In reply to: It should be a softball question posted by sprack
race? Maybe I don't understand the category.
Slavery is the only response to a fundamentalist.
The Ayers article that I linked below digs into the differences between the two schools of thought.
I started reading Foner’s book on reconstruction. It was too much for me at the time (too much information and complexity) so I switched to an easier read. I’ll go back to it soon. (I also have DuBois’ book on reconstruction to balance things out.)
And the dominant one in civil war histiography. Each school was named by its detractors.
Kind of like calling people anti choice or pro death.
Everyone agrees slavery was the proximate cause, but the arguments are over whether politics polarizing around it was inevitable, exactly why the south seceded w Lincoln's win, etc.
At least according to this revisionists pre 1960 were generally lost causers and lost, recently they've had a comeback but are still a minority.
I agree that we are talking about different schools of thought, and I said so in my post.
I like your link. It does a more thorough job of explaining what my position is with respect to the multiple schools of thought.
“I know slavery is the simple answer, but I think it’s more complex than that”. Thats fine, she can then quote Vickers' "Work in Essex County," page 98, and we can be on our way. But she didn’t. She fumbled the answer because she couldn’t give the most simplest, obvious answer. If she didn’t know the answer she is a moron, if she was trying to get around saying slavery to appease some red neck base of the south, well then, I think I rather have her as a moron.
Why were there economic differences? Slavery! The South didn’t industrialize. Cotton was shipped north to the textile mills in New England and “old” England.
Why was there a difference between the Deep South and the Upper South? Slavery! No cotton plantations in Appalachia - and in fact the majority of soldiers from places like eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina fought for the Union. Eastern Tennessee almost seceded from the rest of the state. West Virginia did secede from Virginia proper.
It was slavery. At the root of all of it.
for the revisionist, slavery is buried beneath layers of white ideology and politics." - Edward Ayers.
The article linked below does a great job elaborating on the two mindsets that I mentioned above, and provides the nuance and context that I think is necessary to answer the question at hand. The simple answer of slavery is not enough, in my opinion. After all, the South fought to form their own country, based on the utilization of slave labor. The North however, fought to preserve the union, not eliminate slavery. So in a battle between two sides, slavery represents the motivations of one side, not both sides.
There was a hundred years of the opposite, the “Lost Cause” myth.
In any case, I think the argument that the North was not interested in eliminating slavery is a) hair-splitting and b) is treating northern opinion as a monolith.
He’s not a southern apologist. Although, that is the response that I was expecting.
But it doesn’t mean I have to agree with him.
I appreciate your posting a thoughtful article, I really do. We just have a different opinion.
their cause was slavery plain and simple. As such, an answer that fails to lead with such a statement is indeed one framed to not piss off mouth breathing southerners who can't get over the fact that they lost in an immoral war.
That said, I agree with you that slavery was not what caused the Union to fight because Lincoln was entirely motivated to preserve the Union. The abolitionist movement may have been part of the context but was not the precipitating cause. Instead, as you state, Lincoln and the Northern states sought to preserve the Union.
There is ample evidence showing that Lincoln was open to continued slavery in the South and had to walk a tightrope to keep neutral slave owning states such as Kentucky out of the fight. He also had slave owning northern states to keep in the fold.
Finally, the emancipation proclamation wasn't signed until 1.5 years into the war. It's a common mistake to associate its signing with the start of the war. It's also interesting to see the motivations for signing it were only partly rooted in abolition. Many other factors such as foreign influence played a part.
I don't get how smart trivia people like sprack also forget that Maryland still allowed slave ownership at the start of the civil war...
https://www.loc.gov/collections/abraham-lincoln-papers/articles-and-essays/abraham-lincoln-and-emancipation/#:~:text=Although%20Lincoln%20personally%20abhorred%20slavery,where%20slavery%20was%20still%20legal.
In that last part? I agree with just about everything you wrote, and then you take a shot at me and completely misrepresent what I think?
I am fully aware that Maryland, Kentucky, Delaware and Missouri were slave states that didn’t secede. I am also fully aware that Lincoln’s number one goal was preservation of the Union by any means.
It doesn’t mean that slavery wasn’t at the root of secession, which is what we’re talking about here. To argue otherwise is preposterous. Read the damn Cornerstone Speech. It’s also written in the secession documents of multiple states.
