The Confederacy was About Slavery

@farmerman,

There you go again...

I agree that the Confederacy and the Civil War was mainly about slavery.

My argument has been, and remains, that it wasn't solely about slavery.

As so many on this thread have been quick to point out, no one here is saying it is solely about slavery (Except, of course, Chicago Joe) and so I guess I can't believe my lying eyes.

In any case Farmer Brown, I thank you for your holiday cheer and likewise hope you had a wonderful Christmas too.

What's more, I hope you have a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year...considering the fact that there are no important elections scheduled for 2013.

If I've been properly following you in this forum, biology is not your chosen field and so I guess there's no point in hoping you discover some new species of insect which might bear your name.

Never-the-less: All the best.

1 Reply

I refuse to have my remarks reduced to a simple-minded formula that even the rightwing, reactionary lunatic fringe can understand, and about which they can feel good. The tariff did not lead states to secede and make war on the United States; that nullification bullshit (i.e., states rights) did not lead states to secede and make war on the United States (or, as in the case of at least Florida, to make war on the United States and then secede). Only the remote possibility of a threat to slavery lead states to secded and make war on the United States and form a confederacy. The Confederate States were formed solely to protect the institution of slavery.

In the era of the Reagan administration, states rights became an acceptable concept again. It was at this time that the witless argument that the southern confederacy had been formed to protect states rights was cobbled together so that conservatives could feel good about Confederate apologetics. It's horseshit. The only right of states which the Confederate States intended to protect was the right to keep slaves.

Even earlier, there was a resurgence of Confederate apologetics, though. Dixon's novel The Clansman had been popular in the early 20th vcentury, and Griggith's motion picture, The Birth of a Nation, had been even more widely popular. A defrocked minister in Georgia named Simmons re-established the Ku Klux Klan in 1915 after the furor over the lynching of a Jewish factory owner, Leo Frank, in Atlanta. He plainly relied upon the popularity of Griffith's film for much of his symbolism. Here's a movie poster from that motion picture:

It was a silent movie, and here's one of the text stills from the movie:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Wilson-quote-in-birth-of-a-nation.jpg/300px-Wilson-quote-in-birth-of-a-nation.jpg

I don't know if the attribution to Wilson is accurate, but it hardly matters--i have no doubt people thought it was. There is ample evidence that Wilson was a racist, so i'm good with that.

In the late 19th century there had been a social movement known as the Lily Whites. The name came from an anti-black wing of the Republican Party, the Lily-White Movement. They were anti-black (obviously what is meant by the "white" portion of the name) and they were anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic (two ideas intertwined in Protestant socieity at the time--and hence the "lily" portion of the name, the lily symbolizing Protestants). Their appeal was national--witness the virulent anti-Irish (i.e., anti-immigrant) and anti-Catholic sentiments of Thomas Nast, who is still treated as some kind of crusading hero in the American historical myth. This is just one of his notorious anti-Catholic political cartoons:

http://www.yale.edu/glc/images/1106a.jpg

Note that the alligators are bishops, and their snapping jaws are the mitres the bishops wear.

The author of this thread is the only one who can say for certain, but i suspect that this thread arises out of a long-standing argument here against Confederate apologetics which became lively a few years ago when there was a thread saying that the Confederate battle flag is a racist symbol. As it was used by regiments of the Confederate States army, and the sole purpose for the formation of the Confederacy was to protect the institution of slavery, i agree.

The bullshit is getting deep here, but it's not those who accuse the Confederatcy of being about slavery who are spreading it.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Quote:

My argument has been, and remains, that it wasn't solely about slavery.

Well, youve come far pilgrim so it shant be a big jump for you to understand fully no? What, in your opinion constitutes the main reasons , sort of in an order, of what the Confederacy was founded upon?

As it boiled down , you must agree that EVERYTHING the CSA was founded upon had, at its core, the Institution of Slave Holding.

