To be frank, so what? You can use this same line of reasoning to justify anyone who fought for any awful regime in the history of mankind. It doesn’t make their cause any less evil, nor does it make the soldiers themselves any better for fighting for it. Blindly fighting for something awful is just as bad as doing so willingly.
Is the Myth of the Lost Cause a myth in of itself?
- Thread starter Jack Douglass
- Start date
Rosa Luxemburg
Banned
?
Because future generations will probably damn us, the same way we damn the South.
And saying that I can put myself in the shoes of an antebellum southerner who wonders "how can I take on my entire world and all the people around me deaf to the wrongness of their behavior," and when faced with that sense of wrongness and doing something means facing your brothers, your father and the contempt of everyone you've known, I understand why choices are difficult.
And I have a hard time sympathizing with those who too easily damn southerners. That is very different from the Germans of WW2 who, except for the youngest, did not grow up with Nazism being "Just the way it was."
Reminder that the Confederacy banned states from abolishing slavery in their constitutions...
So much for "state's rights"...
Do you have sympathy for individual Japanese regarding WWII as well?
That is the cost of reconciliation...the elision and avoidance of uncomfortable things...
To a lesser extent, it is even present with the EU narratives like with the Franco-German reconciliation, though there at least there is recognition for the whole Vichy complicity shit...
I would argue that part of some reactions in (at least) US media fandoms in particular is because of backlash against this sort of thing...
So much for "state's rights"...
Do you have sympathy for individual Japanese regarding WWII as well?
That is the cost of reconciliation...the elision and avoidance of uncomfortable things...
To a lesser extent, it is even present with the EU narratives like with the Franco-German reconciliation, though there at least there is recognition for the whole Vichy complicity shit...
I would argue that part of some reactions in (at least) US media fandoms in particular is because of backlash against this sort of thing...
I really, really hate when older people do this, but as an older person myself....
Before the rise of the interstate highways in the late 1950s, before television imposed its own mono-culture over everything, the South had a much stronger regional identity. In this sense, it really almost was like its own country. And the belief in The Lost Cause was one of the dominant beliefs in the South. Statues. Monuments. Speeches. Various Confederate veteran groups. They all reinforced this.
It's like the idea of The Greatest Generation. Most people don't devour history books and come out with a finely judged conclusion based on the evidence. They just sorta think "Oh, yeah, Grandpa lived through the Depression and then saved the war for democracy. They sure don't make them like him anymore."
The same thing with The Lost Cause. I'm sure some people did read and reread the original succession documents but mostly it was a lazy-ish reflexive belief that the South was good and pure and romantic and blah blah blah.
Before the rise of the interstate highways in the late 1950s, before television imposed its own mono-culture over everything, the South had a much stronger regional identity. In this sense, it really almost was like its own country. And the belief in The Lost Cause was one of the dominant beliefs in the South. Statues. Monuments. Speeches. Various Confederate veteran groups. They all reinforced this.
It's like the idea of The Greatest Generation. Most people don't devour history books and come out with a finely judged conclusion based on the evidence. They just sorta think "Oh, yeah, Grandpa lived through the Depression and then saved the war for democracy. They sure don't make them like him anymore."
The same thing with The Lost Cause. I'm sure some people did read and reread the original succession documents but mostly it was a lazy-ish reflexive belief that the South was good and pure and romantic and blah blah blah.
Of course the Antebellum South was evil. As bad as the Reich? I am on record here (as most anyone who has ever had the sad experience of seeing my posts on the subject knows) as saying the the Third Reich 's leadership and actions were the most evil seen on this planet in at least 500 years, and is a strong candidate for most evil ever.
That does not mean wealthy planters, other, less wealthy slaveholders and politicians who believed that the had the God Given right to hold fellow human beings in chattel slavery, and compounding that foul belief, held them in conditions that would be unacceptable for domestic animals and started a war that resulted in at least 700,000 deaths can dodge the "evil" label simply because someone was worse.
The South fought for Slavery. Period. DOT. The "equal representation" argument had nothing to do with the individual state representation in Congress, if anything they were over represented soce thy were able to get apportioned representatives based on a percentage of what they themselves considered to be livestock. It was about the right to spread the evil of chattel slavery beyond the states where it was established. The knew, with a certainty, that their odious system was past its "sell by date" and any new states where they could not manage to, somehow, continue slavery, would, in time result in exactly what happened after their failed rebellion, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. It wasn't that they wanted to be represented in Congress, it was they were deathly afraid that eventually there would be enough new states that their 15 states area would no longer represent at least 1/4+1 of the total states (Ironically, they were wrong, had they simply held the course those 15 states would, even today, be enough to block passage of any Amendments).
