The Civil War in America absolutely dominated the British national conversation, especially in the early years of the war. Politicians followed the conflict closely, and there were even several debates in Parliament over British policy toward the conflict.
Frequently discussed was a line that a lot of Americans would recognize today, of "when should Britain get involved??" because of the destructiveness of the conflict. Prime Minister Palmerston & Foreign Secretary Russell spent a lot of time maneuvering and deflecting calls for Britain to get involved or pick a side.
A few other bits I found surprising when studying this topic—
1. Some British MPs were very pro-Confederate, and pushed for recognition of the Confederacy as a real country in Parliament.
2. British war correspondents were on the ground with both Union and Confederate armies, and sent regular dispatches to British newspapers.
3. British (and other European) officers regularly volunteered on *both* sides.
4. It was fashionable for a time in Britain to be pro-Confederate. Confederate propagandist networks *in* Britain brilliantly played down slavery and played up "self-determination".
5. Britain nearly declared war on the Union (Trent affair), to the point that Royal Navy was just waiting for the go-signal to commence hostilities & Britain sent thousands of additional troops to Canada.
6. There were *tons* of ironclads already in European fleets, there had just never been a fight between ironclads! Europeans watched the Monitor v. Merrimack battle & adapted their fleets & battle doctrines accordingly.
7. The British cabinet had a very serious, "can we even win a war against the U.S. anymore?" conversation at the end of the conflict, after witnessing the million-man army of the Union, the Richmond campaign, and growing effectiveness of the U.S. Navy.
8. Americans credit Seward as a brilliant Secretary of State during the conflict, but in Britain and France he was considered foolish, dangerous, and unpredictable—a lot of the tension between the Union and Europe can be laid at his feet.
9. Prussian military observers watched how the Union used railroads to move massive numbers of troops & supplies around, and adopted a lot of the Union tactics to absolutely crush the French just a few years later. (Franco-Prussian war of 1870.) Seriously - there were European observers *all over the place*.
Strongly recommend A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War by Amanda Foreman. Brilliant book, and a page-turner.
It should be understood that the british empire was at the peak of economic dependence on the raw material coming from the "new world" at the onset of the civil war; in particular, cotton exports for consumption by british textile mills [1].
> By the late 1850s, cotton grown in the United States accounted for 77 percent of the 800 million pounds of cotton consumed in Britain. It also accounted for 90 percent of the 192 million pounds used in France, 60 percent of the 115 million pounds spun in the Zollverein, and 92 percent of the 102 million pounds manufactured in Russia.
One reason that there was support for the confederacy was the fear that the outcome of the war would lead to the end of access to abundant and cheap cotton (due to export duties, end of slavery, etc.).
One of the outcomes of the US Civil War was that the British Empire realized a need to "diversify" their sources, resulting in increasingly imperialistic behavior in India and Egypt, among others.
And the reason why Britain wanted those raw resources was because it was the epicenter of the industrial revolution. Manchester was nicknamed "Cottonopolis"... full of cotton mills driven by water and then steam, and connected by the first inter-city railway. Cotton picked by slaves in the U.S. south was the main source of raw materials for these factories.
I’m sorry but this is profoundly and aggressively incorrect. The civil war was not reframed after the fact to be about slavery, quite the opposite in fact. The ‘reframing’ is in fact what you’ve tried to assert, in that it was supposedly a matter of economics rather than slavery (though of course other factors were certainly at play). It’s part of the ‘lost cause’ narrative furthered by the southern states after the civil war.
If the civil war was about freeing slaves, why did lincoln wait so long to end slavery? Why didn't he do it immediately?
> It’s part of the ‘lost cause’ narrative furthered by the southern states after the civil war.
Who cares as long as it is true? I'm not a southerner. Not a fan of the confederacy.
Is your assertion that racist white northerners fought a war against racist white southerners to free black people? Does that make any sense to you? Have you looked into lincoln's opinions of black people?
"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races [applause]—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality..."
This document was simultaneously published by the very committee that issued the initial ordinance of secession in South Carolina, and it explains the decision to secede at great length. It is all about slavery:
Additionally, articles of secession from other states also explicitly mention slavery in the actual text of the law, including Alabama's ordinance that proposed the Montgomery Convention at which the Confederacy was founded. Even more states explain it in similar justifying documents.
Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, is on record before the war explaining slavery as cause, and after the war claiming it was about states' rights (to practice slavery).
This whole debate is semantics and pedantics about the word cause. The reality is that it doesn't make sense to reduce history to a single factor.
The south wanted to secede because the union was threatening their economic interests which relied on slavery. The union did not want the south to secede for their own reasons, of which slavery was not the foremost.
You can not remove any part of that explanation and still describe the "cause" of the war.
The war would not have happened if slaves didn't have economic value. The war would not have happened if the north was indifferent to the south leaving.
Trying to reduce things further than this is a fools errand.
Your linked document is a great example of this. It discusses a great many things. The first half is a history of grievances about states rights and failures of the union to uphold the constitution.
It starts to talk about slavery about half way through if you ctrl-f.
Anyone arguing for their singular preferred cause can find supporting evidence in it because the "cause" of the war was the interaction of multiple factors, so evidence exists for all of them.
The problem is that showing evidence that one factor was critical to the start of the war does not prove that other critical factors do not exist.
You’re missing the point. It’s one and the same. Slaves were valuable economic assets whose value was diminishing as industrialization intensified.
The slavers wanted to conquer the west with slaves to stay relevant. Slavery was about wealth and control, in losing control of poor white people. The northern industrialists wanted cotton. Abolitionists saw the moral disgrace of slavery as an evil. Lincoln was more moderate and prioritized the nation.
The “states rights” bullshit was always bullshit. But then “get shot to keep rich aristocrats rich” isn’t a compelling battle cry. Conversely, the poor Irish and others participating in draft riots saw abolition as competition from the one strata of society lower then them.
Hence, the noble abstract goals of “preserving the union” and “protection our sacred rights” are front and center.
> The slavers wanted to conquer the west with slaves to stay relevant.
Yes, I believe that's why they rejected the Corwin Amendment compromise, which would have allowed them to keep slavery in states that already had it. That deal didn't allow them to use slaves in the west, so they didn't like it.
This is another thing Lincoln said: "One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves not distributed generally over the union but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen perpetuate and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. [...] Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~ that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" (https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/lincoln-second...)
But hey, the Union wasn't the party who forced the conflict. Let's hear from Alexander Stephens, VP of the CSA, instead:
> Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone 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 normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
You may be shocked to hear this, but Lincoln was a politician and was occasionally slightly disingenuous in order to achieve his political agenda. There wasn't public support for a war to end slavery. There was public support for a war to preserve the union.
Here's another quote from Lincoln:
"'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other."
He could claim as much as he wanted, once the war started, that his goal was to restore the Union even at the expense of continuing to tolerate slavery, but there was no way the Confederates could possibly take him at his word when he said so.
"aggressive racism wasn't really seen in the south before the Civil War" is absurd and only supportable if you don't consider the treatment of the slaves. There was a ton of brutality, and you're sitting here saying there wasn't any aggression.
It's not dissimilar to the US wars in the middle east: The North toppled an evil government, freed some people, but didn't finish the job. So assholes ended back up in charge. They couldn't go quite as far, or quite go all ISIS, they had to settle for just the KKK, because it was all one country again, but somehow the losers didn't lose all that much in the long run.
The 1800s were brutal everywhere, but slavery is an inherently corrupt system. I can certainly imagine merciful white masters who genuinely cared for their slaves, but slavery is such a cut and dry obvious violation of human rights that it's not worth considering. A single person being considered, even in the most benign technical sense, property is an atrocity. We can and perhaps should commemorate those who worked very hard to salvage justice in an inherently just system, but we're still trying to wash the stains of racial injustice within our society today. Any time spent uplifting these persons must unfortunately be set aside to provide equity to those long ignored.
All of that being said, I can't say for certain that you're being intellectually honest, you're conflating quite a few things with crucial nuance. As an example, you claim black slave families were closer and more stable, because they were penned in and forced to breed together to provide additional laborers who would replace them. Have you ever considered that divorced families are better off than unhappy marriages? Have you considered that perhaps marriages aren't entirely necessary, and modern black culture isn't well suited to traditional marriage norms codified by white JudeoChristian people? If you're heart is in the right place, I'd imagine you could tell us a story of a true ally to black slaves in the south. One whom was raised in a toxic racist environment, but learned to work within a inherently broken system to provide some sense of equity.
I agree largely with your first paragraph! The world is a better place if people don't have total coercive power over others, self determination all the way!(obviously that statement lends to the subject and the great irony of the south). Long ignored.. the last 155 years is injustice made my the winners! Jim Crow laws were invented and wide spread in the north(1938 massachussets) before they went south.
Oif you know anything about the old south, white families penned themselves to the land they were on and married those in litteral proximities. Your son was going to marry the neighbors daughter. Thats why they were so defensive of thier land. It had been held closely for generations. Your using modern stanards of moving around constatly and marrying based on 60's free love standards. This was also not too uncommon of a stance made by west africans in their bative lands. Thats why africa is dense of language families, territorial familial rule. The anglo/Irish(ulster etc..)were very similiar in that regard. A story? Lincoln married a prominent kentucky slave holding white woman and sold her slaves for profit. Robert E lee was the executor of his wifes estate, and followed her fathers bequeathing of his slaves freedoms.
"Seriously", "you're citing a 19th century weirdo against over a century of historical research on the treatment of slaves, virtually all of which repudiates that weirdo", comma, "gross".
Further, "I'm not a proponent of slavery" is a sequence of words that loses a lot of its power when it follows a direct assertion that people may have been better off under slavery, as not only Nehemiah Adams believed, but you, from your own comment, also seem to as well?
"Black slave families were closer and more stable(parental seperation rates) than they are now". Gross! The principle of charity is a thing, but there are limits to charity.
No, I think my criticism has more to do with the fact that Adams felt like the antebellum south was much to be admired for keeping its negroes off the street at night, much as advocates for the south apparently (here's those pesky historians again) were happy to point out the low rates of rape and sexual assault against white women in the south --- who, after all, would risk imprisonment assaulting a white woman, when there were so many Black slaves that could be raped without consequence. Family stability. Alabama forbade the sale of enslaved children without their mother --- until they reached 5 years of age.
Give me a literal number. It's a Class B misdemeanor to sell, barter, or offer the fur of a domestic dog or cat. Does that happen regularly? Your conflating that it happened. A law was put in the books. And so it must happen every day? Or maybe it happens enough to make you ucomfortable? I agreed that it happened. I nnever said that its not possible it happened multiple times. Your implicitly suggesting that this was a regular and normal occurance. Show me litteral numbers
Unfortunately, hard numbers are impossible to quantify, although rough estimates can be made based on what records do exist, as well as memoirs, diaries, and other such sources. Much of the most compelling evidence comes from recollections offered after slavery, when the formerly enslaved were able to give some voice. In Mississippi, for example, former enslaved persons registering marriages with the Union authorities in 1864-65 provides information to the clergy about their previous marital status. Over 8,000 black persons registered marriages in the period, and 17.4 percent of them included that they had been married before, and had it broken up by sale. Specifically of those who had been previously married, 40.8 percent stated that force has been the reason for its end. Other similar records bear out similar numbers, reflecting roughly ⅓ of enslaved marriages ended forcibly by white owners breaking apart the couple.
An interesting point that makes me stpo and think for a moment However, are you saying all single parents choose to be single parents? Do you speak for all single parents? My mother left my father to handle myself and siblings. I can tell you he didnt choose to be left behind.
> How do you explain the South's century of aggressive open racism after the civil war in your "it was just economic" theory?
"Is your assertion that racist white northerners fought a war against racist white southerners to free black people?". What about racist white northerners and racist white southerners confused you?
> You don't need to try to save their reputations. Let them be remembered as the assholes they were.
Saving their reputation by calling them racist white southerners?
You do realize that some northern states had slaves too during the civil war. And the emancipation proclamation only freed the slaves in the south.
If you want to learn what the civil war was really about go look into why west virginia seceded from virgina. Do you think west virginians were less racist than the rest of virginians? Or do you think it was economic?
History makes it pretty clear that southerners were, on the whole, much more openly and institutionally racist than northerners both before and after the Civil War.
The ones that seceded said it was about slavery. Many times. You don't believe them. Why? Why do you care enough to claim that you know their motives better than everyone else?
West Virginia split because they didn't want to go along with Virginia's secession. That's something that happened after the cause, not something that can tell you the cause, though! Maryland and Delaware were less dominated by the slave-holding interests. Its not that interesting.
> Do you think west virginians were less racist than the rest of virginians? Or do you think it was economic?
It was economic in the sense that slavery was not central to West Virginia's economy, but was central to not-West Virginia's economy. A map makes this pretty apparent[0]. The argument isn't that the was was about racism, but about slavery. Those are often related, but aren't precisely the same.
It took me about five minutes to find South Carolina's declaration of secession. And the first thing that document mentions is slavery:
"In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”"
South Carolina didn't secede because the North wanted to abolish slavery. They seceded because the North refused to return slaves to the South.
Many Northerners took a long time to follow this truth to its logical conclusion: either the North would have to accede to Southern demands and honor their claims to other human beings as property, or they would have to abolish slavery entirely.
While it discusses slavery, the first thing mentioned is constitutional obligations.
The reality, is the south didn’t feel it was being represented. It felt it would be better on its own (regardless of the slave issue, there’s a whole mess there).
The north, decided it wasn’t going to let the south go its own way. That’s why the south calls it “the war of northern aggression”. (I say this from their perspective) First the north didn’t respect property rights, then it actively attempted to destroy the south’s economy (through tariffs, etc), then it invaded, murdered and seized its wealth and land.
Consider instead, then, Mississippi. Here is the second paragraph of their declaration of secession:
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin."
In other words: they hold that slavery is the foundation of their economy and commerce; that black slaves in particular are the best suited for labor, by virtue of some racist justifications; and that the institution of slavery is under imminent threat of abolition and therefore they need to secede in order to maintain the slavery status quo.
“The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact.
Lettergram, the "constitutional obligations" the first paragraph takes issue with are stipulated in the second paragraph: The obligation to return escaped slaves to their owners.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself for your conduct in this discussion. And god help you if you walk away from here making the same claims as you have in this thread: they will lead you down into the dark.
Lmao what? How many books have you read on this subject? How many lectures attended? Im not making a moral, emotional, spiritual, statement, I’m making a factual one. To be clear, I support maximum liberty, I’m personally a libertarian. But that doesn’t mean I can’t assess a situation.
The south had decades of arguing the north was attempting to suppress them. The slavery issue was one of many related issues. This really started installing the constitution and usurping the articles of confederation; without appropriate approvals.
It’s like today in the United States, most of the middle (red) states believe life begins at conception. The states on the coasts, plus IL and CO (blue) states have laws implying they won’t protect life until after it leaves the womb. Morally, this triggers the states in the center of the country. The states on the coast argue it’s the “mother’s right to stop the birth”.
I’m not making a moral argument, but describing a fact.
Now, one could argue states rights are the real issue here. Because all the latest political craziness around this topic is simply reverting the idea states set the rights. Each state can run itself how it sees fit. The blue states want to impose their will on the red states (making abortion legal nation wide). I’m sure the opposite would be true if the red states and overwhelming control.
But there’s a ton more the red and blue states are arguing over, this is just one issue. Arguably, it’s the same discussion as slavery - who is a person and when.
The conflict that is continuing to escalate in the U.S. is about so much more. But I think in the end may come down to issues like “states rights”. In reality, the conflict is mostly an urban-rural divide that has gone back to the countries founding.
Look, all I can speak to is the quality of your engagement with me here. You misread a primary source which plainly states that slave labor was the precipitating issue in the conflict over state's rights which blossomed into open rebellion and bloody war. That doesn't reflect well or poorly on your reading or understanding, but it does reflect poorly on the quality of your intellectual engagement with me.
I agree that we are seeing the same issues play out with abortion, with some states seeking to pass statutes similar to the Fugitive Slave Act to prevent their citizens from obtaining abortion services in neighboring states. If they hold firmly to that perspective, then we may come to an ill end again.
But to hold the opinion that we could avoid a second Civil War by simply honoring states' rights is to willfully ignore history: the political leaders of North and South tested the states' rights framework on the problem of slavery, and it failed.
I quote another primary source, Ulysses S. Grant, who makes this case far more clearly than I can:
For some years before the war began it was a trite saying among some politicians that "A state half slave and half free cannot exist." All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down. I took no part myself in any such view of the case at the time, but since the war is over, reviewing the whole question, I have come to the conclusion that the saying is quite true.
Slavery was an institution that required unusual guarantees for its security wherever it existed; and in a country like ours where the larger portion of it was free territory inhabited by an intelligent and well-to-do population, the people would naturally have but little sympathy with demands upon them for its protection. Hence the people of the South were dependent upon keeping control of the general government to secure the perpetuation of their favorite institution. They were enabled to maintain this control long after the States where slavery existed had ceased to have the controlling power, through the assistance they received from odd men here and there throughout the Northern States. They saw their power waning, and this led them to encroach upon the prerogatives and independence of the Northern States by enacting such laws as the Fugitive Slave Law. By this law every Northern man was obliged, when properly summoned, to turn out and help apprehend the runaway slave of a Southern man. Northern marshals became slave-catchers, and Northern courts had to contribute to the support and protection of the institution.
This was a degradation which the North would not permit any longer than until they could get the power to expunge such laws from the statute books. Prior to the time of these encroachments the great majority of the people of the North had no particular quarrel with slavery, so long as they were not forced to have it themselves. But they were not willing to play the role of police for the South in the protection of this particular institution.
In the early days of the country, before we had railroads, telegraphs and steamboats—in a word, rapid transit of any sort—the States were each almost a separate nationality. At that time the subject of slavery caused but little or no disturbance to the public mind. But the country grew, rapid transit was established, and trade and commerce between the States got to be so much greater than before, that the power of the National government became more felt and recognized and, therefore, had to be enlisted in the cause of this institution.
> Look, all I can speak to is the quality of your engagement with me here. You misread a primary source which plainly states that slave labor was the precipitating issue in the conflict over state's rights which blossomed into open rebellion and bloody war.
I didn’t misread it, I read it correctly. Others put meaning into the slave debate, at the time this wasn’t as big as we make it today - it was propaganda and the rewriting of history that made it larger. Primary sources at the time definitely emphasize it, but there are a whole plethora of issues. Further, your coming at the discussion from your position in history today; projecting, if you will. At the start of the war and prior to it, there were decades of the north undermining the south. The fact there was a “fugitive slave act” was because of that undermining by the north.
Regardless, what I was trying to convey was a more factual basis for a discussion. Even in this discussion, the judgement is thick. I try not to portray a judgment, rather focusing on factual statements.
Though, to your point I think we mostly agree and I don’t think the civil war was avoidable. I just view it as a much larger conflict than slavery and I think that’s revisionist history to believe it was the primary cause.
From the founding of this country there have been two waring factions — the federalist and the anti-federalist. Rural vs urban. Populist vs elitist. Democrat vs Republican. Effectively, “what is American”.
It hasn’t changed, really. We’re still having the same debates, pro-life or pro-abortion. The idea behind a Republic is we can resolve those differences and allow greater regional freedom. We have mechanisms of government that enable no faction to dominate (though that’s being eroded). The original idea was states would also leave the union if they so chose - which clearly the northern states wouldn’t allow.
Personally, my fear is that we’re sliding into another “hot” period of the civil war. When we can’t resolve differences AND can’t leave, then war is inevitable.
> I didn’t misread it, I read it correctly. Others put meaning into the slave debate, at the time this wasn’t as big as we make it today - it was propaganda and the rewriting of history that made it larger.
The first two paragraphs of South Carolina's articles of secession say, "We are seceding because our constitutional right to own slaves is being violated by northern states."
The outcome of the slave issue had serious consequences for the propertied class in the South, too. Did you know that, apart from Southern slave owners, most slave owners of the era were paid for their slaves when they were freed? Even the citizens of Haiti, who earned their freedom through violent rebellion, were eventually forced to repay France for "stealing" themselves for their owners.
It's not propaganda to point at the words of the slave states; it's propaganda to throw sand in the eyes of people seeking to understand what actually happened. I grew up in Mississippi; I saw the battlefield of Vicksburg as a child, I understand the need to relate to those folks. And I understand the feelings of injustice that well up when you and your community are reductively maligned as being nothing but outright racists, or when a statement like "The Civil War was fought over slavery" is then extrapolated to a statement as obviously untrue as "All southerners fought in the war so that they could preserve slavery."
But southerners are full of self-justifying lies, too.
> The fact there was a “fugitive slave act” was because of that undermining by the north.
And what else was the North to do? Do you believe that slavery is immoral? If a runaway slave hitched a train into your state and knocked on your front door, would you send them back to bondage?
This is why the legal question is a dodge: the moral question speaks too strongly. Read the passage I quoted from Grant again, top to bottom. He is as vivid on the question as any writer I have read. And he was there, and you and I were not.
> The reality, is the south didn’t feel it was being represented.
They received additional representation for their slaves, even though slaves couldn't vote. Just more lies on top of lies.
> First the north didn’t respect property rights
The "property" in question being "human beings"
> then it invaded, murdered and seized its wealth and land.
Sounds like justice to me. And most of that land was given back, instead of being distributed to freed slaves as reparation. Which would have been the right thing to do.
No, they seceded after the north stopped respecting slavery, when "an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation."
They call out Lincoln's inauguration and his perceived attitude on slavery, not tarrifs:
"On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States. "
> But the rebels seceded after the north raised tariffs
Wrong. The tariff bill only passed because the Democrats lost the votes in the Senate that had stopped it earlier in the same session of Congress because the states that had seceded weren't represented anymore. Literally all the South had to do to avoid the tariff bill was not secede.
With the war over, it's really easy for the side that doesn't depend on slavery for its economy to work to go out and put a feather in their cap by saying, "See? We're the good guys."
"The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation. "
> One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
Lincoln wanted to save the union. He did not care about slaves (there was slavery in the north too, but the economy did not depend on it)
The South seceded because of the threat to slavery and the writing on the wall about the way that was going.
So, yes, the USA Civil War was about slavery. The fact that Lincoln did not fight "for the slaves" or even "free the slaves" (the slaves in the North were not freed by the Emancipation Declaration" but by the Thirteenth Amendment) is not relevant.
I’ve always wondered why people reframing the civil war to be about economics rather than slavery, don’t consider slaves are part of the economy (and that slavery itself is a perversion of an economic system).
If you value free market economics, like we so often do today, then step one ought to be free mobility of labor which means laborers ought to be literally free of physical chains binding them to their “employers”.
If nothing replaced cotton, then probably not, but there are other goods than could have substituted. And of course, eventually someone would have had the bright idea of using slaves in factories and coal mines.
In the end it’s hard to avoid slavery by merely being resource poor.
Even in the worst environments, some small elite will always benefit by enslaving the rest of the populace. Take for example, the Danes taking English slaves. It was not an economy bursting with productivity and wealth, yet slavery still existed because “elite” warriors didn’t want to wash their own clothes or grow their own crops or make their own entertainment.
