"why slavery as a single cause of the war does not work" Topic

And yet the Confederate Congress DID authorize black enlistments. Or did BCofF leave that out?

BS, please continue to discuss all you wish. Bless YOUR heart too.

The rejection of Cleburne's idea indicates the extent to which protection of slavery was the war aim. The acceptance two years later -- too late, but they didn't know that -- indicates the extent to which independence was the war aim. If you can't have both, you pick the essential one.

Regardless of the details, arming slaves spelled the end of slavery. If not immediately then in the long run. For reasons evident in yours and others posts.

I've made the best arguments I can. If others cannot see their merits, I will try to bear up under the disappointment.

Slavery in the nation as a whole was the issue, not merely the threat of extension of slavery into the new Western states. Why then was Lincoln willing to accept the Corwin Amendment? And why didn't the South accept it?

"I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service … holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable."

– Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address on March 4

Just weeks prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, President Lincoln sent a letter to each state's governor, transmitting the proposed amendment, which had already received approval from President Buchanan. However, Lincoln's letter remained neutral, neither supporting nor opposing the amendment, indicating his lack of a wholehearted endorsement.

While Lincoln strongly opposed slavery, during the early stages of his presidency, he believed that the Constitution prevented him from ending slavery in states where it already existed. Lincoln saw the proposed amendment as a potential means to prevent the Union from breaking apart, and he might have tacitly approved it in hopes of maintaining the Union until a viable resolution could be reached.

I stated earlier why the South ignored the Corbin Amendment. I am in the awkward position of having to quote myself.

"Lacking the constitutional power to abolish enslavement in the South, northern politicians opposed to enslavement had for years employed other means to weaken enslavement, including banning the practice in the Western territories, refusing to admit new pro-slavery states to the Union, banning enslavement in Washington, D.C.

For this reason, southerners had come to place little value in the federal government's vows not to abolish enslavement in their states and so considered the Corwin Amendment to be little more than another promise waiting to be broken. Lincoln said he would leave slavery where it already existed if it saved the Union. He also said a house divided cannot stand. The Southern states just didn't trust anything or anyone above the Mason-Dixon Line.

Since most of the Republicans including Lincoln opposed the expansion of slavery. The South ignored the Corwin Amendment. By that time the South was going to succeed and nothing could stop them from doing so."

And yet the Confederate Congress DID authorize black enlistments.

Sure they did on March 13th, 1865. A few rag-tag slaves marched down the main street of Richmond. Way too little, Way too late. Lee wanted to free them, for fighting. That was too far. Nothing came of it because they just didn't want to give them firearms. The whole thing came to naught. You have to understand that the greatest fear of the Confederates was not Grant and Sherman but another Saint-Domingue.

"Regardless of the details, arming slaves spelled the end of slavery."

You are correct.

"What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?"

"If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong."

"Use all the Negroes you can get, for all the purposes for which you need them, but don't arm them. The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution."

"If Negroes make good soldiers then this government has no reason to exist"

But if the south's war aim was simply to protect slavery where it existed, Corwin GAVE them that. Without disunion and without a war. So there must have been OTHER factors.

Was Corwin ever ratified? It was signed by Buchanan but never went into effect.

Well, in his defense, Buchanan was a truly clueless president.

With respect doc, we all know the chances of changing anyones mind, yours or theirs, are slim indeed. But if you wish to be engaged civilly, respectfully and willingly, you need to hold off on statements like:
"You are unwilling to be persuaded, so why don't we end this."

The triumph of obduracy.

B

I seldom agree with old Jean Jacques, but

The Social Contract. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1762)

BOOK III

1. GOVERNMENT IN GENERAL

I WARN the reader that this chapter requires careful reading, and that I am unable to make myself clear to those who refuse to be attentive.

I know the feeling, JJ, I know the feeling.

And Silurian, I DO thank you for the advice. Too late!

It's clear that clarity was not a thing even back then. The refusal to be attentive is one of the last defenses of the "had enough" movement.

