(07-10-2015 04:39 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  This isn't about bashing the South, nor is it about the ridicoulous liberal fantasy that the real enemy of the state is that guy in Virginia who flies a little Confederate flag from the antenna of his pickup truck who is a a part of a nation-wide conspiracy or white supremacists.

It's about the historiography of a South without slavery, or a South willing to give it up, is a South with no reason to secede. Sure, it was about State's rights - to have slaves. And the different economic systems causing the sections of the country to drift apart. One of those systems being slavery-based.

Yes the Emancipation Proclamation didn't spring up over night but the North was moving towards limiting slavery, and rolling it back for decades at this point. Abolition wasn't the only question; much of the legal activity was about limiting the expansion of slavery. Lincoln and the North were moving lightly in part because they wanted to avoid war, and in part because the South held political power. But the idea that Lincoln suddenly only cared about abolition of slavery in the middle of the war has been shown wrong time and time again.

The Slave Owner's Rebellion was all about the glories and necessity of slavery as the cornerstone of southern society and the need to spread slavery throughout the rest of the country. Somehow, post-war discussion of the Civil War quickly morphed (even by the late 1890s) into how no one really cared about slavery anyway and it would have died out on its own and all that mass killing in the war was just a big misunderstanding between brothers, egged on by a few abolitionist agitators.

Why do people think there's any need to be proud, or defensive, of the past slave owning South? We weren't alive then, it isn't our fault if the past was bad, or anything to brag about if the past was good. There's never a simple declaration of "OK, slavery was wrong, we shouldn't have done that and the fact that we built our base of power on it has left one helluva stain on the US."

Until that's admitted and owned up to, the South will never really be able to forward in its heart and culture. It astounds me that at this time in history, with all the documentation about the reasons and motivations for the Civil War, intelligent, articulate, well read people will expend so much energy attempting to defend and ennoble the noxious enterprise of human slavery that was the reasoning behind the American Civil War.

Well said.

(07-10-2015 04:03 PM)ark30inf Wrote:  Slavery obviously played a major role in the sectional tensions that led to the Civil War....how could it not have.

But there are other factors involved and it also varied geographically. Slavery was not as influential in North Carolina as it was South Carolina or in Texas as much as in Mississippi.

It's the most complex socio-political event in our history and you cannot boil it down to one sentence and have any credibility.

I'm constantly learning something new that subtly alters my views on it. I distrust people who have all the answers conveniently packaged.

Well said

One factor was the inability of compromise primarily as a result of a generation of great leaders leaving congress and lesser men replacing them.

Consider the complicated nature of the question, what caused the Iraq War? Now, consider again, what caused the Vietnam war? You can't answer either of those correctly or accurately with any combination of three words.

Civil conflicts are inherently more complicated and complex.

What makes anybody think they can explain our civil conflict with any combination of three words, slavery, states, or rights.

It's an exercise in stupidity. Robert Penn Warren called it.

(07-10-2015 04:43 PM)dawgitall Wrote:  

(07-10-2015 04:03 PM)ark30inf Wrote:  Slavery obviously played a major role in the sectional tensions that led to the Civil War....how could it not have.

But there are other factors involved and it also varied geographically. Slavery was not as influential in North Carolina as it was South Carolina or in Texas as much as in Mississippi.

It's the most complex socio-political event in our history and you cannot boil it down to one sentence and have any credibility.

I'm constantly learning something new that subtly alters my views on it. I distrust people who have all the answers conveniently packaged.

Well said

One factor was the inability of compromise primarily as a result of a generation of great leaders leaving congress and lesser men replacing them.

Hmm, but I don't know that any of them could have come up with a compromise regarding slavery. The whole economy was based on it. It's like telling a religious zealot to compromise on his beliefs for the sake of making a deal.

The North and South were always two nations separated by culture, economics, and values. There was stability until the 1850's only because there was a balance of power. Then (in the 1850's) the northern economy took off exponentially. For the first time, one side had an advantage.

And once the balance of power shifted, it was inevitable that one side would want out.

(07-10-2015 03:44 PM)Fitbud Wrote:  Slavery was the one and only reason. Anyone who believes otherwise is fouling themselves.

That is just too simplistic Fit. Your declaration above is just as misguided as is anyone's declaration that slavery was not the cause of the war. There is no doubt that had slavery existed in the entire nation or had not existed anywhere in the nation there would never have been a war. But no short answer can completely explain the causes. If I had to offer a short answer I think the following would come about as close as we can get.

The war was a result of economic and societal conflicts that emerged when an expanding nation was no longer able to deal with sectionalism created when the economy of one section was based on agriculture dependent on slave labor, while another section was based on manufacturing and commerce with a steady influx of low wage immigrant labor.

