Slavery; the root cause of Secession & War

[JR]

Sigh.

I see some folks still insist on using some sort of incomprehensible illogic to arrive at the conclusion that the evil south started the war in order to further slavery.

It goes like this.

1) The South supposedly seceded over slavery.
2) The North said, please stay, you can keep your slaves.
3) The South said, up yours.
4) The North said, then we'll make you stay, because you can't leave unless we say you can.
5) The South said, we're leaving, peacefully if we can, forcibly if we must.
6) The North said, we ain't going to talk with you about it, because, we aren't going to let you leave.  Period.
7) The South said, well, we are leaving, get out of our sovereign territory.
08) The North said, we are staying in your territory, because you can't leave, and you gave us this piece of land to allow us to protect you, and we're going to protect you and make you stay whether you like it or not.
9) The South said, if you don't leave, then we're kicking you out.
10) The North said, we ain't leaving, and we ain't letting you leave us.
11) The South said, BOOM!!
12) The North said, OK, now we're going to show you the cold steel.  (Oh yeah, so they asked all the remaining slave states to join them in the fight against secession.)
 

Wait a minute? 

Where is slavery?  I thought the war was about slavery?  So why did they invite slave states to fight with them against other slave states?  And why did they say "you can keep your slaves, we just can't let you leave us?"

 

I love how you put that haw...LOL LOL....Very good...

[tineak]

1) The South supposedly seceded over slavery.
2) The North said, please stay, you can keep your slaves.

They seceded over the issue of expansion of slavery into the territories which would eventually give the free states amendment power to simply abolish it in one fell swoop. If you look at the 1860 Republic Platform, there was no direct threat to slavery in the slave states. This is obviously some sort of reference to the Corwin Amendment which doesn't address Southern fears that slavery not being in the Territories would ultimately create an amendment majority. The 'entrenched' clause would eventually fail.

[tineak]

Its clear from the writings of those who are pro-secession that they wish to interpret the US Constitution in a manner similar to the Article of Confederation. It might be useful to examine the Articles of Confederation which specifically states: 'Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.' and 'The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever.'; whereas with the US Consititution its the 'people of the United States'

The Articles was an irrelevant and weak government incapable of organizing concerted action. States could and did ‘veto’ (nullify) federal revenue laws; a case in point being Rhode Island’s veto of the revenue tariffs Congress wanted to collect.

Without the force of law, the Articles of Confederation were irrelevant, there was no point to it, and yet the pro secessionists insist that this is the correct interpretation of the US Constitution.

[tineak]

Political power? For what purpose? They were exercising political power to preclude slavery from the Territories.

They felt 'excluded' because they couldn't bring their slaves with them.

Notwithstanding, precluding slavery in the Territories wouldn't give South Carolina any standing. And incidentally seceding doesn't solve the matter with respect to the Territories because now of course they're completely excluded.

You would think from your writing that the North was anti-slavery because they were anti-Southern. The anti-slavery movement was actually anti-slavery.

"The next evil that my friend complained of, was the Tariff. Well, let us look at that for a moment. About the time I commenced noticing public matters, this question was agitating the country almost as fearfully as the Slave question now is. In 1832, when I was in college, South Carolina was ready to nullify or secede from the Union on this account. And what have we seen? The tariff no longer distracts the public councils. Reason has triumphed. The present tariff was voted for by Massachusetts and South Carolina. The lion and the lamb lay down together-- every man in the Senate and House from Massachusetts and South Carolina, I think, voted for it, as did my honorable friend himself. And if it be true, to use the figure of speech of my honorable friend, that every man in the North, that works in iron and brass and wood, has his muscle strengthened by the protection of the government, that stimulant was given by his vote, and I believe every other Southern man. So we ought not to complain of that."
(At this point Toombs interjected, "That tariff lessened the duties.")
Stephen's responded: "Yes, and Massachusetts, with unanimity, voted with the South to lessen them, and they were made just as low as Southern men asked them to be, and those are the rates they are now at."

South Carolina Secession Convention, December 22, 1860.
Lawrence M. Keitt, one of the secession commissioners:
"We have instructed the Committee to present a summary of the reasons which influenced us in the action we have now taken. My friend from Richland said that the violation of the Fugitive Slave Laws are not sufficient, and he calls up the Tariff. Is that one of the causes at this time? What is that cause? Your late Senators, and every one of your members of the House of Representatives, voted for the present tariff... But the Tariff is not the question which brought the people up to their present attitude. We are to give a summary of our causes to the world, but mainly to the other Southern States, whose co-action we wish, and we must not make a fight on the Tariff question."

[unionblue]

A qoute on the matter.

"We of the Southe are about to inaugurate a new civilization.  We shall have new and original thought; negro slavery will be its great controlling and distinctive element."

Source: The Future of the Confederation, DeBow's Review 31 (July 1861), pp. 35-40.

We should listen and learn instead of trying to filter and spin what the people of the period actually said what they were fighting for.

Sincerely,
Unionblue