Slavery; the root cause of Secession & War

[ole]

When I read it I was amazed at the extreme bias shown by the author and that anyone could hold this up as some "well-reasoned" view of the war.

Perhaps you would favor us with a few selected passages wherein Mills' biased observation is not factual?

ole

[Southron]

Perhaps you would favor us with a few selected passages wherein Mills' biased observation is not factual?

ole

Mills-
“It will be desirable to take thought beforehand what are to be our own future relations with a new Power, professing the principles of Attila and Genghis Khan as the foundation of its Constitution.”

Obviously in reference to the slavery provisions of the Confederate Constitution but he somehow ignores the outlawing of the slave trade in that same Constitution-

“Unless we abandon the principles we have for two generations consistently professed and acted on, we should be at war with the new Confederacy within five vears about the African slave-trade.”

“To allow the slave-ships of a Confederation formed for the extension of slavery to come and go free, and unexamined, between America and the African coast, would be to renounce even the pretence of attempting to protect Africa against the man-stealer”


Also in Mill’s hypothetical the South, after fighting a war for independence, is now going to take on the Colonial Empires of France, Britain, and Spain-

“Are we to see with indifference its victorious army let loose to propagate their national faith at the rifle's mouth through Mexico and Central America? Shall we submit to see fire and sword carried over Cuba and Porto Rico, and Hayti and Liberia conquered and brought back to slavery?”

The Confederate State of Liberia?
Silly.



The article is extremely biased in its tone throughout. 
Just a few examples- 

“the arrogance of the Southern slave-holders would not long submit to its exercise. Their pride and self-conceit, swelled to an inordinate height by their successful struggle, would defy the power of England as they had already successfully defied that of their Northern countrymen.”

“lower the arrogance and tame the aggressive ambition of the slave-owners”

[ole]

Many thanks for the prompt response, Southron. Your points are well taken.


Mills-
“It will be desirable to take thought beforehand what are to be our own future relations with a new Power, professing the principles of Attila and Genghis Khan as the foundation of its Constitution.”

References to Attila the Genghis Khan might certainly be taken as evidence of bias which, as previously stated, do not automatically make him wrong. In less flowery language, he might well have said,"We must think about allying ourselves with a slave-holding country."

Obviously in reference to the slavery provisions of the Confederate Constitution but he somehow ignores the outlawing of the slave trade in that same Constitution-

England wasn't concerned with the Confederate Constitution. It was very much down on the practice. Realistically, the US Constitution also allowed banning of slave importation by 1808, which was done, but the importation continued via slave-runners from Caribbean Islands.

“Unless we abandon the principles we have for two generations consistently professed and acted on, we should be at war with the new Confederacy within five vears about the African slave-trade.”

“To allow the slave-ships of a Confederation formed for the extension of slavery to come and go free, and unexamined, between America and the African coast, would be to renounce even the pretence of attempting to protect Africa against the man-stealer”

Also in Mill’s hypothetical the South, after fighting a war for independence, is now going to take on the Colonial Empires of France, Britain, and Spain-

I don't see that as an unreasonable or overly biased prediction. England had already used diplomatic and naval force to stop the slave trade. Mills is predicting a continuation of that "influence" against a new slavery oriented country.

“Are we to see with indifference its victorious army let loose to propagate their national faith at the rifle's mouth through Mexico and Central America? Shall we submit to see fire and sword carried over Cuba and Porto Rico, and Hayti and Liberia conquered and brought back to slavery?”

The Confederate State of Liberia? Silly.

Yes. I choked on that one myself. I'm wondering if he was just confused, or if we are unfamiliar with the English terminolgy used at the time.

The article is extremely biased in its tone throughout.  Just a few examples- 

“the arrogance of the Southern slave-holders would not long submit to its exercise. Their pride and self-conceit, swelled to an inordinate height by their successful struggle, would defy the power of England as they had already successfully defied that of their Northern countrymen.”

“lower the arrogance and tame the aggressive ambition of the slave-owners”

[/quote]

Mills is writing to persuade the people and Parliament of England to not side with the Confederacy. One might expect a bit of bias in there. After all, the Declarations of Secession and Causes are also extremely biased. Does that preclude their being considered as history?

You appear to be a thinking Southron. I appreciate that.

ole

[prius04]

Thank you for this article. 
Revisionists have worked very hard to create the notion that the causes of the Civil war were noble and was never about slavery.  This is preposterous. 

The south was a plantation based society.  When the old man died, the farm could not be split for to do so would mean that over the generations the farm would get smaller and smaller.  So if a man had second and 3rd sons, there had to be another route to success.  In the north, prosperous men could give other sons shares of the fortune, in the south, prosperous men sent those sons to West Point or into government, or into the ministry.  Thus, most of our generals were southern at the outbreak of war, but more importantly, most of our Federal bureaucrats, as well as top Federal employees, were also southerners.  But here's the crux.  Most of our Supreme Court members were also southerners and/or were powerful supporters of "states rights".  Thus whenever there was a controversy between the rights of states and the rights of the Federal Gov, the States ALWAYS won out.

