Slavery is merely a distraction from the root cause. The Civil War was fought over the Tenth Amendment. Rebel leaders made a good case for their cause, so good that the 38th Congress decided to amend the constitution so pro-slavery men could never again fight over slave labor under the Tenth Amendment.

Also, Republicans did not come into power over the subject of slavery, but through a popular filibuster over war taxes! Ironically, it was Republican enforcement acts to secure rights for freed blacks that lead to them being driven from power within a very short time span. Democrats were being elected everywhere, including the north.

It's amazing that we're still fighting the Civil War. Let's face it, the Confederacy was an evil cause that rivals Al Qaida and Nazi Germany, except that the Confederate traitors slaughtered a lot more Americans than the Nazis did or that Al Qaida (thankfully) ever will. Flying the Confederate (battle) flag is morally the equivalent of flying the Nazi flag. Former Confederate soldiers need to be remembered as the traitors they were.

The Confederacy was an evil cause that deserved the crushing defeat it suffered. Get over it, and join the late 19th Century.

It's amazing that we're still fighting the Civil War.

It was the War of Northern Aggression. The United States did not have the right to invade the sovereign Confederacy. The U.S. was Russian; and the Confederacy was Georgia.

The South Carolina Ordinance of Secession referred to northern opposition to slavery -- and failure to enforce the fugitive slave act -- as "encroachments" that required and justified secession. For example, it said that the northern states had

". . . united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction."

It's an opportunity to see white southern men talking frankly to other white southern men

We could see how whites truly felt about blacks in the 1950s. Are we supposed to believe that somehow Southern whites thought more highly of blacks a century before Jim Crow?

I realize that the book your cite argues that the Civil War was not about "States' rights." I just think it's silly to even have this argument. It's like debating whether the Holocaust occurred. Whether or not the Civil War was about slavery is one of those "beyond the pale" arguments.

Prof. Somin implicit theory of national motivation is simplistic. To the extent that it is a sensible concept, national motivation cannot be established by selective quotes from "leaders." Do a few quotes from George Bush describe the motives for the U.S. today? This is just silly. The right of Southerners to secede is proven by the conduct of the North in the war and after it. The U.S. violated the laws of war during the war and punished the South after the war finished.

Nice Post.

A few slavery-related motives you might have left out:

1) The end of censored mail in the south. Unified Republican control of both the legislative and executive branch was going to mean Republican postal appointees, who would have almost certainly allowed anti-slavery literature to flow through the southern mails. Which would have stoked...

2) Fear of a slave revolt. As Potter wonderfully describes in the The Impending Crisis, southern society had become, by 1861, terrified of a slave revolt along the lines of Santo Domingo in 1803. Thus the increasingly harsh laws against slave education, distribution of anti-slavery literautre, etc. Anything that even hinted at unsettling the status quo was seen not just as a possible economic harm, but as a potential revolutionary spark.

I also think some good evidence can be found in the secession convention debates during the winter/spring of 1860/1861. There were plenty of unionist southerners at these conventions (secession was rejected outside of the gulf coast in the first wave), and their main argument was that slavery could be better protected from within the union, an explicit statement that the tactic of secession was clearly tied to the strategy of preserving slavery.

Does anyone have figures for the number of slaves in the South in the few years prior to the Civil War?

The 2nd Inaugural Address, during the Civil War:

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Therein we find the real underlying reason for the War.

The "Memoirs of General William T. Sherman" is a good source on the causes of the Civil War. What Sherman included in his memoirs has been independently verified but he did not include everything. Before the war Sherman was the headmaster of what became LSU and he traveled extensively in the South prior to the war staying in the homes of upper class Southerners.

He told Lincoln that the Southern women were the ones that were shaming the men into continuing the war going after they had recognized it as a "lost cause".

Of course the war was about slavery. But it is simplistic to claim that it was the only cause.

And again, Ilya ignores the point that several of the states refused to secede until Lincoln began the war by reinforcing Fort Sumter. Only then did the remaining states see that there was no hope for peace from the militarily aggressive Lincoln.