This is why I called slavery an economic perversion. There is no job that can’t be done by someone enslaved. Slaves may start as field workers, but they eventually become supervisors. From bed warmers to dancers, singers, and composers. From household servants, they become palace chefs. From nannies they become tutors. From handmaids they become house stewards and accountants. If the practice isn’t stamped out (or restricted via laws such as a caste system since mere social pressure won’t stop the elite from maximizing profit from more educated slaves), it just grows more varied.
I would bet if institutional slavery existed legally today, even computer programmers would face stiff competition from that source rather than having to worry about jobs being outsourced.
It is interesting that the emancipation proclamation did not free the slaves of the northern and northern occupied states, despite that being there "main concern"
The main concern of the southern states was slavery. The main concern of the north was continuance of the Union as such.
That is, the intent behind seccession was to maintain slavery. The intent behind the emancipation proclamation wasn't (solely) to end slavery, but to encourage rebellion by enslaved southerners.
South Carolina did succeede due largely to its fear that the federal government would nationally abolish slavery. President Buchanan, before leaving office, made a gentlemans agreement that he would leave alone a largely abandoned sand bar military base that was run by South Carolinians inside the boundary of said state. In the middle of the night, a federal navy ship, who took all the armamments from a well established nearby federal military base, went to fort sumter and forced out the occupants by bayonet(kind of aggresive?/s) Cabinet members of Lincolns presidency warned him not to send reinforcements, which they were sure would further provoke sentiments of military provocation. He did anyway. This pissed off the SCians who decided, to hell with it no one gets this sand bar, and so they destroyed the base by cannon fire with no one there to nullify either parties claim. No one died, largely because no one was supposed too. Lincoln, then, decided he should call on the remaining states to build one of the largest armies assembled by the federal goverment to forcibly take back south carolina. This extereme overreaction to the situation is the well known historical reason why the rest of the states promptly left the union in its fear of the clear millitary power grab that was occuring before their eyes. Many powerful southerners did not want their home states succeed, including Robert E Lee!
Note: What I did not say in the second to last sentence was that there wasn't sentiment of the follower states of protecting slavery.
Lincoln, like a good lawyer, modified the definition of a word, union, from (meriam webster 1. the formation of a single political unit[okay sure, but read on] from two or more separate and independent. Most dicts use the word "confederacy" for this definition as well) a voluntary agreement between indepenent parts, to involuntary permanance. Did he use trade embargoes like a peace seeking consolidator would? Regardless of your opinion on slavery's involvement, or how righteous either side was, Lincoln, at best, poorly* navigated the waters of the time and was the clear cause of military escalation bringing the greatest casualty of americans lives by population of its respective era.
> Lincoln, then, decided he should call on the remaining states to build one of the largest armies assembled by the federal goverment to forcibly take back south carolina. This extereme overreaction to the situation is the well known historical reason why the rest of the states promptly left the union in its fear of the clear millitary power grab that was occuring before their eyes.
Interesting claim, but it doesn't hold up. The battle of Ft. Sumpter started in April 1861. South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas had already seceded. Only Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee waited until after the battle.
> Did he use trade embargoes like a peace seeking consolidator would?
He wasn't looking to be a piece seeking consolidator, he was looking to put down a revolt. You're welcome to make the argument that actually it would have been better realpolitik to appease the southern states. In fact, I'd love to see that argument!
Fair! My mistake, a little less than half of the states seceded due to the problem I addressed of excessive force which you have not discredited or properly justified.
Again your second paragraph attacks a small technicality. Your saying destroying a run down building on a sandbar is the same as conquering a 32000 square miles? Or are you saying that ignoring the definitions found in all english dictionaries is null and void for this specific use case? Seperating from a definitional union is not a revolt. If my wife leaves me do i get to threaten her with violence and then beat her if she refuses, then chain her permanently to me?
I suggest you read something as basic as the Wikipedia article on sumpter, basically everything you've said about it is wrong, and I'm wholly uninterested in discussing this with someone from an alternate timeline.
What I will say is first, that trying to equate families and countries is rarely valid, and this case is no exception (declaring yourself divorced, for example, does not make it so, and if you take certain actions after unilaterally claiming your union is solved, your partner would be within their rights to invite state force against you!). And second, that yes, firing cannons on soldiers is usually considered an act of war. Everyone involved knew that, the confederacy was already gearing up for war and some think that SC's intent was specifically to provoke a war. So your argument that it was just friendly ribbing doesn't really stand to scrutiny.
Your just pushing transparent confederate propaganda at this point. Stop apologizing for traitors and insurrectionists.
I mean no, I trust accurate historical sources. I'm just saying the stuff you're spouting is so completely obviously off base that it's directly contradicted by Wikipedia.
Like you're not even trying to go for a thing that is debated. Literally no one pushes the story your telling, you've made it up! I cannot find anything, anything that corroborates any of the stuff you're saying. Sumter wasn't empty when shelled. The reinforcements were sent before Lincoln took office. No one was kicked out at bayonet point. You've created confederate fanfiction!
> the north building a massive army and killing people to conquer northern virginia.
Like how you're pretending the south wasn't also building an army at the same time! Lol.
Its is so far past midnight where I am, Ill come back tomorrow to find sources better than a quick google search can provide. You are right, I jumped the gun on its occupation, thank you for calling me out on that. I think it was the lack of casualties and the fact I have read sources speaking to the intent of SC on damaging the fort and causing a fire storm was its strategy rather than the desire to cause casualties. Perhaps tomorrows search will prove my memory incorrect on that as well. But as for your last question. Where were the southern armamets being built up? Are you speaking to south carolina defending a marginal island fort just outside its own port? Does the third ammendment not strike a resemblance here? How could sc stand idle when a now foreign army is sneaking in just outside their major port in the middle of the night not be of major concern? Especially since it was unoccupied by the federal government, and james buchanan agreed to not have it taken. Its not like south carolina was sending boats to blockade washigton dc or new york or boston. Have I mistaken that stance? The south was segregated by states. Was another state building up forces on the border of pennsylvannia? Ohio? or even illinois? I genuinely have not heard of this and would appreciate tips!
> Where were the southern armamets being built up?
See the wikipedia page:
> Governor Pickens, therefore, ordered that all remaining Federal positions except Fort Sumter were to be seized. State troops quickly occupied Fort Moultrie (capturing 56 guns), Fort Johnson on James Island, and the battery on Morris Island. On December 27, an assault force of 150 men seized the Union-occupied Castle Pinckney fortification, in the harbor close to downtown Charleston, capturing 24 guns and mortars without bloodshed. On December 30, the Federal arsenal in Charleston was captured, resulting in the acquisition of more than 22,000 weapons by the militia. The Confederates promptly made repairs at Fort Moultrie and dozens of new batteries and defense positions were constructed throughout the Charleston harbor area, including an unusual floating battery, and armed with weapons captured from the arsenal.
They were gathering weapons and armaments, and had 6000 men ready to siege Sumter (and it's 90 Union soldier), to start a war! Months later, at first Manassas, the CSA forces (which were mostly the Virginia Militia) at that battle numbered 40,000.
> Does the third ammendment not strike a resemblance here?
Are you saying that South Carolina was still a part of the US, in which case firing on US soldiers was treason?
> How could sc stand idle when a now foreign army is sneaking
They were already there! The Soldiers who eventually moved into Sumter were previously stationed like a half mile away, and had already been besieged and cut off by SC troops. They moved from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter because it was a more defensible position as there were only 90 union troops who were being harassed by more than a thousand SC militia men. That eventually grew to more than 5000!
The Union wasn't building up troops on the border. There were 90 guys in a fort. That's it. There were multiple failed attempts to send them food, because the fort was being blockaded and the soldiers were starving, Lincoln was clear that these weren't attempts to reinforce, but simply to provide supplies. None of that is even remotely controversial.
And of course, multiple high ranking confederates knew this was the start of the war. Quoting the wiki page again:
> James had offered the first shot [at fort Sumter] to Roger Pryor, a noted Virginia secessionist, who declined, saying, "I could not fire the first gun of the war."
and
> Edmund Ruffin, another noted Virginia secessionist, had traveled to Charleston to be present at the beginning of the war, and fired one of the first shots at Sumter after the signal round
They were very intentionally trying to start a war!
We can go ahead and cast it as an economic conflict if we really want -- the conflict between a system based on industrialization and an alternate one based on slavery. But slavery is, as you say, most certainly central to the conflict.
I think the reason you’re getting so much vitriol is that you’re framing this issue without any room for nuance.
It’s accepted that a disagreement over the future economic regime of the Union was core to the American Civil War. Part of that economic future was tariffs, as you highlight. But an even more foundational part was slavery, and it’s role in the economic future of the country. The elites of the North and South vehemently disagreed on the role of slavery in America’s future, and it’s absurd to say this didn’t escalate tensions.
It is not correct to frame slavery as an afterthought. It is not correct to frame the moral issue of slavery as the only reason for the war, because it had enormous economic and political implications beyond its morality.
> It is not correct to frame the moral issue of slavery as the only reason for the war, because it had enormous economic and political implications beyond its morality.
I saw an article that said that by the mid-1800's, the southern states that seceded accounted for half the GDP of the entire US, and slave labour accounted for a majority of that. Abolishing slavery would cripple and impoverish those states, so of course they had to secede. From an economical-political perspective it was the only possible choice.
Imagine that the federal US wanted to prohibit people in California from working with software or media. No more Silicon Valley, no more Hollywood. California would secede in a heartbeat, and every single HN reader living there would strongly support it. Threaten people's way of life, and they'll get kinda angry, regardless of morality.
It's also important to realize that since the southern states were so dependent on slavery, and since people actually have a natural aversion to it, that there existed a system of constant brutal racist propaganda to protect itself. That propaganda was everywhere, it was scientific: Clearly, black people are better suited at working in the sun, cotton requires work in the sun, therefore it is the natural order of things that black people should work the cottonfields. Religious: God rewards the people he loves with prosperity, white plantation owners are the most prosperous, therefore God clearly loves this order of things and wills it so. Political: White nations originating in Europe have subjugated black nations in Africa, and since might makes right, black people from Africa are clearly better off as slaves in America, it's a more civilized life, and therefore the best order of things.
Racism and slavery was simply woven into the fabric of society in a way that's very difficult to imagine today, which is why the reductionism is so misguided. Not being racist or not profiting off of slavery was simply not an option for people living there.
There’s really not a lot of of discussion of foreign trade in the documents the states ratified to enact secession. [0] They sure do talk about slavery quite explicitly though.
> There’s really not a lot of of discussion of foreign trade in the documents the states ratified to enact secession.
Because tariffs are a congressional matter, not a state matter. They were trying to justify secession via the states' rights angle. Also, politicians don't like using money as a justification for their actions. It comes off tacky. They want to appear noble and virtuous. Sorta like how nobody invaded iraq for oil. You invade iraq for democracy. Just like the american independence was about "liberty and freedom" not tariffs and the right to steal native land west of the appalachian mountains. "Liberty and freedom" by slave owners. Using your logic, the iraq war was about democracy and the american independence was about freedom. Do you believe russia is invading ukraine to free ukraine from nazis too?
You're claiming they decided to pretend it was about slavery to "appear noble and virtuous." Really??? That's their way of getting GOOD PR? They knew slavery was unpopular with everyone else but them, but they're doubling down on pretending that's their reason instead of tarrifs because they want to look "noble"? OK.
How goddamn stupid is anyone to believe that shit?
> Sorta like how nobody invaded iraq for oil. You invade iraq for democracy freedom.
Fictitious WMD, even more fictitious ties to al-Qaeda (and because, as distinct from North Korea, as described by then -Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Iraq “floats on a sea of oil“, notionally foreclosing leverage for non-military pressure against those fictions.) “Democracy” and “freedom” weren't cited as the reasons for going in, but as things we needed to assure in the aftermath of destroying the existing regime for other reasons. (And then later as “wins” that retroactively justified the invasion even if there never were WMD to protect against.)
Read any state’s declaration of secession. Slavery was the direct cause of the war.
Not by the North to end it, by the South to preserve it.
> The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.
> Markets and tariffs were the reason the south seceded.
No, they weren't.
> Lincoln didn't say "end slavery and we shall have the greatest nation on earth".
The South didn't revolt over something Lincoln said, they revolted over the failure to secure their desire for expansion of slavery into the territories, which they read (probably accurately) as foreshadowing eventual abolition of slavery if they remained in the Union.
Now, they misjudged the prospects of rebellion and so hastened the abolition of slavery by rebelling.
> The South didn't revolt over something Lincoln said, they revolted over the failure to secure their desire for expansion of slavery into the territories
There was no such desire on the South's part, although the claim that there was was common in abolitionist propaganda of the time. The South already knew that none of the territories being added to the Union at that time were suitable for the kind of economy based on slavery that they had in the established Southern states.
> which they read (probably accurately) as foreshadowing eventual abolition of slavery if they remained in the Union
No, what they read (probably accurately) as foreshadowing eventual abolition of slavery if they remained in the Union was...the continuing vociferous demands on the part of abolitionists over decades for the abolition of slavery, which continued to gain more political traction over time. Lincoln's election as a Republican just pushed them over the edge (although another strong signal was sent a couple of years before when all of the abolitionists who kept talking about how we should let the legal process work and abide by its decisions, suddenly switched gears and started talking about ignoring the legal process after the Dred Scott decision). There is no need to attribute fictitious motives of "expansion of slavery" to the South to account for secession. The documented historical facts of the abolitionist movement are more than enough.
Interestingly one of the reasons the south began their war over the right to own people was indeed because they were mad they couldn't force other states in the union to treat Black folks as slaves. Read up on the Fugitive Slave Act (https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/fugitive-...)
Ironic considering the modern lost cause argument of the war being over "states' rights". There was one right they were primarily concerned with - owning people.
> they were mad they couldn't force other states in the union to treat Black folks as slaves
Meaning, I take it, that the couldn't trust northern states to actually obey the Fugitive Slave Act? Even though there was an explicit provision in the Constitution about it?
> Ironic considering the modern lost cause argument of the war being over "states rights"
That's not a "modern" argument. It's the argument the south actually made at the time. And as a matter of law, they were right: both the Constitution and Federal law laid a legal duty on northern states, which northern states refused to obey.
Of course, our "modern" view is that it's perfectly OK to ignore a law if you think it's "wrong"; and this was the argument the north made for ignoring the Fugitive Slave Act: that slavery was wrong, so nobody had any duty to obey a law requiring them to support slavery in any way.
Ironic considering that the same "modern" people who make such arguments also talk about how having a rule of law, where people can't just arbitrarily ignore laws they don't like, is a good thing.
The truth is that both sides at the time of the civil war were wrong. The south was wrong because it was using arguments about rights and the rule of law to deny rights to the slaves. But the north was also wrong because it was undermining the very institution of law, which is wrong even if it's in a good cause, because the institution of law is necessary to have a civil society at all.
With the FSA the south was pushing to force free states to kidnap individuals, something that was illegal to do. There's no constitutional provision for allowing kidnapping and enslaving individuals. In fact there are many rights that explicitly disallow that! The south crying about their inability to force free states to enslave people is an example of the hypocrisy of the modern argument that the south primarily fought over "states' rights" and not slavery, which is 100% bullshit. Read what the southern states said about their reasons for exiting the union: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...
The right they talk about? The right to own people. Slavery.
> That's not a "modern" argument
The southern states were concerned with slavery at the time the war started, not "states rights" - as pointed out, they were perfectly happy to attempt to force free states to kidnap people. "States' rights" became the battle cry in the next century, read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy
Prior to then "states' rights" was not something heavily pushed by the south regarding the Civil War, they didn't think that way generally. As pointed out they were happy to reject the northern states' rights to disallow slavery!
> The truth is that both sides at the time of the civil war were wrong.
> But the north was also wrong because it was undermining the very institution of law
> Prior to then "states' rights" was not something heavily pushed by the south, they didn't think that way generally.
You must be joking. Pushing for states' rights by southern states goes back at least all the way to the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions in the late 1790s, and arguably was an important topic for them at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Relying on Wikipedia as your source on a topic like this is not a good idea.
> There's no constitutional provision for allowing kidnapping and enslaving individuals.
If you want to argue that the explicit Constitutional provision about fugitive slaves (Article IV, Section 2, last clause) is inconsistent with other provisions of the Constitution, you can try to make that argument. But just claiming that the Constitution doesn't allow fugitive slaves to be returned to their owners, and calling doing so "kidnapping" without any supporting argument, when the Constitution has an explicit provision that requires fugitive slaves to be returned to their owners, is nonsense. You can't just ignore parts of the Constitution you don't like.
> only the south was wrong here
I don't think you have fully thought through your position.
How does that square with the 4th amendment against unreasonable search and seizure? The fugitive slave laws allowed anyone to seize anyone they thought might be a slave. Clearly unconstitutional. Also clearly kidnapping! I'd like to hear how you would not consider this kidnapping.
How does it square with the 5th amendment? No one can "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Kidnapping someone clearly violates this amendment.
The 6th and 7th amendments guarantee the right to an impartial jury and a jury trial - however the laws the south wanted to force on the north (a hypocritical violation of states' rights) allowed people to be kidnapped without going through these processes.
You can argue that the constitution is contradictory, but you cannot reasonably argue that the fugitive slave acts do not violate the bill of rights.
> I don't think you have fully thought through your position.
You are ignoring the facts. The south's stated reason for leaving the union was to continue the institution of slavery. The modern "states' rights" argument _regarding the war_ is an attempt to ignore that the state right explicitly called for by those states was the right to own other people.
> Are you claiming that slavery is constitutional?
It was until the Thirteenth Amendment was passed, yes.
I think you have some serious learning to do about the Constitution.
As for how the Bill of Rights was interpreted to be consistent with the fugitive slave provision of the Constitution, that's simple: the jurisprudence of the time did not apply the Bill of Rights to slaves. I'm sure this will seem very shocking to you, but it's quite clear from the historical documents (see, for example, my reference to the Dred Scott decision upthread).
> you cannot reasonably argue that the fugitive slave acts do not violate the bill of rights
Perhaps you can't, but the judges and juries of the time had no problem doing so at all. See above. Even abolitionists did not make this claim. They claimed that slavery was wrong and that laws such as the fugitive slave law were unjust, but they never claimed they were unconstitutional. Their response to provisions like that in the Constitution was to say that the Constitution itself was unjust; for example, William Lloyd Garrison called it "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell". And they were perfectly ok with violating the Constitution in the name of what they believed to be the greater good of abolishing slavery. But they never argued that the Constitution's fugitive slave provision was inconsistent with the Bill of Rights, because nobody believed that to be the case.
> You are ignoring the facts.
No, I'm not. I just appear to have a much better understanding of their historical context than you do.
> If you want to argue that the explicit Constitutional provision about fugitive slaves (Article IV, Section 2, last clause) is inconsistent with other provisions of the Constitution, you can try to make that argument
The fugitive slave provisions of the Constitution were, by definition, consistent with the Constitution, however morally repugnant they were. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, OTOH, provided for the summary detention of accused escaped slaves by affidavit without warrant or probable cause or even any establishment of a reasonable basis, denied accused escaped slave the right to be heard in their own defense, denied them jury trial on the accusation, denied them trial before a judicial officer on the accusation, allowing the accusation to be heard by special commissioners who were paid a premium for ruling that the accused was, in fact, a fugitive without even a pretense of evenhanded justice, and commandeered state officers to assist with enforcement. On any reasonable reading—notwithstanding that its purpose was Constitutionally valid—it violated the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 10th Amendments, and the suspension clause.
(The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 has a subset of the same problems.)
> On any reasonable reading—notwithstanding that its purpose was Constitutionally valid—it violated the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 10th Amendments, and the suspension clause.
The Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision did not take this position. They took the position that the Constitution's protections simply did not apply to slaves. (In fact the decision said that those provisions didn't even apply to free blacks.)
Of course you can say that the Supreme Court was simply wrong. But under our system of law, the Supreme Court's rulings on Constitutional provisions are final unless overridden by an amendment--as the Dred Scott decision was overridden by the Thirteenth Amendment. So as a matter of law, the fugitive slave laws were Constitutional until the Thirteenth Amendment was passed. Just as, for example, it's Constitutional (unless a future Amendment changes things) for Congress to regulate a farmer's growing of wheat for personal use under the Commerce Clause (Wickard v. Filburn), or for a city to seize people's homes and turn them over to a private developer under the eminent domain power (Kelo v. New London). You might think those decisions were wrong (I do), but they're still the law of the land unless and until a Constitutional Amendment overrides them.
> by that logic the whole US was wrong for rebelling against England.
If we include in the north's logic the claim that secession was wrong for the southern states, then yes, one could argue that by the same logic it was wrong for the colonies to secede from Britain. Although there was a difference: the colonies had no effective representation in the British Parliament, they were just colonies, whereas the southern states were not colonies of the US, they were states and had the same representation in the US Congress as other states.
> Meaning, I take it, that the couldn't trust northern states to actually obey the Fugitive Slave Act?
You mean the one (either the 1793 or the 1850 one, though the latter was both worse in this regard and—ironically given the common argument that the Confederacy was motivated by “states rights”—also violated federalism by commandeering state officers for enforcement rather than relying federal resources to enforce federal law) that unconstitutionally presumptively denied habeas rights to anyone alleged by a private person to be an escaped slave?
> But the north was also wrong because it was undermining the very institution of law
> Markets and tariffs were the reason the south seceded.
No, it was slavery.
> Tarrifs were the reason for the civil war.
No Southern secession, and the Northern response to prevent it, was the proximate reason for the Civil War. The South seceded due to slavery.
Yes the North didn't go into the war to free slaves. They did it to keep the country together. But as the war progressed its position on abolition hardened until it became a war aim.
You and dragonwriter keep repeating the false statement.
> The South seceded due to slavery.
No. They left after the north raised the tariff. They justified the secession on states' rights ( one of the notable being slavery ).
The south didn't secede after the north freed the slaves, threatened to free the slaves, etc. They left after they lost a decades long tariff battle to the north. The fight in the first part of the 1800s wasn't over slavery. The major fight between the north and south was tariffs/trade. It was industrialization vs agricultralism. It was never about slavery because some northern states also had slavery before and during the civil war.
If the civil war was about slavery, why didn't delaware and maryland also secede with slave owning states?
Why did west virginia secede from virginia? Could it be because west virginia major industries sold minerals, coal, etc to the industrial north? While the rest of virginia was agriculturally based?
South Carolina seceded around a month later, on December 20, 1860 [1]. Georgia began drafting a new constitution in January 1861[2], after voting to secede a few days earlier.
The Morill Tariff passed in the senate on Feb 20, 1861, two months after SC seceded, and one month after GA.[3]
It's rich of you to call everyone else's statement false when you're the one promoting ignoring the primary texts including the declarations of secession of the states in favor of your hypothetical 15-decade-later mindreading.
But all your questions have answers if you actually looked shit up instead of being suckered into being a mouthpiece for historical revisionism to deflect attention from the sins of the past.
