Cause of Civil War

If I did it isn't based upon your argument.
They started to secede before Lincoln was even inaugurated. Therefore, the argument that they seceded because of abuses falls flat.Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, the Confederate Constitution was adopted on March 11, 1861. How much abuse could have happened in that week?The cry we hear from Confederate apologists is states rights. If that is so why does CSA Constitution not substantially increase the rights of states?

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

Hi, NWR. If slavery was just the "poster child" for the greater issue, then there is a meaningful distinction to be made.The stereotypical conservative stubbornly defends every little tradition they can when they perceive that their way of life is under attack. The opposition to gay marriage as part of the "Chrisitianity is under attack" worldview is a good example of this.Most Southerners today effectively believe that slavery was the "marriage is between a man and a woman" of the secessionists. They of course won't say this, because it is more a negative commentary on than a defense of their way of thinking: but this is the implication of their argument.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Theodoric. You're right, I should have said anticipated abuses.My point still stands: it wasn't the Constitution that they took exception to, so why should we expect them to have changed it?

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

They are claiming states rights issues. The exact Constitution just invites the same abuses. Doesn't add up.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

It's relevant to claims such as that made by Artemis: It was another union, modeled very closely on the USA.

But what if "state's rights" was just the poster child for the larger issue of slavery? Well, no, they don't. For example, I don't see them defending the tradition of outhouses - they much prefer the modern flush toilet. Sure. However, Christianity is not under attack.

Hi, NWR. I can see how slavery could be seen as an archetype of states' rights, but I can't see how states' rights could be seen as an archetype of the slavery issue.----- My second form of identification is a literary license.----- To them, it is. Surely what they think is the only thing that is relevant to the search for their motivation, right?

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Given the flip-flopping of the Tennesse voters between referendums one might well insist that Governor Harris was simply a hate filled racist with motives not representative of the TN voters. Harris likely did not much care why the voters gave him the result he wanted. Exactly. TN voters knew exactly what kind organization they were joining and went for it anyway. Contrast that with what KY and WV did.

The point is that if slavery was the only right that they were concerned enough about to consider secession. So it sure looks as if the issue was slavery, and the states rights bit was just an attempt to make it look more principled than it ever was. Well, sure. And my reference to outhouses was intended as a metaphor.The point is that conservatives are consistently unrealistic. The point, again, is that they are being unrealistic. The are offended by the use of the first amendment establishment clause. But the first amendment free exercise clause is what protects them from being under attack. The first amendment is a package. It can't be that they can have complete free exercise of their religion, but that they can deny others the equivalent free exercise.Evangelical Christianity has done very well in the the USA, compared to how it has fared in other parts of the world. And it is because of the first amendment, that it has done so well. Yet they see the first amendment as a threat. There's some seriously unrealistic thinking going on somewhere.

Moose

Hi, Theodoric. But, what would they have changed to fix this?They already have the text of the Tenth Amendment. And, they already got rid of everybody they thought had the motivation to abuse the Tenth Amendment.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Dr A. Point taken.----- But, the perception is that the union was not a constitutional construct, but a cultural construct derived from a flawed interpretation of the Constitution.They don't change the Bible when they disagree with how somebody else interprets it (usually): why should we expect them to change the Constitution?

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, NWR. So, when gay-rights proponents argue the "pursuit of happiness" clause, is this also just a smokescreen of principle around an ultimately selfish argument? Or is it actually about the principle?The fact that there is a principle that could, in theory, defend their position, and that it is the very principle that they appeal to, should at least give you pause in ruling on their motivation.This is the situation: the state has a major economic investment in slavery, but the combined political power of the nation (and the world) is making it harder and harder for the institution to continue. Then, the Republican Party pushes a platform of halting the spread of slavery, which means the state with a vested interest in slavery would forever be in the minority in the government, and would likely face a situation in which the rest of the states could force it to act against its own best economic interests by limiting or abolishing slavery.It’s very difficult to say whether it was really about slavery, or about states’ rights. Was the Confederacy founded on the belief that white people are superior to black people, and that black people were thus born to be enslaved? Or was it founded on the fear that the states’ economy could be ruined by loss of political power?From their perspective, they wanted to preserve their own political and economic power, and the Union just wanted to take it away.
From our perspective, we wanted to abolish slavery, and they just wanted to exploit and subjugate black people.I think anybody can clearly see that slavery was a major, central focus of the war, regardless of whether it was just the poster child for the underlying concerns.But, if it was just the outward manifestation of a deeper concern, then I think Southerners may have a legitimate case that their participation in the war was actually about the deeper concern, and not about slavery. I personally think it’s glossing over the facts, but I can understand the position.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

