@Setanta,
Setanta wrote:
Quote:to say that the Confederacy was about slavery is an oversimplification of the politics of 1861. I am not an expert on the politics of 1861 . . .
You shoul have quit while you were ahead with that last remark. Perhaps you could enlighten us as to the significant political causes
other than slavery, which lead slave states to withdraw from the Union, form a confederacy (prohibited by the constitution) and to attack, without provocation, Federal installations.
That should be interesting.
It was about economics driven by two different economic engines, slavery being one in the South, and factories being the other in the North. So, if the South did not secede, the fear amongst white Southerners was that eventually new non-slave states could vote against the economic preferences of the South. And, that was to not have tariffs, so the South could buy foreign goods, since "cotton was King." The North wanted tariffs, so the South would have to buy their factory goods. Plus, when white males joined the Union Army upon the Civil War starting, I've read, many were joining so one day there would be a "white West," since any slave territory/state did not need that many white males for employment, since plantations were self-sufficient with its slave labor.
Now, I am just regurgitating some of the high school American history from the early '60's. Was it biased, since someone might have known that in a few years Northern males might be in Vietnam, side-by-side with white Southerners?
Also, the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in those states that seceded, I thought. That meant that the South could not "sue for peace," and the war would have to be fought as a zero sum game. It also meant the impoverishment of the Southern banking system, since by the early 1860's buying a slave required a loan from a bank. In effect, all the "slave" bank loans were made null and void. Who filled the Southern banking vacuum, as Southern banks collapsed? Northern banks?
So, was slavery just the "cause celebre" to fight a war, so one part of the U.S. could economically dominate another part of the U.S., at least for a century?
Also, Washington, D.C. was the only place that there was some recompense to the monetary value of freed slaves, I believe. Why?
And, before Africans were used for slavery in the South, I have read that Native Americans were used, but they easily ran into the forest and found their way back to their tribes. And, I've read that Irish immigrants were used, and they died of prickly heat. So, an argument can be made that there was no "malicious intent" in singling out Africans, to enslave Africans, as I've read, other than the Machiavellian attitude to do what works, and Africans were superior to others in the hot and humid South. So, I believe that to attempt to enslave any human, one must first devalue that human, as compared to oneself. That, in my opinion, was what allowed slavery to flourish at that time with the demographic that existed in the South. Would there have been slavery if Spain dominated the South? Who knows, but it is a question, since in Latin America, the Spanish "developed" a number of new demographics, that may have made the ending of slavery easier (however in Brazil, it did last longer than in the U.S., I thought).
The fact that today, slavery is being touted, I believe, as the quintessential reason for the Civil War may be part of what is needed to heal the blemish on American history for slavery having existed. But, it was not taught that way in NYC in the early '60's.
