"So obscure i have problems debunking it" Topic

Got into a discussion with another norwegian, that made a claim so outrageous i had never herd of it.

First he claims the war was started over taxes, this was new to me and so silly i had problems finding any refrences to it. Aperantly something about the Morrill Tariff is what my google could find.

Its so obscure and conspiracy theoryish. I'm not sure what kind of blog he has come over.

He also added the last man to own a slave was US Grant..

And when asked why he kept them so long, he said "good help is hard to find"

That quote was easy to debunk.

From wiki, grant worked a farm with slaves owned by hus father in law.

Ge also bought a slave from said father in law. That he freed in 1859.

Show him this, the reasons the STATES gave for seceding and let him think what he wants.

link

A Norwegian? Perhaps you should change the conversation to his take on Quisling.

How about asking HIM to prove his assertions.

The industrial north wanted tariffs to protect their industry from cheaper British manufactured goods. The south feared retaliation against their raw materials and they wanted to buy cheaper British goods. It goes back to two different economic models in the same country, one industrial and the other agrarian with slave labor. But your friend is way off base.

Grant was given a slave by Julia Dent's family as a wedding gift. He worked beside him for a while and then freed him. Grant was not the last man to own a slave in the US. As for why the war started have your friend check out the Declarations of Intent published by many of the states seceding. There are many reasons but the one common thread is "personal property rights", i.e. their slaves.

I honestly don't want to press the mater, i linked to wiki and other sources debunking the both lies about grant and the taxes thing.

But he KNOWS TWO people with masters in history for Huston university and another guy from Louisiana.

He obviously doesn't know history or how you study it.

But i have to meet this guy in real life and i honestly don't want to press as I'm afraid more will fall out of his mouth that will make it uncomfortable to be around him.

He is a happy go lucky guy, that seems nice, probably naive and taken inn by "athority" and now he belives it.

I don't want to learn this guy has bought other crank ideas that would make him hard to be around.

Gunfreak,

The subject of the causes of the ACW is complex. The Morill tariff may not have been the principle cause or stated as such by seceding states but do not discount it out of hand. Slavery was the root cause, but even this is not straight forward. The U.S. Government did not fight the war to end slavery but rather to keep breakaway states from leaving. Lincoln's concern as stated in his inaugural address was that taxes be collected (the tariff) and forwarded to the central government or it would mean war.

The south had dominated national politics up to this era partly due to the three fifths clause of the constitution which counted slaves as three fifths of a person for representational purposes. As the country absorbed new western territory and added new states the balance of power was shifting away from favoring the south. New western states were not going to be slave states. The southern point of view was going to lose weight in the house and senate.

There was also a shift in party politics with the end of the Whig party and the birth of the new Republican party. The realignment resulted in a more northern centric republican party. The 1860 election was split four ways and Lincoln wasn't even on the ballot in some southern states, further alienating the south.

There was a growing animosity in the north against slavery, though most of this was not motivated by concerns for social justice but rather that slaves were unfair competition to free working men. The new republican party had an abolitionist element though Lincoln was not one of them. However, Lincoln had made public statements against slavery and incorporating new slave states. He had also made other statements that he didn't believe in or want black equality. The guy was a politician who said whatever he thought would get him elected.

Although the wealthy slave owning class in the south felt under threat of losing the vast wealth that slaves represented (At that time the monetary value of all the slaves combined was greater than the value of all northern industry combined), everyone in the south was freaked out by the idea that blacks would rise up and kill them and that some in the north were encouraging this. The Nat Turner slave uprising, small though it was, and the John Brown attempted uprising caused fear in the south mostly because of perceived northern support for such terrorism.

And even if this didn't happen they did not want blacks to be free equal members of society. To be fair, most northerners didn't want this either and many northern states had draconian discrimination laws.

There is nothing conspiracy theory-ish about the Morill tariff. It was very real and would have caused the south to shoulder a disproportionate burden of funding the central government.

The real question is not why the south tried to gain independence and form its own nation. the more interesting question is how northerners justified making war on them to stop this, given the history of the nations birth when it seceded from Great Britain.