Outgoing President James Buchanan endorsed the Corwin Amendment by taking the unprecedented step of signing it. His signature on the Congressional joint resolution was unnecessary, as the President has no formal role in the constitutional amendment process.

Tort, it's bad enough trying to READ the Social Contract; imagine trying to TEACH it!

OC, yes. What is your point?

The title of the OP has been proven wrong.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum 😁

But if the South's war aim was simply to protect slavery where it existed, Corwin GAVE them that. Without disunion and war. So there must have been OTHER factors.

There were no other factors. Succession was in progress when the amendment was purposed. It was dead on arrival. The South was done with the Federal government. From their point of view, they had been lied to many times and did not see any progress, while those opposed to slavery were enacting measures to restrict slavery, particularly the spread of slavery into the new territories.

The South was not about to put their faith into another Yankee scheme to placate them and then see it come to nothing. From the Southern viewpoint, the election of Lincoln was the last straw. The die is cast. Nothing could persuade them from Succession.

A few of the border states ratified it and one or two of the other states also ratified it. By then it was a moot point.

OC, yes, that is the point, all of those other factors which you mention. Absence of trust was a big one. Plus it was the west that really mattered.

Yes, not trusting the Federal Government, Congress, and the newly elected President to allow slavery to exist in their states and the expansion of it into the West. Slavery was the cause of the Civil War. Now that is settled, can we get back to playing games with miniatures.

Remember, one of the parameters is the discussion of history…

BH, right, no Congress can bind a future Congress. Ditto with amendments. Ditto with We the People (except in jury trials).

Slavery was A cause of the Civil War.

No, it was the cause as has been shown repeatedly.

Oh dear. Well the OP obviously wants us to over look +95% cause of the war.

You can do no better than look at the words of probably my favourite general from the conflict, who was also a Virginian:

"The greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of liberty, justice, humanity, equality, and all the calendar of the virtues of freedom, suffered violence and wrong when the effort for southern independence failed. This is, of course, intended as a species of political cant, whereby the crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of the rebellion might go down in history hand in hand with the defenders of the government, thus wiping out with their own hands their own stains; a species of self-forgiveness amazing in its effrontery, when it is considered that life and property—justly forfeited by the laws of the country, of war, and of nations, through the magnanimity of the government and people—was not exacted from them."

Report to General Ulysses S. Grant (17 November 1868)

Attempts to move away from the role of slavery in the Civil War is just another example of this political cant condemned by Thomas.

Thomas was exceptional, just as he was an exceptional as a commander.

And Thomas, though a southerner, stayed loyal to his oath and fought for his country honorably and well.

John Gibbon was a North Carolinian who stayed loyal and was disowned by his family.

It was he who made the Iron Brigade the Iron Brigade.

Excellent quotation and right on the money,

<Q> Oh dear. Well the OP obviously wants us to over look +95% cause of the war.</Q>

Obviously. Because nowhere do I mention slavery, not once.

Oh wait.

Oh dear indeed. 138, do you even bother to read what is posted?

Because nowhere do I mention slavery, not once.

Not only did you mention it in the title of the thread, but three times in the opening posting.

You mentioned it twice in your second posting.

In your third posting, you mentioned it four times and 'slave' once.

Shall we continue?

BS, yes, sarcasm is a mind trick. You did notice the "Oh wait"?

Guys, guys, guys. It is painful to have to explain this.

139 Squadron said, which I QUOTED, that I was overlooking 95%+ of what caused the war. I assume he meant slavery.

But in fact, as you just pointed out, I mentioned slavery a great deal, using the "America's original sin" notion, among other things.

Somehow 139 went from McBride saying that slavery was not the ONLY cause to saying (but NOT!) that it was no cause at all.

There is no point in arguing with people who do not trouble themselves to actually understand what the argument is about.

Kevin, you'll want to rush to point out that I split an infinitive in that last sentence.

Quack quack quack.

I know some of you find me arrogant. It is hard not to be.