West Virginia split because they didn't want to secede. Did they want to stay because of economic reasons? It doesn't really matter to this question, the war was started by states secession, so the reason for the first move is what matters.
Maryland and Delaware were further north and less dominated by slave-holders than the states that did secede. Anti-slavery sentiment in the pre-war US was very geographically distributed, after all. It was actively debated and voted on, but it didn't carry the day.
"Slavery had been a divisive issue in Delaware for decades before the American Civil War began. Opposition to slavery in Delaware, imported from Quaker-dominated Pennsylvania, led many slaveowners to free their slaves; half of the state's black population was free by 1810, and more than 90% were free by 1860."
> why didn't delaware and maryland also secede with slave owning states?
Have you looked at a map to see where they are? They would've been curbstomped fairly quickly if they tried. And although slavery was legal in Delaware, 91% of the Black population there was free at the start of the ACW.[1]
> The south didn't secede after the north freed the slaves, threatened to free the slaves,
The South seceded because they feared the North would free the slaves.
> Why did west virginia secede from virginia?
Because they disagreed with Virginia's secession from the United States.
> This is so wrong it's a wonder how anyone could think this.
A very long propaganda campaign (oddly, by the very same people who argue that slavery was actually a good thing that was done for those subject to it who should be thankful for it) has established it as an article of faith for a large population in this country, despite the fact that the rebels were quite explicit that the rebellion was about slavery.
Yeah I mean you have to first ignore what those Southerners themselves said were their actual reasons for secession (slavery), and what they wrote down on paper (we're leaving 'cuz we want to keep our slaves). It obviously takes a long time to learn how to ignore actual facts.
> push the narrative
Those dastardly schools, pushing Confederate states' constitutions at young impressionable minds to convince them that the Confederacy was evil. We have to stop them! /s
EDIT: I misunderstood the parent poster. Apologies.
Indeed, we went to great lengths to avoid confronting actual primary sources. It's not enough to just teach alternative history, you also have to teach learned helplessness, that only certain authorities are trustworthy, and to promote a general climate of proud ignorance (looking up things in books is for losers and caring about education is for suckers).
I think you're picking a fight here that's not there: its relatively uncontroversial that there's been an aggressive campaign since the civil war to minimise slavery as a factor, particularly in the South - you will easily find "war of northern aggression" types because that is what they are taught.
All of the current FUD in the southern states against CRT etc. seems like another attempt to take control of the historical narrative to once again start feeding lies to the young and mint a new generation of unquestioning voters that believe in a false history.
No, poster is saying the schools taught them not to look at those sources, because the lost cause lie was to be taught and could not sink in if the primary sources were available (which 100% contradict the "states rights" argument taught in many schools in the US, mostly in the south)
> Slave labor had nothing to do with it. If the south banned slavery in 1800 and cotton was picked by well paid whites, they would still want low tariffs.
No, the southern economy, as it was, would collapse, which is why they were so averse to anything that upset "King Cotton". Yes, tariffs were one aspect of that, but the pre-war southern economy couldn't work with well paid whites. So they had an even stronger objection to slavery ending, as it would be far more ruinous than tariffs.
> Ask yourself, did the south decide to secede after the north decided to free the slaves or after the north raised the tariffs. A tariff battle the north and south have been fighting for decades before the civil war. The answer is pretty simple and obvious.
Let's ask the southern states themselves, shall we:
Texas objected to northern states ignoring the Fugitive Slave Act:
> The States… by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the Fugitive Slave Clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact
And South Carolina (and many others) noted that they were leaving due to Lincoln's election, which spelled doom for slavery:
> On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
The wikipedia articles on SC's[0] debunks this, and none of the state's reasons for secession [1] list taxes or tariffs as a reason. This is ahistorical nonsense and confederate apologia.
“Lost cause” theories are considered the actual revisionism by the vast majority of historians, due to the many pieces of strong evidence supporting slavery being the major issue driving the war.
There were the journals of the actual soldiers fighting the war, who frequently mentioned how slavery was their motivation for fighting the war.
There was the intense focus on slavery leading up to the war, like a slave state being admitted for every free state. There was the Caning of Summers where a man was nearly beaten to death on the senate floor over a very rude speech he gave over slavery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner
In general, the idea that slavery wasn’t a motivator of the war was mostly pitched to Britain who was mostly abolitionist at the time, but overwhelmingly it was mostly pitched after the war had already concluded. Before and during the war the confederates were quite clear their motivation for waging the war was primarily slavery. They were very open about this, which is why historians tend to be doubtful about a theory which seemingly was only ever popularized to make the confederates save face. Historians aren’t keen to go “oh these people who mentioned slavery over and over when they were seceding didn’t care about slavery that was just a prank and I know how they really felt, checkmate Lincolnites!”
Nobody doubts that economics weren’t a major factor in the war, but slavery was discussed far far far more often than tariffs. Tariffs are mostly brought up nowadays because they’re more palatable, not because of the strong evidence the average southerner or southern leader was fighting for tariffs.
>Lincoln did nothing to free the slaves when the war started
True. Lincoln’s initial goal was to keep the union together, whereas the confederates were fighting for slavery. Keep in mind the Civil war was by far the deadliest war in US history, I believe more Americans died in that war than every subsequent war combined. Ending slavery is a noble goal, so is preventing the 620k deaths that happened.
It was only later on, largely due to the aforementioned British pressure that he gave his emancipation proclamation largely as a strategic move to prevent Europe from entering the war since after the proclamation their entrance into the war would be seen as supportive of slavery. However, Lincoln did want to end slavery eventually and many in the union fought for the sake of abolition. Note how a civil war was started soon after Lincoln was elected with the secessionists repeatedly mentioning slavery, his support of abolition was no secret.
> 6. There were tons of ironclads already in European fleets, there had just never been a fight between ironclads! Europeans watched the Monitor v. Merrimack battle & adapted their fleets & battle doctrines accordingly.
These were very different sorts of ironclads. The British and French ironclads mostly resembled traditional ships, at least at first glance. They had steam engines but also retained their masts, and had broadside guns rather than turrets (except for the ill-fated HMS Captain..)
The American ironclads were more bizarre, superficially resembling submarines, and weren't particularly seaworthy (unlike the European ironclads.) The USS Monitor in particular was a novel design; mastless and steam powered with an armored turret, a shallow draft and low freeboard (similar to earlier ironclad floating batteries, but a lot lower). European navies subsequently started building their own 'monitors'.
The monitor class of ships were eventually pushed to the side by pre-dreadnought battleships that derived more from the traditional and seaworthy European ironclads than from monitors, with some lessons learned from monitors. See the HMS Devastation particularly; mastless and steam powered with armored turrets, but with a hull that was actually seaworthy unlike monitors.
The difference in seaworthiness is abundantly clear. These American ironclads were more akin to gunboats, and mostly used on rivers (fighting for control of the Mississippi was a huge deal in the war). They were built comparatively cheaply, for a specific, immediate conflict. They often only had steam engines and lacked the endurance for transoceanic travel.
The British ironclads were built to project imperial power across the globe. The continued use of sail was important to extend endurance to reach far away places.
Don’t forget Russia sending ships to America in support of the union. The letters between tsar Alex and Lincoln are some of the loveliest pieces of writing and highest praises for America.
American russophobia is a sad state of affair considering history, they also gave Alaska for a negligible price.
> When the Civil War broke out, both England and France considered hostile intervention on behalf of the South and they tried to convince the Tsar to join them. Alexander II’s refusal was critically important because the British and French then decided to abort their plans.
It's crazy to think Russia determined modern america fate
Putin ordered Russian forces to be on the highest level of nuclear readiness. We have programs on Russian state TV where people talk about using nuclear weapons to drown the UK and devastate the European coast with a nuclear tsunami. This is a scary time we live in.
The conversation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine may now be centered on NATO, but it began with statements of routine training exercises at the border and escalated to the de-Nazification of Ukraine. Russia has not done well to reach the hearts of its neighbors.
That we have to reach past the Cold War into the American Civil War to discuss amicable relations does not bode well.
When Russia bombed Syrian hospitals ... invaded Chehenia and other countries ... had assasins murder people living EU, likely caused explosion in Czechs (2014), likely shut down plane, supported dictators around the world ...
Common, Ukrainian invasion did not happened out of blue. And I don't even mention Russia actively trying to influence politics of ther countries to the worst.
A very general western hatred (not merely US!) has been brewing over Russian social media for awhile now, and the conversation of whether to deny Russians their prerogative to hate the west is not really there. There isn't even much conversation on western media as to what the state of Russian social media is even like.
America and Russia had a great relationship until the end of WWI. The Bolshevik’s set this in stone towards the end of the civil war when the entente (specifically Britain) opened dialogue towards a trade deal. Lenin used them as the great other, despite knowing they wanted normalized relations, and then the USSR taking Eastern Europe sealed the deal. Self determination was US policy at that time (and kind of ever since.)
The Bolsheviks, who the Entente ( UK, France, US, Japan) deployed troops against and sponsored their enemies? They had valid reasons to at the very least skeptical.
> The Bolshevik’s set this in stone towards the end of the civil war...
I'm not sure about the events that you're referring to. The Treaty of Riga was in 1921, the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement was signed in 1921 as well, the USSR was only declared in 1922, and the UK recognized it in 1924, the same year in which Lenin died. In fact, related to the Trade Agreement he complained:
> The British government has handed us its draft, we have given our counterdraft, but it is still obvious that the British government is dragging its feet over the agreement because the reactionary war party is still hard at work there
So, I don't think it's fair to assume that it was only the UK who wanted normalized relations, and that the difficulties came from only one side.
> taking Eastern Europe sealed the deal
Which again, seems out of place, since I presume you're referring to events that followed the start of WW2.
Talking about WW2, Europe wasn't friendly to the USSR leading up to war:
The initial anti-comintern treaty in 1935 was extended to the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland and China (ruled by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek).
In 1939, Stalin offered to Britain and France to deploy a million troops against Nazi Germany, but he had been rebuffed:
and of course, Churchill's Operation Unthinkable means that Britan had a deep, deep distrust of the USSR.
Despite all this, the USSR asked to join NATO in 1954, but again: it had been rebuffed, along its proposals of reunification and neutrality for Germany.
We often forget about all this, and only think of the reasons for why we distrusted the USSR, but we ignore all of the opportunities that we missed for a friendlier relationship.
There were valid reasons to not be friendly to USSR. Does this justify USSR entering friendship pact with Germany, thus enabling it to start the war?
I also want to know more conditions under which Stalin (who really handled foreign policy then?) offered to send troops to Europe, considering USSR was sort of fighting Japan at the same time. I'm sure UK and France could corroborate and provide more details, if this offer was real.
For the record, the position* of Sotskov (the only source mentioned in the article you linked) is also that occupying Baltic states and dividing Europe between USSR and Germany was not in fact a land grab by USSR but rather a necessary measure to be able to resist Germany.
Never mind that this protection buffer would not have been needed if Germany did not expand its invasion... which it did thanks to USSR siding with it. Dubious twist of logic.
It seems obvious that leaving Germany to take more of Europe in the beginning of WWII would have drastically reduced the ability of USSR to withstand a subsequent attack by Germany, so the argument seems to be "our geniuses could foresee this, so they invaded Europe in order to save the world from fascists". This argument is canceled out, however, by considering that at the end of the day not entering a pact with the UK does not imply USSR needed to side with Germany, the act that enabled Germany to start the war (which presumably USSR was aware of) in the first place.
I'm not sure to which degree this treatment of WWII is truth vs. revisionism.
> There were valid reasons to not be friendly to USSR. Does this justify USSR entering friendship pact with Germany, thus enabling it to start the war?
This is not about "friendship pact", this is about non-aggression pact.
Was Poland not justified in entering a non-aggression pact with Germany?
> Never mind that this protection buffer would not have been needed if Germany did not expand its invasion... which it did thanks to USSR siding with it. Dubious twist of logic.
Good questions/points, but we're judging decisions made at the time with the hindsight of decades after the war. I don't think it was clear to anyone who would've joined the war, which sides would've won, and the likelihood of such events.
Every country, depending on the circumstances, was probably trying to do what's best for them. Either avoiding war, or exploiting the messy situation by expanding their territory by annexing small part of neighboring states.
In fact, after seeing what happened to Poland, I think that every party in such agreements realized that they could provide, at best, temporary respite and delay confrontation (but that's not a weird isolated phenomenon: circumstances changes, and that provides ammunition to arguments that old agreements are not valid anymore).
It's not as much to enable other countries' war, but rather to delay one's own involvement in one war.
In fact, the USSR state budget was dedicated to defense for only about ~5%. A confrontation with Nazi Germany at the time would've been disastrous. But in the extra couple of years since, it increased to > 40%
> Was Poland not justified in entering a non-aggression pact with Germany?
Did they also devise secret protocols dividing the world into spheres of influence, which were subsequently expanded with clauses that had "friendship" in their titles?
> we're judging decisions made at the time with the hindsight of decades after the war
This is exactly what allows us to see objectively what was happening.
It's always easy to say "we didn't mean it, we were playing 3D chess" (like Trump apologists) right afterwards.
However, we can judge based on the actions, which were:
1) sign a non-agression pact with Nazi Germany
2) almost immediately after, jointly with Nazi Germany invade and divide a country
3) extend the pact with a further "friendship" treaty, dividing Europe*
4) further discuss joining Axis**
Where do you think things were really headed?
> I don't think it was clear to anyone who would've joined the war, which sides would've won, and the likelihood of such events.
> Every country, depending on the circumstances, was probably trying to do what's best for them
You're quick to rob all countries and their leaders of moral baselines. There was documented massive surprise (including Western communists) and outrage worldwide when USSR signed the pact. I think the pact at the time was somewhat of a blow to general morale, a sign that another major player takes the world as a zero-sum dog eat dog arena that you allude to.
It seems feasible Stalin/Molotov would've joined Axis if it's "better" for USSR. And furthermore what was going on in USSR under Stalin (ethical cleanses, mass murder) is not too different from what Hitler did, USSR and Nazi Germany are fairly similar in many regards.
But I don't think this is somehow just an instance of how every normal country disregards ethics in the name of own profit. For one, USSR was geopolitically differently situated compared to small countries within immediate vicinity of Germany. It had immense territory. It was actively forging agreements and trade with Germany at the time.
I'm happy USSR ultimately didn't get to win the initial war and divide the world alongside Axis.
> It's not as much to enable other countries' war, but rather to delay one's own involvement in one war.
USSR invaded Poland as soon as Germany did. You're right, this is not enabling other countries' war. This is actually joining the war, and not on the side of the good guys.
> In 1939, Stalin offered to Britain and France to deploy a million troops against Nazi Germany, but he had been rebuffed
At which point he instead allied with Nazi Germany, aided in the invasion of Poland, personally ordered the mass execution of Polish POW's, and invaded Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
> Despite all this, the USSR asked to join NATO in 1954, but again: it had been rebuffed
By 1954, the USSR had already set up undemocratic communist puppet states in Eastern Europe, been caught engaging in espionage against the United States, attempted to blockade West Berlin in order to pressure the Western Allies into abandoning it to Soviet control, and committed genocide and war crimes on possibly the greatest scale seen in history.
Russia and the US became very friendly during WW2 as well. Stalin and Roosevelt had a solid relationship while Stalin and Churchill did not. Churchill did not like Stalin for various reasons. But Roosevelt was the glue. Unfortunately, US elections at the time stipulated that the Vice President was chosen by the Democrat electorate and there was a coup to replace Roosevelts first pick (a guy friendly to the ussr) with a nobody from Missouri named Truman. Stalin never respected Truman and US relationships with the USSR deteriorated quickly after FDRS passing. Churchill and England became the dominant western voice in post ww2 trade and the iron curtain was eventually dropped.
Truman had so many financial struggles that the pension for presidents was created for him to live a dignified life after leaving office.
Truman's presidency doesn't seem so terrible from today's viewpoint, look at the work he did to help rebuild western europe after the war. Making note that he had not enriched himself while president does not serve to make you or your arguments better appreciated.
> Talking about WW2, Europe wasn't friendly to the USSR leading up to war: The initial anti-comintern treaty in 1935 was extended to the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland and China (ruled by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek).
Such a shocking action, after only little thing like The Great Purge and active hostile rhetorics from Russia ... and Holodomor.
This is ridiculous point of view that casts Russia as victim when other countries react to its aggression - whether aggression outside or inside. Russia 1935 and Germany 1936 were not that dissimilar, you know. Except Russia more bloody at that point.
No, we don't forget about revisionist history. We view it with an appropriately skeptical eye.
The Telegraph article has a quote from a historian:
> "There was no mention of this in any of the three contemporaneous diaries, two British and one French - including that of Drax," he said. "I don't myself believe the Russians were serious."
You also seem unfamiliar with the purpose of NATO. Wikipedia:
> NATO is a system of collective security: its independent member states agree to defend each other against attacks by third parties. It was established during the Cold War in response to the threat posed by the Soviet Union.
You also seem unfamiliar with the purpose of NATO. Wikipedia:
> NATO is a system of collective security: its independent member states agree to defend each other against attacks by third parties. It was established during the Cold War in response to the threat posed by the Soviet Union.
That is the stated purpose of NATO. The details of its real life military actions do not square with what you quoted at all - unless you can tell me which NATO member state Libya attacked.
The Libyan conflict was several countries working together and stuck a NATO label on it. Most of NATO was not actually involved. It also included some countries outside of NATO, like Sweden.
You can blame it on France misusing the NATO moniker rather than it just being a coalition.
And NATO rightfully said no, because of what kind of country Russia was.
Also, politicians, including and especially Russian politicians at the time having unserious claims is not weak thesis. That was their frequent negotiating/pressuring/rhetorical tactic.
It would be incredibly stupid to admit Russia of 1954 into NATO. The people taking power after Stalin were somewhat better, but still only slightly less murderous.
This is right after Russia organized processes and executions of class enemies. It demanded such processes of vasal states too. The monster processes were pretty large crime.
And this is btw, only like 14 years before Russia invaded other countries and started to occupie them in 1968.
Also, please note that in my original comment I'm talking about the future - after the collapse of Russia, in a few decades. Can you guarantee that the world will not need to deal with another Trump in a situation where the MAD doctrine stopped working?
And as for currently, don't you think the US is not making "desperate threats" simply because it has absolute no need to? In a parallel universe where Russo-Sino alliance conventional military was much more advanced than the US, what would the US do if the alliance absorbed Mexico or Canada, deploying (for protection, of course) tens of thousands of people along with huge piles of weapons on their territory? Can you trust the US not to make "desperate threats" then?
I can't.
Especially because there's only one country that developed and used nuclear weapons against civilians. In that context, even a statement from a clown of a president about "fire and fury" is something really dangerous. And since we already had to deal with a clown, it's really not that much of a stretch to fear that an actual madman gets elected sometime down the road.
Threatening with conventional arms is not the same as threatening to use nuclear arms. Many countries threaten to use their military - yet Russia is going as far to threaten the offensive use of nukes. I’m discussing the reality of now not some theoretical future/parallel universe as what’s the point? Russia is doing what Russia is now and that’s the problem.
Are you old enough to be sure you will be dead in 20 years? If not, then making sure we won't be all dying in a "fire and fury" would be the point. Otherwise, I guess, you have the luxury of not thinking about "future/parallel universe" that might just one day become the reality.
There's a very brave, honorable politician, who unfortunately was lost in the annals of history, as a man directly responsible for Russian support during the civil war.
Ali's grandfather specifically named his son after Cassius to honor Cassius, the KY politician. The son proceeded to do the same, with who would eventually be a famous boxer, M. Ali.
The boxer changed his name to Ali, both due to his conversion to islam , and because he was angry to take the name of a plantation owner.
The latter is true - Cassius was a plantation owner. However, early on he defender ardently emancipation. He in fact suffered multiple murder attempts from actual slavery advocates... who surrounded him in KY
Right now, Russophobia is kind of healthy thinking. Their current mix of tsarism and return to kinda communist thinking except the communist ideology is sucky and dangerous.
Russia is an authoritarian state lead by one man and his inner circle. This man has very high public support. In particular, Russian population supports imperial ideology.
That is no contradiction. Authoritarians can have public support while at the same time severely oppressing opposition or anyone who dares to voice something else.
Also, opposition to Putin does not imply opposition to annexation of Ukrainian lands or turning Ukrainians into Russians by force. Opposition to Putin does not imply pro-democracy reform either.
> It is rational to hate Russians in general
Hate is a feeling. But accusations of Russophobia are all about support for sanctions or Ukraine in war. And are deployed whenever someone points out Russia as is now is threat to not just Ukraine, but to all countries in former eastern block.
All those are rational. So, if that matter average Russians look really down on Ukrainians too, are happy to use slurs against them and act offended it other formerly occupied countries are not "thankful".
----------
If anything, Russia was enabled rather then opposed for years. It was treated as something special, more worthy then other countries around it.
Russia is not "opposing" it is expanding and starting major wars. It is actively working to destroy other countries.
Russia is not opposing America as much as they are opposing right to existence as democracies to countries around them. It is way more countries around Russia calling for help to Ukraine then anyone else.
And yes, being at risk of being invaded by someone makes people hate that one. It makes them think again about what that country done to them before.
> Russia is not "opposing" it is expanding and starting major wars. It is actively working to destroy other countries.
Brother. You are all over the place.
I was replying to this part:
> Russia is an authoritarian state lead by one man and his inner circle. This man has very high public support. In particular, Russian population supports imperial ideology.
To which I reply: Yes, it’s rational to “hate” someone if they oppose you. And “someone” here means normal Russians.
I was not talking about the Russian government in this context.
A point I found interesting along the lines of perceived British ambivalence, my understanding is that the Emancipation Proclamation was a brilliant piece of diplomacy. It was anti-slavery enough to make it possible to convince Britain that the war was all about slavery and so they shouldn't intervene because of how much they were against slavery. Yet also weak enough against slavery - only freeing slaves in the territory they hadn't conquered yet - to make it possible to convince the Union officers and politicians that it was a tactical economic ploy against the Confederacy and not a changing of the primary war aims. They were rather ambivalent about slavery, and Lincoln himself feared that "half the officers would fling down their arms and three more states would rise" if he made full emancipation a primary war aim.
If you feel inclined | knowledgeable could you expand on any English economic turmoil as a result of the American Civil War. All that American Cotton not feeding the British industry must have hurt a lot.
You could argue that the Confederacy actually started the Cotton Famine, on purpose.
Early on the Union blockade was essentially a paper blockade, and therefore of dubious international legality. There were laws regarding blockades, but those laws were fuzzy when it came to civil wars & a nation blockading their own ports. The Union would have been in violation of international law if the Confederacy were a recognized country, which would have given Britain and France a pretext to end the blockade by force. Early in the war, almost any European sea power (Britain especially) could have broken the Union Navy in a matter of hours.
The Confederate government imposed a cotton boycott to trigger economic turmoil in Britain especially (Britain was always their primary diplomatic target), which they felt would create enough political pressure in Parliament to spur recognition and a complete lifting of the blockade by the Royal Navy.
