Was the civil war primarily over slavery?

[Captain Obvious]

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Poll is NOT PUBLIC

[texan]

Educate me.

I used to say no to this question. But the more I have debated it the more and more slavery took the lead. I would like to be made more clear. let me know after comments votes and comments here. There was certainly more involved. I can't tell if history has been rewritten. I will say that it was pretty big because of Abe's speeches.

[Peter1469]

Had the US never allowed slavery, it is unknown whether the Civil War would have occurred. I think that it certainly wouldn't have started in the 1860s, and I am not sure what the catalyst would have been. The slow erosion of states' rights - perhaps.

But we did have slavery, and the South was becoming non-relevant in the Senate and losing power in the House as new territories were becoming free states.

The status of states' rights is much more dismal today than in the mid 1800s, yet it is very unlikely that there will be a civil war today.

[Captdon]

All you have to do is read the Secession Resolution and Causes. The people who dreamed the secession up stated exactly why they wanted to secede. It doesn't matter what we think. They came up with it. they talked about it, they voted on it and they started a war about it.

The documents are online and easy to find. Only the apologists refuse to read them. They must think their greta-great grandaddies LIED.

[stjames1_53]

while it was part of the issue, Big Business wanted those ports
http://users.humboldt.edu/ogayle/hist110/MapUSPopulation1860.png

all of that oceanfront property...............

[Perianne]

The north has been pushing us around ever since the formation of the United States.

Lincoln was the biggest problem as he was a tyrant. There is a reason Obama admired Lincoln.

[Cthulhu]

Vote

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Poll is NOT PUBLICNo. Primarily over debt.

But freeing slaves sounds much more noble.

Sent from my evil cell phone.

[Mark III]

Polls like this accurately convey how much ignorance abounds at this site.

Educate your ignorant selves. Google the "secession commissioners' . They were prominent men from the states who had already seceded who were sent to the border states to try and convince them to secede also. The "rationale" they offered was largely connected to the need to protect slavery from norther interference. As someone else mentioned, there is also the documents of secession as proclaimed by the individual confederate states who had to declare in their state legislatures what the reason were they were leaving the union. The great majority of their reasoning amounts to a defense of slavery.

This question in the OP is not even a serious question.

[Mark III]

"The commissioners were a group of men who were widely unknown and therefore, could likely relate to the common people of the other Southern states (Dew, 19). However, these men had an incredible aptitude for speaking, which made them valuable in persuading undecided states to secede (Dew 19). Often, the commissioners were born in the state which they were sent to represent, strengthening their position as a Southern figure (Dew, 19).
These commissioners spread the message of secession because of a few key reasons. They believed that the election of Abraham Lincoln was essentially “an open declaration of war” (Dew, 54), in that he would emancipate the south of slavery. This would destroy the racial structure of the South, degrade the white population, and destroy their economic prosperity (Dew, 32). It is true that states rights were a factor in secession, but the South focused on the states’ right to continue slavery (Dew, 11). These two ideals are so interconnected that it is impossible to separate them when discussing causes of secession.
First and foremost, the Commissioners were concerned with the collapse of the racial structure of the south. With the emancipation of slavery would come the equality of both white and black men, an ideal that completely went against the Southern view that white men were naturally superior (Dew, 55). The South believed in this principle so strongly that the vice president, Alexander H. Stephens, went so far as to say the founding fathers were wrong in saying the enslavement of Africans was morally wrong (Dew, 14). If the South were to remain part of the union, they believed they would face not only racial equality, but race war and racial amalgamation (Dew, 78-79). These possibilities strongly go against the South’s belief that their “fathers had made this government for the white man” as described by William Harris, a commissioner from Mississippi (Dew 85). Harris also went as far to say that the South would rather “see the last of her race, men, women, and children, immolated in one common funeral pile, than see them subjugated to the degradation of civil, political, and social equality with the Negro race” (Dew, 89)."

http://cobrienhistoryportfolio.umwblogs.org/the-secession-commisioners-and-their-reasons-for-secession/

[Captain Obvious]

Polls like this accurately convey how much ignorance abounds at this site.

Educate your ignorant selves. Google the "secession commissioners' . They were prominent men from the states who had already seceded who were sent to the border states to try and convince them to secede also. The "rationale" they offered was largely connected to the need to protect slavery from norther interference. As someone else mentioned, there is also the documents of secession as proclaimed by the individual confederate states who had to declare in their state legislatures what the reason were they were leaving the union. The great majority of their reasoning amounts to a defense of slavery.

This question in the OP is not even a serious question.

Thanks for your opinion.

Have a tissue and don't forget to vote.

