Tango01 | 16 Aug 2019 9:52 p.m. PST |
"The American Civil War is at the heart of the mid-19th century and this forum has numerous threads dedicated to how our Victorian friends dealt with it. I recently enjoyed a visit to Montpelier and since have enjoyed contemplating some of James Madison's writings and their implications (if any) on the Civil War. Should Madison and the other Founders be blamed for the Civil War? I think the Constitutional Convention likely had enough to do without trying to solve the complicated issue of slavery. Slavery was already 168 years old as a North American institution. The Founders no doubt had their hands full just trying to unite half a continent under a singular government. Nonetheless this question hangs over the head of men such as James Madison. In the Virginia Resolutions written by James Madison he says that the states "have the right of political protest." Did our Confederate ancestors think he was trying to assert more?…" Main page link Amicalement Armand |
robert piepenbrink | 17 Aug 2019 4:06 a.m. PST |
This paints no miniatures. But no--or at least not as a body and not in terms of law and constitution. The founders went as far as they could go institutionally and still create a nation. (Who called politics "the art of the possible?") As individuals, if every one of them who understood slavery to be an evil had worked hard to end it in their own families, it might have made the difference. As it was, there was no alternative to rule of the planter class in much of the south. As a long-time SF reader, sometimes I blame the invention of the cotton gin. Scientific advances have unforeseeable consequences. |
Flashman14 | 17 Aug 2019 4:06 a.m. PST |
The origins of the ACW could be traced to the founding, sure. The Costitution wouldn't have been ratified and then made operative without concessions to slave holding states. This is an American History 101 question and blaming the Founders is too simplistic, pat and wrong. |
Major General Stanley | 17 Aug 2019 6:27 a.m. PST |
a. Slave holders could see the anti-slavery movement gaining speed in Britain. This is certainly one, among many, factors leading to the American revolution. b. If the founders had not accepted slavery there would not have been 13 colonies in revolt and the British would have likely put down a disjointed revolt. c. Since the founders, both for and against, obviously had misgiving about the issue its interesting that the issue of succession wasn't dealt with in the constitution. It seems obvious that such a contentious issue wasn't going away. d. It's easy to say that slave holders should have recognized the evils of slavery and emancipated their slaves, but its not that easy to do when your families wealth is invested in those slaves and your livelihood is dependent upon their labour. You could be virtuous and poor, but it doesn't appeal all that much. Thats why there were so many slaves emancipated in wills. Did anyone ever suggest large scale compensated emancipation? |
donlowry | 17 Aug 2019 9:01 a.m. PST |
Did anyone ever suggest large scale compensated emancipation? Yes, Lincoln did. |
Tango01 | 17 Aug 2019 11:34 a.m. PST |
Thanks!. Amicalement Armand
|
Brechtel198 | 17 Aug 2019 1:16 p.m. PST |
In the draft of the Declaration of Independence slavery was to be abolished. The three states of the 'deep South' (Georgia and the Carolinas) objected and threatened not to approve the Declaration which would have stopped independence (the vote for independence had to be unanimous). So, it was then a choice of slavery with independence or slavery with no independence. The discussion was put off to be dealt with later-and later was the Civil War and 630,000 dead with slavery abolished. The choice made at the time was the logical one but the price paid later was a heavy one. |
Brechtel198 | 17 Aug 2019 1:18 p.m. PST |
The origins of the ACW could be traced to the founding, sure. The Costitution wouldn't have been ratified and then made operative without concessions to slave holding states. This is an American History 101 question and blaming the Founders is too simplistic, pat and wrong. The Constitution would never have been written, at least not in 1787 because without slavery being 'approved' by the Continental Congress, the Declaration would never have occurred and independence would have failed. |
Clays Russians | 17 Aug 2019 2:53 p.m. PST |
The American war for independence was actually our first civil war. |
ancientsgamer | 17 Aug 2019 6:15 p.m. PST |
Ahem, an extension of the ECW surely? |
Clays Russians | 17 Aug 2019 8:19 p.m. PST |
But to answer your question, ~~ maybe?~~ |
Dn Jackson | 17 Aug 2019 10:14 p.m. PST |
"Slavery was already 168 years old as a North American institution." This statement ignores slavery among the Native Americans. |