It's very disappointing that lawyers and law professors harp on such a complex issue with such a simplistic claim.

The war was about slavery. It was also about the loss of self-determination. Lincoln made it so that you either supported slavery and destroyed self-determination or destroyed slavery and supported self-determination. Neither choice was good, but Lincoln forced states to choose, and he killed 600,000 people in his mad craze to destroy self-determination.

I have this feeling that this is the reason Federal courts co-opted the abortion issue. What would the landscape be like today if there were "abortion states" and "abolition states"? Would that be as destabalizing to the Union?

Erica, don't forget that a third of the Confederacy did not secede until AFTER the war started.

some dude,

I have this feeling that this is the reason Federal courts co-opted the abortion issue. What would the landscape be like today if there were "abortion states" and "abolition states"? Would that be as destabalizing to the Union?

Actually the court attempted to co-opt the slavery issue in the Dredd Scott case. However the issue was too hot for the court to settle the court lost most of the prestige that it had built up to that point. It was discredited enough that Lincoln could basically ignore it with few repercussions during the Civil War.

In response to Illya's point, I would agree that without slavery it is unlikely there would have been a war. It is also simplistic to view the war only in that light however. The South had been losing political power for years as the North population had expanded much faster than the South. This was influenced heavily by slavery as immigrants tended to avoid areas where slavery existed. (Whether out of distaste for slavery, discomfort with blacks, or possibly both is unclear.) What is clear, is that by 1860 only a few hundred thousand people owned slaves in the country and that number was declining. The South had also felt unduly disparaged by the North for years.

Combine the loss of political power, the threat of the North banning slavery, the inferiority the South already felt from the disparagement of the North and how much more successful the North had been. Since less than 10% of the South's free population owned slaves it is more likely that these issues far more than a devotion to slavery motivated much of the south to join the confederacy.

Skyler:

It's very disappointing that lawyers and law professors harp on such a complex issue with such a simplistic claim.

Congratulations, Skyler, for opposing simplistic claims.

Lincoln forced states to choose, and he killed 600,000 people in his mad craze to destroy self-determination.

Don't you think that Lee, Johnston, Jackson, and, yes, even Jefferson Davis, have some responsibility for the deaths? Actually, more Northerners were killed than Southerners, you know. And the violence was started by the South, not by Lincoln, you know. He didn't secede, the South did. He didn't bombard Fort Sumter, the South did.

In his First Inaugural Address, delivered before there was any violence, but after secession had started, Lincoln directly addressed the Southerners:

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."

I'm happy that you reject simplistic claims, Skyler.

The Southern economy would have collapsed - and, indeed, DID collapse - with the end of slavery. The end of slavery did not mean the end of prejudice, injustice, or racism. It was exacerbated; the Ku Klux Klan arguably would not have existed had it not been for the war. We fought for slavery, because without it we could not survive.

Slavery was dead already in the court of popular opinion. It would have ended within the lifetimes of the people who fought the war, many of whom would have lived much longer and happier lifetimes without that war, but the North simply could not wait for progress. Instead, it forced the issue, making profitable plantations destitute overnight. A century and a half later, the region still has not recovered. It was an economic holocaust no less contemptible than the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The true battle of the war was not about ending the exploitation of human life for profit, but changing it. Slavery was not profitable in the North; what was profitable was immigrant labor at starvation wages. Slaves needed to be housed, clothed, and fed. In the urban North, that meant heat and winter coats and imported produce. In the rural South, that meant wood nailed into a rough cube, potato-sack dresses, and access to a river for fishing.

The purpose of the North in fighting the war was not to improve the quality of life for exploited human beings, but to bankrupt their competition. They continued to pay their immigrant factory workers far too little money to live such luxurious lives as were lived by slaves in the South; those workers huddled together for warmth in tiny apartments that housed multiple families, counting pennies to see how many beans they could afford for the week.

