One of the first times we let them rewrite history.
After the war of 1812 the north pushed for tarriffs. They said it was to stop the south trading with our enemies, but the reality is they wanted to drive down the price of cotton and other goods farmed in the south for their factories.
The tariffs were HATED in SC they called the first one the tariff of abomination, and when jackson only slightly reduced them in 1832 they called a statewide convention and declared them null and void in SC. Congress passed a force bill that authorized Jackson to us the military against SC and war was saved by a compromise at the last second.
In the next 3 decades the government worked together on compromises. Till the north gained enough control to pump up their factories again. Nothing changed in SC. The second the pro tariff party won power the people of SC were like "fuck it, I'm out." The slave/free state expansion stuff only mattered because slave states would likely be agricultural and anti tariff and free states would likely be industrial and pro tariff.
It is an absolute hard fact that the south would have traded slavery for lower tarriffs.
The other hard truth is that the after the southern states left Congress a government made up of 100% northern states attempted to stave off war by passing a constitutional amendment permanently enshrining slavery, and lincoln sent letters agreeing to sign it.
If the south wanted to keep slavery they just needed to come back and ratify the amendment and if the north wanted to end it they just needed to trade for lower tsriffs.
The civil war was not about slavery, it was about money.
Taxes. It started because of fucking taxes. The slave bit was a gambit by the north to try and create an insurgency. Lincoln only "freed" the slaves in the States who seceded. Fact.
"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; If I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." - Abraham Lincoln
Pragmatic fellow, it does sound like slavery wasn't the top priority.
One interpretation is that he knew announcing emancipation, news of that would reach the slaves in the South and they would rise up against the Confederate soldiers' families back home. A pretty shrewd move, knowing that no soldier would remain in the field and leave his family defenseless.
You know I would hope all people enslaved would rise up against their enslavers.
If it was about slavery the war would of started with the emancipation proclamation it was passed after north was losing as an attempt to cause trouble for the south . It would of also freed all slaves not just those in the revolting states.
No, much like Biden, he was elected with the idea of "unity", even though he received not one electoral vote from the South. Now, I do think Lincoln was better than Biden, but there is a parallel. His entire agenda from day one was essentially bringing the union back together, damn any consequences from any actions. Slavery is dumb in an industrialized society, people simply do more work when they are motivated than when they are forced. Hence capitalism working and communism... not. Freeing slaves was the correct (morally) and pragmatic choice, imo, but I do not think Lincoln did it for any notion of equality or "racial justice". It was simply the best choice to win the civil war he was in.
He wanted tariff money for his crony projects and knew if allowed to succeed the south would become very powerful and successful with free trade. Lincoln could have compromised but he went full unconstitutional totalitarian tyrant
Even maintaining the union would have been a noble cause.
He didnt care about the union, just them revenues.
Sad but his view of ending slavery was a version of white supremacy - he thought it undermined white workers. That was a big part of the abolitionist movement. Along the northern Midwest and Pacific Northwest they even banned blacks from living so as not to compete for jobs.
Wasn't he a big "send them back" supporter?
Sounds like a politician to me.
100s of thousands of american lives snuffed out so that northern industrialist coult pay a few bucks less for cotton.
Every war is about money. Anyone that tells you otherwise is lying. There's always an economic incentive for taking over someone's land.
And power
If it was about slavery then why was the union the last one to free slaves in their states..meh. They still had slavery in the Union after the war.
It was economics. South was making mad cash and was refusing to play their game of middle man for cotton and goods.
There were also about 5000 slaves owned by black people. Black people never honor that yes, black people also owned slaves. Not only did they own slaves they were also ruthless slave owners. Worse than whites. This one issue pisses me off more than all the rest because they will not accept it. Call it circumstance but whites slave owners were also part of circumstance born into it so the argument is moot.
I will agree with this point. I don't think Lincoln was necessarily benevolent towards black people (hard to say that about anyone when you only know them through written words). It definitely was a two-birds one stone thing.
If lincoln wanted to free the slaves he could have done it easily by lowering the tariffs for any state that phased out slavery in 5 years.
He would have saved 100s of thousands of lives, and with out the animosity of the war a United America would have been a much more powerful force in the early 1900s when all the commies were murdering millions.
Instead he sent an unecessary force to restock a stocked fort because he knew it would start a war.
And the Union admitted West Virginia, which seceded from Virginia, as a slave state until 1900.
Imo, it was about slavery, in the case of elites owning slaves. It wasn't about the "right to own a slave", much like today, it was about the right of elites to maintain their control over the economy. At the time, slavery helped that cause, but it was picked up to maintain control, not for any idea of "rights" or a "just cause". The South had its own elites, and the North had its own, that's where the line was divided. Before the Civil war, the South had more power generally (at least for a while after the Revolutionary war with more population and the like), but the war imo, was fundamentally about Northern elites fighting Southern elites. Nobody gave a fuck who was enslaved or who had their rights violated fundamentally, it was about control, much like any war. The South was not fighting for some "just right" given by god, and neither was the North fighting for "rights" (Lincoln trampled the Constitution).
