee, *and* fried chicken and okra. It’s all about the deliciousness of our differences, you see.

November 22, 2008 at 9:39 pm

kid bitzer

indeed. a point emphasized by lincoln in his famous pre-war “roadhouse divided” speech.

November 22, 2008 at 9:40 pm

Michael Turner

This thread is like a coal seam fire.

Did you know that in Indonesia, they’ve found forest fires started by coal seam fires that were themselves originally started by forest fires?

The debate over the legitimacy of the Confederacy and/or its grievances is the defining coal seam fire of our republic. The longer they can keep it smoldering, the better its chances of igniting something above ground, given enough tinder.

Even I am not fireproof. Why, just last week, I found myself noting that, until January 20, America is still sort of the Confederate States of America. Which means there’s still time for the Union to secede from the Confederacy. Which, you must admit, would spare the incoming Obama administration a lot of congressional gridlock. (I also proposed that we retain all the tactical and strategic nukes, but give the South all the ballistic missile defense stuff. Fair enough?)

Luckily, a friend noticed a fire extinguisher in a corner, and put me out in under 20 seconds. Just a few first degree burns. It was a near thing though.

November 22, 2008 at 10:14 pm

J Thomas

Are you saying the North hated the South for its freedoms?

No, I’m saying surely we can all agree it’s about freedom. For yankees it was about freedom from slavery, and for southerners it was about other freedoms, including the freedom to have slaves.

So we ought to be able to at least agree that far.

November 22, 2008 at 10:18 pm

Sifu Tweety Fish

Just throwing this out there, but maybe the Civil War caused slavery.

Ever think of that?

November 22, 2008 at 11:39 pm

Michael Turner

I think it was really about ignorance. Or maybe about strength. Or maybe the distinction between the two is entirely academic, making it all about both ignorance and strength.

November 23, 2008 at 7:51 am

Charlieford

Well, can we all just resolve that whenever anything’s bugging us, we’ll just get our satisfaction by snubbing Peggy Eaton?

November 23, 2008 at 7:54 am

Michael Turner

Don’t even bring that tramp around here.

December 4, 2008 at 6:47 pm

CPUSA

http://www.blackconfederates.com/ Ignore the title and click the link, look at the picture, I dunno if this is photo shopped but you guys should take a look regardless.

CPUSA stands for the Communist Party of the United States of America by the way, just felt like a cool screen name as an acronym

December 4, 2008 at 8:22 pm

Vance

Wow, Larry predicted that comment nearly a year ago.

December 30, 2008 at 6:34 am

gaetano

I was born in the north,where I was taught in school that Lincoln freed the slaves and was such a great man.Bullshit!!!!! I have lived in the south for 45 years and the civil war was because the southern states did not want to belong to the union.Lincoln was a s.o.b. trying to force people to do what they did not want to do. When the north beat the south,there was no place for slaves to go,so they were told that they were free to do what the wanted to.
Did the north take care of the slaves? NO,thats why most stayed with their owners,in order to survive and I don`t blame them.People were made to starve,blacks and whites.That war was worst war then any war in our history,just beause of mr. dumbass,Lincoln

December 30, 2008 at 7:12 am

Charlieford

Yeah, and did you hear that after their emancipation, the slaves went back to their owners and asked if they couldn’t be slaves again?! OMG, it’s like sooo true! They missed all the fun so much!

December 30, 2008 at 8:19 am

silbey

coal seam fire

They had to evacuate Centralia, PA when they couldn’t put a coal fire out, you know…

January 1, 2009 at 5:58 pm

Charlieford

Coal seam fires can be nice to warm your hands by, ya know.

January 1, 2009 at 6:40 pm

SEK

They had to evacuate Centralia, PA forever when they couldn’t put a coal fire out, you know…

Fixed that for you.

January 2, 2009 at 12:03 pm

Charlieford

No wonder they’re so bitter and clingy.

Slavery did too cause the Civil War.

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Slavery did too cause the Civil War.

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