In the matter of slavery, we have seen many speeches citing slavery as an important issue to the South. For most of the 1800's leading up to the Civil War, slavery was an important issue that came up repeatedly. There was an eternal struggle in the US Senate to keep either side, Free or Slave, from gaining greater representation (every state, regardless of population size, has two senators), so new states entered into the Union in pairs, one free and one slave, within a year of each other. Before Missouri, the Mason-Dixon line determined whether a new state would be slave or free, but the 1820 Missouri Comprise complicated that. The politics leading up to the Nebraska-Kansas Act really are complicated.My family history ties in with Kansas. In 1854, the Kansas Territory was opened up to white settlement. The Nebraska-Kansas Act allowed that a vote by the territory's population would determine whether the new state would be slave or free. As a result, pro- and anti-slavery organizations in the North and in the South recruited settlers for the Kansas Territory. For the North, there was the New England Immigrant Aid Society. By the time their first parties arrived in the Kansas Territory, they found that the Southerners had gotten there first and had settled closest to the eastern border, so the New England Immigrant Aid Society party continued westward to found the cities of Topeka and Lawrence, both of which later drew attacks from the pro-slavery forces.My great-great-grandfather, Louis Wies, arrived from Baden, Germany, via Le Havre, France, at New Orleans on 25 May 1854. He was part of a massive emigration of Germans following the failed 1848 Revolution, after which about a quarter of a million Germans emigrated every year. Given the conditions of near-slavery back home, those new German immigrants were fiercely anti-slavery. He married an Irish girl, Anna Bridget Hastings, that same year of 1854 in St. Louis and then some time before Sep 1856 had arrived in Lawrence, KS, for the birth of their first children, the first white twins born in Kansas, Louis and Sarah. At some point before the 1860 census, the family had changed its name to Wise -- by family tradition, very shortly after his arrival in New Orleans; also, by family tradition, he hated the Jews, so we chuckle at him for having anglicized to a typically Jewish name.That era before and into the Civil War was called "Bleeding Kansas" for the near-constant raids and fighting between pro- and anti-slavery factions. On 21 Aug 1863, during Quantrill's raid on Lawrence, my great-great-grandfather was shot through the heart while he held his 2-year-old son in his arms. His son was struck in the head and he and his father were added to the pile of the dead in the middle of the street and sentries were posted. During the night, sentries heard a child crying. That child was my great-grandfather, whose head had only been grazed by the bullet that had killed his father (he died sixty-odd years later, insane, possibly due to lead poisoning from that bullet). So, you see, I nearly didn't make it here tonight.So regardless of what each Confederate state said, the slavery issue predominated US politics leading up to the Civil War. The only things I can say on their behalf is that I seem to recall part of the Constitution that stated that any state that wanted to leave the Union would be free to do so (the last time I re-enlisted, I was given a copy of the Constitution, but I cannot put my hands on it right at this moment).But regarding 1865, I would indirectly quote a historian who noted that in that year, "United States of America" changed from plural to singular.Edited by dwise1, : Added link to the German 1848 Revolutions, the turning-point of German history where Germany failed to turnEdited by dwise1, : Topeka and LawrenceEdited by dwise1, : the Jewish connection

But this, if true, would only go to strengthen my point.If he didn't care why the secessionists won the referendum, and if the real concerns of the Tennessee voters at the time of the second referendum was that Union soldiers would march through their lands on the way to the Lower South, then he could have played on that fear.But he never even mentioned that. Instead, it was more stuff about "slaveholding states" and the "peculiar institution" and what he'd already said in January.So if we suppose that he was a cynic trying to get secession by any means, then that hypothesis reinforces the view that what really animated the ordinary voters of Tennessee was slavery and not the route of march of the Union Army.It only is if we suppose that he was a man of (bad) principle who would speak up for slavery whether or not it would be popular that we can suppose that in the second referendum the people of Tennessee might have really been concerned only about which roads the Union Army would march down rather than preserving their "peculiar institutions".Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.