The Civil War, on the side of the Confederacy, was about SLAVERY and its infinite survival. That is it. Nothing else. Revisionists and apologists are flatly wrong, perhaps sincerely, perhaps insincerely, but wrong.
I'm not saying choices aren't difficult, but you also choose to fight for the CSA. And frankly the CSA decided to fight as a society, before it fought it elected politicians that stood for the values that cause the CSA to secede over slavery. Yes some where reluctant combatants fighting under social pressure that had little directly to do with slavery for a society they disagreed. but frankly if that had been significantly the case then the CSA would have found it hard to raise armies, and support them
Problem is it wasn't just "the way it was", was it? With the Union being the first society on earth to say out of the blue and against all previous human thought "hang this whole chattel slavery thing isn't right", the conversation had been going for while and the CSA basically said "OK we've heard the arguments but no we're happy with slavery and reject the alternatives"
so actually I don't see it as that different in this context,
However as I said I think there distinction between humanising and sympathising
John Farson
Banned
Including this guy.
(he was already in the army, but I'm sure the intended meaning got through)
Honestly, this is a Southern Civil War officer who deserves to have statues and monuments, and in general ought to be noted more.
Lost the game
Banned
They had equal representation. In the Senate. In the house representation was done according to population. A state with fewer people is not entitled to equal representation in the house. That's how the Constitution works, as any seventh grade can tell you.
Jack Douglass
Banned
I posted my argument yesterday and then I lost internet half way sitting on the forum defending it, most of my points are there on that post but here is a revised one, hopefully if yall read this through and through yall will see the point I am making, I am aware that the vast majority of people on this forum are very against what I am saying, but I do not mean to offend anyone. My point is not to discuss the individual reasons people fought but the context in which the secession documents were written.
Slavery was the Occasion and Incident for Secession not the Cause.
Occasion:
2b b: an occurrence or condition that brings something about especially : the immediate inciting circumstance as distinguished from the fundamental cause
Merriam-Webster dictionary.
“Slavery, so called, or that legal subordination of the black race to the white, which existed in all but one of the States, when the Union was formed, and in fifteen of them when the war began, was unquestionably the occasion of the war, the main exciting proximate cause on both sides, on the one as well as the other, but it was not the real cause, the "Causa causans" of it.”
Alexander Stephens -Vice President of the CSA,
A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States.
“The truth remains intact and incontrovertible, that the existence of African servitude was in no wise the cause of the conflict, but only an incident,”
Jefferson Davis – President of the CSA,
Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government Vol 1.
I am well aware that many of the following quotes of the secession documents are abridged and do not show the many, many references to slavery, my intention was not to cherrypick but to simply highlight numerous examples where the documents mention broader causes other than slavery contributing to the Civil War.
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 slave-powers 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 Lloyd 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 towards 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.
Now you could say that the Southern states seceded because they believed that Slavery would eventually be driven to extinction in a gradual process that begins with Lincoln, however I would argue that secession was very controversial in the South when it was discussed before the Civil War itself, and secession was largely a reactionary and emergency move by the Southern states in reaction to Lincoln’s election. A gradual, eventual, prolonged decline and long-term emancipation would have not have been an immediate crisis to the Southern political leaders and economy, as Lincoln had vowed not to interfere with slavery where it existed, and he did not have the power to limit slavery legally as that would require an amendment to the constitution, this requires a convention to be called just to discuss the amendment in question with the approval of 3/4ths of the states, that would need the ratification of 22/33 states, there were only 18 free states in the union which even if they all voted in favor of such a convention which is unlikely considering the small size of the abolitionist movement distinguished from even the relative conservatism of the anti-slavery movements, they still wouldn’t be able to pass such an amendment without the vote of 4 other slave states, which would never happen. Even if they got those three votes the amendment would still have to be ratified by 3/4ths of the state which would take 25/33 votes requiring the support of 2 more slave states to pass. In fact their wouldn’t even be enough free states to call a convention let alone ratify an amendment until 1890 when Wyoming was added to the Union, assuming no more slave states are added which may be unlikely, as Southern California had a strong presence of pro-slavery Southerners and there was a present movement for a partition to create a Southern Californian slave state. This all being said the only way Lincoln could limit the power of slavery would be to limit it’s expansion via the creation of slave-states, this was his primary platform goal, this would not have freed one slave nor prevented any new slaves from being made, it realistically only would have the effect of creating another free state that would be more amenable to Lincoln and the Republican parties political prerogative’s they inherited from the Whig parties “American System” that of a national banking network and high industrial tariffs that would benefit the north, like the Morill tariff.
