And interestingly enough, the Second Klan considered Lithuanian and Polish Immigrants barely better than African Americans, especially during Temperance.
Is the Myth of the Lost Cause a myth in of itself?
- Thread starter Jack Douglass
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And interestingly enough, the Second Klan considered Lithuanian and Polish Immigrants barely better than African Americans, especially during Temperance.
Jack Douglass
Banned
Oh boy, this is turning into a discussion I didn't want to get into, but the CSA wasn't founded "solely" on the preservation of slavery, its complicated as you understand that when the South seceded South Carolina declared in its "Causes of secession" document
"Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to deny the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection."
and
"a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction."
You can say ambiguously enough that the south seceded because of slavery, but to say they seceded to protect slavery is misleading because it implies slavery was under direct threat of destruction by the Lincoln administration, which it wasn't, at least before secession.
Lincoln never said before 1863 that he would interfere with slavery where it already existed, he in fact was, like the majority of his white contemporaries, republican or not, a white supremacist and believed that ideally blacks could be segregated from whites or better, deported to Liberia in Africa as part of the colonization scheme.
Lincoln was anti-slavery but he was NOT an abolitionist; abolitionists were a very small, albeit disproportionately influential, political minority in the states even at the time of the civil war, and although they supported the republican party more than others, most republicans were not abolitionist but anti-slavery, meaning they opposed the free immigration of slaveowners with their slaves into the territories and opposed the slavepowers on a political level, but it was not at the time synonymous with abolitionism.
The abolitionists themselves such as Frederick Douglass criticized Lincoln, and William Loyd Garrison criticized using war to force the South to stay in the Union.
The various treatises called the "Declarations of Causes" (of secession) by the States, pointed out various grievances exceeding even slavery to justify secession, they also justified slavery and its rationale, against the antipathy of the Lincoln administration against the institution of slavery, which they felt would eventually down the line, deprive them or their descendants of equal representation in congress.
"Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,"
This is a very famous quote of Lincoln used to demonstrate his strong anti-slavery feelings and stance, however when reading through historical speeches and documents it is very important to look at the context in which a word or sentence was given, if we look at that specific section that quote (divided house) was from a campaign speech given during an 1858 congressional campaign to differentiate himself from his pro-popular sovereignty opponent Stephen Douglas, his tone during his first inaugural address was very different where he said he had "... no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interefere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." And if you want to talk about Lincoln's beliefs about race at least before the Civil War then I suggest you read this qoute. Since you read so many of Lincolns speeches anyway. "I will say that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people: and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and Inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything." To be fair this was also said in the context of a political campaign, and I use the term white supremacist anachronistically as no such term existed in Lincoln's time, but he as most white people back then did believe that white people were the superior race.
If the direct threat of Slavery being abolished was really the issue at hand why didn't they stay and agree to the Corwin Amendment which would have made slavery protected by the constitution? And was supported by Lincoln. Why do none of the Declaration of Causes say Lincoln wanted to directly abolish slavery but only talk of his opposition to slaveholders migrating to the territories with their slaves or his moral anti-slavery stance?
“the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction”
Keeping in mind what this is really saying is that Lincoln did believe that slavery would eventually become extinct by natural economic processes, which many historians agree with saying that slavery was on its way out in 1861 too, not through decline, but through the evolving American economy north and south. However it does not indicate that this documents authors believed that Lincoln wanted to immediately abolish slavery.
IN EXAMPLE
Texas Declaration of Causes.
"The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slave-holding States."