Lord Stanley, why are you so defensive and sanctimonious regarding the TWBTS? Slavery was bad and no one has or is xo dining it. However, Lincoln hates the negro and so did the abolitionists. The Abolitionist saw it as a cause like PETA or Occupy Wall Street types aw kind of people. BUT they did not want to be around or share their Northern Land with the negro!!

These discussions are about facts like the Tariiffs of Abomination , The South acting with in their rights by the U.S. Constitution to leave lawfully.

Why can't you and your kind debate something with ALL the facts and keep your self righteous emotion out of the debate?

Ever heard of Reconstruction? It was not a good time. Our land was taken or stolen land pilfered for pennies on the dollar. Women raped by the occupying forces.

So yeah it's a little complex.

(07-10-2015 04:49 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  

(07-10-2015 04:43 PM)dawgitall Wrote:  

(07-10-2015 04:03 PM)ark30inf Wrote:  Slavery obviously played a major role in the sectional tensions that led to the Civil War....how could it not have.

But there are other factors involved and it also varied geographically. Slavery was not as influential in North Carolina as it was South Carolina or in Texas as much as in Mississippi.

It's the most complex socio-political event in our history and you cannot boil it down to one sentence and have any credibility.

I'm constantly learning something new that subtly alters my views on it. I distrust people who have all the answers conveniently packaged.

Well said

One factor was the inability of compromise primarily as a result of a generation of great leaders leaving congress and lesser men replacing them.

Hmm, but I don't know that any of them could have come up with a compromise regarding slavery. The whole economy was based on it. It's like telling a religious zealot to compromise on his beliefs for the sake of making a deal.

They had been doing just that starting with the writing of the Constitution.

(07-10-2015 04:05 PM)john01992 Wrote:  IIRC I already called you out on your "North was dependent on the South's economy" BS comment and never heard a response.

You can pretend all you want that you are correct, but when you have been indoctrinated your whole life there's no point in arguing with something who will never change his stance.

If you posted it I didn't see it. So humor me. Copypasta it.

(07-10-2015 04:39 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  This isn't about bashing the South, nor is it about the ridicoulous liberal fantasy that the real enemy of the state is that guy in Virginia who flies a little Confederate flag from the antenna of his pickup truck who is a a part of a nation-wide conspiracy of white supremacists.

It's about the historiography of a South without slavery, or a South willing to give it up, is a South with no reason to secede. Sure, it was about State's rights - to have slaves. And the different economic systems causing the sections of the country to drift apart. One of those systems being slavery-based.

Yes the Emancipation Proclamation didn't spring up over night but the North was moving towards limiting slavery, and rolling it back for decades at this point. Abolition wasn't the only question; much of the legal activity was about limiting the expansion of slavery. Lincoln and the North were moving lightly in part because they wanted to avoid war, and in part because the South held political power. But the idea that Lincoln suddenly only cared about abolition of slavery in the middle of the war has been shown wrong time and time again.

The Slave Owner's Rebellion was all about the glories and necessity of slavery as the cornerstone of southern society and the need to spread slavery throughout the rest of the country. Somehow, post-war discussion of the Civil War quickly morphed (even by the late 1890s) into how no one really cared about slavery anyway and it would have died out on its own and all that mass killing in the war was just a big misunderstanding between brothers, egged on by a few abolitionist agitators.

Why do people think there's any need to be proud, or defensive, of the past slave owning South? We weren't alive then, it isn't our fault if the past was bad, or anything to brag about if the past was good. There's never a simple declaration of "OK, slavery was wrong, we shouldn't have done that and the fact that we built our base of power on it has left one helluva stain on the US."

Until that's admitted and owned up to, the South will never really be able to move forward in its heart and culture. It astounds me that at this time in history, with all the documentation about the reasons and motivations for the Civil War, intelligent, articulate, well read people will expend so much energy attempting to defend and ennoble the noxious enterprise of human slavery that was the reasoning behind the American Civil War.

Lincoln's own mouth made it clear his motives were not that of an abolitionist. It is also a failure of the highest possible degree that it came to war to eliminate slavery. Every other Western nation on the planet got rid of it without a war. And that comes back to several issues.