IN EXAMPLE
Texas Declaration of Causes.
"The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretenses 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 (Secession)
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.
Arkansas 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.)
Slavery was the Occasion and Incident for Secession not the Cause.
Occasion:
2b b: an occurrence or condition that brings something about especially : the immediate inciting circumstance as distinguished from the fundamental cause
Merriam-Webster dictionary.
“Slavery, so called, or that legal subordination of the black race to the white, which existed in all but one of the States, when the Union was formed, and in fifteen of them when the war began, was unquestionably the occasion of the war, the main exciting proximate cause on both sides, on the one as well as the other, but it was not the real cause, the "Causa causans" of it.”
Alexander Stephens -Vice President of the CSA,
A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States.
“The truth remains intact and incontrovertible, that the existence of African servitude was in no wise the cause of the conflict, but only an incident,”
Jefferson Davis – President of the CSA,
Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government Vol 1.
I am well aware that many of the following quotes of the secession documents are abridged and do not show the many, many references to slavery, my intention was not to cherrypick but to simply highlight numerous examples where the documents mention broader causes other than slavery contributing to the Civil War.
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 slave-powers 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 Lloyd 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 towards 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.
Now you could say that the Southern states seceded because they believed that Slavery would eventually be driven to extinction in a gradual process that begins with Lincoln, however I would argue that secession was very controversial in the South when it was discussed before the Civil War itself, and secession was largely a reactionary and emergency move by the Southern states in reaction to Lincoln’s election. A gradual, eventual, prolonged decline and long-term emancipation would have not have been an immediate crisis to the Southern political leaders and economy, as Lincoln had vowed not to interfere with slavery where it existed, and he did not have the power to limit slavery legally as that would require an amendment to the constitution, this requires a convention to be called just to discuss the amendment in question with the approval of 3/4ths of the states, that would need the ratification of 22/33 states, there were only 18 free states in the union which even if they all voted in favor of such a convention which is unlikely considering the small size of the abolitionist movement distinguished from even the relative conservatism of the anti-slavery movements, they still wouldn’t be able to pass such an amendment without the vote of 4 other slave states, which would never happen. Even if they got those three votes the amendment would still have to be ratified by 3/4ths of the state which would take 25/33 votes requiring the support of 2 more slave states to pass. In fact their wouldn’t even be enough free states to call a convention let alone ratify an amendment until 1890 when Wyoming was added to the Union, assuming no more slave states are added which may be unlikely, as Southern California had a strong presence of pro-slavery Southerners and there was a present movement for a partition to create a Southern Californian slave state. This all being said the only way Lincoln could limit the power of slavery would be to limit it’s expansion via the creation of slave-states, this was his primary platform goal, this would not have freed one slave nor prevented any new slaves from being made, it realistically only would have the effect of creating another free state that would be more amenable to Lincoln and the Republican parties political prerogative’s they inherited from the Whig parties “American System” that of a national banking network and high industrial tariffs that would benefit the north, like the Morill tariff.
IN EXAMPLE
Texas Declaration of Causes.
"The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretenses 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 (Secession)
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.
Arkansas 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.)
Twice as many Confederate soldiers were draftees compared with the Union army, so that's another factor that's rarely discussed.
Jack Douglass
Banned
My point in a nutshell
in 1860, Lincoln did not want to end slavery, he wanted to stop new slave states from being added to the Union. Before this there had always been an effort to maintain a balance of power between the Southern slave states and Northern free states, the Southern states were worried if they lost equal representation in Congress that they had with the free-state, slave-state ratio, and they no longer trusted Northern states to adhere to the constitution strictly and protect them from a dominant majority. Which would have been ok if they felt the freestates were adhering strictly to the constitution,
in 1860, Lincoln did not want to end slavery, he wanted to stop new slave states from being added to the Union. Before this there had always been an effort to maintain a balance of power between the Southern slave states and Northern free states, the Southern states were worried if they lost equal representation in Congress that they had with the free-state, slave-state ratio, and they no longer trusted Northern states to adhere to the constitution strictly and protect them from a dominant majority. Which would have been ok if they felt the freestates were adhering strictly to the constitution,
Jack Douglass
Banned
They were defending their homes, if they were enemy combatants then they were the ones fighting the Union, not Southerners from the border states in the Union Army who's homes were not on frontline.
Unbe-frickin'-lievable.
Really?
That would be so much more believable if you hadn't pulled your stuff from the very same books that started the frickin' Lost Cause.