No, though I probably need a longer handle on my spoon.

No, it's easy not to be arrogant. I don't find anyone here particularly arrogant. Some of the arguments don't work for me, and on the point of slavery and the war, I have come to see what some call the "other causes" as being related in some way to slavery, components of the one basic issue. The various arguments easily settle into this simple premise in the end, at least for me. Not because it's easy. It's simply evident that it is correct.

We know the promises of the founders could not be kept until slavery was gone, but its economic power was strong and benefited too many. We have often turned to rationalization in our history to deal with our differences, and the Lost Cause is a classic example. It may have helped smooth over the outcome of the war for some, but the promises of the founders continued to challenge us, and not just in the South. We rationalized our way along and change was slow.

Now we understand that the challenges are ongoing. The promises are tough to fulfill and may always be. We created high moral principles, a great country, and some of history's greatest grifters. But also heroes. And maybe some who were both.

The reason slavery history keeps coming up is because it is vile hard work to build and keep consensus and we have never been that good at it from day one. We are a raucous bunch in the best of times. We have been lucky to survive ourselves on occasion. The founding of the United States was more than a bit miraculous.

If we had a thread about the things that have held all of the States together from the start, with a bump in the middle of the story, what would those things be? What are the things that have kept all of us citizens of the United States? You will never hear a politico or news outlet ask this. No money in it. But we keep coming at this from the other end, the end that will never end. We like to argue, as these threads keep demonstrating.

Tort, yes, or at least mostly yes.

BH, you seem to have a problem with complexity.

Kevin, you are a fine bricklayer, if facts may be considered bricks metaphorically. Your walls are neat and precise and straight (or serpentine like TJs). But the bricklayer needs, or needs himself to be, an architect as well, with a vision of what it is he is constructing with his hard facts. A church r a courthouse? A home or a prison? HOW the bricks are laid, to WHAT PURPOSE, that is what a historian is about. I'm afraid I do not see much evidence that you understand that.

"I know some of you find me arrogant." I don't
With respect, I think you are greatly affected by your up bring (our national myths and in your case the regional ones as well), which has greatly colored your intellect, you want to believe that you are the product of some heroic / divine act. From which you then arrange and/or ignore facts to reflect your desires of history. This is not how the study history is, particularly in any sort of academic sense. You like some others you do this, not out of intellect but out of emotion, because you are afraid of what this means for and your sense of place.

"There is no point in arguing with people who do not trouble themselves to actually understand what the argument is about"
This is the ancient specious argument that seeks to avoid the abject shame of U.S. history. The vast majority of academic historians both in the US and abroad understand this non-sense for what it is.

"The abject shame of us history" ?

No. Or if so, only n John Winthrop's cautioning sense. We ARE a city on a hill and so of course our failings show up more but so do our triumphs.

So why is the rest of the world trying to get here?

Name a freer and more prosperous country.

John Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity (extracts)

Whatsoever we did, or ought to have done, when we lived in England, the same must we do, and more also, where we go. That which the most in their churches maintain as truth in profession only, we must bring into familiar and constant practice; as in this duty of love, we must love brotherly without dissimulation, we must love one another with a pure heart fervently. We must bear one another's burdens. We must not look only on our own things, but also on the things of our brethren.

Neither must we think that the Lord will bear with such failings at our hands as he do the from those among whom we have lived…. Thus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into covenant with Him for this work. We have taken out a commission. The Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles. We have professed to enterprise these and those accounts, upon these and those ends. We have hereupon besought Him of favor and blessing.

Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath he ratified this covenant and sealed our Commission, and will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it; but if we shall neglect the observation of these articles which are the ends we have propounded, and, dissembling with our God, shall fall to embrace this present world and prosecute our carnal intentions, seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us; be revenged of such a [sinful] people and make us know the price of the breaches of such a covenant.

Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other's necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make other's conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as his own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways. So that we shall see much more of his wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when he shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, "the Lord make it like that of New England."

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God's sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till wee be consumed out of the good land whither we are a going.