The economic problems in Britain were very real (triggering waves of emigration & from Lancashire & other towns that were cotton dependent) but the British largely worked around them. They retooled their factories to work with cotton from Egypt, India, and the East Indies. Workers found other jobs. Government relief. A lot of people suffered though.
The Confederates seriously underestimated the degree to which Britain and British politicians loathed slavery. Slavery stacked the deck against them diplomatically from the beginning. There were other geopolitical reasons (like Britain not wanting to risk Canada by sparking a conflict with the Union) but the British basically chose to suck it up and endure the cotton famine & economic depression because they wanted slavery gone, and America was one of the last major holdouts at that point.
Not doubting to be clear, but do you have recommended sources on the desire for the American abolition of slavery being a principal motivation for Britain's non-involvement in the American Civil War? Would be curious to read it.
I've generally had a pretty cynical view towards British abolitionism, which is that the elites only disliked slavery to the extent that they found capitalistic imperialism (i.e. systems that controlled the lower classes through persistent indebtedness and restrictions on ownership of real estate) to be more profitable and politically stable than the systems constructed on the institution of slavery.
And, coincidentally, that their empire, whose 19th century wealth was bootstrapped on the profits of slave-trading and the manufacture of raw materials extracted via slave labor, was uniquely-well-positioned to come out on top in a world order deprived of slave labor.
In other words, they opposed slavery on the basis of limiting economic volatility, and maintaining their geopolitical status, more so than any moral basis.
I'd love to read more sources that balance out my cynicism. :)
The book I recommended in original comment (A World on Fire) will give you a good inside-look at the British political thought & decision making during that time, including Parliamentary debates & communiques between Palmerston and his ministers. Their motivations are complex, like any other politician, but if they were purely economic & geopolitical opportunists I would have expected them to leap at dividing America and keeping the cotton flowing. They didn't.
> I've generally had a pretty cynical view towards British abolitionism
I am not an expert on abolitionist movements or their political effects, but there was a strong moral outrage to slavery in the 19th century and it developed very rapidly, starting in Britain. I recommend reading about the British public's reaction to the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
> their empire, whose 19th century wealth was bootstrapped on the profits of of slave-trading and the manufacture of raw materials extracted via slave labor, was uniquely-well-positioned to come out on top in a world order deprived of slave labor
You're not wrong, and you can toss colonialism in there, too. The Japanese were made the same argument in the early 20th century as they were trying to expand and acquire colonies and kept getting their knuckles whacked by the Europeans, who were (mostly) trying to pump the brakes on colonialism by that point.
> 5. Britain nearly declared war on the Union (Trent affair), to the point that Royal Navy was just waiting for the go-signal to commence hostilities & Britain sent thousands of additional troops to Canada.
I wonder how much the Union's need to hedge against British intervention—so, to divert resources away from the war against the South, affecting troop placement, artillery availability, fortification building/maintenance/garrisoning, and fleet positioning—prolonged the war.
That's a good question, and I don't know the answer.
However, whatever that need was (to hedge against the British) should have been completely necessary, and really goes to show you just how valuable a strong diplomatic corps can be to a country.
The British wanted to be pro-Union. They wanted slavery gone. They didn't want to have to station huge numbers of troops in Canada, or large numbers of ships in the Atlantic.
Silly, unforced errors by Seward & Charles Francis Adams (the American ambassador) antagonized Britain throughout the war & made them unsure of their North American holdings. Ridiculous. Union diplomats should have been talking peace & partnership with Britain from day 1 of the conflict.
> The British wanted to be pro-Union. They wanted slavery gone.
tbf, we had moral reasons for wanting slavery gone but practical reasons for thinking we were better off with a divided America and an independent Confederacy as a useful source of cheap cotton. Some would say our political positions haven't got more realistic since. :)
Karl Marx, who was residing in Britain at the time, also wrote much on the topic. He had nothing but withering criticism of mainstream/elite British attitudes for the war, namely the downplaying the importance of slavery in the formation of the Confederacy.
He, unlike his more socially acceptable contemporaries, also deeply admired Lincoln. Many pieces published in prominent periodicals, like The Economist, painted him as a wily and double-dealing politician. One could understand that interpretation given the compromises he was desperately trying to make with Southern states to prevent the outbreak of war, but it gave prominent Brits an excuses to dismiss the sincerity of his anti-slavery rhetoric after the war broke out. (Lincoln himself was also being deeply transformed by the savagery of war. He would come to believe the carnage was divine punishment for the sin of slavery.) Marx would have none of it. He called out the hypocrisy of those who in the years prior condemned American slavery but would not support the cause of Lincoln and the Union because it didn't have an unblemished history of being totally and consistently anti-slavery.
The claim regarding the effectiveness of "Confederate propagandist networks" is overstated, though. People across Britain were divided on the issue, even across political camps and ethnic groups (e.g. Irish and English). To be clear, by "divided", I don't mean that people necessarily individually ambivalent. There were some staunch supporters on both sides.
There were also multiple reasons for preferring one side over another, too. Slavery was just one issue. Another was potential weakening the Monroe Doctrine. (During the Civil War, France under Napoleon III invaded and conquered Mexico, and Spain re-colonized what would become the Dominican Republic.) Others were access to raw materials, support for wars of national unity (European nationalists admired Lincoln, as would Hitler decades later), etc.
> the compromises he was desperately trying to make with Southern states to prevent the outbreak of war
I'm not sure what you're referring to here. AFAIK between his inauguration and the outbreak of war Lincoln had basically no interaction with any of the Southern states.
Because Vietnam showed that conscripting armies of that size was not an efficient way to fight a modern war. You want people, volunteers, who want to be in the army. Also technology. We’re close to that point in, like in Roman history, where the income of entire villages was only enough to field one Calvary soldier (knight.)
Not that we’re going towards feudalism but history has a cycle of armies going from a small force with a huge technology edge to a giant force with mundane tech. Even during the Roman Republic only the richest men could afford to fight.
During the early republic, only the richest could equipment themselves but my understanding is that the Marian reforms changed this by professionalizing the army and having the general of a legion supply the soldiers with their weapons.
Also, the thing about a village supporting one cavalry soldier seems off. The roman army focused on infantry with cavalry being supplied by allied forces.
Roman cavalry is often forgotten, but a considerable portion of social class all the way back to Roman Republic and I think pre-republic kingdom was existence of a class wealthy enough to fight as cavalry.
They were of course small compared to infantry legions, and as the Republic and later Empire expanded they frequently hired auxiliaries, especially from a more cavalry focused groups.
Sure, equites were an established social class but didn't that devolve to just a class without the training on horseback by the late republic and certainly by imperial rome. It seems like it made more sense for the imperial army to have auxilia handle cavalry, missile troops, and other functions.
>Also, the thing about a village supporting one cavalry soldier seems off. The roman army focused on infantry with cavalry being supplied by allied forces.
Also possible that they're thinking of the Roman Kingdom and the Equites?
It was not so easy back then as well. They had draft riots in New York City, which had to be suppressed by regular Union regiments. There were also deserters and bounty jumpers.
The South had trouble to support their armies. Lee basically planned the Gettysburg campaign to live of the land. Soldiers were happy because they had enough to eat. A lot of soldiers lacked shoes.
> 6. There were tons of ironclads already in European fleets, there had just never been a fight between ironclads! Europeans watched the Monitor v. Merrimack battle & adapted their fleets & battle doctrines accordingly.
And the fight they got was comically irrelevant to the ironclads they had.
I'm sure they had lots of great arguments trying to pull anything applicable out of it and apply the lessons to their own fleets.
One of my ancestors was a British aristocrat and tory MP who was so vocal in his opposition to appeasing the American colonists in any way at all that even King George raised an eyebrow.
His total conviction led him to purchase a commission as major of Grenadiers in the 20th Foot, and set off for The Colonies, where he was promptly shot at The Battle of Saratoga and then taken prisoner.
Because he was a wounded officer and a minor noble, his wife was permitted to come and pick him up.
Not mentioned: Towards the end of the Civil War, British officers became very concerned that the large and now experienced army might turn its attention North, as they had some 50 years prior. The Civil War was thus a direct catalyst for Canadian confederation.
A direct American invasion was not a catalyst for confederation. Expansion westward was seen as vital, and America’s rapid growth made the endeavour even more vital, lest American immigrants seize Canadian land.
No one feared the American army would turn north. They could have crushed Canada, but peace between Canada and the US was seen as assured as long as the UK wanted it.
Perhaps not a direct catalyst as it was the Fenian Raids, in particular the battle of Ridgeway, that led to Canadian Confederation. The Fenians were largely Union Army veterans of the Civil War. Lincoln's decision to allow the formation of ethnic Irish regiments to aid recruitment allowed for the military organization and training of the Fenian Brotherhood.
In fact, there were some men (Irish nationalists) who gained military experience during the Civil War that were involved in armed raids into Canada from 1865-1871. Encyclopedia article: https://www.britannica.com/event/Fenian-raids
The US took the oregon territories from the british empire in the 1840s. Even before the civil war, the british empire was in no position to challenge the US in north america. America was focused on western expansion to the pacific before and after the civil war, not to worthless canadian tundra and the frigid arctic.
* Miller and Chesney’s lectures describe the course of the war up to that point, with Chesney focussing first on fighting in Virginia and then on operations in the west and south, such as Sherman’s March to the Sea
* In his lectures, Chesney laments that Sherman, in his March to the Sea near the end of the war, ‘has given no voucher or note anywhere for the supplies he has seized [from civilians]’ and expresses concern about whether the North and South could be reconciled, given the brutality of the conflict
* The combat between the Monitor and the Merrimac, notable for being the first clash between ironclad ships, is referenced but purposely not discussed because ‘the result has not influenced the military progress of the war’
* In some cases, the conduct of the Civil War was used by British officers to justify their own opinions of how the UK should prepare its military for future wars
* The RUSI lectures demonstrate the challenges of following a war as it is occurring from a distance, the disappointment with the Union’s military performance early in the war and the manner in which foreign conflicts were mobilised to justify the policies of people like the Duke of Cambridge
Not enough, actually. The American Civil War was the first big war where railroads and telegraph lines allowed coordinated operations over a large area, and machine guns and repeating rifles allowed killing large numbers of advancing troops. Grant got this; he wrote "War is Progressive", meaning that there was progress through technology. This was a radical idea in military thinking at the time. Most European military leaders didn't get that until WWI. They were still trying mass charges. Which, against machine guns, absolutely does not work.
> The American Civil War was the first big war where railroads and telegraph lines allowed coordinated operations over a large area, and machine guns and repeating rifles allowed killing large numbers of advancing troops.
Hi, the Crimean War would like to remind you that it existed.
It also featured a little bit of trench warfare. I imagine the European observers who saw that were like "Huh, definitely not important, let's not come up with strategies to counter this sort of thing" and then forgot about it for the next 50 years or so.
The missing ingredient that prevented the ACW from turning into static trench warfare similar to the later Western Front was probably barbed wire, which was only patented in 1867.
Presumably also the rate of fire of WW1 weapons. While the ACW had Gatling guns and canons, the rate of fire during WW1 far exceeded anything seen before. The only protection was a trench
In fairness, I think people thought the Eastern and Southern armies fought in a "civilized" manner.
It's just that the Western armies and Western generals came in, and they fought in a significantly different fashion. You can call the West of the Union more "modern". Or "pragmatic". Or maybe "barbaric" is the right word.
No one wanted to be seen as being "Barbaric". Except Western armies, who really didn't care what people thought about them. (At least, not as much as they cared about their orders.)
I just can't see how that can be true - 'we're going to murder you all, but we're going to do it with good manners because otherwise people will think we're bad'??
It seems way more likely to be 'cargo cult' type learning where something worked for centuries and so got formalised and taught rigidly?
Any good sources on this, it must have been covered on AskHistorians!?
I mean, it had been 50 years, it wasn't like there had been another war fought 10 years prior that also devolved into trench warfare that they completely failed to learn anything from.
I think the real answer and probably why the article is a bit light on actual anecdotes, is that Britain or its military at the time probably didn't think much of it all, especially from a military point of view. Plus they were super busy with imperial concerns, especially in the British Raj post-1857 rebellion.
The U.S., although gaining steam economically (pun intended), was still a backwater, rural, nation isolated by a whole lot of ocean (edit: I meant all this from a military point of view). I am sure the abolitionists in power in Parliament were interested in the outcome of the war from that point of view, but it was really of very little consequence to UK or Europe as a whole.
The US was economically beginning to be involved on the world level, but wasn't really a "power worth considering" until after WWI, partially just because of distance.
yeah, this was really my point.
A (maybe terrible) modern analogy is how concerned would we be with a civil war in say, South America, where a significant chunk of our lithium comes from? We would probably be concerned, but our economic and military clout means that we would always be the customer for whoever won that civil war.
Well yeah you are correct, and I wrote clumsily. That was meant to read 'although the U.S. was gaining steam economically, it was not of much consequence militarily'
> The U.S., although gaining steam economically (pun intended), was still a backwater, rural, nation isolated by a whole lot of ocean
A "backwater"? That forced the 49th parallel on the british in the 1810s? That took oregon territories from the british in the 1840s? The "backwater" that "took" louisiana territories from france and alaska from the russians? The "backwater" that took texas,california,et al from mexico? The "backwater" that took control over the yangtze river from china in 1854?
Quite a few European powers embedded observers with both sides of the conflict. The application of improved small arms and artillery was something that military minds were very interested in, to see how it played out in a large scale conflict.
Would have taken quite a while to be noticed, given the speed of communication and lack of American military presence overseas. Compared to the British Empire.
Not true. By 1860, the US was of comparable size to the UK and France, and had a similar GDP per capita to the UK. De Tocqueville‘s “Democracy in America” had introduced Europe to America’s prosperity in the 1830s and 1840s, so it wasn’t unknown.
The war might not have been militarily relevant to Europeans, but that doesn’t mean people weren’t paying attention. The US was as big and as rich as the European powers at that point. It’s like today: If France broke out in a civil war it would be all over the news 24/7.
Militarily Europe walked away with simple caricatures of the war, but the lionization of Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was (rightly) recognized as a new kind of general - one that would be far more familiar in World War I than in the Napoleonic War. This led to a lot of fame.
Generally, the US revolutionary war was viewed very positively in parts of Europe. That upstart new world was finally in its place and would now tear itself to pieces without European governance. Britain considered entering the war early on(on the southern side!) and benefited from the economic collapse of the Americas. The British commercial fleets went from near-parity with the US merchant marine to unquestioned ruler of the commercial seas by the devastation of the blockades and the lack of insurance underwriting for north or south flagged vehicles.
But a lot of things were missed millitary that they would learn in 1914. The role of rail lines and junctions, and the early signs of trench warfare and total war were the only thing that could break near-industrial societies. The potential of armored battleships and submarines. (Though to be fair, imagine how much history would have changed if the Turtle had detonated its torpedo in the Revolutionary War!) These lessons would be learned a hard way sixty years later.
> What did British officers think of the American civil war as it was happening?
Go to the source.
Here is a book written by Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, a British officer who traveled with the Confederate army in 1863. He is well known due to appearing in the movie Gettysburg based on The Killer Angels book. Three Months in the Southern States: April, June, 1863.
https://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/fremantle/fremantle.html
I think the world would collectively shit its pants. The world's largest economy and military suddenly splintering while in control of several thousand nuclear weapons? It would seem like Armageddon.
The us is far from the USSR - yet the USSR had so many nukes, the world treated them with kid gloves, for good or bad. Maybe after we in the US finish killing each other over imaginary grievances (is Tom Hanks really a pedophile who kills kids for their hormones, I can't believe I live in a country where anyone considers such idiocy) what will be left of the cities and rural areas.
America's allies would probably not support a side unless there was going to be a clear winner OR it was in that nation's interest to do so.
America's enemies maybe would pick a side in an attempt to destabilize the country more... But I think a splintered America would be extremely reluctant to accept help from Russia/China.
They thought the Confederate and US commanders lacked training, while Stanning for Lee. And generally thought that there was not much to learn that was applicable to European wars.
This resulted in “stiffness in the lines and clumsiness in management and direction of troops” as large divisions of the army fully relied on their higher officers to direct all movement. “The loss of an upper-level commander,” Scheibert states, “Would cripple advance and retard again in battle.”
Interesting, this kind of criticism is leveled at the Russian army today.
Why do you call it a civil war? In a civil war two parties fight for dominance over the country - England’s and Russian’s civil wars, more than two hundred years apart, are great example. In that war, South did not want to dominate North but secede. It seems calling the conflict “a
Civil war” just follows Northern narrative.
I upvoted because it's an interesting point: but I think your definition of 'civil war' is just wrong. It's people in a single nation/people group fighting to resolve differences. Limiting it to exclude things like secession is an unnatural split that doesn't have any obvious benefits. Like, some people end up fighting because 'their' side is being attacked, they don't wish for dominance but only survival ... you'd be deciding for each individual person if it was a civil war or not.
Luckily the US Navy wasn't doing so hot, and so the only real places to get worried were Canada and Mexico, as neither army had worked out how to walk on water.
without facts, I would expect some central Asian horse army to have 200,000 humans, far earlier than that.. Persian and Egyptian armies were large at different times too.. sounds uninformed..
As far as I know Qing military organization was weird for the time. There was no single central Chinese Army as such. There were some forces which officially reported to the Imperial government (the Green Standard and the Eight Banners), but these were of limited use. The armies that put down the Taiping Rebellion were raised by local governors, and were loyal to them not to the Emperor.
If we and the French could just help the Confederates a bit more America might be ripe for reconquest! The French are already in Mexico and we have ships in Canada! The mad king was a fool for letting those backwards colonists break away in the first place.
Those darn Russian fleets showing up in 1863 in NY and SF with sealed orders to attack anyone who attacked the US! How dare they, those Russians will pay!
Get those Freemasonic/B'nai B'rith networks pumping out more confederate spies!
Cotton cotton cotton
That Lord Palmerston and his Zoo!
Whew, they didnt find our connections to John Wilkes Booth.
The Civil War in America absolutely dominated the British national conversation, especially in the early years of the war. Politicians followed the conflict closely, and there were even several debates in Parliament over British policy toward the conflict.
Frequently discussed was a line that a lot of Americans would recognize today, of "when should Britain get involved??" because of the destructiveness of the conflict. Prime Minister Palmerston & Foreign Secretary Russell spent a lot of time maneuvering and deflecting calls for Britain to get involved or pick a side.
A few other bits I found surprising when studying this topic—
Strongly recommend A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War by Amanda Foreman. Brilliant book, and a page-turner.It should be understood that the british empire was at the peak of economic dependence on the raw material coming from the "new world" at the onset of the civil war; in particular, cotton exports for consumption by british textile mills [1].
> By the late 1850s, cotton grown in the United States accounted for 77 percent of the 800 million pounds of cotton consumed in Britain. It also accounted for 90 percent of the 192 million pounds used in France, 60 percent of the 115 million pounds spun in the Zollverein, and 92 percent of the 102 million pounds manufactured in Russia.
One reason that there was support for the confederacy was the fear that the outcome of the war would lead to the end of access to abundant and cheap cotton (due to export duties, end of slavery, etc.).
One of the outcomes of the US Civil War was that the British Empire realized a need to "diversify" their sources, resulting in increasingly imperialistic behavior in India and Egypt, among others.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/12/empire-... the whole book is a fantastic peek behind the curtains of the history of global capital markets
And the reason why Britain wanted those raw resources was because it was the epicenter of the industrial revolution. Manchester was nicknamed "Cottonopolis"... full of cotton mills driven by water and then steam, and connected by the first inter-city railway. Cotton picked by slaves in the U.S. south was the main source of raw materials for these factories.
I’m sorry but this is profoundly and aggressively incorrect. The civil war was not reframed after the fact to be about slavery, quite the opposite in fact. The ‘reframing’ is in fact what you’ve tried to assert, in that it was supposedly a matter of economics rather than slavery (though of course other factors were certainly at play). It’s part of the ‘lost cause’ narrative furthered by the southern states after the civil war.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederac...
https://imperialglobalexeter.com/2015/03/02/debunking-the-ci...
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/the-lost-c...
> The civil war was not reframed after the fact to be about slavery, quite the opposite in fact.
Should I believe you or lincoln?
'...My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery...'
https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/greele...
If the civil war was about freeing slaves, why did lincoln wait so long to end slavery? Why didn't he do it immediately?
> It’s part of the ‘lost cause’ narrative furthered by the southern states after the civil war.
Who cares as long as it is true? I'm not a southerner. Not a fan of the confederacy.
Is your assertion that racist white northerners fought a war against racist white southerners to free black people? Does that make any sense to you? Have you looked into lincoln's opinions of black people?
"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races [applause]—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality..."
This document was simultaneously published by the very committee that issued the initial ordinance of secession in South Carolina, and it explains the decision to secede at great length. It is all about slavery:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Address_of_the_People_of_...
Additionally, articles of secession from other states also explicitly mention slavery in the actual text of the law, including Alabama's ordinance that proposed the Montgomery Convention at which the Confederacy was founded. Even more states explain it in similar justifying documents.
The vice president of the Confederacy delivered a speech establishing slavery as the primary motivator of secession: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech
Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, is on record before the war explaining slavery as cause, and after the war claiming it was about states' rights (to practice slavery).
This whole debate is semantics and pedantics about the word cause. The reality is that it doesn't make sense to reduce history to a single factor.
The south wanted to secede because the union was threatening their economic interests which relied on slavery. The union did not want the south to secede for their own reasons, of which slavery was not the foremost.
You can not remove any part of that explanation and still describe the "cause" of the war.
The war would not have happened if slaves didn't have economic value. The war would not have happened if the north was indifferent to the south leaving.
Trying to reduce things further than this is a fools errand.
Your linked document is a great example of this. It discusses a great many things. The first half is a history of grievances about states rights and failures of the union to uphold the constitution.
It starts to talk about slavery about half way through if you ctrl-f.
Anyone arguing for their singular preferred cause can find supporting evidence in it because the "cause" of the war was the interaction of multiple factors, so evidence exists for all of them.
The problem is that showing evidence that one factor was critical to the start of the war does not prove that other critical factors do not exist.
You’re missing the point. It’s one and the same. Slaves were valuable economic assets whose value was diminishing as industrialization intensified.
The slavers wanted to conquer the west with slaves to stay relevant. Slavery was about wealth and control, in losing control of poor white people. The northern industrialists wanted cotton. Abolitionists saw the moral disgrace of slavery as an evil. Lincoln was more moderate and prioritized the nation.
The “states rights” bullshit was always bullshit. But then “get shot to keep rich aristocrats rich” isn’t a compelling battle cry. Conversely, the poor Irish and others participating in draft riots saw abolition as competition from the one strata of society lower then them.
Hence, the noble abstract goals of “preserving the union” and “protection our sacred rights” are front and center.
> The slavers wanted to conquer the west with slaves to stay relevant.
Yes, I believe that's why they rejected the Corwin Amendment compromise, which would have allowed them to keep slavery in states that already had it. That deal didn't allow them to use slaves in the west, so they didn't like it.
This is another thing Lincoln said: "One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves not distributed generally over the union but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen perpetuate and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. [...] Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~ that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" (https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/lincoln-second...)