[Mark III]

Thanks for your opinion.

Have a tissue and don't forget to vote.

I'm not surprised you would turn your own deep ignorance into a silly poll.

[Captain Obvious]

I'm not surprised you would turn your own deep ignorance into a silly poll.

Hope you voted.

As of now, popular opinion disagrees with you.

Are you up to date on your meds?

[Crepitus]

Yes, the civil war was about slavery. The south was aggressively trying to expand slavery, especially to the west, actually to the point of sparking a mini civil war in kansas called "bleeding kansas" in the late 1850s before the big one. When it became apparent that slavery wasn't going to expand and was in fact most likely on the way out as more western states joined as "free states" the south suceded in an attempt to save the institution they felt was central to their way of life.

Here is an excerpt from the "cornerstone speech" by Alexander Stephens, VPN or the confederacy:


Our new Government is founded on exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone 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 moral condition

Don't kid yourself, and don't fall for the southern revisionist rhetoric, the war was all about slavery.

[Archer0915]

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Poll is NOT PUBLIC
I can not answer that question with the answers given so I will answer here.

Yes! For many it was about freeing the slaves but not a majority. I mean are you asking about the political part or the citizen part or the military part? There were many reasons for it. The north wanted to take over the south and used slavery to bolster support. It is very complex...

[Newpublius]

All you have to do is read the Secession Resolution and Causes. The people who dreamed the secession up stated exactly why they wanted to secede. It doesn't matter what we think. They came up with it. they talked about it, they voted on it and they started a war about it.

The documents are online and easy to find. Only the apologists refuse to read them. They must think their greta-great grandaddies LIED.

But secession is NOT war. This is the rub. There's no question abolitionist fears stoked secession. None, zero. But at the end of the day the Union was willing to guarantee slavery and to do so by constitutional amendment, I might add. If one side wants to preserve slavery and the other os willing to guarantee it, then you need to ask why there wasn't a Compromise of 1860. And that's because there were other issues, and the South wrote about those too, ie tariffs, and more specifically how the North was perverting the Union for its advamtage. Now, that point, the Union was NOT willing to concede, the result was a war.

[del]

the war of southern cupidity wasn't fought because the north sought to end slavery

it was fought because the traitors in the south sought to extend it

/thread

[Newpublius]

the war of southern cupidity wasn't fought because the north sought to end slavery

it was fought because the traitors in the south sought to extend it

/thread

The North was unequivocally abolitionist in sympathy, it just wasn't important enough to them to relinquish the financial interest they had in retaining the South in the Union.

[Crepitus]

the war of southern cupidity wasn't fought because the north sought to end slavery

it was fought because the traitors in the south sought to extend it

/thread

Exactly.

Howdy Del.

[del]

The North was unequivocally abolitionist in sympathy, it just wasn't important enough to them to relinquish the financial interest they had in retaining the South in the Union.
bullshit

there were plenty of northerners who supported slavery and the majority didn't give a flying fuck.

[Mister D]

The North was unequivocally abolitionist in sympathy, it just wasn't important enough to them to relinquish the financial interest they had in retaining the South in the Union.
And certainly not important enough to risk their lives over.

[Newpublius]

And certainly not important enough to risk their lives over.

Indeed, what people forget about 'tariffs' is that Northern interests didn't want their products facing a Southern tariff and to be placed on an equal footing with English products which would, of course be facing the same tariff. They were more than willing to sacrifice their principles for that inconvenient truth.

[Newpublius]

bull$#@!

there were plenty of northerners who supported slavery and the majority didn't give a flying $#@!.

Many, but the South clearly perceived Lincoln as an abolitionist threat. Indeed there were Copperheads and Fire-Eaters in the north, just as there were border states where slavery was legal. Painting the North with a broad brush doesn't nake the general point any less true however becaise after all this is the peanut gallery and we aren't writing dissertations here. Indeed, to discuss the 'North' as 'abolitionist' in an off the cuff manner on an informal message board isn't something to get all worked up about.

[Ethereal]

The civil war was fought over slavery in the same way the Iraq war was fought over weapons of mass destruction.

There is the ostensible justification given to the public and then there is the real motive.

[Ethereal]

Anyway, the abolitionist Lysander Spooner said it best back in the 1800's:


No Treason (http://praxeology.net/LS-NT-0.htm#intro)

The question of treason is distinct from that of slavery; and is the same that it would have been, if free States, instead of slave States, had seceded.

On the part of the North, the war was carried on, not to liberate slaves, but by a government that had always perverted and violated the Constitution, to keep the slaves in bondage; and was still willing to do so, if the slaveholders could be thereby induced to stay in the Union.

