What You Don't Know

What You Don’t Know…

        Sometimes the history teacher in me cringes when I see an ignorant person “schooling” another who may or may not be as ignorant as they are. This was a biting retort to a somewhat equally ignorant Facebooker. I started to explain the reality, or at least my take on it, then realized it was going to “run long” so I blogged it instead. It is a bit long, (remember, the war ran 4 years plus) Proceed at your own risk, but I like it.

 “The confederates were NOT about slavery... I really wish people knew this shit... Just like Abraham Lincoln did NOT free the slaves... He made them fight and told them if they won, he would grant them freedom...”
 

        The above paragraph is one such example. The issue of slavery as a “reason” for the Civil war was irrevocably entangled with the issue of states’ rights. Then, as now, people with money and property (many of whom, in the ante-bellum South, made that money in plantation agriculture) also made up sizeable majorities in most Southern State legislatures. There were certainly other issues which affected many more Southerners. Chief among them were tariffs on imported products which aimed to ensure Northern state’s manufacturers profitability, and their (the South’s) status as importing consumers of finished goods while being generally only exporters of raw materials.

        As it happened, the tariff issue which offended the rank and file consumer, had already led in 1828 to a South Carolina crisis which abated only when Andrew Jackson threatened to end it with federal troops (publicly) while also, but with much less public hoo-hah, requesting and getting a new tariff bill which lowered most of the offending tariffs, thus blunting (for the moment) South Carolina’s intent to nullify the tariff and, if necessary, secede from the Union. Jackson’s real concern had been that South Carolina had attempted to assert what some (they) viewed as the state’s “right” to nullify a federal law and make it void within the state. This was arguably, for the less moneyed in the South, a significant issue later, in early 1861, when South Carolina followed through with the earlier threat of succession.

       However, there are two essential truths related to the election of 1860: The first was that the Republican candidate. Lincoln, throughout the campaign (which was reported only in print, obviously), was on the record as generally opposing slavery, but having made no threat to attempt to eradicate it in the South,  but to disallow it to spread to any new state.

         By that time, there had already been one war fought by Americans specifically because of slavery. In 1835, after years of Texicans continuing to flout Mexican law forbidding slavery (I mean, heck, Texas was (is) prime “cotton country,” and how did we farm cotton?) Mexico decided to enforce the law, and, after negotiations failed attempted enforcement by military action. We know the rest of the story, and, like the current statues to Confederates, further east, Texans still venerate the slave owners and mercenaries who defended the Alamo, the real reason lost in the convenient fog of time.  

       But back to 1861. As mentioned, Lincoln had not ever called for the abolition of slavery in states where is existed, however his election, and the four way race which led to it, were further indices to the South that things were going downhill fast. It wasn’t the “cause” for the South, rather, the last straw.

       Southern spirits regarding the continued spread of slavery had been buoyed and dashed several times earlier. At the time of its passing , the Missouri Compromise (1820) had  been the first of what would be continuing efforts to blunt the fact that Northern States and Southern states, in addition to differing on slavery also tended to vote as a bloc, especially in the Senate. Northerners referred to the South as “the Slave Power,” Southerners were well aware that, as early as the first Congress, Pennsylvania Quakers had offered a bill in the US House to abolish slavery. Hence events that ensue were hardly “new.”

       The Kraken arose again in 1820, when both Maine and Missouri petitioned to enter the Union. There were 11 “slave” and 11 “free” states in the US and both sides, but more so the South,were concerned regarding the new states and the balancing of the Senate. After much debate, the “final
 solution” was to admit Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, thus adding 2 new Senators from both North and South. All settled, right? Not so fast.  Furthermore, with the exception of Missouri, this law prohibited slavery in the Louisiana Territory north of the 36° 30´ latitude line. This in essence muddied the waters, as no one really knew what states in what shapes and boundaries would emerge as the nation expanded as everyone thought it probably would.

          Thirty-four years later another much more divisive issue arose. Illinois Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas had interested investors who wanted to build a railroad west of the Mississippi. Before doing so, the territory had to be designated  and geographically defined and that brought the slave or free issue to the fore again.