But hey, the Union wasn't the party who forced the conflict. Let's hear from Alexander Stephens, VP of the CSA, instead:
> Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone 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 normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
(https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto...)
You may be shocked to hear this, but Lincoln was a politician and was occasionally slightly disingenuous in order to achieve his political agenda. There wasn't public support for a war to end slavery. There was public support for a war to preserve the union.
Here's another quote from Lincoln:
"'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other."
He could claim as much as he wanted, once the war started, that his goal was to restore the Union even at the expense of continuing to tolerate slavery, but there was no way the Confederates could possibly take him at his word when he said so.
How do you explain the South's century of aggressive open racism after the civil war in your "it was just economic" theory?
It was about slavery, racism was DEEPLY involved in US slavery, and racism and racists didn't just go away after the civil war.
Sometimes it's as simple as people say it is, over and over and over in their defense of slavery and their post-Civil-War racist laws and propaganda.
You don't need to try to save their reputations. Let them be remembered as the assholes they were.
"aggressive racism wasn't really seen in the south before the Civil War" is absurd and only supportable if you don't consider the treatment of the slaves. There was a ton of brutality, and you're sitting here saying there wasn't any aggression.
It's not dissimilar to the US wars in the middle east: The North toppled an evil government, freed some people, but didn't finish the job. So assholes ended back up in charge. They couldn't go quite as far, or quite go all ISIS, they had to settle for just the KKK, because it was all one country again, but somehow the losers didn't lose all that much in the long run.
The 1800s were brutal everywhere, but slavery is an inherently corrupt system. I can certainly imagine merciful white masters who genuinely cared for their slaves, but slavery is such a cut and dry obvious violation of human rights that it's not worth considering. A single person being considered, even in the most benign technical sense, property is an atrocity. We can and perhaps should commemorate those who worked very hard to salvage justice in an inherently just system, but we're still trying to wash the stains of racial injustice within our society today. Any time spent uplifting these persons must unfortunately be set aside to provide equity to those long ignored.
All of that being said, I can't say for certain that you're being intellectually honest, you're conflating quite a few things with crucial nuance. As an example, you claim black slave families were closer and more stable, because they were penned in and forced to breed together to provide additional laborers who would replace them. Have you ever considered that divorced families are better off than unhappy marriages? Have you considered that perhaps marriages aren't entirely necessary, and modern black culture isn't well suited to traditional marriage norms codified by white JudeoChristian people? If you're heart is in the right place, I'd imagine you could tell us a story of a true ally to black slaves in the south. One whom was raised in a toxic racist environment, but learned to work within a inherently broken system to provide some sense of equity.
I agree largely with your first paragraph! The world is a better place if people don't have total coercive power over others, self determination all the way!(obviously that statement lends to the subject and the great irony of the south). Long ignored.. the last 155 years is injustice made my the winners! Jim Crow laws were invented and wide spread in the north(1938 massachussets) before they went south.
Oif you know anything about the old south, white families penned themselves to the land they were on and married those in litteral proximities. Your son was going to marry the neighbors daughter. Thats why they were so defensive of thier land. It had been held closely for generations. Your using modern stanards of moving around constatly and marrying based on 60's free love standards. This was also not too uncommon of a stance made by west africans in their bative lands. Thats why africa is dense of language families, territorial familial rule. The anglo/Irish(ulster etc..)were very similiar in that regard. A story? Lincoln married a prominent kentucky slave holding white woman and sold her slaves for profit. Robert E lee was the executor of his wifes estate, and followed her fathers bequeathing of his slaves freedoms.
Nehemiah Adams? Really? Gross.
"Seriously", "you're citing a 19th century weirdo against over a century of historical research on the treatment of slaves, virtually all of which repudiates that weirdo", comma, "gross".
Further, "I'm not a proponent of slavery" is a sequence of words that loses a lot of its power when it follows a direct assertion that people may have been better off under slavery, as not only Nehemiah Adams believed, but you, from your own comment, also seem to as well?
"Black slave families were closer and more stable(parental seperation rates) than they are now". Gross! The principle of charity is a thing, but there are limits to charity.
So your big criticisim of Nehemiah is that he is 1. He is a weirdo? 2. I can list more names who think as I do than I can count to the contrary?
No, I think my criticism has more to do with the fact that Adams felt like the antebellum south was much to be admired for keeping its negroes off the street at night, much as advocates for the south apparently (here's those pesky historians again) were happy to point out the low rates of rape and sexual assault against white women in the south --- who, after all, would risk imprisonment assaulting a white woman, when there were so many Black slaves that could be raped without consequence. Family stability. Alabama forbade the sale of enslaved children without their mother --- until they reached 5 years of age.
Nehemiah Adams? Really? Gross.
... of white slave owners raping Black slaves? That's your comeback?
Are you sure you want to keep talking about this?
It happened so often that Alabama had a law forbidding the sale of children before the age of 5.
Give me a literal number. It's a Class B misdemeanor to sell, barter, or offer the fur of a domestic dog or cat. Does that happen regularly? Your conflating that it happened. A law was put in the books. And so it must happen every day? Or maybe it happens enough to make you ucomfortable? I agreed that it happened. I nnever said that its not possible it happened multiple times. Your implicitly suggesting that this was a regular and normal occurance. Show me litteral numbers
Unfortunately, hard numbers are impossible to quantify, although rough estimates can be made based on what records do exist, as well as memoirs, diaries, and other such sources. Much of the most compelling evidence comes from recollections offered after slavery, when the formerly enslaved were able to give some voice. In Mississippi, for example, former enslaved persons registering marriages with the Union authorities in 1864-65 provides information to the clergy about their previous marital status. Over 8,000 black persons registered marriages in the period, and 17.4 percent of them included that they had been married before, and had it broken up by sale. Specifically of those who had been previously married, 40.8 percent stated that force has been the reason for its end. Other similar records bear out similar numbers, reflecting roughly ⅓ of enslaved marriages ended forcibly by white owners breaking apart the couple.
But sure. Family stability. A virtue of slavery.
You realise that single parenthood is a choice (I'm a single parent by choice), whereas having your family separated under slavery is not, right?
The comparison should be prevalence of kidnapping in modern times vs family separation under slavery.
An interesting point that makes me stpo and think for a moment However, are you saying all single parents choose to be single parents? Do you speak for all single parents? My mother left my father to handle myself and siblings. I can tell you he didnt choose to be left behind.
> My mother left my father to handle myself and siblings. I can tell you he didnt choose to be left behind.
It was a choice made by a private citizen to choose their own autonomy.
That's very different to a choice made by one person on the life of another, enforced by the power of the state.
Didnt mean to send yet. Your last point is excellent though! I agree
> How do you explain the South's century of aggressive open racism after the civil war in your "it was just economic" theory?
"Is your assertion that racist white northerners fought a war against racist white southerners to free black people?". What about racist white northerners and racist white southerners confused you?
> You don't need to try to save their reputations. Let them be remembered as the assholes they were.
Saving their reputation by calling them racist white southerners?
You do realize that some northern states had slaves too during the civil war. And the emancipation proclamation only freed the slaves in the south.
If you want to learn what the civil war was really about go look into why west virginia seceded from virgina. Do you think west virginians were less racist than the rest of virginians? Or do you think it was economic?
History makes it pretty clear that southerners were, on the whole, much more openly and institutionally racist than northerners both before and after the Civil War.
The ones that seceded said it was about slavery. Many times. You don't believe them. Why? Why do you care enough to claim that you know their motives better than everyone else?
West Virginia split because they didn't want to go along with Virginia's secession. That's something that happened after the cause, not something that can tell you the cause, though! Maryland and Delaware were less dominated by the slave-holding interests. Its not that interesting.
> Do you think west virginians were less racist than the rest of virginians? Or do you think it was economic?
It was economic in the sense that slavery was not central to West Virginia's economy, but was central to not-West Virginia's economy. A map makes this pretty apparent[0]. The argument isn't that the was was about racism, but about slavery. Those are often related, but aren't precisely the same.
[0]: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3881e.cw1047000/
> Should I believe you or lincoln?
Both.
The rebellion was about slavery for the rebels and preserving the Union for the Union.
GP addressed the former, Lincoln spoke for the latter.
It took me about five minutes to find South Carolina's declaration of secession. And the first thing that document mentions is slavery:
"In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”"
South Carolina didn't secede because the North wanted to abolish slavery. They seceded because the North refused to return slaves to the South.
Many Northerners took a long time to follow this truth to its logical conclusion: either the North would have to accede to Southern demands and honor their claims to other human beings as property, or they would have to abolish slavery entirely.
While it discusses slavery, the first thing mentioned is constitutional obligations.
The reality, is the south didn’t feel it was being represented. It felt it would be better on its own (regardless of the slave issue, there’s a whole mess there).
The north, decided it wasn’t going to let the south go its own way. That’s why the south calls it “the war of northern aggression”. (I say this from their perspective) First the north didn’t respect property rights, then it actively attempted to destroy the south’s economy (through tariffs, etc), then it invaded, murdered and seized its wealth and land.
Consider instead, then, Mississippi. Here is the second paragraph of their declaration of secession:
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin."
In other words: they hold that slavery is the foundation of their economy and commerce; that black slaves in particular are the best suited for labor, by virtue of some racist justifications; and that the institution of slavery is under imminent threat of abolition and therefore they need to secede in order to maintain the slavery status quo.
The Vice President of the Confederacy:
“The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact.
Lettergram, the "constitutional obligations" the first paragraph takes issue with are stipulated in the second paragraph: The obligation to return escaped slaves to their owners.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself for your conduct in this discussion. And god help you if you walk away from here making the same claims as you have in this thread: they will lead you down into the dark.
Lmao what? How many books have you read on this subject? How many lectures attended? Im not making a moral, emotional, spiritual, statement, I’m making a factual one. To be clear, I support maximum liberty, I’m personally a libertarian. But that doesn’t mean I can’t assess a situation.
The south had decades of arguing the north was attempting to suppress them. The slavery issue was one of many related issues. This really started installing the constitution and usurping the articles of confederation; without appropriate approvals.
It’s like today in the United States, most of the middle (red) states believe life begins at conception. The states on the coasts, plus IL and CO (blue) states have laws implying they won’t protect life until after it leaves the womb. Morally, this triggers the states in the center of the country. The states on the coast argue it’s the “mother’s right to stop the birth”.
I’m not making a moral argument, but describing a fact.
Now, one could argue states rights are the real issue here. Because all the latest political craziness around this topic is simply reverting the idea states set the rights. Each state can run itself how it sees fit. The blue states want to impose their will on the red states (making abortion legal nation wide). I’m sure the opposite would be true if the red states and overwhelming control.
But there’s a ton more the red and blue states are arguing over, this is just one issue. Arguably, it’s the same discussion as slavery - who is a person and when.
The conflict that is continuing to escalate in the U.S. is about so much more. But I think in the end may come down to issues like “states rights”. In reality, the conflict is mostly an urban-rural divide that has gone back to the countries founding.
Look, all I can speak to is the quality of your engagement with me here. You misread a primary source which plainly states that slave labor was the precipitating issue in the conflict over state's rights which blossomed into open rebellion and bloody war. That doesn't reflect well or poorly on your reading or understanding, but it does reflect poorly on the quality of your intellectual engagement with me.
I agree that we are seeing the same issues play out with abortion, with some states seeking to pass statutes similar to the Fugitive Slave Act to prevent their citizens from obtaining abortion services in neighboring states. If they hold firmly to that perspective, then we may come to an ill end again.
But to hold the opinion that we could avoid a second Civil War by simply honoring states' rights is to willfully ignore history: the political leaders of North and South tested the states' rights framework on the problem of slavery, and it failed.
I quote another primary source, Ulysses S. Grant, who makes this case far more clearly than I can:
For some years before the war began it was a trite saying among some politicians that "A state half slave and half free cannot exist." All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down. I took no part myself in any such view of the case at the time, but since the war is over, reviewing the whole question, I have come to the conclusion that the saying is quite true.
Slavery was an institution that required unusual guarantees for its security wherever it existed; and in a country like ours where the larger portion of it was free territory inhabited by an intelligent and well-to-do population, the people would naturally have but little sympathy with demands upon them for its protection. Hence the people of the South were dependent upon keeping control of the general government to secure the perpetuation of their favorite institution. They were enabled to maintain this control long after the States where slavery existed had ceased to have the controlling power, through the assistance they received from odd men here and there throughout the Northern States. They saw their power waning, and this led them to encroach upon the prerogatives and independence of the Northern States by enacting such laws as the Fugitive Slave Law. By this law every Northern man was obliged, when properly summoned, to turn out and help apprehend the runaway slave of a Southern man. Northern marshals became slave-catchers, and Northern courts had to contribute to the support and protection of the institution.
This was a degradation which the North would not permit any longer than until they could get the power to expunge such laws from the statute books. Prior to the time of these encroachments the great majority of the people of the North had no particular quarrel with slavery, so long as they were not forced to have it themselves. But they were not willing to play the role of police for the South in the protection of this particular institution.
In the early days of the country, before we had railroads, telegraphs and steamboats—in a word, rapid transit of any sort—the States were each almost a separate nationality. At that time the subject of slavery caused but little or no disturbance to the public mind. But the country grew, rapid transit was established, and trade and commerce between the States got to be so much greater than before, that the power of the National government became more felt and recognized and, therefore, had to be enlisted in the cause of this institution.
> Look, all I can speak to is the quality of your engagement with me here. You misread a primary source which plainly states that slave labor was the precipitating issue in the conflict over state's rights which blossomed into open rebellion and bloody war.
I didn’t misread it, I read it correctly. Others put meaning into the slave debate, at the time this wasn’t as big as we make it today - it was propaganda and the rewriting of history that made it larger. Primary sources at the time definitely emphasize it, but there are a whole plethora of issues. Further, your coming at the discussion from your position in history today; projecting, if you will. At the start of the war and prior to it, there were decades of the north undermining the south. The fact there was a “fugitive slave act” was because of that undermining by the north.
Regardless, what I was trying to convey was a more factual basis for a discussion. Even in this discussion, the judgement is thick. I try not to portray a judgment, rather focusing on factual statements.
Though, to your point I think we mostly agree and I don’t think the civil war was avoidable. I just view it as a much larger conflict than slavery and I think that’s revisionist history to believe it was the primary cause.
From the founding of this country there have been two waring factions — the federalist and the anti-federalist. Rural vs urban. Populist vs elitist. Democrat vs Republican. Effectively, “what is American”.
It hasn’t changed, really. We’re still having the same debates, pro-life or pro-abortion. The idea behind a Republic is we can resolve those differences and allow greater regional freedom. We have mechanisms of government that enable no faction to dominate (though that’s being eroded). The original idea was states would also leave the union if they so chose - which clearly the northern states wouldn’t allow.
Personally, my fear is that we’re sliding into another “hot” period of the civil war. When we can’t resolve differences AND can’t leave, then war is inevitable.
> I didn’t misread it, I read it correctly. Others put meaning into the slave debate, at the time this wasn’t as big as we make it today - it was propaganda and the rewriting of history that made it larger.
The first two paragraphs of South Carolina's articles of secession say, "We are seceding because our constitutional right to own slaves is being violated by northern states."
The outcome of the slave issue had serious consequences for the propertied class in the South, too. Did you know that, apart from Southern slave owners, most slave owners of the era were paid for their slaves when they were freed? Even the citizens of Haiti, who earned their freedom through violent rebellion, were eventually forced to repay France for "stealing" themselves for their owners.
It's not propaganda to point at the words of the slave states; it's propaganda to throw sand in the eyes of people seeking to understand what actually happened. I grew up in Mississippi; I saw the battlefield of Vicksburg as a child, I understand the need to relate to those folks. And I understand the feelings of injustice that well up when you and your community are reductively maligned as being nothing but outright racists, or when a statement like "The Civil War was fought over slavery" is then extrapolated to a statement as obviously untrue as "All southerners fought in the war so that they could preserve slavery."
But southerners are full of self-justifying lies, too.
> The fact there was a “fugitive slave act” was because of that undermining by the north.
And what else was the North to do? Do you believe that slavery is immoral? If a runaway slave hitched a train into your state and knocked on your front door, would you send them back to bondage?
This is why the legal question is a dodge: the moral question speaks too strongly. Read the passage I quoted from Grant again, top to bottom. He is as vivid on the question as any writer I have read. And he was there, and you and I were not.
> The reality, is the south didn’t feel it was being represented.
They received additional representation for their slaves, even though slaves couldn't vote. Just more lies on top of lies.
> First the north didn’t respect property rights
The "property" in question being "human beings"
> then it invaded, murdered and seized its wealth and land.
Sounds like justice to me. And most of that land was given back, instead of being distributed to freed slaves as reparation. Which would have been the right thing to do.
Constitutional obligations to assist in slavery. There's no cause for the Civil War that you can point to that isn't predicated on slavery.
No, they seceded after the north stopped respecting slavery, when "an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation."
They call out Lincoln's inauguration and his perceived attitude on slavery, not tarrifs:
"On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States. "
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp
> But the rebels seceded after the north raised tariffs
Wrong. The tariff bill only passed because the Democrats lost the votes in the Senate that had stopped it earlier in the same session of Congress because the states that had seceded weren't represented anymore. Literally all the South had to do to avoid the tariff bill was not secede.
With the war over, it's really easy for the side that doesn't depend on slavery for its economy to work to go out and put a feather in their cap by saying, "See? We're the good guys."
Read what the states who left the union had to say about it:
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...
It was slavery.
An excerpt from one state:
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. "
Don't ask Lincoln, he's not the one who seceded.
Ask the states who left. South Carolina, for instance, directly blames the North's increasing hostility towards slavery - https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp :
"The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation. "
> One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln's_second_inaug...
Lincoln wanted to save the union. He did not care about slaves (there was slavery in the north too, but the economy did not depend on it)
The South seceded because of the threat to slavery and the writing on the wall about the way that was going.
So, yes, the USA Civil War was about slavery. The fact that Lincoln did not fight "for the slaves" or even "free the slaves" (the slaves in the North were not freed by the Emancipation Declaration" but by the Thirteenth Amendment) is not relevant.
It is not "semantics", it is a simple fact.
You said it yourself:
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union"
The North wanted to keep the country together when they went into the war. Tax considerations weren't part of the equation.
I’ve always wondered why people reframing the civil war to be about economics rather than slavery, don’t consider slaves are part of the economy (and that slavery itself is a perversion of an economic system).
If you value free market economics, like we so often do today, then step one ought to be free mobility of labor which means laborers ought to be literally free of physical chains binding them to their “employers”.
You have to ask - if there was no cotten export industry of such a scale, would we of had still had slavery at the scale it was in that era?
If nothing replaced cotton, then probably not, but there are other goods than could have substituted. And of course, eventually someone would have had the bright idea of using slaves in factories and coal mines. In the end it’s hard to avoid slavery by merely being resource poor.
Even in the worst environments, some small elite will always benefit by enslaving the rest of the populace. Take for example, the Danes taking English slaves. It was not an economy bursting with productivity and wealth, yet slavery still existed because “elite” warriors didn’t want to wash their own clothes or grow their own crops or make their own entertainment.
This is why I called slavery an economic perversion. There is no job that can’t be done by someone enslaved. Slaves may start as field workers, but they eventually become supervisors. From bed warmers to dancers, singers, and composers. From household servants, they become palace chefs. From nannies they become tutors. From handmaids they become house stewards and accountants. If the practice isn’t stamped out (or restricted via laws such as a caste system since mere social pressure won’t stop the elite from maximizing profit from more educated slaves), it just grows more varied.
I would bet if institutional slavery existed legally today, even computer programmers would face stiff competition from that source rather than having to worry about jobs being outsourced.
It is interesting that the emancipation proclamation did not free the slaves of the northern and northern occupied states, despite that being there "main concern"
The main concern of the southern states was slavery. The main concern of the north was continuance of the Union as such.
That is, the intent behind seccession was to maintain slavery. The intent behind the emancipation proclamation wasn't (solely) to end slavery, but to encourage rebellion by enslaved southerners.
South Carolina did succeede due largely to its fear that the federal government would nationally abolish slavery. President Buchanan, before leaving office, made a gentlemans agreement that he would leave alone a largely abandoned sand bar military base that was run by South Carolinians inside the boundary of said state. In the middle of the night, a federal navy ship, who took all the armamments from a well established nearby federal military base, went to fort sumter and forced out the occupants by bayonet(kind of aggresive?/s) Cabinet members of Lincolns presidency warned him not to send reinforcements, which they were sure would further provoke sentiments of military provocation. He did anyway. This pissed off the SCians who decided, to hell with it no one gets this sand bar, and so they destroyed the base by cannon fire with no one there to nullify either parties claim. No one died, largely because no one was supposed too. Lincoln, then, decided he should call on the remaining states to build one of the largest armies assembled by the federal goverment to forcibly take back south carolina. This extereme overreaction to the situation is the well known historical reason why the rest of the states promptly left the union in its fear of the clear millitary power grab that was occuring before their eyes. Many powerful southerners did not want their home states succeed, including Robert E Lee! Note: What I did not say in the second to last sentence was that there wasn't sentiment of the follower states of protecting slavery.
Lincoln, like a good lawyer, modified the definition of a word, union, from (meriam webster 1. the formation of a single political unit[okay sure, but read on] from two or more separate and independent. Most dicts use the word "confederacy" for this definition as well) a voluntary agreement between indepenent parts, to involuntary permanance. Did he use trade embargoes like a peace seeking consolidator would? Regardless of your opinion on slavery's involvement, or how righteous either side was, Lincoln, at best, poorly* navigated the waters of the time and was the clear cause of military escalation bringing the greatest casualty of americans lives by population of its respective era.
> Lincoln, then, decided he should call on the remaining states to build one of the largest armies assembled by the federal goverment to forcibly take back south carolina. This extereme overreaction to the situation is the well known historical reason why the rest of the states promptly left the union in its fear of the clear millitary power grab that was occuring before their eyes.
Interesting claim, but it doesn't hold up. The battle of Ft. Sumpter started in April 1861. South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas had already seceded. Only Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee waited until after the battle.
> Did he use trade embargoes like a peace seeking consolidator would?
He wasn't looking to be a piece seeking consolidator, he was looking to put down a revolt. You're welcome to make the argument that actually it would have been better realpolitik to appease the southern states. In fact, I'd love to see that argument!
Fair! My mistake, a little less than half of the states seceded due to the problem I addressed of excessive force which you have not discredited or properly justified.
Again your second paragraph attacks a small technicality. Your saying destroying a run down building on a sandbar is the same as conquering a 32000 square miles? Or are you saying that ignoring the definitions found in all english dictionaries is null and void for this specific use case? Seperating from a definitional union is not a revolt. If my wife leaves me do i get to threaten her with violence and then beat her if she refuses, then chain her permanently to me?
I suggest you read something as basic as the Wikipedia article on sumpter, basically everything you've said about it is wrong, and I'm wholly uninterested in discussing this with someone from an alternate timeline.