Gunfreak,

Yes, dismiss the Morill Tariff out of hand. First, is was not passed until after the various secession movements. Second, look at any of the primary sources given by Southerners for secession and tariff issues are not mentioned. Only slavery.
Finally, having gotten by PhD in Civil War Studies and having reads hundreds of books about the war not once have I ever encountered a mention of tariffs or the Morill Tariff. This all is bull put out by the neo-Lost Causers.

Inkpaduta is right. Pseudo-history isn't history. It's generally wishful thinking.

Also, to why the Northern justified war in relation to our independence from GB. There are differences.

First 13 Colonies were just that, colonies. They did not have representation in Parliament nor were they viewed as being equals. One could make the case that by the time of the war the colonists were also being denied the basic rights of Englishmen.

However, the Southern states had ratified the Constitution thus joining the Nation. They did have equal rights and representation. They just didn't like the fact that their views and desires weren't in the majority. Nor was there anything stated in the Constitution that gave a state the right to secede. The South claimed, in theory, they had that right and the North, using the Constitution said they did not. It took a war to decide the issue.

Finally, the North did not start the war. The South was ed off that they were being blocked from expanding slavery into the West and freaked when the Republicans won the 1860 election. Even though Lincoln and the Republican platform stated clearly they would not touch slavery were it currently existed. The South seceded and then the South fired on Fort Sumter starting the war.

Not exactly the same thing as the American Revolution.

Tell him it's more plausible than other theories you have heard.

But be sure to specify that by 'other theories', you mean the plot of "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter".

Inkpaduta, your view of the cause is much the same as mine.

But again, i won't dig into it, he has deleted his comments. Add i gave him one answer i will not force a confrontation.

He is not a hobby historian, he has probably been told things and bought into it.

If he comes back open to a real debate, and not based on what two poeple with masters in history told him. I might try and educate him.

But given how far from reality his acertions were, i doubt ant debate will end nicely. I need to see him in real life from time to time, and so it's better to let it rest.

He is an honest good man, just extremely miss informed.

I thought it had to do with who wore grey and who wore blue uniforms if ever there was a reason for war :)
Thank goodness the ECW was only about haircuts otherwise we'd be as earnestly hot about cause as those that reside across the Atlantic are.
Cheers and here's to civility to civil war over cheese :D BTW liked Panzers reasoning blame to all seems right and all for $s again.

Zargon, if you look at British political history in the late 18th century (about 150 years after the ECW) you will find that the old animosities were every bit as hot in Britain as those over the ACW are in the US.

Nice analysis Panzerfaust.

Freeing the slaves was a nice move from a propaganda point, but for Lincoln, preservation of the Union was the real motive. And Emancipstion wasn't mentioned until support started flagging.

Much as on the part of the South the rhetoric was based on 'property rights' and not about the economic reasons for Secession.

The American public has always preferred to fight 'crusades' and (rightly or wrongly in some cases) paint the enemy in dark shades.

"The American public has…paint the enemy in dark shades"

And other countries haven't? Other countries think the enemy are "really nice people, just misunderstood'?

I mean, the guys who seceded wrote down, at length, in flowery English why they seceded.

I really don't see how there's a lot of debates about this. It's literally a Google search away.

@Weasel:
How _dare_ you, Sir! Dragging the filth of factuality into this august debate!

I mean, the guys who seceded wrote down, at length, in flowery English why they seceded.

Yes, the reason they seceded. But that was the proverbial straw that they were declaring. There were many, many issues that eventually built up and led to the war.

Debating the reason for succession is foolish, but just as foolish is pointing to a single thing and declaring it the end all be all reason.

I know, that's how people do things today. Point to one thing, call it a day, ignore every other thing.
The world doesn't work that way. Never has, never will.

Even more foolish is taking the written reason they said they did something and rejecting it. Unless you had good reason to believe they lied to make themselves look better.