Outright immediate abolition has negligible cost for the Northern merchants who sold the slaves, but a total capital loss cost to the Southern farmers who purchased them. That is why the British government bought out all the slaves, THEN made slavery illegal. That price tag is large, but pales in comparison to the cost of the Civil War. Slavery was on the way out worldwide. A compromise could have been had. But Lincoln and his ilk wanted no compromise. Adn this has lasting consequences to this day. The fractures that that war created are still alive and well, and largely papered over. You see it in a polarized and diverging political discourse, media, and political agenda. And far from forging a stronger union, it has actually sewed the very seeds to permanently render it asunder. Will the politicians fix the entitlement systems before they collapse? I feel pretty confident in saying no there. So what is the fallout when those systems cease to function? The Democrats will want to means test and enact enormous tax hikes. The Republicans will want to replace it wholesale or eliminate it. When you start arguing who gets left with the hundreds of trillions in debt and unfunded liabilities at the end of this game of suicide musical chairs ... that's when you upset the landscape enough for rifts to become new international borders.

(07-10-2015 02:26 PM)miko33 Wrote:  

(07-10-2015 02:08 PM)vandiver49 Wrote:  

(07-10-2015 01:56 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  

(07-10-2015 01:10 PM)miko33 Wrote:  I think there has been a lot of cross talk about this topic. I'd like to put together a list of what people think were the reasons why the war was fought. I'm hoping there are no value judgements about which side was right or wrong. We've had plenty enough of those types of threads. I'm hoping to see a more clinical discussion about the merits of the causes themselves - not emotional reactions to whether a symbol should be banned from view. I'm sure that 100% of the people on this forum would agree that slavery is morally repugnant and is indefensible today. Also, I think everyone would agree that black people were viewed as less than human by the majority of people in both the slave and free states in the 1860s. Please, let's get those 2 facts out of the way. It is what it is, so there's no debate on those items. Here is what I understand to be the root causes of the war.

• Slavery - The abolitionist movement was very strong in the north. With that plus the prohibitions to slavery in Europe, the north felt pressure to prevent the spread of slavery.
• Income redistribution - The south at that time was the primary means by which capital flowed into the U.S. The northern manufacturing base was in its infancy, and as such tariffs were enacted to help protect the manufacturing sector of the U.S. The south thought this was a wealth transfer by preventing them from buying cheaper goods from Britain.
• Loss of influence in the Federal Gov't - The south was losing the population battle with the north on 2 fronts: 1) the north was growing in population faster and 2) curbs on allowing new territories to become slave states was effective.
  

That's how I understand it. I did not explicitly state states rights, because I think that is heavily contingent upon the slavery issue. I also understand that southerners were opposed to the laws that northerners enacted that prohibited the transportation of slaves through free territory, the importation of slaves, and the loss of the value they invested in a slave whenever a slave successfully escaped into a free territory.

Regarding trade, I'm not sure if the south thought states rights were violated via the tariffs. Honestly, I'm not sure if the south thought it had the right to negotiate its own trade deals, i.e. Georgia making trade agreements with Britain for example. I thought that was against the Constitution and that the trade deals could only be between the U.S. and foreign countries.

No. Stupidity caused the Civil War.
/thread

Concur. All other nations found a way to peaceably end slavery save America.

You may think this is odd, but it's been my belief that the biggest issue that resulted in the war was economics. Specifically, the tariff on European goods and the anger the south felt about subsidizing the north. While slavery was a part of it, I think the south felt more threatened by the economics, i.e. interfering with the ability of the south to trade freely with Europe.

I don't think it's odd, it's just not a good reason the southern elite chose to retain an agriculture based society and refusing to embrace industrialization.

Quote:A compromise could have been had. But Lincoln and his ilk wanted no compromise.

This is one of many examples where you are full of s***

His position was not to end slavery but to stop it from expanding into new territory and believed the federal govt did not have the constitutional right to ban it. If it were to be banned he wanted monetary compensation to slave owners. In fact he supported the Corwin Amendment (introduced by Seward) which would have guaranteed that slavery would have been protected in the Southern States.

I agree generally with the original OP's reasons, but I think everyone is missing the most obvious: regional identities. I think the greatest cause was lack of commonality between the culture and peoples of the North and South. When each side started identifying as a member of their state or region over the nation, then a split was inevitable. No different than the colonists wanting self-governance instead of wanting to be shackled to England.

I'd also like to dispel the myth that the North was fighting to end slavery, that was not the case. Slavery didn't end until the 13th amendment was passed. The emancipation proclamation only claimed to end slavery in regions controlled by the CSA, i.e. regions not under Union control, which in effect freed no one. Slavery was still existed in northern border states throughout the war.

Thanks Jug, I've been telling them that but they don't know the topic only emotion.

(07-10-2015 06:40 PM)Jugnaut Wrote:  I agree generally with the original OP's reasons, but I think everyone is missing the most obvious: regional identities. I think the greatest cause was lack of commonality between the culture and peoples of the North and South. When each side started identifying as a member of their state or region over the nation, then a split was inevitable.

