Origins of the Civil War...
Lord, will the Civil War ever be put to rest? For the third time in two weeks I've come across a blog entry where the comments degenerate into trying to figure out who was to blame for it.
My take is the whole thing was rooted in slavery. Period. Call it "state's rights" if you want but those "rights" were about owning human beings. Nothing else. Gussy up this pig anyway you can, it'll still be a pig.
For justification of my opinion I give this portion of the Constitution of the Confederate States of America, Article 4, Section 3, subsection 3;
3. The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several Sates; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.
To repeat the pertinent part, "...In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government;..."
So if the whole damned thing wasn't about slavery then what in hell was it about?
Regardless of that, when do we stop fighting the damned thing?
2 comments:
I've been studying this issue again lately myself, and I agree with you, with this addition:
The southern states seceded when Lincoln was elected. Lincoln had repeatedly denied the authority of the federal government to interfere with slavery in the states, but had consistently asserted the authority of the federal government to regulate and even ban slavery in the territories, a power denied by the southern states, and also ruled out in the Dred Scott decision.
Now see: Through the 1850s, all the agitation about slavery was over two issues: fugitive slave laws, and slavery in the territories (rather like the way we today argue abortion on the fronts of partial birth abortion and funding for embryonic stem cell research).
Lincoln's election meant the likely overturning of Dred Scott and the assertion of federal authority to ban slavery in the territories. This is why they seceded.If Lincoln had not waged the Civil War to bring the seceded states back into the Union, the Union would have been at war with the Confederacy for decades over this and that territory as each territory determined whether to join the Union or the Confederacy.
Not only was the U.S. losing 11 states, it was losing some unknown amount of western territory.
I have yet to find anyone, at the time or since, discussing this issue, but they must have been very cognizant of it.
The Civil War was not about states' rights. It was about whether slavery could be exported to the territories with the expectation that territorial law would protect slave property.
Or, in short, it was about slavery, and spreading slavery.
OK--you asked for it. It was about Revulsion, from all those dam yankees putting sugar and milk on their grits!
Actually, an alternative explaination is that it was about northern fears that the south would industrialize and use slave labor in the facotries. So yeah, slavery was a big part of it.
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