What are your views on the civil war?

[Hunt or be Hunted]

What was the civil war fought over? Many historians seek to justify the federal government's invasion of the South by claiming that the war was fought over slavery, and that Union forces were fighting to free the slaves while the South was fighting to keep them in bondage. But is that really tree guys? A number of critics say that the South only fought in order to ensure the continuation of slavery. BUT! a detailed refutation of these assertions would require a separate paper. But for now, I will say the following points in response to them....

Oh boy... Where shall I start??

The war was fought over secession, NOT I repeat NOT over slavery. If the South had not declared its independence, Lincoln would not have launched an invasion, and there would have been no war at all. The only slave states that were charged with insurrection and then invaded were those that belonged to the Confederacy!!. Would Lincoln and his Republicans have accepted secession if the Confederacy had announced it was abolishing slavery as the first official act of its existence??? Would the Republicans have allowed a peaceful separation if the Confederacy had started an emancipation program right after the First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run)?! Any serious student of the Civil War will agree that the answer to both of these questions is NO! I don't think anyone who has studied the subject believes the Republicans would have allowed the South to go in peace no matter when the Confederacy would have started to abolish slavery! Look...In July 1861, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution, by a unanimous vote, that affirmed that the North was not waging the war to overthrow slavery but to preserve the Union (Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation!

When Lincoln assumed office, he was willing to allow slavery to continue. Lincoln even supported a constitutional amendment that would have given additional legal protection to slavery. When Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation about two years later, he did so largely because he was under intense pressure from Republicans in Congress, who were threatening to cut off funds from the army if Lincoln didn't issue some kind of emancipation statement!!

Will type more tomorrow, But Its late and I am off to bed!

Edited February 17, 2012 by Hunt or be Hunted

[redkneck]

Slavery was the underlying issue for secession though Jeremy, the fundamental cause of the entire thing.

[layin on the smackdown]

Well, Jeremy, I am by no means a self proclaimed history buff, but one thing i know for sure about the Civil War is that it wasnt very civil.

:hammer1:

now that is a very good useless piece of information.

it sure sounds like you are well educated in this department, so i am going to continue to read and maybe learn a thing or two.

dan

[wtnhunt]

Civil war tensions between the north and south built up over economic issues, and not primarily on slavery.

[redkneck]

And what was the primary economic driver in the south? We used to have more slaves in this state than white men. A LOT more. If thats not a slave based economy I dont know what is.

[redkneck]

I'm not nearly as well read as many of you on the subject by all means, but I've heard so many of these debates in the past and no matter how you slice it, it all boils down to slavery, IMHO.

[Ravin R10 man]

man..that was back in high school history class.about 1974, I do know Lincoln was against slavery,,whether economics had anything to do with it I do not recall, but one would think it's tied togther. Ill sit back and get re-educated on the subject..carry on!

[Rhino]

The main issue that lead to the civil war was state's rights. The southern states believed each state's decisions should take precedence over the federal government's. Slavery was certainly an issue too but not the main one. Many people forget when Lincoln freed the slaves, he only freed slaves in the southern states, not the Union states.

[m gardner]

Civil war tensions between the north and south built up over economic issues, and not primarily on slavery.

True. The north relied heavily on slaves for labor especially in the port of New York City so pointing the finger at the plantation system was fallacy. Basically it was over what we have building right now irreconcilable differences over our beliefs and control of the country.

[wtnhunt]

I'm not nearly as well read as many of you on the subject by all means, but I've heard so many of these debates in the past and no matter how you slice it, it all boils down to slavery, IMHO.

I am not an expert John and Jeremy probably knows way more on this stuff than I do, but the the problems that led up to the civil war was more about industry and trade than anything else, like I said economics. It has been a long time since I studied in any depth on it, but there is some real good info out there. Abraham Lincoln from some of the reading I did contrary to common beliefs actually was not in favor of abolishing slavery. Wish I could remember some of the books I read, but that was back around 1990-91.

[redkneck]

Honestly Ive never read a book on the subject, it just seems that arguments for the war either as economic or state's rights or anything else always seemed to be based on the institution of slavery. I mean what was THE number one issue that was an unreconcileable states rights issue?

Perhaps the war would have taken place anyway even if we had never brought over the first slave. I kinda doubt it, but who knows, we were a stupid bunch of people in those days.

[m gardner]

Perhaps the war would have taken place anyway even if we had never brought over the first slave. I kinda doubt it, but who knows, we were a stupid bunch of people in those days.

We are more stupid these days, 150 years ago most people were tough and knew survival on a base level. Today we don't.

Before the Civil War the South had an unfair advantage in the clothing markets (cotton) because of the plantation system. The North had no slaves herding sheep so the woolen mills weren't doing as well. Dismantling the South's economic system in the name of abolition ( a very altruistic thing) put them out of business.

One thing that always baffled me is if the blacks were enslaved by the Muslim Slavers and brought here and then supposedly freed by the Christians in this country why would many of them accept the religion of their Arab subjugators and not their American saviors?