Remember Dred Scott?  So to suggest the south committed treason and seceded over states rights is in direct contradiction to historical fact.  But there was one single states rights issue that was marching inexorably to a conclusion and that was the loss of the legality of slavery.  It was just a matter of time.  The south knew it and they didn't like it.  The Whig party got torn apart but the notion of slavery and thus was born the Republican party.  When Abe won the election it sealed the fate of slavery, at least in the eye of the southern decision makers.

That's the real reason for the war.  Slavery.

Now of course, each individual soldier and each individual town and district in the south probably had their own reasons that they used and believed.  Indeed, loyalty to some wonderful culture could be propagandized to get the masses to do most anything.  And some of that propaganda was indeed built on "noble" origins.  But that was just the propaganda to mobilize the masses.  Again, the real reasons that motivated those who actually controlled the process, was slavery.

By the way, Tennessee originally voted against succession then changed there minds when they were expected to fight against their "brothers" to protect the union.  I've read that numerous other southern towns voted against the war and in some southern towns, nearly all the young man fled north to fight for the Union, including some towns as far south as Alabama. 

I've read that during the American Revolution, at any one time only 30% of our country supported Washington, with another 30% not caring, and another 30% supporting the King.  Does anyone have figures on how much support the confederate cause actually had in the south during the war? 

(In more support of the notion that the war was not about "States Rights", try actually reading the Confederate Constitution.  One can easily come away from that read by concluding that the Confederacy was well on their way to becoming a MORE federalist based nation than the North was.  --Meaning MORE central control and LESS freedom for each state.  The only significant difference between the 2 constitutions was language strengthening central authority over states authority, and on the issue of slavery.)

[ole]

A totally excellent post, Prius. Very many welcomes. I regret to note that Southron has not posted since August. He/she looked like someone who could discuss the situation rationally. So now I'll turn to you, but it becomes difficult to cross swords with someone with whom I generally agree. Lemmee see if I can find something to disagree with....

When the old man died, the farm could not be split for to do so would mean that over the generations the farm would get smaller and smaller.  So if a man had second and 3rd sons, there had to be another route to success.

In my ancestors' country, the land had to be divided among the sons. My ggfather and his brother came over here, leaving what little land there was to a sister. which was not unusual because their mother had possession of the pitiful few acres because of a lack of brothers. But it was the law.

But there was one single states rights issue that was marching inexorably to a conclusion and that was the loss of the legality of slavery.  It was just a matter of time.  The south knew it and they didn't like it.  The Whig party got torn apart but the notion of slavery and thus was born the Republican party.  When Abe won the election it sealed the fate of slavery, at least in the eye of the southern decision makers.

Might have to diverge from you here just a touch, Prius. The issue of expansion was the necessity. The Constitution could not be amended to forbid "persons bound to servitude." (Don't remember where I read that, but there were some gimcracks in the constitution that forbid amending certain articles, among which was that particular phrase.) So legally, there was no forseeable danger of any administration's eliminating slavery. But it existed, since 177? that slavery was not to be practiced in the NW territories. This was taken as precedent that it was not to be practiced in any territory. The precedent did not meet with great welcome in the slaveholding states as they were about to be surrounded with possible states that might interfere with their rights, not to mention losing the senate to the free states.

That's the real reason for the war.  Slavery.

I usually think that the real reason for the war was secession. And that the real reason for secession was the perceived fear of losing the economic societal and economic basis, which was slave-based. So we're essentially talking about the same thing.

By the way, Tennessee originally voted against succession then changed there minds when they were expected to fight against their "brothers" to protect the union./quote]When you think about it, you can argue a point with your relatives and neighbors about the rightness or wrongness of this or that, but when you have to pick up a musket, where will your feet be?

Does anyone have figures on how much support the confederate cause actually had in the south during the war?

Haven't seen a firgure, but would personally expect the ratio to be about the same -- with considerably more involved complications.

Finally, on state's rights. I've mostly concluded that it was a propoganda tool. The Federals were not interested in eliminating slavery -- only in limiting its expansion (thereby eventually eliminating it). From that, it become's my state's right to have that territory become, with its two senators, a slave state. It's always rubbed my gourd some that one might expect that territory to become a slave state with slave senators without a slaveowning population. However Kansas and Nebraska declared themselves on entering the Union, how long would either have elected slave-owning senators?

The peculiar institution had most of the world figuring that this was not something that should be perpetuated. Only in Brazil and parts of the Caribbean was it hanging on, by its fingernails -- and in Dixie. Internationally, the practice was being shunned. And eliminated. The abolitionists? Pikers. The most powerful countries in the world were stamping out the sparks. But Dixie was working on reestablishing its dominance. Sigh.

ole

[Catherine Hopley]

“The Civil War and Reconstruction represent in their primary aspect an attempt on the part of the Yankee to achieve by force what he had failed to achieve by political means; first, a free hand in the nation for the thievish aims of the tariff gang, and secondly, and far more fundamentally, the satisfaction of the instinctive urge of men in the mass to put down whatever differs from themselves – the will to make over the South in the prevailing American image and to sweep it into the main current of the nation.”