       The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was a huge catalyst in sending the nation to the Civil War. This act was strenuously pushed by Douglas, a nominally Northern State Senator, but not an abolitionist by any means, especially if money was involved. It (Kansas-Nebraska Act) reversed the Missouri Compromise (erased the 36-degree 30-minute line) and allowed slavery in the remainder of the original areas of the Louisiana Purchase. There was now the potential for a “balance of power” shift in the government and across the land. It also delineated the concept of “popular sovereignty” which would allow voters in the territories, when they later applied for statehood, to decide for themselves the status of slaves in the territory applying for statehood. This one act triggered a political panic attack, as many opposing it did so because felt that it would “allow slaveholders to dominate the new states of the West” opening the way for the Southern states to dominate the governing of the nation and to make the North a permanent minority. Bear in mind that these were two different cultures living as one country. Neither one wanted the other to have control over their people.

        Furthermore. a South with a Congressional majority could lower high tariffs on European goods, which they hated (the tariffs, that is. They loved the imported goods. Many of the wealthiest planters owed London furniture makers on an almost constant basis) with no effect on their own exports of cotton, rice, indigo and tobacco. On the other hand, Tariffs were the sole source of government revenue at the time and protected Northern industries who, in some cases took the South’s raw materials (cotton) shipped it north, spun it, wove it into cloth, and shipped it back at a much higher price.

        Making matter even worse, three years later (1857) and much to the outrage of the growing number of radical northern abolitionists, was the Dred Scott decision. In theory it was even more dire for the North, since the ruling in three parts by the USSC and with the opinion written by Chief Justice Roger Taney decreed: That all people of African descent, free or slave, were not United States citizens and therefore had no right to sue in federal court. In addition, he wrote that the Fifth Amendment protected slave owner rights because slaves were their legal property. Finally, he added as an unsolicited (and irrelevant to the  case) afterthought, his opinion that the 1820 Missouri Compromise legislation — passed to balance the power between slave and non-slave states — was unconstitutional. In effect, this meant that Congress had no power to prevent the spread of slavery.  Northern radical abolitionists were infuriated.  

       The Dred Scott Decision outraged abolitionists, who saw the Supreme Court’s ruling as a way to stop debate about slavery in the territories. The divide between North and South over slavery grew and culminated in the subsequent secession of the southern states. In the November 1860 election, Lincoln faced Douglas, a Democrat who, as stated earlier, favored popular sovereignty and who represented the Northern faction of a heavily divided Democratic Party, as well as two additional candidates, Breckinridge and Bell. The announcement of Lincoln’s victory signaled the secession of the Southern states, which since the beginning of the year had been publicly threatening secession if the Republicans gained the White House. By the time of Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861, seven states had seceded, and the Confederate States of America had been formally established, with Jefferson Davis elected its President.

        As for the statement that the Civil War wasn’t “about slavery”: in terms of specifics, the preservation of the Union was seen by Lincoln as paramount, however, the underlying motif of every major political conflict, including Texas in the years 1820 to 1860 was precisely focused in some way on the continuance or abolition of slavery, with the nuance that the bulk of wealth, ergo the political power, of the South was based on growing, handling selling or transporting export crops farmed almost exclusively with Slave labor. Whatever other regional differences existed, slavery was the defining one, and its continued existence was vital to the Southern economy. Period.

       As for the other claim, that “Abraham Lincoln did NOT free the slaves... He made them fight and told them if they won, he would grant them freedom...” that is purely bullshit.

        Lincoln, by executive order, freed all slaves “in those states still in rebellion” effective January 1863. The proclamation, however, was issued September 22, 1862. Why wait over 3 months for it to take effect?  Simple, Jethro, because Lincoln hoped that those border states of the Confederacy, such as Tennessee, fearing the loss of their “property” (slaves) and not really primarily plantation agriculture states, might think better of secession and rejoin the Union. To Lincoln’s expressed disappointment none did. A secondary objective (hope, really)  was that freed slaves would cease to be a workforce for the South, which only happened to any degree after Union troops “liberated” the region This created a weird situation in Maryland and Delaware, both slave states but both still in the union, where slaves remained enslaved, while slaves in the Confederacy were “free.” Lincoln at no time and in no fashion “made them (slaves) fight” nor did he even have to “promise them freedom” since he’d done that in 1863. In fact (remember facts?) 79,000 Black troops (free persons of color) enlisted from free states after Lincoln, who had initially actually opposed using black troops was convinced by the Army to allow using and enlisting freedmen. There was never a “fight and get freed” offer. Ever.

        Ok, I’m better now. I hate it when persons who don’t even know what they don’t know chastise those who do.