The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.

No principle, that is possible to be named, can be more self-evidently false than this; or more self-evidently fatal to all political freedom. Yet it triumphed in the field, and is now assumed to be established. If it really be established, the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been greatly increased; for a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave. And there is no difference, in principle – but only in degree – between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man’s ownership of himself and the products of his labor; and asserts that other men may own him, and dispose of him and his property, for their uses, and at their pleasure.

Previous to the war, there were some grounds for saying that – in theory, at least, if not in practice – our government was a free one; that it rested on consent. But nothing of that kind can be said now, if the principle on which the war was carried on by the North, is irrevocably established.

If that principle be not the principle of the Constitution, the fact should be known. If it be the principle of the Constitution, the Constitution itself should be at once overthrown.

Keep in mind, Spooner was a radical abolitionist. He achieved notoriety within the abolitionist community by writing The Unconstitutionality of Slavery.

[Chris]

State's rights (http://www.civilwarhome.com/statesrights.html)


Afterward Davis agreed with Stephens about the basic issue of the war. In A Constitutional View of the Late War between the States (1868--1870) Stephens maintained: "It was a strife between the principles of Federation, on the one side, and Centralism, or Consolidation, on the other" In The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881) Davis held that the Confederates had "fought for the maintenance of their State governments in all their reserved rights and powers."

State's rights, from Calhoun to Davis and Stephens were more about protecting the rights of the people from a government, namely, the norther states, ever overstepping constitutional bounds and encrouching on those rights, that about state power as it is today.

[Ethereal]

It's also worth noting that the USA came close to "civil war" several times before 1860.

Shay's rebellion; the whiskey rebellion; the presidential election of 1800; the Burr conspiracy; the nullification crisis of 1832; etc.

All these incidents could have easily precipitated a civil war, and none of them had anything to do with slavery. Probably the closest we came to a civil war before 1860 was during the nullification crisis when South Carolina refused to pay federal tariffs. Andrew Jackson, the president at the time, responded by threatening to mount an invasion of South Carolina. War was only averted because Congress modified the tariff in such a way as to placate South Carolina.

[Ethereal]

But secession is NOT war. This is the rub. There's no question abolitionist fears stoked secession. None, zero. But at the end of the day the Union was willing to guarantee slavery and to do so by constitutional amendment, I might add. If one side wants to preserve slavery and the other os willing to guarantee it, then you need to ask why there wasn't a Compromise of 1860. And that's because there were other issues, and the South wrote about those too, ie tariffs, and more specifically how the North was perverting the Union for its advamtage. Now, that point, the Union was NOT willing to concede, the result was a war.
The simple fact that there was zero threat to slavery in the south at the time the south seceded should be proof enough that slavery was only a proximate cause and that the distal cause was related to matters of economics.

[Ethereal]

the war of southern cupidity wasn't fought because the north sought to end slavery

it was fought because the traitors in the south sought to extend it

/thread
/Resume thread


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFwHQYDqf6c

[Captdon]

But secession is NOT war. This is the rub. There's no question abolitionist fears stoked secession. None, zero. But at the end of the day the Union was willing to guarantee slavery and to do so by constitutional amendment, I might add. If one side wants to preserve slavery and the other os willing to guarantee it, then you need to ask why there wasn't a Compromise of 1860. And that's because there were other issues, and the South wrote about those too, ie tariffs, and more specifically how the North was perverting the Union for its advamtage. Now, that point, the Union was NOT willing to concede, the result was a war.

Yet, somehow, the Secessionists failed to say that. They said it was slavery and only slavery. They wrote nothing else in the resolutions.Apologists abound but they are all wrong. The men who actually tried to secede ought to be a better source than anyone alive today.

It's always amazing how a written document passed by a vote can be the lie and the apologist the truth. I love the quote from the Gray Ghost, Col. Mosby- "In four years of war I have never heard any other reason than slavery for the cause of this war."

I usually just laugh when I hear the nonsense of the Sons of the Confederacy about why their great-granddaddy fought. They actually believe their own bullshit.

[Newpublius]

Yet, somehow, the Secessionists failed to say that. They said it was slavery and only slavery. They wrote nothing else in the resolutions.Apologists abound but they are all wrong. The men who actually tried to secede ought to be a better source than anyone alive today.

It's always amazing how a written document passed by a vote can be the lie and the apologist the truth. I love the quote from the Gray Ghost, Col. Mosby- "In four years of war I have never heard any other reason than slavery for the cause of this war."