But they were white, so nobody cared. The plight of the black man was romantic and attractive. Who cared about the plight of the Polack, the Mick, or the Wop? Or, for that matter, the Russky?

Sure, we fought to keep slavery. We fought to keep the basic human right of our workers to be housed and fed and clothed, as many of those immigrant workers could not. We fought to be responsible for the continued health and well-being of our people, as the factory owner was not. And at the same time, the North fought tooth and nail for the right to treat human life as a different sort of commodity, to be rented at will instead of bought. Slavery would have gone away regardless - the economic reality was that plantations would need to fundamentally change the way they did business over the next fifty years.

But if the North had left well enough alone, the eyes of those progressive liberal socialites would have landed on industry. So they manufactured a distraction, as evil men so often do, and people continue to believe it to this day.

The South fought to keep what they had, while the North fought to take it away. It doesn't take a genius to see which of those positions is wrong.

<i>He meant that blocking the expansion of slavery would eventually put pressure on southern states to abolish it "voluntarily."</i>

Perhaps we can infer this from Lincoln's comments, and it may be a fair inference, but unless Lincoln actually explained so, it's intellectually arrogant for Prof. Somin to declare the point Lincoln was trying to make. Only the man who spake the words can definitively explain the intentions of his own comment.

How terrible, Caliban... the North wouldn't simply be patient and allow another generation or two of human beings to be born into slavery. Why, all those slaves were better off than the poor factory workers, because, well, those slave-owners guaranteed a roof over their head, and clothes on their back...

Except, of course, for the "uppity" slaves that dared talk back to Master... they got the cloths whipped off their back. And the women, of course... they had "free" room and board, so long as the attractive ones spread their leg for masters, and didn't mind having their children sold away from them.

There's a reason the immigrants didn't consent to slavery... they preferred freedom to enslavement. Nobody ever volunteered to be a slave, and most folks, however "well fed" they were, were willing to risk a great deal to escape their bondage. Your materialist philosophy is pathetic and sad, and it demeans you and all who follow it.

The Civil War was entirely States Rights. . . . A state's right to have slaves.

The stubborness with which certain posters (on this site and elsewhere) argue against the clear historical evidence demonstrates that there is some other reason than an honest pursuit of truth in play. The same arguments are made over and over again, effectively disproven, and then made again and again, contrary to the historical evidence, and despite the overwhelming weight of scholarly opinion to the contrary, in the South as well as the North. I suggest that some of it is local or regional sensitivity, an attempt to bolster current political arguments about state rights, yes, even some racial animosity. For whatever reason or reasons, the deniers will never be convinced. It is a sad commentary on a tragic era in American history and an even sadder commentary on human psychology.

Of course the war was about slavery. But it is simplistic to claim that it was the only cause.

I suppose few events have exactly one cause. However, it is accurate to say that slavery was both necessary and sufficient for the war, while no other proposed "cause" was either.

And again, Ilya ignores the point that several of the states refused to secede until Lincoln began the war by reinforcing Fort Sumter. Only then did the remaining states see that there was no hope for peace from the militarily aggressive Lincoln.

I think you're a little confused. Sending supplies to American soldiers at an American fort is not "beginning a war," nor is it "militarily aggressive." On the other hand, assaulting said American fort is both.

it was first advanced by apologists for the Confederate cause in the immediate aftermath of the War in order to paint the Confederacy in a more positive light by demonstrating that it was fighting for "states' rights" rather than slavery.

False. During the war, the reasons for it were debated in the English press (both the US and CSA press were censored at the time). The tariff and states rights argument was pressed by Charles Dickens, while John Stuart Mill was the chief supporter of "it's about slavery."

The correct answer is "all of the above". And in a historical debate, it seems silly for Northerners to get all self-righteous about Southern slaveholding when slavery was legal in many Northern states.

This reminds me of Lee Atwater's explanation of the anti-black strategy over the years; how it changed from overt bigotry into something couched into other neutral terms to cover the real intent to punish or separate the black population.