Regions of the country had been grumpy for 80 years. And they all put up with a lot and stayed in the Union.
If the Rebs go to the pains of writing down in long declarations that slavery was the primary reason…in fact they mentioned nothing else…who am I to doubt it?
Hitler told everyone what he intended to do in great detail in Mein Kampf. Only the foolish doubted him or made excuses.

I suggest the following article:

link

The upshot is that anyone who claims to both be an expert on the civil war and know nothing about the Morrill tariff should go to their school and demand their money back.

A slightly different perspective on the Morrill tariff:

link

….. At the time of the Civil War nearly 90 percent of Federal revenue was derived from ad valorem taxes – i.e tariffs.

B

Another article on the Morrill tariff:

link

"Precisely because southern states began seceding from December 1860 onwards, a number of southern senators had resigned that could otherwise have voted against the tariff bill. Had they not resigned, they would have had enough votes in the Senate to successfully block the tariff's congressional passage. In other words, far from causing the Civil War or secession, the Morrill Tariff of March 1861 became law as a result of southern secession."

Slavery was not the final straw. As far back as the Missouri Compromise in the 1820s slavery was the main issue between the North and the South. Start at the end of the Mexican War in 1848, go through the major events that followed and what do you find, they deal with the issue of slavery expansion.
Compromise of 1850, elections, John Brown's Raid, Kansas, Fugitive Slave Laws, Personal Liberty laws, fighting and brawls in Congress, Davis Resolutions, Dred Scott decision.

But right, it was the Morill tariff everybody.

link
link

Read what the lovely people in the Confederacy said as to why they did it. Not a mention of Morill tariff. Its all about divine right to white supremacy. Revisionist and romantic history is nice, but rarely accurate. My personal fave is 'War of Northern Aggression', after the south started it! Its a bit like Japan calling WW2 the 'War of American Aggression'.

The tariff might have been an issue, but it wasn't regional enough to have brought about the secession of all those southern states. The Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama might have hated the tariff, but Texas and Arkansas and Missouri loved the tariff. They weren't buying many European goods and the tariff was the federal government's main source of income to pay for things like the army which kept the Indians at bay.

Only the slavery issue truly divided North and South.

The Civil War was started by Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam. I've seen the cartoon episode.

Jeez, who doesn't know this?

(Sorry, just had to include something light hearted in all this heavy historical discussion) :)

DS6151 – If you read the declarations of secession from each state, it's abundantly clear that slavery was not the "be all end all" reason but there's little doubt it was the primary reason.

It's debated at length in all of the declarations and it's made the key issue in most of them.

Seriously. Go read them now. We'll wait for you.

There is a meme floating around the internet resulting from the flag controversy pushing nonsense about Grant and Sherman owning slaves, among other BS.

If you want to argue that the ACW was about tariffs, I think you would have to go back further, to the Tariff of Abominations in the 1830s. South Carolina which was purchasing goods from overseas was upset about paying high tariffs to protect domestic manufacturing in other parts of the country. Their response led to the Nullification Crisis where SC attempted to overturn the Federal Tariff. President Jackson stood up to SC which received little support from other cotton states. Cooler heads prevailed and a compromise lowering certain tariffs resolved the crisis.

After the Nullification Crisis which was brought about by the Tariff of Abominations the firebrands in the south began selling the idea that the southern states share common interests and a common culture which differs from the rest of the country. By the 1860s the notion of THE SOUTH is widely accepted, both within and outside of the region. Now if you look at the one thing about those states which they all shared and which was largely lacking in the rest of the country, it wasn't their views on tariffs.

I was unaware they had in Norway…

AI have found it is best not to disturb people in their prejudices. In fact I would encourage you to advance him in this. It will make him happier.

Another reason to take Jackson of the $20 USD bill, he had a chance to send troops into South Carolina in the 1830's and he blew it…..

Now there is a great alternative "What if" wargame. Jackson does send in troops and it starts the Civil War years earlier. Could make for some interesting uniforms, troop organization, different weaponry and different generals. Humm.

Winfield Scott would still be there!

And he would be kick'n butt!!
Our most under rated general.