I usually just laugh when I hear the nonsense of the Sons of the Confederacy about why their great-granddaddy fought. They actually believe their own bull$#@!.

No, they specifically said that.

"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"

For instance....

[Perianne]

I want to vote again.

[Captain Obvious]

I want to vote again.

Someone from Rodham's campaign crew will be in touch with you shortly.

[Tahuyaman]

Was the civil war primarily over slavery?
Does it matter?

[Doublejack]

The dudes that wanted to secede said it was about slavery.

We can analyze and debate over it all we want but we can't change historical facts.

[Chris]

The dudes that wanted to secede said it was about slavery.

We can analyze and debate over it all we want but we can't change historical facts.


Those dudes also said this...


State's rights (http://www.civilwarhome.com/statesrights.html)


Afterward Davis agreed with Stephens about the basic issue of the war. In A Constitutional View of the Late War between the States (1868--1870) Stephens maintained: "It was a strife between the principles of Federation, on the one side, and Centralism, or Consolidation, on the other" In The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881) Davis held that the Confederates had "fought for the maintenance of their State governments in all their reserved rights and powers."

State's rights, from Calhoun to Davis and Stephens were more about protecting the rights of the people from a government, namely, the norther states, ever overstepping constitutional bounds and encrouching on those rights, that about state power as it is today.

So it's just no quite so simple as the pat answer slavery suggests.

[Doublejack]

Those dudes also said this...



So it's just no quite so simple as the pat answer slavery suggests.

Yes, yes it is simple. Why try to make it not simple?

They wrote the shit down. They used states rights excuse to continue profiting from slavery.

[Chris]

Yes, yes it is simple. Why try to make it not simple?

They wrote the shit down. They used states rights excuse to continue profiting from slavery.


Because they said more than it was about slavery. That makes it complex much as you'd prefer to oversimplify it.


They used states rights excuse to continue profiting from slavery.

Try reading, what I posted was what they wrote after the war. "Afterward Davis agreed with Stephens about the basic issue of the war. In A Constitutional View of the Late War between the States (1868--1870) Stephens maintained: 'It was a strife between the principles of Federation, on the one side, and Centralism, or Consolidation, on the other' In The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881) Davis held that the Confederates had 'fought for the maintenance of their State governments in all their reserved rights and powers.'"

[del]

losers justifying their behavior

why wouldn't you believe them?

:rofl:

[Chris]

losers justifying their behavior

why wouldn't you believe them?

:rofl:

The losers, and, for that matter, the winners, are all dead, Del. As many as 700,000 died in the war so can it be said anyone won? Civil Rights, resisted by Democrats, had to wait another 100 years.

[Newpublius]

Was the civil war primarily over slavery?


Does it matter?

It is one part of the culture war actually. The 'moral crusade' theory bolsters the whole concept of the coastal elites being condescending of flyover country, and in this case the rural South of course. The unwarranted sense of superiority that this is part of is part of the very foundation of liberalism - a hubris that they know better......one nation, under good, INDIVISIBLE, something we bleat like sheep while we are in the public schools they won't let us out of.

Right now of course secession is illegal and its inextricably linked with slavery. Very fortunate for the liberals actually, secession is ultimately linked with a negative, right?

But start asking deeper questions.

If the case for the Union is self evident, why not make secession legal and have the confidence that the Union being self-evidently beneficially, no state will choose to secede. And the same could be said of Social Security. If its wonderful, let people opt-out, what are you scared of? And likewise the same with vouchers, public schools, which, while you are not compelled to attend, you are compelled to fund by way of property taxes.

[Doublejack]

Because they said more than it was about slavery. That makes it complex much as you'd prefer to oversimplify it.



Try reading, what I posted was what they wrote after the war. "Afterward Davis agreed with Stephens about the basic issue of the war. In A Constitutional View of the Late War between the States (1868--1870) Stephens maintained: 'It was a strife between the principles of Federation, on the one side, and Centralism, or Consolidation, on the other' In The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881) Davis held that the Confederates had 'fought for the maintenance of their State governments in all their reserved rights and powers.'"


Yea "after" doesn't quite have the same impact.

If we nuked the muzzies into glass I'm sure they would also say it wasnt really about killing all non-muslims but simply about preserving their own religion.

I could give two shits. Words have meaning and I believe what was said and written before they got their asses beat down like the small minded bitches they were.

[bdtex]

The economics of slavery for sure.

[Captdon]

The civil war was fought over slavery in the same way the Iraq war was fought over weapons of mass destruction.

There is the ostensible justification given to the public and then there is the real motive.

Afraid to read the Secession Resolution and Causes. You ancestors said it was slavery and only slavery.