Also, the “House Divided” speech indicated he wasn’t for a half-slave, half-free Union long term, and the Southern leaders knew it - because of the man’s own words and the platform of the Republican Party.
Because you have one with me and I think Eric cartman. Perhaps if you hadn’t responded to him as you did I wouldn’t have tossed in my comment. I genuinely wasn’t following your post and I know you are a god like trivia master…
Was to admit free western states and tip the balance of power to eventually get rid of slavery. The party was founded on the Slavery issue which tore the Whigs apart. Lincoln was a political realist and knew he needed to appeal to white people who only cared about slavery inasmuch as it threatened their economic prospects.
If we didn't have a civil war, the move to get rid of it in totality was probably 20 years away, but the Republicans wanted to eliminate the institution and the South knew it.
the southern objective was to expand slavery into areas where it was not allowed. The single reason for this was that slavery was extremely profitable. The arrival of the industrial age with Whitney's improved cotton gin and the steam looms in huge factories drove that profitability. There was a vast increase in the value of slavery between 1787 when it was economically marginal and 1860 when it was awesomely profitable.
When the southern aristocracy concluded that they would not be effective in expanding slavery as a part of the Union, they decided to leave the Union to achieve their objectives in the West, North, Mexico, and even (possibly) Cuba. That was all going well with legislatures and conventions voting to stay (Virginia did) or leave (e.g., South Carolina). Those that left told the Union that its possessions (e.g., forts, post offices) had been confiscated and ordered them vacated.
It was going smooth as silk.
Lincoln said "In your hands, my dissatisfied countrymen, lies the momentous issue of civil war. We shall not assail you." Whether he felt that force was justified to compel the seceding states return to the Union or not, we shall never know. He was being very careful with an explosive political situation.
Then the hotheads in Charleston decided that the Union garrison in Fort Sumter was taking too long to leave and, despite the fact that Major Anderson had made clear that his supplies were running out, it was time to start shooting.
The rest, as they say ...
who was urging for emancipation action, is a good summary of his position early in the war.
". My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union."
Talk about tight- roping.
...(all of which I completely agree with, FWIW), why is Lincoln considered OK for having had to "walk a tightrope" as airborne said, but Haley's efforts to walk that same tightrope seem to be cause for disqualification by some?
If I get the chance to vote for her, I definitely will.
her fealty to Trump that made me feel she wasn't presidential timber. It wasn't walking a tightrope, it was all-in.
Of all the folks running for the GOP nomination, I put her in first or second place. Since she appears to be the most likely alternative to Trump, and she appears to have stopped drinking the Kool-Aid, maybe there's hope.
Down. She is a first generation American. It’s silly to ascribe confederate sympathies to her. She’s a serviceable candidate.
Become important when they highlight issues or problems the candidate already has. This hilights a lot of her issues. Being prone to pandering, needing to appeal to MAGA types while keeping old school republicans/independents united with her.
The slavery issue also serves as a signal for issues of race and how one sees racial issues in the past and present. It's why people are still fighting over monuments and military bases dedicated to Confederate generals.
understand this. Time and time again they declared their position to be thoroughly idenified with slavery. They had plans to expand it.
While other reasons existed, this is like looking at a coronary report and bringing up 3 papercuts as equal to the gunshot wound between the eyes.
Economic differences are a red herring -- the south wanted to go to war because the North was generating more industry, more customers & competitions for cash crops, and a stronger nation overall? The North wanted to... do what the south?
Are rooted in slavery anyway. It’s all a big circle jerk. At the end, it’s still all about slavery.
The economic divide that concentrating wealth in the north and slavery in the south - an economic non-starter over the long-term - made the situation somewhat inevitable. As long as the South continued to allow it, it would be likely to happen - it was just a matter of when.
I thought the John Adams miniseries did a decent job of explaining this, and the choices that the founding fathers had to make when it came to long-term economic and civil health versus gaining independence.
But I remember the invention of the cotton gin really accelerating that difference. Prior to that there was a general move away from slavery. And in parts of the south that couldn't grow cotton well slavery was decreasing (or at least the slaves were Bing sold to planters in the deep south)
It’s called the “Cornerstone Speech”. Skip down to the ninth and tenth paragraphs for the gist.
Stephens, for those that don’t know, was the Vice President of the Confederate States of America.
In paragraph ten:
”Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone 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.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFwHQYDqf6c