(Proposed Draught) Georgia Declaration of Independence (Seccession)
http://www.civil-war.net/pages/georgia_declaration.asp
Therefore such an organization must have resulted either in utter failure or in the total overthrow of the Government. The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the South not at all. In the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests of the North began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests. Even the owners of fishing smacks sought and obtained bounties for pursuing their own business (which yet continue), and $500,000 is now paid them annually out of the Treasury. The navigating interests begged for protection against foreign shipbuilders and against competition in the coasting trade. Congress granted both requests, and by prohibitory acts gave an absolute monopoly of this business to each of their interests, which they enjoy without diminution to this day. Not content with these great and unjust advantages, they have sought to throw the legitimate burden of their business as much as possible upon the public; they have succeeded in throwing the cost of light-houses, buoys, and the maintenance of their seamen upon the Treasury, and the Government now pays above $2,000,000 annually for the support of these objects. Theses interests, in connection with the commercial and manufacturing classes, have also succeeded, by means of subventions to mail steamers and the reduction in postage, in relieving their business from the payment of about $7,000,000 annually, throwing it upon the public Treasury under the name of postal deficiency. The manufacturing interests entered into the same struggle early, and has clamored steadily for Government bounties and special favors. This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding States. Wielding these great States it held great power and influence, and its demands were in full proportion to its power. The manufacturers and miners wisely based their demands upon special facts and reasons rather than upon general principles, and thereby mollified much of the opposition of the opposing interest. They pleaded in their favor the infancy of their business in this country, the scarcity of labor and capital, the hostile legislation of other countries toward them, the great necessity of their fabrics in the time of war, and the necessity of high duties to pay the debt incurred in our war for independence. These reasons prevailed, and they received for many years enormous bounties by the general acquiescence of the whole country.
But when these reasons ceased they were no less clamorous for Government protection, but their clamors were less heeded-- the country had put the principle of protection upon trial and condemned it. After having enjoyed protection to the extent of from 15 to 200 per cent. upon their entire business for above thirty years, the act of 1846 was passed. It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people. The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy. There was but small hope of its reversal; upon the direct issue, none at all.
Florida Declaration of Causes
http://www.civilwarcauses.org/florida-dec.htm
The representative principle is a sufficient security only where the interest of the representative and the Constituent are identical with the variety of climate productions and employment of labor and capital which exist in the different sections of the American Confederacy creating interests not only diverse but antagonistic.
The majority section may legislate imperiously and ruinously to the interests of the minority section not only without injury but to great benefit and advantage of their own section. In proof of this we need only refer to the fishing bounties, the monopoly of the coast navigation which is possessed almost exclusively by the Northern States and in one word the bounties to every employment of northern labor and capital such a government must in the nature of things and the universal principles of human nature and human conduct very soon lead as it has done to a grinding and degrading despotism.
"-It is denied that it is the purpose of the party soon to enter into the possession of the powers of the Federal Government to abolish slavery by any direct legislative act. This has never been charged by any one. But it has been announced by all the leading men and presses of the party that the ultimate accomplishment of this result is its settled purpose and great central principle. That no more slave States shall be admitted into the confederacy and that the slaves from their rapid increase (the highest evidence of the humanity of their owners will become value less."
The Address of the people of South Carolina, assembled in Convention, to the people of the Slaveholding States of the United States
https://www.civilwarcauses.org/rhett.htm
The Southern States now stand exactly in the same position toward the Northern States that our ancestors in the colonies did toward Great Britain. The Northern States, having the majority in Congress, claim the same power of omnipotence in legislation as the British Parliament. "The general welfare" is the only limit to the legislation of either; and the majority in Congress, as in the British Parliament, are the sole judges of the expediency of the legislation this "general welfare" requires. Thus the Government of the United States has become a consolidated Government, and the people of the Southern States are compelled to meet the very despotism their fathers threw off in the Revolution of 1776.
The consolidation of the Government of Great Britain over the colonies was attempted to be carried out by the taxes. The British Parliament undertook to tax the colonies to promote British interests. Our fathers resisted this pretension. They claimed the right of self-taxation through their Colonial Legislatures. They were not represented in the British Parliament, and therefore could not rightfully be taxed by its Legislature. The British Government, however, offered them a representation in the British Parliament; but it was not sufficient to enable them to protect themselves from the majority, and they refused it. Between taxation without any representation, and taxation without a representation adequate to protection, there was no difference By neither would the colonies tax themselves. Hence they refused to pay the taxes paid by the British Parliament.
The Southern States now stand in the same relation toward the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation, that our ancestors stood toward the people of Great Britain. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress is useless to protect them against unjust taxation, and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British Parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue -- to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures.