What I will say is first, that trying to equate families and countries is rarely valid, and this case is no exception (declaring yourself divorced, for example, does not make it so, and if you take certain actions after unilaterally claiming your union is solved, your partner would be within their rights to invite state force against you!). And second, that yes, firing cannons on soldiers is usually considered an act of war. Everyone involved knew that, the confederacy was already gearing up for war and some think that SC's intent was specifically to provoke a war. So your argument that it was just friendly ribbing doesn't really stand to scrutiny.
Your just pushing transparent confederate propaganda at this point. Stop apologizing for traitors and insurrectionists.
I mean no, I trust accurate historical sources. I'm just saying the stuff you're spouting is so completely obviously off base that it's directly contradicted by Wikipedia.
Like you're not even trying to go for a thing that is debated. Literally no one pushes the story your telling, you've made it up! I cannot find anything, anything that corroborates any of the stuff you're saying. Sumter wasn't empty when shelled. The reinforcements were sent before Lincoln took office. No one was kicked out at bayonet point. You've created confederate fanfiction!
> the north building a massive army and killing people to conquer northern virginia.
Like how you're pretending the south wasn't also building an army at the same time! Lol.
Its is so far past midnight where I am, Ill come back tomorrow to find sources better than a quick google search can provide. You are right, I jumped the gun on its occupation, thank you for calling me out on that. I think it was the lack of casualties and the fact I have read sources speaking to the intent of SC on damaging the fort and causing a fire storm was its strategy rather than the desire to cause casualties. Perhaps tomorrows search will prove my memory incorrect on that as well. But as for your last question. Where were the southern armamets being built up? Are you speaking to south carolina defending a marginal island fort just outside its own port? Does the third ammendment not strike a resemblance here? How could sc stand idle when a now foreign army is sneaking in just outside their major port in the middle of the night not be of major concern? Especially since it was unoccupied by the federal government, and james buchanan agreed to not have it taken. Its not like south carolina was sending boats to blockade washigton dc or new york or boston. Have I mistaken that stance? The south was segregated by states. Was another state building up forces on the border of pennsylvannia? Ohio? or even illinois? I genuinely have not heard of this and would appreciate tips!
> Where were the southern armamets being built up?
See the wikipedia page:
> Governor Pickens, therefore, ordered that all remaining Federal positions except Fort Sumter were to be seized. State troops quickly occupied Fort Moultrie (capturing 56 guns), Fort Johnson on James Island, and the battery on Morris Island. On December 27, an assault force of 150 men seized the Union-occupied Castle Pinckney fortification, in the harbor close to downtown Charleston, capturing 24 guns and mortars without bloodshed. On December 30, the Federal arsenal in Charleston was captured, resulting in the acquisition of more than 22,000 weapons by the militia. The Confederates promptly made repairs at Fort Moultrie and dozens of new batteries and defense positions were constructed throughout the Charleston harbor area, including an unusual floating battery, and armed with weapons captured from the arsenal.
They were gathering weapons and armaments, and had 6000 men ready to siege Sumter (and it's 90 Union soldier), to start a war! Months later, at first Manassas, the CSA forces (which were mostly the Virginia Militia) at that battle numbered 40,000.
> Does the third ammendment not strike a resemblance here?
Are you saying that South Carolina was still a part of the US, in which case firing on US soldiers was treason?
> How could sc stand idle when a now foreign army is sneaking
They were already there! The Soldiers who eventually moved into Sumter were previously stationed like a half mile away, and had already been besieged and cut off by SC troops. They moved from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter because it was a more defensible position as there were only 90 union troops who were being harassed by more than a thousand SC militia men. That eventually grew to more than 5000!
The Union wasn't building up troops on the border. There were 90 guys in a fort. That's it. There were multiple failed attempts to send them food, because the fort was being blockaded and the soldiers were starving, Lincoln was clear that these weren't attempts to reinforce, but simply to provide supplies. None of that is even remotely controversial.
And of course, multiple high ranking confederates knew this was the start of the war. Quoting the wiki page again:
> James had offered the first shot [at fort Sumter] to Roger Pryor, a noted Virginia secessionist, who declined, saying, "I could not fire the first gun of the war."
and
> Edmund Ruffin, another noted Virginia secessionist, had traveled to Charleston to be present at the beginning of the war, and fired one of the first shots at Sumter after the signal round
They were very intentionally trying to start a war!
We can go ahead and cast it as an economic conflict if we really want -- the conflict between a system based on industrialization and an alternate one based on slavery. But slavery is, as you say, most certainly central to the conflict.
I think the reason you’re getting so much vitriol is that you’re framing this issue without any room for nuance.
It’s accepted that a disagreement over the future economic regime of the Union was core to the American Civil War. Part of that economic future was tariffs, as you highlight. But an even more foundational part was slavery, and it’s role in the economic future of the country. The elites of the North and South vehemently disagreed on the role of slavery in America’s future, and it’s absurd to say this didn’t escalate tensions.
It is not correct to frame slavery as an afterthought. It is not correct to frame the moral issue of slavery as the only reason for the war, because it had enormous economic and political implications beyond its morality.
> It is not correct to frame the moral issue of slavery as the only reason for the war, because it had enormous economic and political implications beyond its morality.
I saw an article that said that by the mid-1800's, the southern states that seceded accounted for half the GDP of the entire US, and slave labour accounted for a majority of that. Abolishing slavery would cripple and impoverish those states, so of course they had to secede. From an economical-political perspective it was the only possible choice.
Imagine that the federal US wanted to prohibit people in California from working with software or media. No more Silicon Valley, no more Hollywood. California would secede in a heartbeat, and every single HN reader living there would strongly support it. Threaten people's way of life, and they'll get kinda angry, regardless of morality.
It's also important to realize that since the southern states were so dependent on slavery, and since people actually have a natural aversion to it, that there existed a system of constant brutal racist propaganda to protect itself. That propaganda was everywhere, it was scientific: Clearly, black people are better suited at working in the sun, cotton requires work in the sun, therefore it is the natural order of things that black people should work the cottonfields. Religious: God rewards the people he loves with prosperity, white plantation owners are the most prosperous, therefore God clearly loves this order of things and wills it so. Political: White nations originating in Europe have subjugated black nations in Africa, and since might makes right, black people from Africa are clearly better off as slaves in America, it's a more civilized life, and therefore the best order of things.
Racism and slavery was simply woven into the fabric of society in a way that's very difficult to imagine today, which is why the reductionism is so misguided. Not being racist or not profiting off of slavery was simply not an option for people living there.
There’s really not a lot of of discussion of foreign trade in the documents the states ratified to enact secession. [0] They sure do talk about slavery quite explicitly though.
[0] - https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...
> There’s really not a lot of of discussion of foreign trade in the documents the states ratified to enact secession.
Because tariffs are a congressional matter, not a state matter. They were trying to justify secession via the states' rights angle. Also, politicians don't like using money as a justification for their actions. It comes off tacky. They want to appear noble and virtuous. Sorta like how nobody invaded iraq for oil. You invade iraq for democracy. Just like the american independence was about "liberty and freedom" not tariffs and the right to steal native land west of the appalachian mountains. "Liberty and freedom" by slave owners. Using your logic, the iraq war was about democracy and the american independence was about freedom. Do you believe russia is invading ukraine to free ukraine from nazis too?
You're claiming they decided to pretend it was about slavery to "appear noble and virtuous." Really??? That's their way of getting GOOD PR? They knew slavery was unpopular with everyone else but them, but they're doubling down on pretending that's their reason instead of tarrifs because they want to look "noble"? OK.
How goddamn stupid is anyone to believe that shit?
Appear noble... to their constituents who were slave owners and racist white southerns?
I think that's what he means.
> Sorta like how nobody invaded iraq for oil. You invade iraq for democracy freedom.
Fictitious WMD, even more fictitious ties to al-Qaeda (and because, as distinct from North Korea, as described by then -Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Iraq “floats on a sea of oil“, notionally foreclosing leverage for non-military pressure against those fictions.) “Democracy” and “freedom” weren't cited as the reasons for going in, but as things we needed to assure in the aftermath of destroying the existing regime for other reasons. (And then later as “wins” that retroactively justified the invasion even if there never were WMD to protect against.)
Read any state’s declaration of secession. Slavery was the direct cause of the war.
Not by the North to end it, by the South to preserve it.
> The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.
> Markets and tariffs were the reason the south seceded.
No, they weren't.
> Lincoln didn't say "end slavery and we shall have the greatest nation on earth".
The South didn't revolt over something Lincoln said, they revolted over the failure to secure their desire for expansion of slavery into the territories, which they read (probably accurately) as foreshadowing eventual abolition of slavery if they remained in the Union.
Now, they misjudged the prospects of rebellion and so hastened the abolition of slavery by rebelling.
> The South didn't revolt over something Lincoln said, they revolted over the failure to secure their desire for expansion of slavery into the territories
There was no such desire on the South's part, although the claim that there was was common in abolitionist propaganda of the time. The South already knew that none of the territories being added to the Union at that time were suitable for the kind of economy based on slavery that they had in the established Southern states.
> which they read (probably accurately) as foreshadowing eventual abolition of slavery if they remained in the Union
No, what they read (probably accurately) as foreshadowing eventual abolition of slavery if they remained in the Union was...the continuing vociferous demands on the part of abolitionists over decades for the abolition of slavery, which continued to gain more political traction over time. Lincoln's election as a Republican just pushed them over the edge (although another strong signal was sent a couple of years before when all of the abolitionists who kept talking about how we should let the legal process work and abide by its decisions, suddenly switched gears and started talking about ignoring the legal process after the Dred Scott decision). There is no need to attribute fictitious motives of "expansion of slavery" to the South to account for secession. The documented historical facts of the abolitionist movement are more than enough.
Interestingly one of the reasons the south began their war over the right to own people was indeed because they were mad they couldn't force other states in the union to treat Black folks as slaves. Read up on the Fugitive Slave Act (https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/fugitive-...)
Ironic considering the modern lost cause argument of the war being over "states' rights". There was one right they were primarily concerned with - owning people.
> they were mad they couldn't force other states in the union to treat Black folks as slaves
Meaning, I take it, that the couldn't trust northern states to actually obey the Fugitive Slave Act? Even though there was an explicit provision in the Constitution about it?
> Ironic considering the modern lost cause argument of the war being over "states rights"
That's not a "modern" argument. It's the argument the south actually made at the time. And as a matter of law, they were right: both the Constitution and Federal law laid a legal duty on northern states, which northern states refused to obey.
Of course, our "modern" view is that it's perfectly OK to ignore a law if you think it's "wrong"; and this was the argument the north made for ignoring the Fugitive Slave Act: that slavery was wrong, so nobody had any duty to obey a law requiring them to support slavery in any way.
Ironic considering that the same "modern" people who make such arguments also talk about how having a rule of law, where people can't just arbitrarily ignore laws they don't like, is a good thing.
The truth is that both sides at the time of the civil war were wrong. The south was wrong because it was using arguments about rights and the rule of law to deny rights to the slaves. But the north was also wrong because it was undermining the very institution of law, which is wrong even if it's in a good cause, because the institution of law is necessary to have a civil society at all.
With the FSA the south was pushing to force free states to kidnap individuals, something that was illegal to do. There's no constitutional provision for allowing kidnapping and enslaving individuals. In fact there are many rights that explicitly disallow that! The south crying about their inability to force free states to enslave people is an example of the hypocrisy of the modern argument that the south primarily fought over "states' rights" and not slavery, which is 100% bullshit. Read what the southern states said about their reasons for exiting the union: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...
The right they talk about? The right to own people. Slavery.
> That's not a "modern" argument
The southern states were concerned with slavery at the time the war started, not "states rights" - as pointed out, they were perfectly happy to attempt to force free states to kidnap people. "States' rights" became the battle cry in the next century, read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy
Prior to then "states' rights" was not something heavily pushed by the south regarding the Civil War, they didn't think that way generally. As pointed out they were happy to reject the northern states' rights to disallow slavery!
> The truth is that both sides at the time of the civil war were wrong.
> But the north was also wrong because it was undermining the very institution of law
No, only the south was wrong here.
> Prior to then "states' rights" was not something heavily pushed by the south, they didn't think that way generally.
You must be joking. Pushing for states' rights by southern states goes back at least all the way to the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions in the late 1790s, and arguably was an important topic for them at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Relying on Wikipedia as your source on a topic like this is not a good idea.
> There's no constitutional provision for allowing kidnapping and enslaving individuals.
If you want to argue that the explicit Constitutional provision about fugitive slaves (Article IV, Section 2, last clause) is inconsistent with other provisions of the Constitution, you can try to make that argument. But just claiming that the Constitution doesn't allow fugitive slaves to be returned to their owners, and calling doing so "kidnapping" without any supporting argument, when the Constitution has an explicit provision that requires fugitive slaves to be returned to their owners, is nonsense. You can't just ignore parts of the Constitution you don't like.
> only the south was wrong here
I don't think you have fully thought through your position.
> you can try to make that argument.
Are you claiming that slavery is constitutional?
How does that square with the 4th amendment against unreasonable search and seizure? The fugitive slave laws allowed anyone to seize anyone they thought might be a slave. Clearly unconstitutional. Also clearly kidnapping! I'd like to hear how you would not consider this kidnapping.
How does it square with the 5th amendment? No one can "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Kidnapping someone clearly violates this amendment.
The 6th and 7th amendments guarantee the right to an impartial jury and a jury trial - however the laws the south wanted to force on the north (a hypocritical violation of states' rights) allowed people to be kidnapped without going through these processes.
You can argue that the constitution is contradictory, but you cannot reasonably argue that the fugitive slave acts do not violate the bill of rights.
> I don't think you have fully thought through your position.
You are ignoring the facts. The south's stated reason for leaving the union was to continue the institution of slavery. The modern "states' rights" argument _regarding the war_ is an attempt to ignore that the state right explicitly called for by those states was the right to own other people.
> Are you claiming that slavery is constitutional?
It was until the Thirteenth Amendment was passed, yes.
I think you have some serious learning to do about the Constitution.
As for how the Bill of Rights was interpreted to be consistent with the fugitive slave provision of the Constitution, that's simple: the jurisprudence of the time did not apply the Bill of Rights to slaves. I'm sure this will seem very shocking to you, but it's quite clear from the historical documents (see, for example, my reference to the Dred Scott decision upthread).
> you cannot reasonably argue that the fugitive slave acts do not violate the bill of rights
Perhaps you can't, but the judges and juries of the time had no problem doing so at all. See above. Even abolitionists did not make this claim. They claimed that slavery was wrong and that laws such as the fugitive slave law were unjust, but they never claimed they were unconstitutional. Their response to provisions like that in the Constitution was to say that the Constitution itself was unjust; for example, William Lloyd Garrison called it "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell". And they were perfectly ok with violating the Constitution in the name of what they believed to be the greater good of abolishing slavery. But they never argued that the Constitution's fugitive slave provision was inconsistent with the Bill of Rights, because nobody believed that to be the case.
> You are ignoring the facts.
No, I'm not. I just appear to have a much better understanding of their historical context than you do.
> If you want to argue that the explicit Constitutional provision about fugitive slaves (Article IV, Section 2, last clause) is inconsistent with other provisions of the Constitution, you can try to make that argument
The fugitive slave provisions of the Constitution were, by definition, consistent with the Constitution, however morally repugnant they were. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, OTOH, provided for the summary detention of accused escaped slaves by affidavit without warrant or probable cause or even any establishment of a reasonable basis, denied accused escaped slave the right to be heard in their own defense, denied them jury trial on the accusation, denied them trial before a judicial officer on the accusation, allowing the accusation to be heard by special commissioners who were paid a premium for ruling that the accused was, in fact, a fugitive without even a pretense of evenhanded justice, and commandeered state officers to assist with enforcement. On any reasonable reading—notwithstanding that its purpose was Constitutionally valid—it violated the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 10th Amendments, and the suspension clause.
(The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 has a subset of the same problems.)
> On any reasonable reading—notwithstanding that its purpose was Constitutionally valid—it violated the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 10th Amendments, and the suspension clause.
The Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision did not take this position. They took the position that the Constitution's protections simply did not apply to slaves. (In fact the decision said that those provisions didn't even apply to free blacks.)
Of course you can say that the Supreme Court was simply wrong. But under our system of law, the Supreme Court's rulings on Constitutional provisions are final unless overridden by an amendment--as the Dred Scott decision was overridden by the Thirteenth Amendment. So as a matter of law, the fugitive slave laws were Constitutional until the Thirteenth Amendment was passed. Just as, for example, it's Constitutional (unless a future Amendment changes things) for Congress to regulate a farmer's growing of wheat for personal use under the Commerce Clause (Wickard v. Filburn), or for a city to seize people's homes and turn them over to a private developer under the eminent domain power (Kelo v. New London). You might think those decisions were wrong (I do), but they're still the law of the land unless and until a Constitutional Amendment overrides them.
> But the north was also wrong because it was undermining the very institution of law
Yeah, but by that logic the whole US was wrong for rebelling against England.
> by that logic the whole US was wrong for rebelling against England.
If we include in the north's logic the claim that secession was wrong for the southern states, then yes, one could argue that by the same logic it was wrong for the colonies to secede from Britain. Although there was a difference: the colonies had no effective representation in the British Parliament, they were just colonies, whereas the southern states were not colonies of the US, they were states and had the same representation in the US Congress as other states.
> Meaning, I take it, that the couldn't trust northern states to actually obey the Fugitive Slave Act?
You mean the one (either the 1793 or the 1850 one, though the latter was both worse in this regard and—ironically given the common argument that the Confederacy was motivated by “states rights”—also violated federalism by commandeering state officers for enforcement rather than relying federal resources to enforce federal law) that unconstitutionally presumptively denied habeas rights to anyone alleged by a private person to be an escaped slave?
> But the north was also wrong because it was undermining the very institution of law
No, that was also the South.
> Markets and tariffs were the reason the south seceded.
No, it was slavery.
> Tarrifs were the reason for the civil war.
No Southern secession, and the Northern response to prevent it, was the proximate reason for the Civil War. The South seceded due to slavery.
Yes the North didn't go into the war to free slaves. They did it to keep the country together. But as the war progressed its position on abolition hardened until it became a war aim.
You and dragonwriter keep repeating the false statement.
> The South seceded due to slavery.
No. They left after the north raised the tariff. They justified the secession on states' rights ( one of the notable being slavery ).
The south didn't secede after the north freed the slaves, threatened to free the slaves, etc. They left after they lost a decades long tariff battle to the north. The fight in the first part of the 1800s wasn't over slavery. The major fight between the north and south was tariffs/trade. It was industrialization vs agricultralism. It was never about slavery because some northern states also had slavery before and during the civil war.
If the civil war was about slavery, why didn't delaware and maryland also secede with slave owning states?
Why did west virginia secede from virginia? Could it be because west virginia major industries sold minerals, coal, etc to the industrial north? While the rest of virginia was agriculturally based?
> No. They left after the north raised the tariff
No, they didn't.
Lincoln was elected in Nov 6, 1860. [0]
South Carolina seceded around a month later, on December 20, 1860 [1]. Georgia began drafting a new constitution in January 1861[2], after voting to secede a few days earlier.
The Morill Tariff passed in the senate on Feb 20, 1861, two months after SC seceded, and one month after GA.[3]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_presidentia...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Carolina_Declaration_of_...
[2]: https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-poli...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Tariff#Renewed_Senate_...
It's rich of you to call everyone else's statement false when you're the one promoting ignoring the primary texts including the declarations of secession of the states in favor of your hypothetical 15-decade-later mindreading.
But all your questions have answers if you actually looked shit up instead of being suckered into being a mouthpiece for historical revisionism to deflect attention from the sins of the past.
West Virginia split because they didn't want to secede. Did they want to stay because of economic reasons? It doesn't really matter to this question, the war was started by states secession, so the reason for the first move is what matters.
Maryland and Delaware were further north and less dominated by slave-holders than the states that did secede. Anti-slavery sentiment in the pre-war US was very geographically distributed, after all. It was actively debated and voted on, but it didn't carry the day.
Especially Delaware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Delaware#Delaware_i...
"Slavery had been a divisive issue in Delaware for decades before the American Civil War began. Opposition to slavery in Delaware, imported from Quaker-dominated Pennsylvania, led many slaveowners to free their slaves; half of the state's black population was free by 1810, and more than 90% were free by 1860."
> why didn't delaware and maryland also secede with slave owning states?
Have you looked at a map to see where they are? They would've been curbstomped fairly quickly if they tried. And although slavery was legal in Delaware, 91% of the Black population there was free at the start of the ACW.[1]
> The south didn't secede after the north freed the slaves, threatened to free the slaves,
The South seceded because they feared the North would free the slaves.
> Why did west virginia secede from virginia?
Because they disagreed with Virginia's secession from the United States.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaware#Slavery_and_race
> Slavery was at best an afterthought. Markets and tariffs were the reason the south seceded. Tarrifs were the reason for the civil war.
This is so wrong it's a wonder how anyone could think this.
Put it like this: the reason the South wanted low tarrifs was because they were a low cost producer.
And they were a low cost producer because of slave labor.
> This is so wrong it's a wonder how anyone could think this.
A very long propaganda campaign (oddly, by the very same people who argue that slavery was actually a good thing that was done for those subject to it who should be thankful for it) has established it as an article of faith for a large population in this country, despite the fact that the rebels were quite explicit that the rebellion was about slavery.
I thought this was impossible, but sure enough here on HN there is someone who is literally making that exact argument: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31454920
> This is so wrong it's a wonder how anyone could think this.
I and everyone I knew was taught this is school by people who wanted to push the narrative, and it took a long time to figure out it was false.
> it took a long time to figure out it was false
Yeah I mean you have to first ignore what those Southerners themselves said were their actual reasons for secession (slavery), and what they wrote down on paper (we're leaving 'cuz we want to keep our slaves). It obviously takes a long time to learn how to ignore actual facts.
> push the narrative
Those dastardly schools, pushing Confederate states' constitutions at young impressionable minds to convince them that the Confederacy was evil. We have to stop them! /s
EDIT: I misunderstood the parent poster. Apologies.
Indeed, we went to great lengths to avoid confronting actual primary sources. It's not enough to just teach alternative history, you also have to teach learned helplessness, that only certain authorities are trustworthy, and to promote a general climate of proud ignorance (looking up things in books is for losers and caring about education is for suckers).
> we went to great lengths to avoid confronting actual primary sources
So you're saying you looked up the primary source documents for Southern secession and you still believe slavery wasn't a cause?
I think you're picking a fight here that's not there: its relatively uncontroversial that there's been an aggressive campaign since the civil war to minimise slavery as a factor, particularly in the South - you will easily find "war of northern aggression" types because that is what they are taught.
Thanks for explaining. I didn't think Southern schools were still teaching the Lost Cause as history so recently.
All of the current FUD in the southern states against CRT etc. seems like another attempt to take control of the historical narrative to once again start feeding lies to the young and mint a new generation of unquestioning voters that believe in a false history.