I am a Division Adjutant and Treasurer in the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and related to Robert E. Lee (and many other Confederate soldiers and Generals). It makes me VERY proud to see people speak the truth about the Civil War and the Confederacy. Thank you for making this post!
Those were causes for sure. But Alexander Stephens in his Cornerstone speech goes against this.
Full text.
Now I don't think it was only about slavery. But attributing secession to a single cause, is hard to do. Since the mechanisms that led to secession are complex and varied.
Every southern Governor wrote a letter stating that the main cause was slavery. Sure, other stuff contributed, but slavery was the issue they all started was the main cause. The letters are known as the declarations of causes. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states
I think it can be argued that the common rebel soldier didn't care about slavery. But the leadership certainly did. I
That's an accurate analysis. Now, you could make the argument of whether or not the federal government had the right to outright abolish slavery, which I don't believe it did. I think that should have been left to the states to decide. Especially given the dependency of the South on slave labor. I think rushing that transition probably did more harm than good in the short term. But if you look at economic success today, it's mostly about where the Federal government has/continues to allocate its money. And not so much the economics of the state in 1861. California benefitted greatly during and after WWII from Federal investment for example. While pockets like Huntsville, Alabama in the South did as well. But California benefitted state wide.
And that's the primary reason why I don't care about people with the Confederate battle flag. (Not that I really give a shit about anyone with any flag).
I pretty much agree with you. I think a solution like Britain's government had would've been better for the country in the long term honestly (they basically bought every slave and freed them). In terms of avoiding civil war. But slavery is both morally wrong, and in an industrialized society is completely inefficient. Capitalism works better because voluntary labor in most cases is much better than forced labor like communism. Also, yeah, the rank and file in both the union and the confederacy did not care about slavery. The union had draft riots because people didn't want to fight the war, and most people in the South did not own slaves outside of the elites.
I dunno about that last. If they're flying the flag of Communism, like our AntiFa buddies?
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But for Lincoln it wasn’t about slavery it was about the tariff money. Lincoln was going to make a constitutional amendment that blocked the federal government from interfering with southern slavery. Lincoln actually thought blacks were inferior and wanted them to leave the US
Yes I completely agree. It was about elites in the South upset that their influence was waning to elites in the North. Nobody truly cared about the morality of slavery or "equality". The elites in the South made their money and influence off of slavery, so they supported it. The elites in the North did not, so they (at least outwardly despite some actions) opposed it. People in the North did not care about slavery (draft riots in NY and more), and the people in the South as a whole did not own slaves outside of mostly elites who owned many. Both sides were influenced to fight a war that essentially did not need to happen imo. Also, slavery is simply less efficient in an industrialized society, and will always be phased out at some point in capitalism. Communists believe that forced labor is more efficient than voluntary labor.
Relatively few southerners owned slaves. Just like the average northerner was not wealthy. This was about elites fighting elites thru proxy armies.
If the war was about slavery, the second the north passed the amendment That permanently enshrined slavery in the constitution the southern states would have rejoined and the war would have never started.
But the US never passed an amendment that permanently enshrined slavery in the Constitution.
It was already protected by the Constitution according to Lincoln and the North did propose a further amendment (Corwin Amendment) and Lincoln supported it. A few Yankee states had already ratified.
Well it kinda is... technically you can be enslaved if convicted of a crime, good old 13th amendment...
Right cause if they did it would totally prove my point.
They did, it was called the corwin amendment. And had the south rejoined the union and ratified the amendment lincoln promised to sign it and slavery would have been enshrined in the constitution forever, well for a few more years. Sharecropoing was far more profitable and slavery had a shelf life anyway.
“ The reason for the amendment’s failure can be attributed to the simple fact that the South did not trust the North.
Lacking the constitutional power to abolish enslavement in the South, northern politicians opposed to enslavement had for years employed other means to weaken enslavement, including banning the practice in the Western territories, refusing to admit new pro-slavery states to the Union, banning enslavement in Washington, D.C., and, similarly to today’s sanctuary city laws, protecting freedom seekers from extradition back to the South.”
https://www.thoughtco.com/corwin-amendment-slavery-and-lincoln-4160928
You > "so that thing you knew about and I didn't know about , I've done 26 seconds of Internet Research And now I know that you're wrong"
So you knew something that I did not know and therefore everything you think you knew about that subject must be accurate.
There is probably a name for that logical fallacy. I just don’t know what it is.
The interesting thing about it is Lincoln was offering to strengthen slavery even more under the Corwin Amendment which a few Yankee states even approved. “Slavery” seems to have been politically along the lines of “no taxation without representation” - even if the British had offered representation, we weren’t taking it according to Ben Franklin. An emotional issue to upset people. Slavery wasn’t under threat. Lincoln’s first inaugural speech is a great original source.
Why did the truck blow up?
The truck had a full gas tank, multiple boxes of matches, a propane tank, and a bomb.
If you take the matches, propane tank, gas tank out the truck still blows up, but if you take the bomb out it doesn't.