I shall shut up this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel, Deut. 30: Beloved there is now set before us life and good, Death and evil, in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Commandments and his Ordinance and his laws, and the articles of our Covenant with him, that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may blesse us in the land whither we go to possess it.

But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship and serve other Gods, our pleasure and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it; Therefore let us choose life – that we, and our seed may live, by obeying His voice and cleaving to Him, for He is our life and our prosperity.

By Winthrop's measure yes, we have surely failed in part. But only in part, because we tried to reach the sky. (And landed there, a couple of centuries after Winthrop.)

BS, interesting. I'll have to look at their criteria. Thanks for that.

…you are a fine bricklayer…

So was Winston Churchill…he was also a noted historian…

I also thought of Churchill at Chartwell during the 30s, laying bricks, reflecting, and realizing what was coming. He was a great narrative writer of history with an inspirational command of language.

I recently picked up five of his volumes on War II. He was an excellent writer with an amazing command of the language.

"The abject shame of us history" ?
"No. Or if so, only n John Winthrop's cautioning sense. We ARE a city on a hill and so of course our failings show up more but so do our triumphs."

I am reminded of the sheep and the goats parable. What do you consider our triumphs?

"So why is the rest of the world trying to get here?"

The propaganda organizations you listen to want you to believe this, but it really only desperate folks from developing countries simply interested in safely feeding their families, yes there is the odd Mordoch or Musk (have you notice the real parasites arrive in jets) for which there simply never enough wealth. Canadians are no longer interested in being part of the US.

"Name a freer and more prosperous country." Pick almost any western European country most of them left us in the dust 40 years ago in education, infrastructure and Heath care.

Western Europe's freedom and prosperity is based on US policies and actions from 1941 until, well, more or less NOW. I mean, if defeating the Nazis, and then the Communists, counts for anything. The Marshall Plan. NATO. So yes, triumphs.

Western Europe's freedom and prosperity is based on US policies and actions from 1941 until, well, more or less NOW. I mean, if defeating the Nazis, and then the Communists, counts for anything. The Marshall Plan. NATO. So yes, triumphs.

We defeated the Communists? Or did they defeat themselves?

Also, it occurs to me that some are still fighting them.

But why would these achievements leave Europe more free than the USA? Did we sacrifice our freedoms to make them more so?

And we would do well to remember that the Soviet Union played a not insignificant part in the defeat of the Nazis.

Being British, I might also suggest that the role of Great Britain and her Empire in continuing to oppose the Nazis between 1939 and 1941, and thereafter, had a little something to do with it.

arthur, of course. But without the US (and its factories) Hitler wins.

But I'm glad to see someone else acknowledging that complex events have multiple causes. Except, evidently, for the Civil War, which was (people insist) ENTIRELY CAUSED BY SLAVERY, and don't you DARE suggest anything else might have been involved! Because slavery was BBAAADD (thank you, yes, we know that) and so it HAS to have been the ONLY cause. (Wait, Hitler was BBAAADDD too, but was he the only cause of WWII? No, not even close.)

Given the scope of WW2, I would just not go there for comparison.

Yes, I am afraid we must insist. Based on slavery being connected to the other suggested causes. You can insist otherwise and we will just leave it. No other choice.

Yes, we much insist…

Comparing the Civil War with War II is a very long stretch…

Comparing the Civil War with War II is a very long stretch…

Except that the Nazis did base their Nuremberg Race Laws on both Antebellum and Jim Crow systems/laws. One wonders if "Arbeit Macht Frei" should be traced back to kindly Southern slave owners teaching black slaves skills.

One of Hanson's books on ancient Greece was a text in grad school. I didn't care for it nor did I agree with the author's conclusions.

Needless to say, I didn't keep it.

Yes AuPas, one of the most gut wrenching revelations about American racism was the extent to which it was codified to the point where it became a resource for Nazi policy makers, who studied our Jim Crow laws. This was just the tip of the iceberg for the Nazis. But it stills makes me queasy.