Lincoln began trying to free slaves in the Border States in 1861. He tried a "buy out" first in Delaware in late 1861, then in the other border states. It was refused by the state legislatures so he had published his "Emacipation Proclamation" efforts really in 1861. Once he sent out the initial procamation in Sept 1862 and then, in final form in JAn1 1863,, even the war became about slavery because the Federal Troops became the "police force" that would enforce the Emancipation Proclamation.

Everything focused around slavery as THE ISSUE. All the other junque is revisionist pablum that has been produced by a lot of folks who apparently dont delve very deeply into our history .

1 Reply

@farmerman,

Oops, I forgot, In Sept I sat in on a symposium about the Confederacy and the War in 1861 and 1862 which was held at Gettysburg College. It was chaired by ERic Foner and included a number of Civil War scholars.
A coupla factoids that summarized the conferences conclusions

1The Confederacy was founded soleley on the issue of SLavery because the primary source of wealth in the future CSA states was large mono culture agriculture that focused around two crops, cotton and tobacco.

2. Cotton was the principle commodity since 90% of cotton grown in the south was for EXPORT. The richest five counties in the US (pe Ciil war) were in the SOuth (led by Adams County Mississippi). These ag centers were built upon slavery as a means to produce their commodities. In each case then ,when these states began seceeding, they made their cases for seccesion based EXCLUSIVELY upon their instrument of wealth, ie, slavery.

It was the concensus of these Civil War scholars that SLavery was all that counted in the formation of the CSA .

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Anyone who thinks issues other than slavery played a part in secession should consider this question: why didn't any free state secede? Agricultural states in the midwest had similar concerns about the tariff (which mostly benefitted the industrial northeastern states), and a strong strain of Jacksonian democracy pervaded the midwest as well. Illinois and Alabama, for instance, voted the same in every presidential election from 1820 to 1856. So if economic issues or concerns about states rights were enough to justify seceding from the union, why didn't Illinois or Indiana secede in 1860?

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@Setanta,

I thought that even before the Civil War many Southerners despised Yankees. Meaning even Yankees that were not abolistionists were oftentimes despised, before the Civil War. So, since there was no love lost between the North and Dixie, secession may not have needed the slave issue to make Southerners want to be independent of the North.

I sort of look at slavery as the proverbial burr under the respective regions' saddles, so to speak. But it did not make for secession, in my opinion. It sort of hastened the attempt to be free of the North.

If we look around the world at people's desires for autonomy, we see there is a cauldron of reasons for each respective group. It all falls under the main heading of antipathy to the perceived ruling group.

My experience in the military afforded many observations of Southerners fairly alienated from Northern personnel, amongst the non-lifers. So, slavery was still causing this alienation? In my opinion, it was the humiliation of having their "dream" of autonomy gone with the wind.

And, if the Southern states did not secede they could have continued their "peculiar institution," regardless of how many of the territories became free states. Now that would have impacted on the slave states, regarding the economic impact of federal laws regarding tariffs, etc. I just see the impatience of the South as reflective of their pursueing their dream of autonomy. Slavery was just a big issue that highlighted the differences of the two regions. Perhaps, a good analogy was the Reformation claiming that Salvation was by faith alone, not by good works. Well, that did sway many minds; however, it wasn't what made for the reformation, nor the selling of indulgences. It was most likely that northern Europe did not want to have their royalty and clergy answering to Rome, a southern European entity. Autonomy again.

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@Foofie,

Shut up Miller, you f*cking idiot. Any sentence which you being with "i thought" is bound to be idiocy on the face of it.

I'm not at all surprised to see you join the Confederacy apologist camp. I suspect you hate blacks, too, but are too big of a coward to admit it publicly.

1 Reply

@Foofie,

Quote:

I sort of look at slavery as the proverbial burr under the respective regions' saddles, so to speak. But it did not make for secession,

Then I assume that youve not read ANY of the rticles of secession of the various confederate states. I would read some of them before posing an "I sort of..." assertion.