There is another evil in the condition of the Southern toward the Northern States, which our ancestors refused to bear toward Great Britain. Our ancestors not only taxed themselves, but all the taxes collected from them were expended among them. Had they submitted to the pretensions of the British Government, the taxes collected from them would have been expended on other parts of the British Empire. They were fully aware of the effect of such a policy in impoverishing the people from whom taxes are collected, and in enriching those who receive the benefit of their expenditure. To prevent the evils of such a policy was one of the motives which drove them on to revolution. Yet this British policy has been fully realized toward the Southern States by the Northern States. The people of the Southern States are not only taxed for the benefit of the Northern States, but after the taxes are collected three-fourths of them are expended at the North. This cause, with others connected with the operation of the General Government, has provincialized the cities of the South. Their growth is paralyzed, while they are the mere suburbs of Northern cities. The bases of the foreign commerce of the United States are the agricultural productions of the South; yet Southern cities do not carry it on. Our foreign trade is almost annihilated. In 1740 there were five shipyards in South Carolina to build ships to carry on our direct trade with Europe. Between 1740 and 1779 there were built in these yards twenty-five square-rigged vessels, beside a great number of sloops and schooners to carry on our coast and West India trade. In the half century immediately preceding the Revolution, from 1725 to 1775, the population of South Carolina increased seven-fold.
Akansas Ordinance of Secession
http://www.civildiscourse-historyblog.com/blog/2018/7/1/secession-documents-arkansas
Whereas, in addition to the well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention, in resolutions adopted on the 11th of March, A.D. 1861, against the sectional party now in power in Washington City, headed by Abraham Lincoln, he has, in the face of resolutions passed by this convention pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any State that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful and ruinous to the State of Arkansas:
Mississippi Declaration of Causes
http://www.civil-war.net/pages/mississippi_declaration.asp
it has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system. (I am aware that this is an abridged version of the declaration that leaves out the references to slavery, this is why I left the link, I put this in here to point out almost every secession document mentions or alludes to causes beyond directly to slavery.)
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Jasen777
Donor
The lost cause wasn't just about the war, it was about the traditional white supremacy in the South that through the war and reconstruction had temporarily lost, and which was regained in the aftermath. That is the cause isn't necessarily the Confederacy, it was the way of life that the Confederacy had been meant to protect. For decades the "Dunning School" was the dominant view of the subject in American academia, arguing that White Southern resistance to reconstruction was valid, that Black people couldn't govern, that segregation was necessary, etc.
ButWhatIf
Banned
The Lost Cause myth was pervasive among the South in the decades after the civil war and in many ways is still around today, what with racist crowds protesting the removal of white supremacist statues glorifying the oppression of black people in the South and folks waving the Confederate flag proudly
That is how slaves were legally viewed viewed by the CSA, as property. So these two paragraphs mention either slavery by name or the legal status of slaves. How is this not meant to prove its solely about slavery?
Any complaint that the Confederate states had outside of Lincoln's hostility towards slavery and attempts to keep the institution from spreading were the sorts of typical economic and regional issues that are dealt with by Congress on a regular basis. They were used as window dressing at best. The documents quoted here as well as Confederate Vice-President Stephens's Cornerstone Speech make it clear that without slavery, an actual war between the states would have been unlikely at best.
Correct. There’s no way they would secede over banking or trade issues.
StephenColbert27
Banned
The South saw the election of an anti-slavery party to the White House and control of both houses of Congress to be an imminent threat to the expansion of slavery, and a ban on the spread of slavery was nothing more than a stepping stone to outright abolition.
Holy shit that's some cherry picking.
Let's start with South Carolina
You cut out a very important sentence immediately before the "those states have assumed part" which is
Also earlier in the document.
Here's the whole thing on wiki source for anyone interested!
Now let's move further down the state lists because frankly it doesn't matter a damn what Lincoln did or said in regards to whether or not the South seceded over slavery since they say as much in their own words time and again.
Texas
Georgia
Florida (going with your link here)
Also this bit later on is really telling
Holy fuck these people were insane.
For Arkansas you've only got the ordnance which is mostly dry legalese until you realize this
Is referencing things being said by guys like Henry Rector
Yikes! Although I guess fair enough that Arkansas seemed to have much more tumult over seceding than other states that did so. Still seceding to join this particular bunch...not exactly a good character recommendation for those who did so.
And Mississippi, honestly the most laughable of all of these considering it straight up says this
Anyway if the war were about anything but slavery they probably wouldn't have just copied and pasted the Constitution for the most part except to add that states rights were totally awful if they interfered with slavery.