gunnerphil | 18 Aug 2019 2:49 a.m. PST |
Yes they should be blamed. They are blamed for every other problem, so why not. It is amazing that they did not foresee every issue. |
Brechtel198 | 18 Aug 2019 3:20 a.m. PST |
The American war for independence was actually our first civil war. While there was fighting between Americans in the Hudson Highlands and the Carolinas, it was not a civil war by any stretch of the imagination. Some Americans did fight for the British, but the war was one of independence from Great Britain and the establishment of a new nation from the mother country was an historic event. |
GurKhan | 18 Aug 2019 4:45 a.m. PST |
I blame that Columbus chappie. |
Trajanus | 18 Aug 2019 8:07 a.m. PST |
Can't imagine who else you could blame! They may have had pragmatic reasons for doing so but as they gifted the nation both slavery and the federal system, its pretty hard to say they didn't! |
Brechtel198 | 18 Aug 2019 9:31 a.m. PST |
Slavery began under the British… |
Clays Russians | 18 Aug 2019 11:56 a.m. PST |
I disagree Brechtel, half my ancestors were in the new jersey royals and disenfranchised of all property and rights and marched out of NJ to NYC and turned over to royal agents who re-patriated these families and resettled them in New Brunswick. The crown granted them land grant and cash out for settlement. |
Brechtel198 | 18 Aug 2019 2:19 p.m. PST |
They were loyal to Great Britain and were run out of town by the winners. What's your point? |
thedrake | 18 Aug 2019 11:22 p.m. PST |
Is this the episode of DS9 where the Founders used Borg technology to recreate the time vortex,allowing them to send a changeling back to the 1850's , pursued by Sisko, O'Brien, and Dax??? |
Trajanus | 19 Aug 2019 3:52 a.m. PST |
Slavery began under the British… No question about that. To have been accurate I should have said "gifted the nation the continuance of slavery and the federal system" The instigation of the latter providing the catalyst with the former for the basis of the war. |
Virginia Tory | 19 Aug 2019 7:23 a.m. PST |
"Slavery began under the British…" The Portuguese and Dutch, actually. |
Eagle76 | 19 Aug 2019 11:04 a.m. PST |
Why not? I blame James Madison for my shortness, Jefferson for my idealism, and the first G"Wuddbya" for my bad teeth. |
Brechtel198 | 19 Aug 2019 11:15 a.m. PST |
The Portuguese and Dutch, actually. The first African slaves in the English colonies that would become the United States were brought to Jamestown in 1619 by the Dutch and the English settlers bought them. Hence the reference to the English. And Virginia was the first English colony to legalize slavery in 1661 in what would become the United States. |
Lee494 | 19 Aug 2019 5:01 p.m. PST |
Of course! If there had been no Founding Fathers we still would have been English Colonies so by definition there would have been no Civil War. Was this a trick question?? Cheers! |
Virginia Tory | 20 Aug 2019 8:33 a.m. PST |
OK, got it--you were talking about slaves in the colonies v. slavery in general Project 1619! What a dumb idea. |
donlowry | 20 Aug 2019 8:47 a.m. PST |
As with most things, I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time. |
Bill N | 20 Aug 2019 9:21 a.m. PST |
Which Founders do we blame? The ones who argued against emancipation, the ones who started the process of emancipating slaves, or the ones who proposed we kick the issue down the road? The Founders who were actively involved in the process or the ones who passively went along with the decision? The Founders who crafted the compromise that was the Constitution of 1787 or the Founders who opposed its adoption? The Founders were not a monolithic block. They were a group of people who had differing views and interests on a variety of different issues. They also were not clairvoyant. They did foresee the developments that would make cotton production in the early to mid-19th century extremely profitable, both creating the demand for additional slave territories and priming the financial and industrial pumps in non-slave holding parts of the country where abolitionism would grow. The men sweltering in the heat of 1776 and 1787 Philadelphia summers were trying to deal with more immediate problems. Then again they were also white. |
Brechtel198 | 20 Aug 2019 3:16 p.m. PST |
The question was independence… |
Stephen Miller | 20 Aug 2019 6:19 p.m. PST |
Almost a hundred years later, President Lincoln once said something along the lines of "If I could end this (the Civil War, of course) war by freeing every slave, I would. If I could end this war by freeing no slaves, I would do that also." Blame the founding fathers?-I think not. |
Trajanus | 21 Aug 2019 2:19 a.m. PST |