[redkneck]

Personally Ive always thought any slave descendant should thank God for slavery. Our forefathers faught and died for freedom and independece, theirs had to pick cotton to get a life of freedom. In almost any case they're better off here than in Africa. Just my 2 cents, that reparation crap gets under my skin pretty bad lol.

[m gardner]

Personally Ive always thought any slave descendant should thank God for slavery. Our forefathers faught and died for freedom and independece, theirs had to pick cotton to get a life of freedom. In almost any case they're better off here than in Africa. Just my 2 cents, that reparation crap gets under my skin pretty bad lol.

My family is mostly cherokee on my dad's side and scot-irish on my mom's side. When I hear the whining about being slaves I just tell them that some of my family came here as slaves and indentured people and the indians were just killed so get over it and get a life. We got nothing either just a slim chance by the Grace of God to survive.

[Hunt or be Hunted]

Alright, I'm going to be all over the place, But here it goes,

Southern slave owners held that such a restriction on slavery would violate the principle of states' rights. In 1860, the election of Abraham Lincoln, who won the national election without receiving a single electoral vote from any of the Southern states, triggered declarations of secession from the United States by slave states of the Deep South, and their formation of the Confederate States of America. Nationalists (in the North and elsewhere) refused to recognize secession, nor did any foreign government. War began in April 1861 when Confederates attacked Fort Sumter, a major fortress held by the U.S. in lands claimed by the Confederacy.

As a panel of historians emphasized in 2011, "while slavery and its various and multifaceted discontents were the primary cause of disunion, it was disunion itself that sparked the war. States' rights and the tariff issue became entangled in the slavery issue, and were intensified by it. Other important factors were party politics, Abolitionism, Southern nationalism, Northern nationalism, expansionism, sectionalism, economics and modernization in the Antebellum Period.

The United States had become a nation of two distinct regions. The free states in New England, the Northeast, and the Midwest had a rapidly-growing economy based on family farms, industry, mining, commerce and transportation, with a large and rapidly growing urban population. Their growth was fed by a high birth rate and large numbers of European immigrants, especially Irish, British and German. Overall, the Northern population was growing much more quickly than the Southern population, which made it increasingly difficult for the South to continue to influence the national government. By the time of the 1860 election, the heavily agricultural southern states as a group had fewer Electoral College votes than the rapidly industrializing northern states. Lincoln was able to win the 1860 Presidential election without even being on the ballot in ten Southern states. Southerners felt a loss of federal concern for Southern pro-slavery political demands, and continued domination of the Federal government by "Slaveocracy" was on the wane. This political calculus provided a very real basis for Southerners' worry about the relative political decline of their region due to the North growing much faster in terms of population and industrial output.

William Lloyd Garrison, a prominent abolitionist, was motivated by a belief in the growth of democracy. Because the Constitution had a three-fifths clause, a fugitive slave clause and a 20-year extension of the Atlantic slave trade, Garrison once publicly burned a copy of the U. S. Constitution and called it "a covenant with death and an agreement with ****". In 1854, he said:

"I am a believer in that portion of the Declaration of American Independence in which it is set forth, as among self-evident truths, "that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Hence, I am an abolitionist. Hence, I cannot but regard oppression in every form—and most of all, that which turns a man into a thing—with indignation and abhorrence."

Thomas Jefferson's ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error.... Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition

Lincoln's war goals were reactions to the war, as opposed to causes. Abraham Lincoln explained the nationalist goal as the preservation of the Union on August 22, 1862, one month before his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation:

“ I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." ... My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.... I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Hunt or be Hunted

[Hunt or be Hunted]

Fingers got tired...... This has been VERY interesting so far!

[wtnhunt]

Personally Ive always thought any slave descendant should thank God for slavery. Our forefathers faught and died for freedom and independece, theirs had to pick cotton to get a life of freedom. In almost any case they're better off here than in Africa. Just my 2 cents, that reparation crap gets under my skin pretty bad lol.

Yup. To the best of my knowledge, my family never owned any slaves, matter of fact my great grandfather on my father's side came from Belgium around 120 years ago which would have been just a little late to own slaves.

[Hunt or be Hunted]

Economy in the civil war.

Seen some talking about it, Let me clear things up a little.

Economically, the Civil War was not a contest between equals. The South had no factories to produce guns or ammunition, and its railroads were small and not interconnected, meaning that it was hard for the South to move food, weapons and men quickly and over long distances. In addition, though agriculture thrived in the South, planters focused on cash crops like tobacco and cotton and did not produce enough food to feed the southern population. The North, on the other hand, had enough food and enough factories to make weapons for all of its soldiers. It also had an extensive rail network that could transport men and weapons rapidly and cheaply. At first, this superiority of the North didn't seem to make much of a difference; like many wars in history, those involved thought it would be over quickly. But northern advantages would prove crucial as the war dragged on.