The bomb caused the truck to blow up, the tariffs caused the civili war.
Neither side cared enough about slavery to go to war for it and both sides would have traded it for money. In the truck scenario slavery is a box of matches that gets blamed, because you have to justify 600k dead, and we did it for money doesnt sound heroic enough.
Stephens does mention taxes, but in the context of feeling as though Southern states were taxed without representation in government, due to the Federal government attempting to outlaw slavery. Like I said before, I think it's hard to boil secession down to one particular cause. It was an amalgamation of causes. But Stephens himself declares the Confederacy is founded on the "great truth" that black people are not equal to white people.
Again all they had to do was rejoin the union and ratify the amendment and slavery would have been enshrined forever.
This is not hard, SC almost seceded after the first round of tarriffs in 1932, jackson got permission to use military force and a last second compromise stopped war 30 years before this. No one was preaching about slavery then, only about money.
I dont blame anyone who believes the civil war was about slavery, its what you have been told your whole life.
The Union had something like 40% tariffs and the new Southern government had 10%. Charleston would’ve become the new New York and wreck the Yankee economy. Lincoln felt he had no choice.
Northern Democrats supported slavery even after the civil war. Slavery was never about North vs. South but Republicans vs. Democrats.
It’s crazy how everything you’ve been taught about Lincoln was a lie. Lincoln was a money, power hungry big government tyrant. He was elected to promote a white west, promote corporate welfare, enact huge tariffs( to acquire fed money and reward his crony handlers) and bribe voters with free land. There are multiple sources that confirm this just look for them
He was not a hero.
Want to find out why the south went to war? Read the books by Jefferson Davis. Understand, he thought the US broke its word by trying to repeal slavery. For this, he left the union.
Trivia: every southerner took the loyalty oath to become a citizen again. Davis didn’t. The US arrested him, held him in prison, but never brought him to trial because they thought they would lose. He was released after making bail.
He died never taking the oath to become a citizen.
When did they try to repeal slavery?
The abolitionists were in force from the 1830’s forward.
Your post implies that the us "broke its word" when it tried to repeal slavery.
When did that happen?
When Lincoln was elected, the repeal of slavery was inevitable. Davis saw it.
So when a politician tells you That he's leaving the Union Because of slavery you believe him, But when a politician runs repeatedly saying he's not going to end slavery, He's the one you don't believe.
Read Davis’s books. He explains it perfectly. Argue with him.
Because Lincoln ended slavery after saying he wouldn’t,
Kinda like how dementia said he wasn’t going to ban fracking....
Reading Davis's book To understand The causes of the Civil War , is like Reading Saddam Hussein book Can find out what caused Shock and awe
That is so not accurate. Read Lincoln’s own inaugural address. It required a constitutional amendment that would never pass with the South in the union and the proposals from Lincoln were to actually strengthen the constitutional protections. New states were allowed to vote on whether they wanted it.
The North did not try to repeal slavery before the war. It would take a constitutional amendment which would’ve never passed. Eventually it went through after the war. The emancipation proclamation did not free any slaves as it applied only to those states territory under confederate control, union states and held territory were exempt.
It’s a fascinating study, especially if you go to original sources. You need to take in context. These guys’ grandfathers started their own country so it wasn’t a stretch that the 1860’s South would want to do so. The regular guys came to the view that the Union was more of a drag on them economically than a benefit - taxes, centralized government in Yankee control. Big upside if on their own. Lincoln was inclined to let it go if you read his first inaugural (an eye opening read) but later concluded that it would decimate the Yankee economy revenue which needed the South in the supply chain. Even had a quote along the lines of “sure, leave them go but then where’s the revenue”. The Constitution strongly protected slavery so it was t going anywhere if the South stayed out.
I definitely agree that the war was about tariffs.
But if the war was not also about slavery then how could a Constitutional amendment enshrining slavery stave off war?
It didnt, that's my point.
Yes, that’s why it didn’t.
Just prior to the Civil War the US government passed an Amendment to the Constitution enshrining slavery.
Which Amendment was this?
The corwin amendment
Remember when this was passed the south had already bounced.
These are your noble heros the north passing it and honest abe ready to sign it.
If it were then slavery wouldn’t have remained legal in the Northern slave holding states.
Nothing you said was untrue, however, the final nail in the coffin was 1) electing FDR and 2) the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Number two was probably a direct result of the things you stated above.
The civil rights act was inevitable, and would have come sooner with out the war/reconstruction.
Any good books on this? forgot much of this from when they actually taught history.
Facts the Historians Leave out - a confederate primer - John S. Tilley
Slavery was not the cause of the civil war - Gene Kizer
The southern constitution - actually has a ban on what we would term big business crony capitalism and allowing non slave states
The south was right is ok, not perfect.
Lincoln unmasked-
Jefferson Davis’s memoirs, ‘ The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government’ and ‘A Short History of the Confederate States of America’.
You soon conclude Davis was the first Libertarian.
It is a great historical read - broader than just the civil war.
Like most major events in our history. Of course, you need useful id...ealists to rally the common man.