Eh? So are you blaming Lincoln for a war that had already started when he made that comment or what? |
Stephen Miller | 21 Aug 2019 4:09 p.m. PST |
Of course not, I'm meerly pointing out that even Lincoln would have tolerated slavery in the southern states at that late date to avoid/end the war. To have expected the "Founding Fathers" to have risked their revoluntion from England in order to abolish it (slavery) 80 years earlier is totally unrealistic. |
Trajanus | 22 Aug 2019 2:02 a.m. PST |
Then I guess it's more a question of cause and effect and the use of the term "blame". Did the Founding Fathers deliberately set out to create conditions for a Civil War – No, how and why, would they. Did their actions create the conditions for one to eventually come about, most definitely. No Slavery and No Federal system = No War. |
Brechtel198 | 22 Aug 2019 4:35 a.m. PST |
No federal system means chaos-which was the overall condition in the United States under the Articles of Confederation. The Constitutional Convention and the resulting US Constitution solved that problem. And with the Constitution came the federal system and the argument between federalists and anti-federalists. |
donlowry | 22 Aug 2019 10:31 a.m. PST |
The blame for the war rests squarely on the shoulders of Jefferson Davis. He is the one who ordered Beauregard to fire on Fort Sumter even after Major Anderson had said that he would be starved out in a few days. Firing on US troops flying the US flag over a US-owned installation turned what until then had been a political crisis into a shooting war! |
Delbruck | 22 Aug 2019 12:05 p.m. PST |
Perhaps the Congress of Vienna should be blamed for World War I & II. A bunch of rich spoiled monarchs playing with peoples lives for their own vanity. |
Au pas de Charge | 22 Aug 2019 8:17 p.m. PST |
We are assuming that the Civil War was a problem? From a wargaming point of view, I couldn't imagine not having it. Maybe we should thank the founders for potentially causing it. It's a great idea to reexamine history but it's often a bad idea to pin new blames to old deeds. |
thomalley | 23 Aug 2019 9:35 a.m. PST |
In 1641, Massachusetts passed its Body of Liberties which gave legal sanction to certain kinds of slavery. |
Garde de Paris | 24 Aug 2019 10:37 a.m. PST |
Yes, Donlowry, and a couple months ago on this forum, someone rightly wrote that FT. Sumter was the action that determined the outcome of the ACW! GdeP |
Au pas de Charge | 25 Aug 2019 8:38 a.m. PST |
Actually, this anxiety about who to or not to pin blame on for slavery has very little to do with the Founders and more to do with us. We have a collective inability to grapple with some elements of how the country was founded lest it lessen the vision we like to have of ourselves; that we are better than other countries, not just materially but also morally. Until we reconcile all of this, we are going to continue to live in a dream world. |
Blutarski | 27 Aug 2019 11:15 a.m. PST |
This strikes me as a very sad and empty exercise in ex post facto racial virtue signalling. Anyone, for example, who thinks that Caucasians were exempt from slavery should read up a bit on the Arabs and Moors who regularly raided, captured and enslaved Causacians for well over six hundred years (as late as the early 19th century Barbary Pirates). B |
ScottWashburn | 27 Aug 2019 11:30 a.m. PST |
White Europeans did not invent slavery. They were, however, the first ones to seriously consider the notion that maybe slavery was immoral. |
Au pas de Charge | 28 Aug 2019 7:54 a.m. PST |
@Blutarski This strikes me as a very sad and empty exercise in ex post facto racial virtue signalling. Anyone, for example, who thinks that Caucasians were exempt from slavery should read up a bit on the Arabs and Moors who regularly raided, captured and enslaved Causacians for well over six hundred years (as late as the early 19th century Barbary Pirates).B Can you explain this a bit more? Are you suggesting that because everyone was doing it, including pirates, medieval Moslem cultures and desert tribesmen it was OK for the USA to do it too? I know you're not suggesting they ONLY enslaved whites because I'm certain they did it to blacks and other groups as well. As far as I know, slavery wasnt necessarily a permanent or a hereditary condition among those people, nor did it ever become racially codified. In some ways, without adjustments, your statement makes American slavery sound worse than the slavery of "lawless" buccaneers. @ScottWashburn White Europeans did not invent slavery. They were, however, the first ones to seriously consider the notion that maybe slavery was immoral. Doesnt this make it worse that they considered it wrong and still desired to pursue slavery as a policy? Not