TL;DR -
For anyone looking for a good introductory to the subject I highly recommend this on Reddit Bad History, there are also a bunch more over there that are really good.
StephenColbert27
Banned
Agreed. During the Tariff Crisis under Jackson, John C. Calhoun, the Father of Secession himself said that tariffs and trade were but “the occasion, rather than the real cause of the present unhappy state of things.” What they were truly worried was that if it grew powerful enough, the federal government could act against “the peculiar domestick institutions of the Southern States”-slavery.
Jack Douglass
Banned
Holy shit that's some cherry picking.
Let's start with South Carolina
You cut out a very important sentence immediately before the "those states have assumed part" which is
Also earlier in the document.
Here's the whole thing on wiki source for anyone interested!
Now let's move further down the state lists because frankly it doesn't matter a damn what Lincoln did or said in regards to whether or not the South seceded over slavery since they say as much in their own words time and again.
Texas
Georgia
Florida (going with your link here)
Also this bit later on is really telling
Holy fuck these people were insane.
For Arkansas you've only got the ordnance which is mostly dry legalese until you realize this
Is referencing things being said by guys like Henry Rector
Yikes! Although I guess fair enough that Arkansas seemed to have much more tumult over seceding than other states that did so. Still seceding to join this particular bunch...not exactly a good character recommendation for those who did so.
And Mississippi, honestly the most laughable of all of these considering it straight up says this
Anyway if the war were about anything but slavery they probably wouldn't have just copied and pasted the Constitution for the most part except to add that states rights were totally awful if they interfered with slavery.
TL;DR -
For anyone looking for a good introductory to the subject I highly recommend this on Reddit Bad History, there are also a bunch more over there that are really good.
Literally right in my post, also you completely missed the point, I DID NOT SAY SLAVERY WAS A NOT A CAUSE OF THE CIVIL WAR! It was the occasion for the Civil War but not the causa causans, the fundamental cause was states rights
Also a State's Right to what? Equal representation in Congress!
Jack Douglass
Banned
Tell that to South Carolina during the nullfication crisis.
Also didn't the US itself secede over silly-billy taxes? Or maybe taxes were the occasion to an even more real cause of representation in their countries legislature.
StephenColbert27
Banned
What are you talking about? Where does the South ever discuss equal representation in Congress?
So what you’re arguing is that so long as we ignore the actual cause of secession, that is to say slavery, then it wasn’t about slavery. But...also, huh? The South didn’t just have representation they had major over representation since they didn’t let their slaves have any rights whatsoever.
Nahh I didn't miss it, because I'm saying when you don't sloppily try to cut out all the parts about slavery, it's pretty clear they seceding because of slavery and everything else stems from that root cause.
And lol if that were true the South's political power should have vanished in a puff of logic when it realized the only reason it was able to hold on to power for as long as it did in the face of a growing North was the 3/5ths compromise.
To steal a quote, if the Confederacy didn't secede over slavery, then somebody forgot to tell the fucking Confederacy.
Jack Douglass
Banned
Seems like you're doing your own cherry picking if you want to ignore the other sides reason for fighting. They both create a broader view of the conflict.
Jesus Christ read my post before you comment, I listed out several places where it discusses that issue.
"The representative principle is a sufficient security only where the interest of the representative and the Constituent are identical with the variety of climate productions and employment of labor and capital which exist in the different sections of the American Confederacy creating interests not only diverse but antagonistic."
Florida Declaration of Secession
No, the proximate cause was the expansion of slavery into the territories, however this links back to the fundamental cause of Equal representation by the states in Congress where each state gets a vote on things regarding tariffs and how the government should be orchestrated, Lincoln favored creating a system of National Banks, a more centralized government, and High Tariffs to support and protect industry, he inherited this view from the Whig Party which he was a member. The South also wasn't over represented they were represented by the proportion of their population the 3/5ths compromise was a deal with the north since freedmen and slaves weren't citizens there either.
Jack Douglass
Banned
I did not cut out the parts, I left links to all the documents in their entirety when I posted my argument, what they make clear is that the South viewed Northern hostility to slavery as dangerous to keeping a balance of power between the South (slaveholding states) and the North (Free States)