Real reason

[RickD]

Does anyone still want to argue that the real reason the south seceeded from the union wasn't slavery?http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reason ... ississippi
If you want a real eye opener, read Mississippi.

[Seraph]

Yeeaah, Confederacy sympathizers...all that can be said is lol

[rockman0]

Slavery most definitely played a big part in it. Another part of the secession from the U.S. was disagreement over how the government should be. By then, America had adopted a strong central government, meaning that one government body would be the main branch that held responsibility over all of the states. Calhoun urged the people of the South that this was intolerant and would lead to the same tyranny that sparked the colonists to revolt against Britain. As a result, the Southern states revolted because they did not want to be ruled by a central government, but rather states' rights, meaning states made their own laws and were free from other states. Of course, one of the laws being passed was the abolishment of slavery, so slavery did have a part in the Civil War.

Fun Fact: If you go on John C. Calhoun's Wikipedia page, he looks kind of like Charlie Sheen. Coincidence? Maybe. We'll never know.

[RickD]

Texas:

In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.

.



Next time you see a confederate battle flag , and read "Heritage not Hate", you'll know it actually is a "Heritage OF Hate".

[The Protector]

Slavery most definitely played a big part in it. Another part of the secession from the U.S. was disagreement over how the government should be. By then, America had adopted a strong central government, meaning that one government body would be the main branch that held responsibility over all of the states. Calhoun urged the people of the South that this was intolerant and would lead to the same tyranny that sparked the colonists to revolt against Britain. As a result, the Southern states revolted because they did not want to be ruled by a central government, but rather states' rights, meaning states made their own laws and were free from other states. Of course, one of the laws being passed was the abolishment of slavery, so slavery did have a part in the Civil War.

Fun Fact: If you go on John C. Calhoun's Wikipedia page, he looks kind of like Charlie Sheen. Coincidence? Maybe. We'll never know.

Actually, throughout most of the antebellum history of the United States, it was the free states that continually made concessions to the slave states, and the slave states that maintained a disproportionately large amount of power in the federal government. The slave states used this power in the central government to violate the rights of the free states, not the other way around. The Free States had to endure the Fugitive Slave Act. The Free States were forced to accept Dred Scott, which essentially allowed slaveholders to take their slaves into free states and territories unhindered.

"The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France."

"It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion."

These two reasons (given in the Mississippi secession document) that the issue boiled down to in 1860. By and large, Northerners-- even most Republicans-- had little interest in abolishing slavery altogether; even most abolitionists who desired such a thing understood that it would have been unconstitutional to mandate at the federal level-- this was Lincoln's position and he made it very clear before and after states began seceding. That did not matter, though, because that was not the issue. The issue was that the slave states wanted to maintain power disproportionate to their population, and (more broadly) they considered their culture and way of life superior and would not abide by implications that there was something wrong with it. To put it succinctly, the southern states seceded not over slavery within their own borders, but over the expansion of slavery into new states.

Lincoln advocated disallowing slavery in the territories, which were under federal jurisdiction (but leaving slavery in slave states alone). When he was elected, slave states started seceeding. But you must go back to the Democratic convention to understand the political dynamics of the time. The Democrats were going to nominate Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, who was a moderate and advocated "popular sovereignty" in the territories-- that is, the population of a territory could vote to decide whether they would be free or slave. The "Fire-Eaters" from the south walked out of the convention because of this; they demanded the Democratic party adopt a plank into their platform advocating the federal government extend slavery into the territories, even those whose voters did not want slavery! Eventually these southern democrats broke away and selected their own nominee for president. The splitting of the ticket played a large role in getting Lincoln elected. Now, if southerners would not accept Stephen Douglas as their nominee, they certainly were not going to accept Lincoln as their President. Indeed, South Carolina seceeded shortly after Lincoln was elected, but well before he ever took office.

[Murray]

How about you read about southern poverty rates before the civil war, thats a real eye opener as well.

[kevdog19]

I thought the real reason for the Civil War was "The Treaty of Abominations. Where the North put a large tariff on imported European goods, forcing the South to buy from the industrial North. Atleast that arguement worked on my AP American History exam in High School.

[RickD]

I thought the real reason for the Civil War was "The Treaty of Abominations. Where the North put a large tariff on imported European goods, forcing the South to buy from the industrial North. Atleast that arguement worked on my AP American History exam in High School.

This certainly isn't an argument from me that the Union wasn't complicit in this. But, if we read the articles of secession that the confederate states wrote(like the one I linked in my op), we see by their own words, that slavery was the real reason.

[The Protector]

How about you read about southern poverty rates before the civil war, thats a real eye opener as well.

Sadly, this is another tragic, though less talked about consequence of slavery-- the wealthy landowners got wealthier on the backs of free slave labor, while poor whites were mired in the poverty of a stunted aggrarian economy.

I thought the real reason for the Civil War was "The Treaty of Abominations. Where the North put a large tariff on imported European goods, forcing the South to buy from the industrial North. Atleast that arguement worked on my AP American History exam in High School.

Landowners in aggrarian regions did hate the tariffs, and therefore they were the subject of frequent complaint by those in power in the south (where plantation owners dominated positions of power). However, the tariffs were protectionist measures that benefited ALL American industry, North and South alike, and Northern farmers were forced to pay them as well as southern ones. And remember that this was half a century before the federal income tax was even constitutional-- tariffs were basically how the government paid for itself. Besides that, though, immediately preceding secession the tariffs were at there lowest in several decades, and were actually among the lowest in the industrialized world. Also, the southern economy was actually quite good in 1860 (severely stratified, as mentioned above, but quite wealthy overall), while the northern economy (especially the northeast) was still recovering from the panic of 1858.

Unfortunately, a lot of revisionism took place in decades following the reconstruction. In order to heal the wounds of the war, the narrative went from a fight over holding men in bondage to a little tift between brothers wherein the gallantry of the men and leaders on both sides was celebrated-- and the generations of people treated like animals were swept under the rug.

[RickD]

I thought this cartoon was funny and to the point:

[Murray]

^