only did white Europeans not invent slavery but they were for millennia, the victims of it. But who today looks at some white man and thinks, his ancestors were once slaves? I don't know that the universal concept of slavery through the ages is the point here but rather that slavery became both codified by race and that for long after slavery ended, certain "elements" continued to make sure that blacks would remain second class citizens. This suggests that slavery wasnt just "business as usual" and that after it ended it wasn't a matter of "Let's let bygones be bygones" but that instead, slavery was a deeply personal mass hysteria against a group of people. And in turn, this mass hysteria both justified slavery as policy from the get-go and rationalized continued persecution even after the victims of that policy desired nothing more than to remain unmolested |
StoneMtnMinis | 28 Aug 2019 9:19 a.m. PST |
Slavery has existed since the start of recorded history and probably prior to that. And it still exists today, especially in the Middle East and Africa. The first slaves sold to the American colonies were the Irish through indentured servitude. So the history of slavery is not simply race based. It has encompassed all nationalites and peoples at various times and locations. |
Au pas de Charge | 28 Aug 2019 11:37 a.m. PST |
@StoneMtnMinis Slavery has existed since the start of recorded history and probably prior to that. And it still exists today, especially in the Middle East and Africa. So has theft and murder. I fail to see the significance of this and, especially after the last few posts above, it is extraordinary that you would write this. The first slaves sold to the American colonies were the Irish through indentured servitude. So the history of slavery is not simply race based. It has encompassed all nationalites and peoples at various times and locations. No one is justifying this but indentured servitude ended and I dont know of many cases where the Irish were hunted down with dogs and hanged or persecuted for having been indentured servants (and whom the persecutors believed should still be indentured servants) generations after they earned their freedom. So, this is a really poor analogy. Slavery across time and civilizations was not a monolith and rarely do we have examples where particular ethnicities were codified as slaves, their descendants codified as slaves with no ability to ever gain their freedom; and indeed their freed descendants persecuted in perpetuity. This type of slavery we had here was a particularly virulent sort. If you read what I wrote above: Actually, this anxiety about who to or not to pin blame on for slavery has very little to do with the Founders and more to do with us. We have a collective inability to grapple with some elements of how the country was founded lest it lessen the vision we like to have of ourselves; that we are better than other countries, not just materially but also morally. Until we reconcile all of this, we are going to continue to live in a dream world. The assumption being that both the Founders and the Country deserve a special, higher morale treatment than other times, countries and places. If you believe this, then it must needs a reconciliation of slavery in the form it took here. If you dont believe the USA or the Founders were special, please say so and we can move on but it is difficult to accept an artificially spliced argument that we are special alongside slavery what-about-isms. |
Virginia Tory | 29 Aug 2019 7:51 a.m. PST |
The simple point is Plan 1619 From Outer Space is intended to recast the historical narrative as being all about slavery, nothing but slavery. Which is patently rubbish. I've seen that sort of thing in higher ed before, while doing my degrees. Nobody has ignored slavery or its significance. There's tons of scholarship on the subject and the NYT is being dishonest in trying to imply otherwise. Just read the first essay--it's so riddled with distortions and falsehoods it made my brain bleed. |
thomalley | 29 Aug 2019 4:52 p.m. PST |
This is certainly one, among many, factors leading to the American revolution. The anti-slavery movement in Britain didn't become a politcal issue until 1783, 2 years after Yorktown. The first slaves sold to the American colonies were the Irish through indentured servitude. Indenture Servants are in no way slaves. The contract (yes a real contract) is usually limited to 2-7 years. It include transport, food. lodging and most important, training. Most were given their own land (something they couldn't get in Ireland) after their contract was completed. Having land not only meant they were free, but that they could vote. Others were able to be smiths, coopers and other trades. |