Here are articles of Secession that were written and presented by four states of the Confederacy
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html

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Miller and Finn are in the same category--i.e., loud-mouths who haven't bothered to read the thread, where the evidence is explicitly presented. They come in here to resurrect the same old tired bullshit which has already been addressed. They are both apologists who seem to think they have clever (spare me) arguments to suggest that not all Confederates were bad people.

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This thread is now well over two years old, and it's persistence since then is vivid testimony of our willingness to quibble endlessly about mindlessly absolute statements, ("the Confederacy was (mostly, all, exclisively ???) about slavery), the unknowable motives and intentions of others, or arbitrary selection of elememnts in a causal sequence of cause and effect (were the plantation owners motivated by the desire for a quick return on capital & money or unjust racism?).

The historical record is quite clear that, absent the issue of slavery and its extension, or prohibition from the new territories west of the Mississippi, the southern states would not have seceeded, and the Civil war would not have occurred. That's easy to say, but hard to isolate from all the collateral social and economic issues involved. Others have described them (the industrial north and the plantation economy of the South, then recently expanded in the deep south with the production of increasingly valuable cotton; the tariff issues; struggles between states and the federal government over primacy in the new territories; etc.) Despite all the many distracting factors, the practice of slavery was indeed the central unifying issue connecting them all.

That said, it is not knowably true that the ONLY motivation of all who joined in the war (or discuss it now) was the preservation or elimination of slavery. Too many Confederate soldiers were drawn from the farms of non slave holding families for that to be believed. More likely they were, to a large degree fighting for home and freedom from interference from what appeared to be an intrusive and alien authority. Similarly, despite the widespread revulsion towards slavery in the north, what we would today call racism was still widespread among these same people.

The Confederacy was surely about slavery as the title of this thread asserts. However, it was not only about slavery as some here appear to insist. Other motives influences some of thoise involved on both sides. Racism in some form was widespread on both sides. Economic self-interest was also a factor on both sides.

Clearly our founders hoped that slavery, as it was known in the late 18th century would somehow "fade away" in our national development, and fade it might have done if it had remained as it was in the tobacco plantations of Virginia &North Carolina . However, the explosion of cotton consumption in the textile industries of England brought about a cotton boom in the Deep South (South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, which, along with the prohibition of the slave trade, transformed slavery across the whole South ( breeding & selling in Virginia, and cotton production in the deep south.) The motive was greed and the quick (but not lasting) economic returns offered by slavery. The price paid was the freedom of the slaves , the distorted thinking required of the masters to rationalize their awful deeds, and the war that eventually ensued.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

That said, it is not knowably true that the ONLY motivation of all who joined in the war (or discuss it now) was the preservation or elimination of slavery. Too many Confederate soldiers were drawn from the farms of non slave holding families for that to be believed.

So illiterate soldiers were used by their government? Say it ain't so!

The Confederacy was created to preserve the institution of slavery; the individual motivations of the soldiers isn't really the point.

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Just as many foolish tea baggers don't want taxes raised on the wealthy because of an unreasoning belief that they will themselves some day be wealthy, so many southerners were willing to protect the institution of slavery in the hope that they would themselves on day be slave owners. Leaving that aside, the Confederate States instituted conscription long before the United States did so, because they could not fill their ranks. From Wikipedia:

Quote:

On August 8, 1861, the Confederate States, after facing[5] the U.S. took control over rebellious areas, called for 400,000 volunteers to serve for one or three years. By April 1862, the Confederacy passed a conscription act, which drafted men into PACS. The Confederate Congress' successive Conscription Acts broadened the ages of those subject to conscription and even swept in people who had already provided substitutes for service. The Confederate States Supreme Courts uniformly upheld the Acts. (emphasis added)

Also from Wikipedia:

Quote:

In the Confederacy, the "Twenty Negro Law" permitted one owner or overseer of any plantation to exempt themselves from military service; this proved extremely unpopular with many Confederate soldiers and contributed to the oft-spoken adage of "a rich man's war, and a poor man's fight."

The United States did not institute conscription until 1863.