[W.J. Cash, The Mind Of the South, p.121.]

“Regardless of the part which slavery and states’ rights may have played in producing the war, its most significant and lasting result was the free and unhampered emergence of a new America – an America with a strangely different temper and spirit from the old, with a new set of values and with new dominating interests. Freed from southern restraint, the nation rushed forward into the Gilded Age, the era of Robber Barons, the day of Big Business and bigger depressions. To put it more bluntly, the values and interests of the Northeast, as evolved under industry and finance on a Puritan background, took charge to shape and direct the course of the United States into the Modern World.”

[Avery Craven, An Historian & The Civil War, p.162.]

“…it is perfectly clear that the war was waged over antagonisms much broader than slavery and that the purposes back of the so-called Reconstruction program, inaugurated at the close of the war, had far more to do with reordering the South as a section than they had to do with the Negro as a human being. The nearly total abandonment of the Negro to the control of the southern states after 1876, the brazen political-economic bargaining or compromising in the disputed  election of that year, and the quick turning of the Negro’s Fourteenth Amendment almost exclusively to economic uses were, in fact, only the logical climax of steady developments which had, for a generation, been reducing the South, as a section, to a completely colonial status in relation to the finance-industrial areas.”

[ibid., pp.163-164.]

“…it must be perfectly clear to every scholar that the establishment of permanent Republican party control, the protection of the already exorbitant tariffs, and the securing of financial arrangements satisfactory to the bankers, the creditors, and the rising industrialists were basic factors in determining the treatment given the South…the subjugation of the rural-agricultural South was, therefore, a foregone conclusion long before the indignation against Negro slavery…if [the South] had any contribution to make to a people blundering into the Gilded Age, in terms of rural-agricultural moderation of industrial and financial excesses or of living as against acquiring, it was neither asked for nor appreciated. Southern emphasis on good manners, on personal and social responsibility, or on the right of men and regions to be different, were old-fashioned in such an age. These things were not progressive. They did not yield profits.”

[ibid., pp.164-168.]

“I am never going to say that it was best for the South that the Confederacy was overthrown; I do not believe it. I do not think that such tyrannical trusts would have been tolerated and such debauchery in politics could have existed, as we now have, under the flag of the Southern Cross.”

[William H. Stewart, A Pair Of Blankets, p.13.]

“there are…five more years of good stealing in South Carolina!”

Post-war Republican Senator John J. Patterson

[ole]

Now that is a very nice wad of steaming crud, Miss Catherine.

What, exactly, is it you are trying to say?

ole

[Johan Steele]

"of all aristocracies upon earth, that of the slaveholder is the most meaningless, the most contemptible, and the most damnable."

"For more than a year we have engaged in this struggle, into which an arrogant and dictatorial slave-oligarchy has driven a free, happy, and peaceful people, fighting for the rights of all.  With true bravery and invincible patience our citizen soldiers have stood on this ground to the present moment, against violators of the laws of war and humanity.  Remaining true to their principles, they have said, by words and actions, to their fellow citizens in the South, We fight for common rights.  If we win, you win.  If the government is maintained, you will dwell under the protecting shadow as freely as we.  And there we stand, and thus we sat, today.

But if the Confederates prevail, farewell peace and safety to us; farewell freedom, forever!  Their principles and leaders are known to us.  They cheated us, crying out, No coercian; holding out false hopes and deceitful assurances of friendly regard, while assassin like, they were preparing to destroy our Government and reduce us to anarchy or servitude.  The past year's experiance renders it certain that if they triumph, blood and desolation, fire and sword, or arbitrary subjection to their will, awaits every white man who has manhood enough to dislike their system of slavery.

They will omit no means, honest or dishonest, to insure success.  Misrepresenting, calumniating our motives, ridiculing our honest efforts to mitigate the horrors of war, and inflaming the passions of the populace by low epithets, are among the milder and more ordinary means resorted to by this psuedo 'chivalry,' the meanest aristocracy that ever stood at the head of a civilized society"

William S Rosecrans 20 July 1862

[Catherine Hopley]

Now that is a very nice wad of steaming crud, Miss Catherine.

What, exactly, is it you are trying to say?

ole

Am I to take this as meaning "Welcome to the forum. A pleasure to make your acquaintance"? 

[Catherine Hopley]

"of all aristocracies upon earth, that of the slaveholder is the most meaningless, the most contemptible, and the most damnable."

"aristocracy  -   a class of society comprising people of noble birth with hereditary titles"

[Concise Oxford English Dictionary]

Abolitionist rhetoric would be more persuasive if it encompassed a basic understanding of the English language.

"And the result [of the war] - well, the result in part, of course, was that  the tariff gang got what it wanted - that the Republican Party had time and freedom to establish itself in the national trough so solidly that it would  never really be got out again until the coming of the great depression of 1929."

[W.J. Cash, The Mind Of The South, p.123.]