The differences in manpower and industrial capacity were so profound that the fact that the South almost won the war was a shock to observers all over the world. On paper, there was no way that the South could possibly have stood up to the North, which had all of the material and financial advantages, and which did an excellent job of closing off the only advantage the South did have: cotton. Since most of the South's money came from exporting cotton the North aimed to shut this trade down. One of the very first things the Union government did was to blockade southern ports. The blockade took some time to become operational, but after the capture of New Orleans the amount of southern cotton exported to England plummeted. With it went the South's only consistent form of income, something it desperately needed to defeat the North. With the loss of its cotton exports, the South was in big trouble. It had lost its banking system which had been headquartered in New York and held no gold or silver reserves. There were various forms of paper money printed by the states and even by some private banks, but overall people did not trust paper money, unless it was explicitly backed by gold. Without gold and without banks, the Confederacy did the only thing it could: it printed money. Lots and lots of money. However, it could not do much to collect taxes to support this huge printing effort because the Confederate Constitution forbade the central government from imposing taxes on the states, and left it up to each individual state to tax its citizens. As in the American Revolution decades before, states collected little money and, thus, the Confederacy was left nearly broke. The Confederate government levied taxes in 1864, but by that time it was too late to do much good. With money flooding the market, its value fell dramatically, and horrendous inflation dogged the Confederate war effort from beginning to end.

With so many family heads away in fighting the war, much of the southern agricultural land was left idle or insufficiently farmed. The South, then, could not manage to feed both the civilian and military populations. Food was scarce throughout the war and, by the end, parts of the South suffered from starvation. The final dissolution of the Confederate army came when men realized that their families were starving to death and they left the army to try to help.

Arms and ammunition were also chronically in short supply in the South. Men had to bring their own guns, and soldiers scavenged the battlefields to take Union weapons and ammunition. Soldiers also lacked simple necessities such as shoes. In fact, the quest for shoes brought both the North and the South together at the town of Gettysburg which housed a shoe factory. Uniforms, tents, wagons and horses were also rare in the South, and these problems only increased toward the end of the war. In the end, the South lost the war primarily because it ran out of men, money, and supplies.

That's the southerner economy.

Now to the north.

The picture was much rosier north of the Mason-Dixon Line. In addition to having a population that was more than twice that of the South, the North had enough food to feed all of its people, including its armies. Plus, it boasted many factories that produced much of what those armies needed. The federal arsenal at Springfield, Massachusetts alone produced over one million rifles for the army, and countless rounds of ammunition. The Union armies had wagons, tents, and its factory-produced blue uniforms. (Southern uniforms were generally of a brownish grey homespun color.) The North enjoyed 69% of the railroad capacity compared to only 31% in the South, and held all of the currency reserves of the federal government. The Midwest and Northeast were the most industrialized areas of the country, and those factories quickly turned to making war supplies that kept the massive Union armies relatively well-equipped.

Despite these advantages, the government needed money, and it went to great lengths to get it. First, it issued a massive bond measure in which citizens and financial institutions were asked to buy bonds to fund the war. When this failed to yield enough money for the war, the Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, decided to print paper money. The "greenbacks," as paper money became known, were initially backed by gold, and then later by the bonds that the government sold. In a complicated scheme, the government sold bonds for greenbacks but repaid the interest in gold, making them attractive investments. The value of the paper money varied according to the fortunes of the Union Army, and at times they were worth almost one-third less than face value. In contrast to the economic plan in the Confederacy, the Union made the greenbacks "legal tender for all debts public and private," which helped lower inflation since, by law, everyone had to accept them for goods and services.

Still searching for ways to gather more money, the federal government introduced the first income tax in 1862, and the Bureau of Internal Revenue, later known as the IRS, was established. All of this worked relatively well, and the Union dealt with a rate of inflation that never topped 80% per year, while the South suffered a rate that reached 9,000% by the end of the war.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Hunt or be Hunted

[Tominator]

Wasn't that like over a hundred years ago?

[redkneck]

No it was back in the 60's. Some guys dressed up in sheets shot some other guys and made everybody mad, then Ole Miss had the army invade cuz their football team sux and they still have never been to an SEC championship game and still to this day blame it on Kennedy.

I minored in history btw, ask me anything you'd like.

[Hunt or be Hunted]

150.

[EastTnHunter]

I do know this if this hasnt been stated already becuaseI havent read all the cut and paste but Lincoln would NEVER have won the election if the southern states had their ducks in a row because there were I believe 5 or 6 candidates up for election. The southern states votes were split 3 or 4 ways into 3 or 4 candidates who all were pulling for the same ideas for the most part but with a split vote Lincoln won.

Edited February 18, 2012 by EastTnHunter

[Missilelock]

Our Preacher has actually been preaching on slavery from the pulpit lately. Did you know that worldwide, there are more slaves now than there were at civil war times? almost all of the coffee and chocolate we consume in USA is a product of slave labor, and the sex slave market is incredibly bad.

[stevebeilgard]

slavery was the smokescreen in the civil war. it was about states rights. simple as that. the feds were telling the south what to do, and some stated didn't like that. most states still don't like the feds telling them what to do. neither do i. it's happening right now, today, in washington. we actually have the federal goverment suing the state of arizona, because arizona has the gall to uphold the federal law. (no immigration and border closing)