"If Sumter hadn't been attacked" Topic

I'm really tired of the Southern secession convention argument. Okay, states seceded to protect slavery. We get it. And I think we've always known that.

But what do YOU make of the fact that there were more anti-slavery organizations in the South than in the North before 1830? That was long after the cotton gin made slavery profitable once again. The change came after Nat Turner and William Lloyd Garrison. NOT economic.

Those who profess to base an argument on history ought to be aware that if historians agree on anything, it is multiple causation: complex events have complex causes.

Your obsession with slavery and insistence upon Southern guilt (and why is that?) is blinding you to the rest of the story.

But what do YOU make of the fact that there were more anti-slavery organizations in the South than in the North before 1830?

Not sure which of the several YOUs where being addressed in the above post but my personal comment would be that it was 30 years prior to events and that they were clearly not making much headway!

I think that what is often seen as

obsession with slavery and insistence upon Southern guilt

stems from the number of people (Not labelling you here, doc mcb) who are still of a mind to deny the position of slavery in the cause of the war, Lincoln's intentions and the cold hard fact that the Confederacy lost the war!

These come to the fore as regularly and repetitively as the topic that draws them out as do those propounding the contrary argument.

Personally I am and would have been, a dyed in the wool abolitionist but I accept there were other factors involved as people of all persuasions – particularly political ones – have always drawn causes together to strengthen their arguments. So the matter of one single cause is in many things, diminished accordingly.

Doc,

I am not sure what you are basing your idea that more anti-slavery societies were in the South. Yes, from the start of the Republic, even before, there were individuals and certain groups, like the Quakers, who opposed slavery but I can think of only one organized group in the early Republic era that sought to buy slaves free and then send them back to Africa, the name escapes me, and a number of leading Founding Fathers, both North and South were members. But it did not go anywhere. Not until the Second Great Awakening and the reform movements it inspired in the 1820s-30s did the American Anti-Slavery Society come about and that was centered in the North.

Following New Jersey, a North state, ending slavery in 1808 no Southern state ever ended slavery. Although Virginia did debate it but that came to an end with Turner's rebellion.

Also, the golden age for cotton started in the 1810s not in the 1830s as you implied. Thus economics was a factor for slavery along with race control, social advancement and political considerations (the 3/5 rule in the Constitution regarding slaves and congressional members).

As a historian I do agree with multiple causation. However, that does not mean that these causes can not emerge from a central issue or problem. In this case slavery. Slavery was the issue that morally divided the nation, economically divided the nation, politically divided the nation, caused problems over expansion, caused disagreement over the future identity of the nation and caused the South to advocate state rights and secession. Thus, multiple causes for the war based off of one central issue.

I'm afraid you've misread me. The "golden age" of slavery began after the cotton gin, long before 1830. The significance of THAT date (1831) is that Nat Turner created intense southern fear of slave revolts -- can't really say paranoia since it had some basis in fact -- and Garrison's publication of THE LIBERATOR marked the rise of abolitionism as a (small numerically) increasingly significant force in northern thinking.

And the Va legislature was considering a gradual emancipation when NT exploded, which ended THAT!

It is a mistake to read a dispute over slavery too far back into the past. Slavery was easily resolved by the 3/5 compromise plus the 20 year delay in ending the international slave trade. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 held until the Mexican Cession; slavery was nowhere near the main issue during the Jacksonian period; it was banking and tariffs and internal improvements.

Also, we must distinguish between the South as a consuming and staple crop agricultural section and its labor system of chattel slavery. After 1865 it had a different labor system (sharecropping by whites and blacks) but the same problems attending tariffs and such.

And what do you make of the ant-abolitionist rioting in the north? The north;s economic prosperity was substantially based on southern exports, and so upon the slave labor system as well, and northerners understood this, hence the widespread opposition to abolitionism IN THE NORTH.

Found this on the Civil War Talk forum. Haven't read the book cited but this summary is consistent with my own understanding. Southerners were very aware of slavery's problems and its moral dangers; Jefferson wrote of them in NOTES ON VIRGINIA. The most favorable view was that slavery was a necessary evil, and alternatives such as colonization to Africa were popular (and ultimately impractical). But fear from slave rebellions, especially Turners, produced a seachange; slavery was seen as an essential defense measure, and the South's mind closed to alternatives and to outside arguments, precisely as the Abolionists became increasingly shrill and then violent (see John Brown).

This thread is a good opportunity to plug Lacy K. Ford's Deliver Us From Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South. In the book, Prof. Ford traces the evolution of southern white thinking on slavery from roughly the Founding to about 1835. Among many other things, Prof. Ford examines the American Colonization Society (founded 1816), which in the late teens had broad if shallow support in both the lower and upper south. In the early 20s, the Missouri debates and the Denmark Vesey conspiracy caused the lower south to cast a suspicious eye on the ACS, and the Society's campaign for federal funding for removal in the 20s only made things worse. By the late 1820s the ACS was dead in the lower south. Although it retained some influential supporters in the upper south (notably Henry Clay), the ACS came under increasing attack and suspicion there as well as a breeding ground for slave revolts and the opening wedge for abolitionism.