Many regions of the South did not support secession or the war. The western counties of Virginia seceded from that state, and in 1863 became the state of West Virginia. The eastern counties of Tennessee not only did not join with the alleged sentiments of the rest of the state, they defied Confederate authority in arms. With the Tennessee Unionist forces centered on Knoxville, they endured long sieges, including one conducted by Longstreet with troops from the Army of Northern Virginia. Confederate forces always failed to take the city. Despite what is usually alleged about Petersburg, trench warfare first began at Knoxville, including using concertina wire to protect the trenches from night raids. Lincoln's second Vice President, Andrew Johnson, was a Tennessee Unionist.

The South was not the enthusiastic monolith which it appears O'George would have us believe in.

Tediously, once again: no state seceded or made war on the United States over the tariff; no state seceded or made war on the United States over nullification (states' rights). The states of the southern confederacy were only willing to secede and make war on the United States over a perceived threat to the institution of slavery. As sad as it is to contemplate, i have to assume that O'George's thoughtless devotion to conservative polemic carries him so far as to join the ranks of Confederacy apologists.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

The South was not the enthusiastic monolith which it appears O'George would have us believe in.

Tediously, once again: no state seceded or made war on the United States over the tariff; no state seceded or made war on the United States over nullification (states' rights). The states of the southern confederacy were only willing to secede and make war on the United States over a perceived threat to the institution of slavery. As sad as it is to contemplate, i have to assume that O'George's thoughtless devotion to conservative polemic carries him so far as to join the ranks of Confederacy apologists.

I wrote the post above after 40 minutes or so spent reading excerpts from this thread going back over two years, to get a sense of the thing and the central themes in it.

Apparently Setanta's tedious pedantry limits his ability to read. I was clear that slavery (its preservation in the South and extension to new territories, or conversely, its abolition) was the central issue in the succession and civil war and, without it, neither would have occurred. I don't know what he would have added to that statement.

I didn't address the uninimity (or lack thereof) of the Confederate states at all. However, I did, in a related context indirectly refer to the differing roles and motives of the Border and Old Southern states to those in the newer states of the Deep South where cotton prevailed.) I made no assertion about a southern "monolith" at all, apart from the obvious fact that they seceeded and a civil war ensued.

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@georgeob1,

Bullshit, O'George . . .

You wrote:

That said, it is not knowably true that the ONLY motivation of all who joined in the war (or discuss it now) was the preservation or elimination of slavery.

As i did not mention the motivation of those who fought the southern confederacy, that is not relevant to my comments.

1 Reply

By the way, with the revival of this thread by right wingers who apparently want to be Confederacy apologists, and who are harping with tedious pedantry on a claim that it was not all about slavery, this is the opening paragraph of the this thread:

snood wrote:

Those who defend the right of people to display the confederate flag, and decry the "pride in heritage" indicated thereby, and do civil war reenactments, and generally lionize the Confederacy and its memory, seem always to be in denial that the war was fought because some wanted to preserve the right to enslave. The following is taken from an article from Salon Magazine by Michael Lind. If there are any here on A2K who deny the centrality of slavery in the motives of the secessionists, who want to bury any mention of that ugly truth beneath some obfuscated twaddle about state's rights, I'd like to direct their attention, and encourage them to please reply, to this. Especially to the quote from the Vice-President of the Confederacy, taken from a speech in which he clearly states what the confederacy is based on:

So, in fact, it was never the intent of the author to suggest that it was all only about slavery. It appears to me that having failed to make any other case, they've all jumped on the Finn bandwagon to attempt to insist that it wasn't solely about slavery. To that, i say bullshit.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Bullshit, O'George . . .

You wrote:
That said, it is not knowably true that the ONLY motivation of all who joined in the war (or discuss it now) was the preservation or elimination of slavery.

As i did not mention the motivation of those who fought the southern confederacy, that is not relevant to my comments.

Believe it or not there are some comments here from posters other than yourself. And I believe I did use the "Reply All" button.