Ah yes, the genteel South vs the industrial North. It was just a a simpler time down South, when people knew their neighbors, and children said 'sir' and 'ma'am'................ and blacks said "massuh."

(07-10-2015 06:40 PM)Jugnaut Wrote:  No different than the colonists wanting self-governance instead of wanting to be shackled to England.

One of these things is not like the other:

Taxation without Representation! One of the grievances of the Thirteen Colonies.

No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed. CSA Constitution

(07-10-2015 06:52 PM)South Carolina Duke Wrote:  I've been telling them that but they don't know the topic only emotion.

It's entirely possible that we understand you, find your arguments ahistorical and riddled with errors or special pleadings, and find it frankly frightening that you're more concerned with that than you are with the actual dehumanization of slaves.

I would hope that if I was making such an oblivious and ignorant argument that I would be swiftly and bluntly corrected.

(07-10-2015 07:19 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  

(07-10-2015 06:40 PM)Jugnaut Wrote:  I agree generally with the original OP's reasons, but I think everyone is missing the most obvious: regional identities. I think the greatest cause was lack of commonality between the culture and peoples of the North and South. When each side started identifying as a member of their state or region over the nation, then a split was inevitable.

Ah yes, the genteel South vs the industrial North. It was just a a simpler time down South, when people knew their neighbors, and children said 'sir' and 'ma'am'................ and blacks said "massuh."

They said that up north too, as much as I know it may come to a horrendous shock to some of you.

(07-10-2015 07:19 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  

(07-10-2015 06:40 PM)Jugnaut Wrote:  I agree generally with the original OP's reasons, but I think everyone is missing the most obvious: regional identities. I think the greatest cause was lack of commonality between the culture and peoples of the North and South. When each side started identifying as a member of their state or region over the nation, then a split was inevitable.

Ah yes, the genteel South vs the industrial North. It was just a a simpler time down South, when people knew their neighbors, and children said 'sir' and 'ma'am'................ and blacks said "massuh."

(07-10-2015 06:40 PM)Jugnaut Wrote:  No different than the colonists wanting self-governance instead of wanting to be shackled to England.

One of these things is not like the other:

Taxation without Representation! One of the grievances of the Thirteen Colonies.

No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed. CSA Constitution

Personally, I see little difference in the South wanting independence and the colonies wanted to being independent from England. The desire for self-governance and independence from a faraway government is in our blood.

I'd like to understand your point of view. Is your only problem with secession the impure motives you ascribe to the South? If the South didn't have slavery but wanted to secede, would it have been immoral or tyranny for the North to keep them in the Union?

Stanley,

You or none of your ilk can produce any evidence that slavery was the reason why Lincoln went to war. If so produce the U.S. Declaration. Show evidence of an amendment concerning slavery for the United States.

You can't even answer why a man from Indiana would leave his family and fight in a war in the Southeastern portion of his continent. For a black slave ? Bull crap, Indiana wouldn't even allow a negro in the state during 1860 without a tax.

So go ahead and regurgitate "slavery" because that's all the "knowledge" you have read from Wikipedia regarding the true history of this nation.

It was an economic war wow you are a thick one to reason with.

(07-10-2015 04:49 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  Hmm, but I don't know that any of them could have come up with a compromise regarding slavery. The whole economy was based on it. It's like telling a religious zealot to compromise on his beliefs for the sake of making a deal.

The inevitable conflict.

Personally, I think that it was a voluntary federal compact that was joined voluntarily...twice. That the founders already had state's secede once from the Articles of Confederation previously. I think the Southern state's were entirely within their rights to withdraw from the union for whatever reason they so desired. Slavery, economics, whim, bad taco.

I think the founders believed in self-determination (at least for white people) and not creating an inescapable empire. They had already escaped one empire by blood and I don't think they were setting up another one that could only be escaped by blood.

That said, I think most of the reasons the South did withdraw for were bad and not particularly justified.

So you are most certainly correct. Fireaters and abolitionist zealots were not going to compromise.

(07-10-2015 07:53 PM)Jugnaut Wrote:  Personally, I see little difference in the South wanting independence and the colonies wanted to being independent from England. The desire for self-governance and independence from a faraway government is in our blood.

I'd like to understand your point of view. Is your only problem with secession the impure motives you ascribe to the South? If the South didn't have slavery but wanted to secede, would it have been immoral or tyranny for the North to keep them in the Union?

The United States supported secession of the Baltic nations from the USSR. We are currently rotating troops around there to make sure they stay seceded.

The United States supported and brought about by force the secession of Kosovo from Serbia.

The United States has supported and continues to support Taiwanese seperatism.

Americans and Kurds seem to be the special cases where secession isn't allowed.