No, poster is saying the schools taught them not to look at those sources, because the lost cause lie was to be taught and could not sink in if the primary sources were available (which 100% contradict the "states rights" argument taught in many schools in the US, mostly in the south)
One doesn’t storm Harper’s Ferry over Mercantilism.
> Slave labor had nothing to do with it. If the south banned slavery in 1800 and cotton was picked by well paid whites, they would still want low tariffs.
No, the southern economy, as it was, would collapse, which is why they were so averse to anything that upset "King Cotton". Yes, tariffs were one aspect of that, but the pre-war southern economy couldn't work with well paid whites. So they had an even stronger objection to slavery ending, as it would be far more ruinous than tariffs.
> Ask yourself, did the south decide to secede after the north decided to free the slaves or after the north raised the tariffs. A tariff battle the north and south have been fighting for decades before the civil war. The answer is pretty simple and obvious.
Let's ask the southern states themselves, shall we:
Texas objected to northern states ignoring the Fugitive Slave Act:
> The States… by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the Fugitive Slave Clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact
And South Carolina (and many others) noted that they were leaving due to Lincoln's election, which spelled doom for slavery:
> On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
The wikipedia articles on SC's[0] debunks this, and none of the state's reasons for secession [1] list taxes or tariffs as a reason. This is ahistorical nonsense and confederate apologia.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Carolina_Declaration_of_...
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20150213033216/http://civilwarca...
“Lost cause” theories are considered the actual revisionism by the vast majority of historians, due to the many pieces of strong evidence supporting slavery being the major issue driving the war.
Let’s start with the articles of secession. Ctrl-F on these and you’ll find “slave” mentioned more than 80 times. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...
There were the journals of the actual soldiers fighting the war, who frequently mentioned how slavery was their motivation for fighting the war.
There was the intense focus on slavery leading up to the war, like a slave state being admitted for every free state. There was the Caning of Summers where a man was nearly beaten to death on the senate floor over a very rude speech he gave over slavery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner
There were the northerners coming into slave states and inciting slave rebellions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)
In general, the idea that slavery wasn’t a motivator of the war was mostly pitched to Britain who was mostly abolitionist at the time, but overwhelmingly it was mostly pitched after the war had already concluded. Before and during the war the confederates were quite clear their motivation for waging the war was primarily slavery. They were very open about this, which is why historians tend to be doubtful about a theory which seemingly was only ever popularized to make the confederates save face. Historians aren’t keen to go “oh these people who mentioned slavery over and over when they were seceding didn’t care about slavery that was just a prank and I know how they really felt, checkmate Lincolnites!”
Nobody doubts that economics weren’t a major factor in the war, but slavery was discussed far far far more often than tariffs. Tariffs are mostly brought up nowadays because they’re more palatable, not because of the strong evidence the average southerner or southern leader was fighting for tariffs.
>Lincoln did nothing to free the slaves when the war started
True. Lincoln’s initial goal was to keep the union together, whereas the confederates were fighting for slavery. Keep in mind the Civil war was by far the deadliest war in US history, I believe more Americans died in that war than every subsequent war combined. Ending slavery is a noble goal, so is preventing the 620k deaths that happened.
It was only later on, largely due to the aforementioned British pressure that he gave his emancipation proclamation largely as a strategic move to prevent Europe from entering the war since after the proclamation their entrance into the war would be seen as supportive of slavery. However, Lincoln did want to end slavery eventually and many in the union fought for the sake of abolition. Note how a civil war was started soon after Lincoln was elected with the secessionists repeatedly mentioning slavery, his support of abolition was no secret.
> 6. There were tons of ironclads already in European fleets, there had just never been a fight between ironclads! Europeans watched the Monitor v. Merrimack battle & adapted their fleets & battle doctrines accordingly.
These were very different sorts of ironclads. The British and French ironclads mostly resembled traditional ships, at least at first glance. They had steam engines but also retained their masts, and had broadside guns rather than turrets (except for the ill-fated HMS Captain..)
The American ironclads were more bizarre, superficially resembling submarines, and weren't particularly seaworthy (unlike the European ironclads.) The USS Monitor in particular was a novel design; mastless and steam powered with an armored turret, a shallow draft and low freeboard (similar to earlier ironclad floating batteries, but a lot lower). European navies subsequently started building their own 'monitors'.
The monitor class of ships were eventually pushed to the side by pre-dreadnought battleships that derived more from the traditional and seaworthy European ironclads than from monitors, with some lessons learned from monitors. See the HMS Devastation particularly; mastless and steam powered with armored turrets, but with a hull that was actually seaworthy unlike monitors.
For a visual example, this was an American Civil-War era ironclad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USS_Baron_DeKalb.jpg
This was a British oceangoing ironclad, launched in 1860: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HMSWarrior.JPG
The difference in seaworthiness is abundantly clear. These American ironclads were more akin to gunboats, and mostly used on rivers (fighting for control of the Mississippi was a huge deal in the war). They were built comparatively cheaply, for a specific, immediate conflict. They often only had steam engines and lacked the endurance for transoceanic travel.
The British ironclads were built to project imperial power across the globe. The continued use of sail was important to extend endurance to reach far away places.
Don’t forget Russia sending ships to America in support of the union. The letters between tsar Alex and Lincoln are some of the loveliest pieces of writing and highest praises for America.
http://beam-inc.org/abraham-lincoln-and-tsar-alexander-ii-pa...
American russophobia is a sad state of affair considering history, they also gave Alaska for a negligible price. > When the Civil War broke out, both England and France considered hostile intervention on behalf of the South and they tried to convince the Tsar to join them. Alexander II’s refusal was critically important because the British and French then decided to abort their plans. It's crazy to think Russia determined modern america fate
Putin ordered Russian forces to be on the highest level of nuclear readiness. We have programs on Russian state TV where people talk about using nuclear weapons to drown the UK and devastate the European coast with a nuclear tsunami. This is a scary time we live in.
The conversation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine may now be centered on NATO, but it began with statements of routine training exercises at the border and escalated to the de-Nazification of Ukraine. Russia has not done well to reach the hearts of its neighbors.
That we have to reach past the Cold War into the American Civil War to discuss amicable relations does not bode well.
If Russophobia is a widespread phenomenon then it started way before 2022.
When Russia bombed Syrian hospitals ... invaded Chehenia and other countries ... had assasins murder people living EU, likely caused explosion in Czechs (2014), likely shut down plane, supported dictators around the world ...
Common, Ukrainian invasion did not happened out of blue. And I don't even mention Russia actively trying to influence politics of ther countries to the worst.
Let’s put it like this: being critical of the American government does not force you to be Americophobic.
> invaded Chehenia
Invaded their own territory.
Nah. It was not theirs. It was invasion twice.
Just because you was stole something does not mean you can steal it again and again every time owners get it back.
Are the states of the US, Canada, and Australia (to name a few) on stolen land?
how do you deal with the insane double standard? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phan_Thi_Kim_Phuc#/media/File:... I'm not advocating against russophobia per se, but americanophobia seems similarly legitimate
A very general western hatred (not merely US!) has been brewing over Russian social media for awhile now, and the conversation of whether to deny Russians their prerogative to hate the west is not really there. There isn't even much conversation on western media as to what the state of Russian social media is even like.
That 1972 picture somehow implies none of Russian escalation of aggression between late 1990 and 2022 happened?
Should we go into how many countries Russia occupied at that point and how oppressive and murderous it was?
America and Russia had a great relationship until the end of WWI. The Bolshevik’s set this in stone towards the end of the civil war when the entente (specifically Britain) opened dialogue towards a trade deal. Lenin used them as the great other, despite knowing they wanted normalized relations, and then the USSR taking Eastern Europe sealed the deal. Self determination was US policy at that time (and kind of ever since.)
The Bolsheviks, who the Entente ( UK, France, US, Japan) deployed troops against and sponsored their enemies? They had valid reasons to at the very least skeptical.
> The Bolshevik’s set this in stone towards the end of the civil war...
I'm not sure about the events that you're referring to. The Treaty of Riga was in 1921, the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement was signed in 1921 as well, the USSR was only declared in 1922, and the UK recognized it in 1924, the same year in which Lenin died. In fact, related to the Trade Agreement he complained:
> The British government has handed us its draft, we have given our counterdraft, but it is still obvious that the British government is dragging its feet over the agreement because the reactionary war party is still hard at work there
So, I don't think it's fair to assume that it was only the UK who wanted normalized relations, and that the difficulties came from only one side.
> taking Eastern Europe sealed the deal
Which again, seems out of place, since I presume you're referring to events that followed the start of WW2.
Talking about WW2, Europe wasn't friendly to the USSR leading up to war:
The initial anti-comintern treaty in 1935 was extended to the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland and China (ruled by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek).
In 1939, Stalin offered to Britain and France to deploy a million troops against Nazi Germany, but he had been rebuffed:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/322...
and of course, Churchill's Operation Unthinkable means that Britan had a deep, deep distrust of the USSR.
Despite all this, the USSR asked to join NATO in 1954, but again: it had been rebuffed, along its proposals of reunification and neutrality for Germany.
We often forget about all this, and only think of the reasons for why we distrusted the USSR, but we ignore all of the opportunities that we missed for a friendlier relationship.
There were valid reasons to not be friendly to USSR. Does this justify USSR entering friendship pact with Germany, thus enabling it to start the war?
I also want to know more conditions under which Stalin (who really handled foreign policy then?) offered to send troops to Europe, considering USSR was sort of fighting Japan at the same time. I'm sure UK and France could corroborate and provide more details, if this offer was real.
For the record, the position* of Sotskov (the only source mentioned in the article you linked) is also that occupying Baltic states and dividing Europe between USSR and Germany was not in fact a land grab by USSR but rather a necessary measure to be able to resist Germany.
Never mind that this protection buffer would not have been needed if Germany did not expand its invasion... which it did thanks to USSR siding with it. Dubious twist of logic.
It seems obvious that leaving Germany to take more of Europe in the beginning of WWII would have drastically reduced the ability of USSR to withstand a subsequent attack by Germany, so the argument seems to be "our geniuses could foresee this, so they invaded Europe in order to save the world from fascists". This argument is canceled out, however, by considering that at the end of the day not entering a pact with the UK does not imply USSR needed to side with Germany, the act that enabled Germany to start the war (which presumably USSR was aware of) in the first place.
I'm not sure to which degree this treatment of WWII is truth vs. revisionism.
* Which also seems to be the official position of the Kremlin: http://www.svr.gov.ru/material/sbornik-dokumentov/otzyvy-na-...
> There were valid reasons to not be friendly to USSR. Does this justify USSR entering friendship pact with Germany, thus enabling it to start the war?
This is not about "friendship pact", this is about non-aggression pact.
Was Poland not justified in entering a non-aggression pact with Germany?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Polish_declarat...
Was France not justified in entering a non-aggression pact with Germany?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement#Consequences
> Never mind that this protection buffer would not have been needed if Germany did not expand its invasion... which it did thanks to USSR siding with it. Dubious twist of logic.
Good questions/points, but we're judging decisions made at the time with the hindsight of decades after the war. I don't think it was clear to anyone who would've joined the war, which sides would've won, and the likelihood of such events.
Every country, depending on the circumstances, was probably trying to do what's best for them. Either avoiding war, or exploiting the messy situation by expanding their territory by annexing small part of neighboring states.
In fact, after seeing what happened to Poland, I think that every party in such agreements realized that they could provide, at best, temporary respite and delay confrontation (but that's not a weird isolated phenomenon: circumstances changes, and that provides ammunition to arguments that old agreements are not valid anymore).
It's not as much to enable other countries' war, but rather to delay one's own involvement in one war.
In fact, the USSR state budget was dedicated to defense for only about ~5%. A confrontation with Nazi Germany at the time would've been disastrous. But in the extra couple of years since, it increased to > 40%
https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-military-spending/
> Was Poland not justified in entering a non-aggression pact with Germany?
Did they also devise secret protocols dividing the world into spheres of influence, which were subsequently expanded with clauses that had "friendship" in their titles?
> we're judging decisions made at the time with the hindsight of decades after the war
This is exactly what allows us to see objectively what was happening.
It's always easy to say "we didn't mean it, we were playing 3D chess" (like Trump apologists) right afterwards.
However, we can judge based on the actions, which were:
1) sign a non-agression pact with Nazi Germany
2) almost immediately after, jointly with Nazi Germany invade and divide a country
3) extend the pact with a further "friendship" treaty, dividing Europe*
4) further discuss joining Axis**
Where do you think things were really headed?
> I don't think it was clear to anyone who would've joined the war, which sides would've won, and the likelihood of such events.
> Every country, depending on the circumstances, was probably trying to do what's best for them
You're quick to rob all countries and their leaders of moral baselines. There was documented massive surprise (including Western communists) and outrage worldwide when USSR signed the pact. I think the pact at the time was somewhat of a blow to general morale, a sign that another major player takes the world as a zero-sum dog eat dog arena that you allude to.
It seems feasible Stalin/Molotov would've joined Axis if it's "better" for USSR. And furthermore what was going on in USSR under Stalin (ethical cleanses, mass murder) is not too different from what Hitler did, USSR and Nazi Germany are fairly similar in many regards.
But I don't think this is somehow just an instance of how every normal country disregards ethics in the name of own profit. For one, USSR was geopolitically differently situated compared to small countries within immediate vicinity of Germany. It had immense territory. It was actively forging agreements and trade with Germany at the time.
I'm happy USSR ultimately didn't get to win the initial war and divide the world alongside Axis.
> It's not as much to enable other countries' war, but rather to delay one's own involvement in one war.
USSR invaded Poland as soon as Germany did. You're right, this is not enabling other countries' war. This is actually joining the war, and not on the side of the good guys.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German–Soviet_Boundary_and_Fri...
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German–Soviet_Axis_talks#Molot...
> In 1939, Stalin offered to Britain and France to deploy a million troops against Nazi Germany, but he had been rebuffed
At which point he instead allied with Nazi Germany, aided in the invasion of Poland, personally ordered the mass execution of Polish POW's, and invaded Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
> Despite all this, the USSR asked to join NATO in 1954, but again: it had been rebuffed
By 1954, the USSR had already set up undemocratic communist puppet states in Eastern Europe, been caught engaging in espionage against the United States, attempted to blockade West Berlin in order to pressure the Western Allies into abandoning it to Soviet control, and committed genocide and war crimes on possibly the greatest scale seen in history.
Russia and the US became very friendly during WW2 as well. Stalin and Roosevelt had a solid relationship while Stalin and Churchill did not. Churchill did not like Stalin for various reasons. But Roosevelt was the glue. Unfortunately, US elections at the time stipulated that the Vice President was chosen by the Democrat electorate and there was a coup to replace Roosevelts first pick (a guy friendly to the ussr) with a nobody from Missouri named Truman. Stalin never respected Truman and US relationships with the USSR deteriorated quickly after FDRS passing. Churchill and England became the dominant western voice in post ww2 trade and the iron curtain was eventually dropped.
Truman had so many financial struggles that the pension for presidents was created for him to live a dignified life after leaving office.
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/johnson/fdrpoland.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944_Democratic_Party_vice_pre...
Truman's presidency doesn't seem so terrible from today's viewpoint, look at the work he did to help rebuild western europe after the war. Making note that he had not enriched himself while president does not serve to make you or your arguments better appreciated.
> Talking about WW2, Europe wasn't friendly to the USSR leading up to war: The initial anti-comintern treaty in 1935 was extended to the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland and China (ruled by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek).
Such a shocking action, after only little thing like The Great Purge and active hostile rhetorics from Russia ... and Holodomor.
This is ridiculous point of view that casts Russia as victim when other countries react to its aggression - whether aggression outside or inside. Russia 1935 and Germany 1936 were not that dissimilar, you know. Except Russia more bloody at that point.
No, we don't forget about revisionist history. We view it with an appropriately skeptical eye.
The Telegraph article has a quote from a historian:
> "There was no mention of this in any of the three contemporaneous diaries, two British and one French - including that of Drax," he said. "I don't myself believe the Russians were serious."
You also seem unfamiliar with the purpose of NATO. Wikipedia:
> NATO is a system of collective security: its independent member states agree to defend each other against attacks by third parties. It was established during the Cold War in response to the threat posed by the Soviet Union.
You also seem unfamiliar with the purpose of NATO. Wikipedia:
> NATO is a system of collective security: its independent member states agree to defend each other against attacks by third parties. It was established during the Cold War in response to the threat posed by the Soviet Union.
That is the stated purpose of NATO. The details of its real life military actions do not square with what you quoted at all - unless you can tell me which NATO member state Libya attacked.
The Libyan conflict was several countries working together and stuck a NATO label on it. Most of NATO was not actually involved. It also included some countries outside of NATO, like Sweden.
You can blame it on France misusing the NATO moniker rather than it just being a coalition.
> "I don't myself believe the Russians were serious."
Oh so it was a prank? - - What a weak thesis...
> You also seem unfamiliar with the purpose of NATO. Wikipedia
You seem unfamiliar with the fact the USSR asked to join NATO it seems
And NATO rightfully said no, because of what kind of country Russia was.
Also, politicians, including and especially Russian politicians at the time having unserious claims is not weak thesis. That was their frequent negotiating/pressuring/rhetorical tactic.
It would be incredibly stupid to admit Russia of 1954 into NATO. The people taking power after Stalin were somewhat better, but still only slightly less murderous.
This is right after Russia organized processes and executions of class enemies. It demanded such processes of vasal states too. The monster processes were pretty large crime.
And this is btw, only like 14 years before Russia invaded other countries and started to occupie them in 1968.
> In 1939, Stalin offered to Britain and France to deploy a million troops against Nazi Germany, but he had been rebuffed:
WOW thank you I never heard of this
Because it's not true - by 1939 discussions that led to Ribbentropp-Molotov were pretty advanced
You mean the country committing war crimes daily and threatening the world with nukes?
Yes, the russophobia of that country is a tragedy.
The US does a lot of shit, but it doesn't actively threaten countries with nuclear weapons
They built the biggest pile of them, have them pointed at certain countries. That can be threatening
While it may be threatening Americans have so many nukes, they are very much not making desperate threats with them, like Russia currently is.
What about "fire and fury"? Wasn't that a threat?
Also, please note that in my original comment I'm talking about the future - after the collapse of Russia, in a few decades. Can you guarantee that the world will not need to deal with another Trump in a situation where the MAD doctrine stopped working?
And as for currently, don't you think the US is not making "desperate threats" simply because it has absolute no need to? In a parallel universe where Russo-Sino alliance conventional military was much more advanced than the US, what would the US do if the alliance absorbed Mexico or Canada, deploying (for protection, of course) tens of thousands of people along with huge piles of weapons on their territory? Can you trust the US not to make "desperate threats" then?
I can't.
Especially because there's only one country that developed and used nuclear weapons against civilians. In that context, even a statement from a clown of a president about "fire and fury" is something really dangerous. And since we already had to deal with a clown, it's really not that much of a stretch to fear that an actual madman gets elected sometime down the road.
Threatening with conventional arms is not the same as threatening to use nuclear arms. Many countries threaten to use their military - yet Russia is going as far to threaten the offensive use of nukes. I’m discussing the reality of now not some theoretical future/parallel universe as what’s the point? Russia is doing what Russia is now and that’s the problem.
> as what’s the point?
Are you old enough to be sure you will be dead in 20 years? If not, then making sure we won't be all dying in a "fire and fury" would be the point. Otherwise, I guess, you have the luxury of not thinking about "future/parallel universe" that might just one day become the reality.
There's a very brave, honorable politician, who unfortunately was lost in the annals of history, as a man directly responsible for Russian support during the civil war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassius_Marcellus_Clay_(politi...
thx for sharing. Is Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. related to him ? (also known as Muhammad Ali)
No. However there is a relation.
Ali's grandfather specifically named his son after Cassius to honor Cassius, the KY politician. The son proceeded to do the same, with who would eventually be a famous boxer, M. Ali.
The boxer changed his name to Ali, both due to his conversion to islam , and because he was angry to take the name of a plantation owner.
The latter is true - Cassius was a plantation owner. However, early on he defender ardently emancipation. He in fact suffered multiple murder attempts from actual slavery advocates... who surrounded him in KY
Right now, Russophobia is kind of healthy thinking. Their current mix of tsarism and return to kinda communist thinking except the communist ideology is sucky and dangerous.
Pick one:
- Russia is an authoritarian state lead by one man and his inner circle
- It is rational to hate Russians in general
Russia is an authoritarian state lead by one man and his inner circle. This man has very high public support. In particular, Russian population supports imperial ideology.
That is no contradiction. Authoritarians can have public support while at the same time severely oppressing opposition or anyone who dares to voice something else.
Also, opposition to Putin does not imply opposition to annexation of Ukrainian lands or turning Ukrainians into Russians by force. Opposition to Putin does not imply pro-democracy reform either.
> It is rational to hate Russians in general
Hate is a feeling. But accusations of Russophobia are all about support for sanctions or Ukraine in war. And are deployed whenever someone points out Russia as is now is threat to not just Ukraine, but to all countries in former eastern block.
All those are rational. So, if that matter average Russians look really down on Ukrainians too, are happy to use slurs against them and act offended it other formerly occupied countries are not "thankful".
----------
If anything, Russia was enabled rather then opposed for years. It was treated as something special, more worthy then other countries around it.
Sure. It is not unreasonable to “hate” someone if they oppose you. I’ll give you that.
Russia is not "opposing" it is expanding and starting major wars. It is actively working to destroy other countries.
Russia is not opposing America as much as they are opposing right to existence as democracies to countries around them. It is way more countries around Russia calling for help to Ukraine then anyone else.
And yes, being at risk of being invaded by someone makes people hate that one. It makes them think again about what that country done to them before.
> Russia is not "opposing" it is expanding and starting major wars. It is actively working to destroy other countries.
Brother. You are all over the place.
I was replying to this part:
> Russia is an authoritarian state lead by one man and his inner circle. This man has very high public support. In particular, Russian population supports imperial ideology.
To which I reply: Yes, it’s rational to “hate” someone if they oppose you. And “someone” here means normal Russians.
I was not talking about the Russian government in this context.
And I don’t know why you brought up America.
Probably referring to Russia looking to return to a command economy: https://cepa.org/rattled-russia-re-embraces-the-command-econ...
Not good for the people of Russia, but nothing good can come while Putin is still in power.
Thanks for sharing
“Russophobia” is a sham term invented by Russian propagandists to invalidate their opposition. It doesn’t exist.
A point I found interesting along the lines of perceived British ambivalence, my understanding is that the Emancipation Proclamation was a brilliant piece of diplomacy. It was anti-slavery enough to make it possible to convince Britain that the war was all about slavery and so they shouldn't intervene because of how much they were against slavery. Yet also weak enough against slavery - only freeing slaves in the territory they hadn't conquered yet - to make it possible to convince the Union officers and politicians that it was a tactical economic ploy against the Confederacy and not a changing of the primary war aims. They were rather ambivalent about slavery, and Lincoln himself feared that "half the officers would fling down their arms and three more states would rise" if he made full emancipation a primary war aim.
A lot more concrete information in this comment than in the article itself. Thank you.