Prof. Ford provides a superb overview of trends such as the battle between paternalism and an older, less sentimental approach to slavery, the key importance of colonization as an element in the thinking of almost all whites willing to contemplate gradual abolition, toleration of and crackdowns on slave education and participation in religion and religious gatherings, the interstate slave trade, the issue of free blacks, and the divergent approaches to slavery between the lower and upper south. He also relates fine and detailed accounts of specific incidents that dramatically affected southern thinking on the topic, such as the Vesey conspiracy. the Negro Seamen Acts, and the abolitionist mail campaign. If the topic is of interest, Prof. Ford's book is highly recommended.

link

A good portion of anti-abolitionist rioting in the North was based on fear of the market being flooded with cheap (or more exactly – even cheaper) labour.

When you are near the bottom of the pile and the strata you consider to be lower than you is on the move, humanity goes out the window! I doubt there was much reasoned debate as to the rights and wrongs of either abolition or slavery.

Building on what Trajanus wrote another issue was that Abolitionists did not just advocate ending slavery but the equality of blacks and whites. This few whites, either North or South, would support at that time. Led to a few riots over that one.

However, the issue that more united the North and eventually helped led to secession was not ending slavery but stopping the expansion of slavery into the West. Abolitionists were always in the minority until after the war started.

Lincoln didn't fight to end Slavery, he fought to preserve the union. Abolition was to keep Britain and France from recognising the South and/or stop them helping the South. I would imagine Lincoln was kept awake at night by the thought London would pull a 'reverse 1812' and break the blockade for merchants by claiming 'freedom of the Seas'

It's been 40 years since I read this: "Gentlemen of Property and Standing": Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (Galaxy Books) by Leonard L. Richards (Feb 15, 1971) but iirc the opposition to abolitionists was not JUST poorer northern whites, though they certainly feared competition and also were as racist as everyone else. But there really were significant northern business interests that depended on slavery. Southerners (see, e.g., Mary Chestnut) believed slavery made everyone ELSE rich except the planters who were perpetually in debt.

I think understanding the economics of slavery is important, but tricky and at most half the story.

Abolition was to keep Britain and France from recognising the South and/or stop them helping the South

Actually, no it wasn't.

One of the surest things preventing recognition and active aid was slavery.

In Britain in particular there would have been uproar if the Government had supported slavery by supporting the South. After Britain lead the abolition of the Slave Trade and removed it from the British Empire the about face would have been unthinkable.

The British government was caught between a rock and a hard place as the war was damaging trade and the Blockade was a major source of friction. So it was under pressure from business and Southern sympathisers. However, reformists and religious groups along with a large portion of working people where determined that slavery would not be supported.

Seward played a very dangerous game in his stance on the blockade and British trade, even to the point of pushing Britain towards war and into the arms of the Confederacy, until Lincoln made him back off.

It was really in the North's interest to keep slavery a live issue and paint the South as the bad guys.

Don't forget the Emancipation Proclamation did not ‘free' slaves in the South, there were another two years of war before Lincoln was secure enough to push the 13th Amendment and effectively alter the South's position for them.

Yes, but otoh British manufacturers stood to benefit a great deal from an independent south free from the US protective tariff.

Not to mention that Britain was very depended on Northern foodstuffs like wheat, oats and other grains. Plus, a number of British companies were heavily invested in US businesses and finances. Britain coming into the war was not as likely as is often stated. Once Egyptian cotton was arriving in England the need to support the South was even less.

"Not to mention that Britain was very depended on Northern foodstuffs like wheat, oats and other grains."

And machine tools. One area that is often glossed over is the increasing amount of precision tools that the US was exporting to Britain. At the Crystal Palace exhibition of 1851, the quality of US machine goods surprised many (which undoubtedly led to a heightened investment interest). Yes, British banks and investors were deeply involved in the leading edge of the US economy and would not have been pleased with an independent south (who only had cheap cotton to offer; and we all know what a disaster Cotton Diplomacy turned out to be).

I forgot…what was the original question again?

Would the North of attacked the South anyway. By hey, Nasty,
at least we are still talking about the Civil War, usually by this time things are so off topic that the debate would be what if Lee had been a Zombie!

OK, I'll buy that for a Dollar!

So, what if Lee had been a Zombie?

I'm pretty certain Hood was one by December '64!

What was left of him.

I'd give Lee and 2-1/2 points by late 1862. That's if he doesn't tear his ACL.