I was, as I noted above, addressing some of the observable themes in the comments on this thread, and making a point about some fairly persistent misunderstanding and obvious talking past each other that has been going on here, - arguments about usually unstated but different interpretations of the phrase that defined the topic here. The Confederacy was indeed "about slavery". I think we agree that succession and all that followed would not have occurred without the several slavery issues involved. However, it was not exclusively about slavery for everyone involved, and there were other motivations involved, many ultimately traceable to slavery, but not all of them - on both sides of the divide.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

Believe it or not, i am entitled to comment on what you post, whether it was addressed to me or not. This:

Quote:

Apparently Setanta's tedious pedantry limits his ability to read. I was clear that slavery (its preservation in the South and extension to new territories, or conversely, its abolition) was the central issue in the succession and civil war and, without it, neither would have occurred. I don't know what he would have added to that statement.

. . . was addressed to me, including the slighting remark. What i would have added, and have added to your statement is that slavery was the sole reason for the creation of the Confederate States. You have provided no evidence that there was any other reason, and your ipse dixit claims do not constitute evidence.

(Why do conservatives consistently substitute succession for secession?)

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

By the way, with the revival of this thread by right wingers who apparently want to be Confederacy apologists, and who are harping with tedious pedantry on a claim that it was not all about slavery, this is the opening paragraph of the this thread:

So, in fact, it was never the intent of the author to suggest that it was all only about slavery. It appears to me that having failed to make any other case, they've all jumped on the Finn bandwagon to attempt to insist that it wasn't solely about slavery. To that, i say bullshit.

I fully agree with Snood's statement which you quoted. Indeed my earlier post to which you objected said about the same thing. I was, instead, as I described, addressing other posts in this long thread which attempted to suggest it was exclusively about slavery (perhaps you are one). Such absolute statements advetrtise their inaccuracy. They are "bullshit".

Don't you think you are being just a bit paranoid in your perception of this "right winger" conspiracy to distort the thread and become apologists for the Confederacy. (Since I made no apology for the Confederacy, I assume this remark was addressed to others whom you also perceive as "right wingers").

You are merely - once again - looking for a disagreement or an issue to dispute, when, in fact there is none.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

No, i don't think it's paranoid at all--note that i referred to the Finn bandwagon. I certainly consider it to have been his intent. That other conservatives jump on the bandwagon, and i take note of that is not evidence that i'm paranoid. In fact, this is in microcosm what's been going in the nation since the Reagan era, when the concept of states' rights was rehabilitated.

Anyone who claims that the Confederacy was founded for any other reason than to preserve slavery is a Confederate apologist. It's a pathetically obvious attempt to put a fig leaf on a grossly disfigured genital protrusion.

There certainly is an issue to dispute whenever someone attempts to claim that the Confederacy was founded for any other reason than to protect the institution of slavery.

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@Setanta,

Now you are refining the wording of the proposition. I'll readily agree that the historical record is abundantly clear that the sole reason offered in the various secession statements and resolutions offerd by the various Confederate states were entirely about slavery and the related matter that some styled as a Northern attack on their traditions which they were unwilling to tolerate any longer.

The larger and vaguer proposition; That "The Confederacy was (fill in your unstated modifier) About Slavery" (standard modifiers often implied here incliude "only", "exclusively" and for some, the added clause "and the motives of all involved in the Civil war, or who later rationalize any aspect of the South" has been bastardized by posters who obviously included their own unstated modifiers usually from the list above, and without acknowledging doing so, thus preserving the perpetual dispute.

I don't believe that every Confederate soldier was chiefly motivated by a personal desire to perpetuate slavery. Further, I don't believe that every Union Soldier was motivated to give a fair break to all African slaves or freemen. Both fail the common sense test and I believe the burden of proof is on he who argues the affirmative. Moreover, I don't think that every individual who finds some aspect of Southern society, during the pre civil war period, as appealing is expressing an approval of slavery. You can argue that such a person is ignoring other, probably relevant, matters that certainly dim the lustre of his imaginings, but that is a different matter.

1 Reply

The Confederacy was About Slavery

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