If you feel inclined | knowledgeable could you expand on any English economic turmoil as a result of the American Civil War. All that American Cotton not feeding the British industry must have hurt a lot.
You could argue that the Confederacy actually started the Cotton Famine, on purpose.
Early on the Union blockade was essentially a paper blockade, and therefore of dubious international legality. There were laws regarding blockades, but those laws were fuzzy when it came to civil wars & a nation blockading their own ports. The Union would have been in violation of international law if the Confederacy were a recognized country, which would have given Britain and France a pretext to end the blockade by force. Early in the war, almost any European sea power (Britain especially) could have broken the Union Navy in a matter of hours.
The Confederate government imposed a cotton boycott to trigger economic turmoil in Britain especially (Britain was always their primary diplomatic target), which they felt would create enough political pressure in Parliament to spur recognition and a complete lifting of the blockade by the Royal Navy.
The economic problems in Britain were very real (triggering waves of emigration & from Lancashire & other towns that were cotton dependent) but the British largely worked around them. They retooled their factories to work with cotton from Egypt, India, and the East Indies. Workers found other jobs. Government relief. A lot of people suffered though.
The Confederates seriously underestimated the degree to which Britain and British politicians loathed slavery. Slavery stacked the deck against them diplomatically from the beginning. There were other geopolitical reasons (like Britain not wanting to risk Canada by sparking a conflict with the Union) but the British basically chose to suck it up and endure the cotton famine & economic depression because they wanted slavery gone, and America was one of the last major holdouts at that point.
Not doubting to be clear, but do you have recommended sources on the desire for the American abolition of slavery being a principal motivation for Britain's non-involvement in the American Civil War? Would be curious to read it.
I've generally had a pretty cynical view towards British abolitionism, which is that the elites only disliked slavery to the extent that they found capitalistic imperialism (i.e. systems that controlled the lower classes through persistent indebtedness and restrictions on ownership of real estate) to be more profitable and politically stable than the systems constructed on the institution of slavery.
And, coincidentally, that their empire, whose 19th century wealth was bootstrapped on the profits of slave-trading and the manufacture of raw materials extracted via slave labor, was uniquely-well-positioned to come out on top in a world order deprived of slave labor.
In other words, they opposed slavery on the basis of limiting economic volatility, and maintaining their geopolitical status, more so than any moral basis.
I'd love to read more sources that balance out my cynicism. :)
The book I recommended in original comment (A World on Fire) will give you a good inside-look at the British political thought & decision making during that time, including Parliamentary debates & communiques between Palmerston and his ministers. Their motivations are complex, like any other politician, but if they were purely economic & geopolitical opportunists I would have expected them to leap at dividing America and keeping the cotton flowing. They didn't.
> I've generally had a pretty cynical view towards British abolitionism
I am not an expert on abolitionist movements or their political effects, but there was a strong moral outrage to slavery in the 19th century and it developed very rapidly, starting in Britain. I recommend reading about the British public's reaction to the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
> their empire, whose 19th century wealth was bootstrapped on the profits of of slave-trading and the manufacture of raw materials extracted via slave labor, was uniquely-well-positioned to come out on top in a world order deprived of slave labor
You're not wrong, and you can toss colonialism in there, too. The Japanese were made the same argument in the early 20th century as they were trying to expand and acquire colonies and kept getting their knuckles whacked by the Europeans, who were (mostly) trying to pump the brakes on colonialism by that point.
How dependent was British industry on American Cotton? Didn't British possessions include many cotton growing regions?
> 5. Britain nearly declared war on the Union (Trent affair), to the point that Royal Navy was just waiting for the go-signal to commence hostilities & Britain sent thousands of additional troops to Canada.
I wonder how much the Union's need to hedge against British intervention—so, to divert resources away from the war against the South, affecting troop placement, artillery availability, fortification building/maintenance/garrisoning, and fleet positioning—prolonged the war.
That's a good question, and I don't know the answer.
However, whatever that need was (to hedge against the British) should have been completely necessary, and really goes to show you just how valuable a strong diplomatic corps can be to a country.
The British wanted to be pro-Union. They wanted slavery gone. They didn't want to have to station huge numbers of troops in Canada, or large numbers of ships in the Atlantic.
Silly, unforced errors by Seward & Charles Francis Adams (the American ambassador) antagonized Britain throughout the war & made them unsure of their North American holdings. Ridiculous. Union diplomats should have been talking peace & partnership with Britain from day 1 of the conflict.
> The British wanted to be pro-Union. They wanted slavery gone.
tbf, we had moral reasons for wanting slavery gone but practical reasons for thinking we were better off with a divided America and an independent Confederacy as a useful source of cheap cotton. Some would say our political positions haven't got more realistic since. :)
Karl Marx, who was residing in Britain at the time, also wrote much on the topic. He had nothing but withering criticism of mainstream/elite British attitudes for the war, namely the downplaying the importance of slavery in the formation of the Confederacy.
He, unlike his more socially acceptable contemporaries, also deeply admired Lincoln. Many pieces published in prominent periodicals, like The Economist, painted him as a wily and double-dealing politician. One could understand that interpretation given the compromises he was desperately trying to make with Southern states to prevent the outbreak of war, but it gave prominent Brits an excuses to dismiss the sincerity of his anti-slavery rhetoric after the war broke out. (Lincoln himself was also being deeply transformed by the savagery of war. He would come to believe the carnage was divine punishment for the sin of slavery.) Marx would have none of it. He called out the hypocrisy of those who in the years prior condemned American slavery but would not support the cause of Lincoln and the Union because it didn't have an unblemished history of being totally and consistently anti-slavery.
The claim regarding the effectiveness of "Confederate propagandist networks" is overstated, though. People across Britain were divided on the issue, even across political camps and ethnic groups (e.g. Irish and English). To be clear, by "divided", I don't mean that people necessarily individually ambivalent. There were some staunch supporters on both sides.
There were also multiple reasons for preferring one side over another, too. Slavery was just one issue. Another was potential weakening the Monroe Doctrine. (During the Civil War, France under Napoleon III invaded and conquered Mexico, and Spain re-colonized what would become the Dominican Republic.) Others were access to raw materials, support for wars of national unity (European nationalists admired Lincoln, as would Hitler decades later), etc.
> the compromises he was desperately trying to make with Southern states to prevent the outbreak of war
I'm not sure what you're referring to here. AFAIK between his inauguration and the outbreak of war Lincoln had basically no interaction with any of the Southern states.
It's interesting how difficult it is nowadays to field a million man army
Because Vietnam showed that conscripting armies of that size was not an efficient way to fight a modern war. You want people, volunteers, who want to be in the army. Also technology. We’re close to that point in, like in Roman history, where the income of entire villages was only enough to field one Calvary soldier (knight.)
Not that we’re going towards feudalism but history has a cycle of armies going from a small force with a huge technology edge to a giant force with mundane tech. Even during the Roman Republic only the richest men could afford to fight.
During the early republic, only the richest could equipment themselves but my understanding is that the Marian reforms changed this by professionalizing the army and having the general of a legion supply the soldiers with their weapons.
Also, the thing about a village supporting one cavalry soldier seems off. The roman army focused on infantry with cavalry being supplied by allied forces.
Roman cavalry is often forgotten, but a considerable portion of social class all the way back to Roman Republic and I think pre-republic kingdom was existence of a class wealthy enough to fight as cavalry.
They were of course small compared to infantry legions, and as the Republic and later Empire expanded they frequently hired auxiliaries, especially from a more cavalry focused groups.
Sure, equites were an established social class but didn't that devolve to just a class without the training on horseback by the late republic and certainly by imperial rome. It seems like it made more sense for the imperial army to have auxilia handle cavalry, missile troops, and other functions.
>Also, the thing about a village supporting one cavalry soldier seems off. The roman army focused on infantry with cavalry being supplied by allied forces.
Also possible that they're thinking of the Roman Kingdom and the Equites?
> like in Roman history, where the income of entire villages was only enough to field one Calvary soldier
What an interesting data point.
It was not so easy back then as well. They had draft riots in New York City, which had to be suppressed by regular Union regiments. There were also deserters and bounty jumpers.
The South had trouble to support their armies. Lee basically planned the Gettysburg campaign to live of the land. Soldiers were happy because they had enough to eat. A lot of soldiers lacked shoes.
> 6. There were tons of ironclads already in European fleets, there had just never been a fight between ironclads! Europeans watched the Monitor v. Merrimack battle & adapted their fleets & battle doctrines accordingly.
And the fight they got was comically irrelevant to the ironclads they had.
I'm sure they had lots of great arguments trying to pull anything applicable out of it and apply the lessons to their own fleets.
One of my ancestors was a British aristocrat and tory MP who was so vocal in his opposition to appeasing the American colonists in any way at all that even King George raised an eyebrow.
His total conviction led him to purchase a commission as major of Grenadiers in the 20th Foot, and set off for The Colonies, where he was promptly shot at The Battle of Saratoga and then taken prisoner.
Because he was a wounded officer and a minor noble, his wife was permitted to come and pick him up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dyke_Acland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Harriet_Acland
What I found more interesting is the French role in both US and India in inciting rebellion against the British
- https://thediplomat.com/2018/04/the-last-time-the-us-and-ind...
- https://aeon.co/essays/why-american-revolutionaries-admired-...
In addition to conveying information well, this comment motivated me to find Foreman’s cited work. My library even has the audiobook!
I learned more from this comment than the article, and I thank you
Maybe this is nitpicking but I suspect the motive was less "the destructiveness of the conflict" and more a chance to balkanize the US permanently.
Not mentioned: Towards the end of the Civil War, British officers became very concerned that the large and now experienced army might turn its attention North, as they had some 50 years prior. The Civil War was thus a direct catalyst for Canadian confederation.
A direct American invasion was not a catalyst for confederation. Expansion westward was seen as vital, and America’s rapid growth made the endeavour even more vital, lest American immigrants seize Canadian land.
No one feared the American army would turn north. They could have crushed Canada, but peace between Canada and the US was seen as assured as long as the UK wanted it.
Perhaps not a direct catalyst as it was the Fenian Raids, in particular the battle of Ridgeway, that led to Canadian Confederation. The Fenians were largely Union Army veterans of the Civil War. Lincoln's decision to allow the formation of ethnic Irish regiments to aid recruitment allowed for the military organization and training of the Fenian Brotherhood.
In fact, there were some men (Irish nationalists) who gained military experience during the Civil War that were involved in armed raids into Canada from 1865-1871. Encyclopedia article: https://www.britannica.com/event/Fenian-raids
The US took the oregon territories from the british empire in the 1840s. Even before the civil war, the british empire was in no position to challenge the US in north america. America was focused on western expansion to the pacific before and after the civil war, not to worthless canadian tundra and the frigid arctic.
My key takeaways:
* Miller and Chesney’s lectures describe the course of the war up to that point, with Chesney focussing first on fighting in Virginia and then on operations in the west and south, such as Sherman’s March to the Sea
* In his lectures, Chesney laments that Sherman, in his March to the Sea near the end of the war, ‘has given no voucher or note anywhere for the supplies he has seized [from civilians]’ and expresses concern about whether the North and South could be reconciled, given the brutality of the conflict
* The combat between the Monitor and the Merrimac, notable for being the first clash between ironclad ships, is referenced but purposely not discussed because ‘the result has not influenced the military progress of the war’
* In some cases, the conduct of the Civil War was used by British officers to justify their own opinions of how the UK should prepare its military for future wars
* The RUSI lectures demonstrate the challenges of following a war as it is occurring from a distance, the disappointment with the Union’s military performance early in the war and the manner in which foreign conflicts were mobilised to justify the policies of people like the Duke of Cambridge
Not enough, actually. The American Civil War was the first big war where railroads and telegraph lines allowed coordinated operations over a large area, and machine guns and repeating rifles allowed killing large numbers of advancing troops. Grant got this; he wrote "War is Progressive", meaning that there was progress through technology. This was a radical idea in military thinking at the time. Most European military leaders didn't get that until WWI. They were still trying mass charges. Which, against machine guns, absolutely does not work.
> The American Civil War was the first big war where railroads and telegraph lines allowed coordinated operations over a large area, and machine guns and repeating rifles allowed killing large numbers of advancing troops.
Hi, the Crimean War would like to remind you that it existed.
In which American Civil War battles did machine guns play a meaningful role?
It also featured a little bit of trench warfare. I imagine the European observers who saw that were like "Huh, definitely not important, let's not come up with strategies to counter this sort of thing" and then forgot about it for the next 50 years or so.
The missing ingredient that prevented the ACW from turning into static trench warfare similar to the later Western Front was probably barbed wire, which was only patented in 1867.
Presumably also the rate of fire of WW1 weapons. While the ACW had Gatling guns and canons, the rate of fire during WW1 far exceeded anything seen before. The only protection was a trench
In fairness, I think people thought the Eastern and Southern armies fought in a "civilized" manner.
It's just that the Western armies and Western generals came in, and they fought in a significantly different fashion. You can call the West of the Union more "modern". Or "pragmatic". Or maybe "barbaric" is the right word.
No one wanted to be seen as being "Barbaric". Except Western armies, who really didn't care what people thought about them. (At least, not as much as they cared about their orders.)
I just can't see how that can be true - 'we're going to murder you all, but we're going to do it with good manners because otherwise people will think we're bad'??
It seems way more likely to be 'cargo cult' type learning where something worked for centuries and so got formalised and taught rigidly?
Any good sources on this, it must have been covered on AskHistorians!?
I mean, it had been 50 years, it wasn't like there had been another war fought 10 years prior that also devolved into trench warfare that they completely failed to learn anything from.
I think the real answer and probably why the article is a bit light on actual anecdotes, is that Britain or its military at the time probably didn't think much of it all, especially from a military point of view. Plus they were super busy with imperial concerns, especially in the British Raj post-1857 rebellion.
The U.S., although gaining steam economically (pun intended), was still a backwater, rural, nation isolated by a whole lot of ocean (edit: I meant all this from a military point of view). I am sure the abolitionists in power in Parliament were interested in the outcome of the war from that point of view, but it was really of very little consequence to UK or Europe as a whole.
The US South provided 80% of British cotton, and the textile industry was the UK's largest employer and industry.[1].
[1] https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/liverpools-aberc...
The US was economically beginning to be involved on the world level, but wasn't really a "power worth considering" until after WWI, partially just because of distance.
yeah, this was really my point. A (maybe terrible) modern analogy is how concerned would we be with a civil war in say, South America, where a significant chunk of our lithium comes from? We would probably be concerned, but our economic and military clout means that we would always be the customer for whoever won that civil war.
> We would probably be concerned, but our economic and military clout means that we would always be the customer for whoever won that civil war.
Don’t we typically just give a fuckton of guns and resources (and maybe more) to whichever side we want to win.
Absolutely not. We are also perfectly willing to overthrow democratically elected governments as well.
A good read about that: The Savage Wars of Peace.
I believe both things are true, but I'm going to have to hunt for some sources
Well yeah you are correct, and I wrote clumsily. That was meant to read 'although the U.S. was gaining steam economically, it was not of much consequence militarily'
> The U.S., although gaining steam economically (pun intended), was still a backwater, rural, nation isolated by a whole lot of ocean
A "backwater"? That forced the 49th parallel on the british in the 1810s? That took oregon territories from the british in the 1840s? The "backwater" that "took" louisiana territories from france and alaska from the russians? The "backwater" that took texas,california,et al from mexico? The "backwater" that took control over the yangtze river from china in 1854?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze_Patrol
The "backwater" that forced japan to open in the 1850s? Which no european power, including britain, was able to do?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Expedition
It wasn't the british navy that dominated the seas mid 1800s. It was american whalers.
By the civil war, we had been shitting on the british and the rest of the great powers for decades. Not bad for a "backwater".
Quite a few European powers embedded observers with both sides of the conflict. The application of improved small arms and artillery was something that military minds were very interested in, to see how it played out in a large scale conflict.
The US economy overtook the UK's right around the civil war. That's also around when the US population overtook the UK's.
They may have not thought much about the war, but it wouldn't be because the US had a small economy or population.
Right right, you are absolutely correct, but I meant that the U.S. was inconsequential to Europe militarily.
Would have taken quite a while to be noticed, given the speed of communication and lack of American military presence overseas. Compared to the British Empire.
Really? I thought that happened way after WWI. The UK economy back then had a gazillion of colonies to sustain it.
No OP's correct, the US surpassed the UK both in population and in GDP sometime around the middle of the 19th century.
The US overtook the UK in 1860, but overtaking the entire British Empire was closer to 1900.
I think the point is that looking at the UK in a vacuum, outside the context of colonies like India, Kenya, Singapore, etc., is probably misleading.
Not true. By 1860, the US was of comparable size to the UK and France, and had a similar GDP per capita to the UK. De Tocqueville‘s “Democracy in America” had introduced Europe to America’s prosperity in the 1830s and 1840s, so it wasn’t unknown.
The war might not have been militarily relevant to Europeans, but that doesn’t mean people weren’t paying attention. The US was as big and as rich as the European powers at that point. It’s like today: If France broke out in a civil war it would be all over the news 24/7.
Militarily Europe walked away with simple caricatures of the war, but the lionization of Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was (rightly) recognized as a new kind of general - one that would be far more familiar in World War I than in the Napoleonic War. This led to a lot of fame.
Generally, the US revolutionary war was viewed very positively in parts of Europe. That upstart new world was finally in its place and would now tear itself to pieces without European governance. Britain considered entering the war early on(on the southern side!) and benefited from the economic collapse of the Americas. The British commercial fleets went from near-parity with the US merchant marine to unquestioned ruler of the commercial seas by the devastation of the blockades and the lack of insurance underwriting for north or south flagged vehicles.
But a lot of things were missed millitary that they would learn in 1914. The role of rail lines and junctions, and the early signs of trench warfare and total war were the only thing that could break near-industrial societies. The potential of armored battleships and submarines. (Though to be fair, imagine how much history would have changed if the Turtle had detonated its torpedo in the Revolutionary War!) These lessons would be learned a hard way sixty years later.
There's also an interesting paper written on the Vatican's view of the American Civil War: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25018756
this was disappointingly content-light. I'm curious about the subject, but this was barely even an introduction.
Here’s an article I found with more info: https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1506&cont...
My chief takeaway: people who weren’t there didn’t have all the details.
> What did British officers think of the American civil war as it was happening?
Go to the source.
Here is a book written by Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, a British officer who traveled with the Confederate army in 1863. He is well known due to appearing in the movie Gettysburg based on The Killer Angels book. Three Months in the Southern States: April, June, 1863. https://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/fremantle/fremantle.html
I'd be interested in how the world would/might react to an American civil war today?
Would we see America's "enemies" sending arms to the side of their choice to fight a proxy war on American soil? Would a side accept that aide?
Would America's "allies" sit out or pick sides? Would those sides align with the sides "enemies" would choose?
I think the world would collectively shit its pants. The world's largest economy and military suddenly splintering while in control of several thousand nuclear weapons? It would seem like Armageddon.
The us is far from the USSR - yet the USSR had so many nukes, the world treated them with kid gloves, for good or bad. Maybe after we in the US finish killing each other over imaginary grievances (is Tom Hanks really a pedophile who kills kids for their hormones, I can't believe I live in a country where anyone considers such idiocy) what will be left of the cities and rural areas.
>Would we see America's "enemies" sending arms to the side of their choice to fight a proxy war on American soil? Would a side accept that aide?
If history is any indication, yes and yes.
America's allies would probably not support a side unless there was going to be a clear winner OR it was in that nation's interest to do so.
America's enemies maybe would pick a side in an attempt to destabilize the country more... But I think a splintered America would be extremely reluctant to accept help from Russia/China.
It would be interesting to know what Prussian officers thought of the battles as they soon after fought a few wars. But I can't read German.
They thought the Confederate and US commanders lacked training, while Stanning for Lee. And generally thought that there was not much to learn that was applicable to European wars.
https://gettysburgcompiler.org/2015/01/05/a-prussian-observe...
A quote from that article:
This resulted in “stiffness in the lines and clumsiness in management and direction of troops” as large divisions of the army fully relied on their higher officers to direct all movement. “The loss of an upper-level commander,” Scheibert states, “Would cripple advance and retard again in battle.”
Interesting, this kind of criticism is leveled at the Russian army today.
Is Chesney the Guards officer that is portrayed in the "lost cause" movie Gettysburg?
Um, no, sorry. Appparently that was Lt. Colonel Arthur Fremantle of the Coldstream Guards.
Why do you call it a civil war? In a civil war two parties fight for dominance over the country - England’s and Russian’s civil wars, more than two hundred years apart, are great example. In that war, South did not want to dominate North but secede. It seems calling the conflict “a Civil war” just follows Northern narrative.
I upvoted because it's an interesting point: but I think your definition of 'civil war' is just wrong. It's people in a single nation/people group fighting to resolve differences. Limiting it to exclude things like secession is an unnatural split that doesn't have any obvious benefits. Like, some people end up fighting because 'their' side is being attacked, they don't wish for dominance but only survival ... you'd be deciding for each individual person if it was a civil war or not.
The article was a bit "once over lightly"
Comments here are much more interesting.
After the war I'm sure they took note. The US Army of the North was then the largest army in the world. That had to be concerning.
Second place? The US Army of the South.
Looks like the troop strength was 200-600K on each side. I'm not sure that would have been the largest army in the world.
source: https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/facts.htm#:~:text=In%20July%201....
It wouldn't be. Russia had a larger army. Only if you consider both sides a single army do they outnumber the Russian forces.
Luckily the US Navy wasn't doing so hot, and so the only real places to get worried were Canada and Mexico, as neither army had worked out how to walk on water.
Japan completely transformed their society, largely in response to a visit from that navy.
without facts, I would expect some central Asian horse army to have 200,000 humans, far earlier than that.. Persian and Egyptian armies were large at different times too.. sounds uninformed..
The OP says largest army at the time, not largest ever
Really? In 1865? Which one of those was in existence and larger?
The Qing dynasty (i.e., China), which had just put down a massive rebellion, probably had many times that number of men under arms.
As far as I know Qing military organization was weird for the time. There was no single central Chinese Army as such. There were some forces which officially reported to the Imperial government (the Green Standard and the Eight Banners), but these were of limited use. The armies that put down the Taiping Rebellion were raised by local governors, and were loyal to them not to the Emperor.
Asia has held the bulk of human population for quite a long time.
In the Wealth of Nations (1776) Adam Smith refers to it as “an ongoing disturbance in our North American colonies” IIRC
That was the American Revolution. The American Civil War typically refers to the conflict of 1861-1865.
"War of Northern Aggression".
Alternatively, "War of Southern Treason".
Has that one common usage anywhere?
The south will rise again! and get its ass beat again!
Considering the manufacturing and ensuing migration, it’s rising one way or another.
Won or lose, we still see Carpet Baggers…
“The Recent Unpleasantness,” as a certain Great-Aunt used to say.
My bad, just got back from a run and obviously my brain was scrambled.
"American Civil War" usually refers to the war in the 1860s. "American Revolution" is what we US people call the war in the 1770s.
What am I reading here?
A response to the title. What were British officers thinking during the American civil war. Lots of hidden history I just hinted at.