Caliban: Sure, we fought to keep slavery. We fought to keep the basic human right of our workers to be housed and fed and clothed, as many of those immigrant workers could not. We fought to be responsible for the continued health and well-being of our people, as the factory owner was not.

Well then, it is obvious what was needed. There needed to be large government-run social programs to make the transition easier, such as

1) massive re-training programs for African-Americans to give them the know-how to be effective citizens.

2) government-run economic development programs for the South, to provide for an efficient transition of plantations to a free-worker status.

If the welfare state had existed in the mid-19th century, there would have been no need for the Civil war. The best of both worlds would have been possible.

The war was about slavery. It was also about the loss of self-determination.

The "self-determination" you talk about is not self-determination at all. It's the right of a white slave-holding oligarchy to retain power and to continue to deny self-determination to a very large number of people.

To provide some further information on population:

The population of the Confederacy was almost 40% slaves. Slaves were a substantial majority in SC and MS, and around 45% in AL, FL, GA, and LA.

These figures in themselves destoy the notion that the Confederacy can reasonably be considered an expression of popular will in the South.

Eigth Note: "I will concede that the South faught to keep slavery if you concede the North did not fight to end slavery."

I'd agree with this. The South's fight was certainly about slavery and the North's fight was about preservation of the Union. The South believed, i would argue correctly, that preservation of the Union would eventually lead to the destruction of slavery, but the North was not actively fighting for the extinction of slavery until after the Emancipation Proclamation (before someone says "IT WAS SELECTIVE!!!!" allow me to preemptively point out that you simply can't abolish slavery in Georgia and leave it in Maryland, not for any length of time).

Jeffrey - Presumably you mean Maryland and Delaware, which is not exactly many... and I believe both of these states abolished slavery during the Civil War. Also, I don't know what you mean about self-righteousness... this all happened long before any of us entered this earth- there's nothing having to do with one's "self" involved in this debate. You and Caliban there seem to identify yourself way too much with the Civil War South, you weren't involved in the traitorious decisions of the South, why are you so desperate to justify them?

You know, you can't have an intelligent debate about a controversial issue when trolls like Caliban come along and pretend to argue that slavery was worth defending.

I never said that or implied it and I want no part of it.

I'm just saying that it is morally dubious to think that the only way to free the slaves was by killing 600,000 people. This war was precipitated by Lincoln purposefully choosing to not evacuate only one fort, and he chose Fort Sumter because he knew that South Carolina was the most hot headed state. A true statesman would have found another way, or at least attempted it.

It was this invasion that convinced the other states that Lincoln was a mad man intent on establishing a dictatorship. Whether this was true is irrelevent, his actions gave them cause to believe it.

So, yes, self-determination included the right to continue slavery. I didn't say that this was good. I said the tragedy is that the two goods, ending slavery and protecting self-determination, were put into conflict with each other. The snarky comments that this makes it all about slavery is correct, but it was not exclusively about slavery. Just as it was all related to slavery, it was also all related to self-determination. You can't separate the two.

The tragedy is that in ending the institution of slavery, we threw away our right to self-determination at the same time.

pluribus whines "...And the violence was started by the South, not by Lincoln, you know. He didn't secede, the South did. He didn't bombard Fort Sumter, the South did."

The violence was started by one state, South Carolina. There was no "South" at the time. SC bombarded a federal-occupied island.

Then Lincoln invaded Virginia, a state that rejected secession previously, sending troops westward to cut off and capture their transportation.

That was the moment "the South" was born; not before.

I'm just saying that it is morally dubious to think that the only way to free the slaves was by killing 600,000 people. This war was precipitated by Lincoln purposefully choosing to not evacuate only one fort, and he chose Fort Sumter because he knew that South Carolina was the most hot headed state.

There were many forts at issue, since the seceding states claimed ownership of federal property. FL had also blockaded a fort and the re-supply of that one was in contemplation. For various logistical reasons, Lincoln chose to re-supply Sumter first.

Then Lincoln invaded Virginia, a state that rejected secession previously, sending troops westward to cut off and capture their transportation.

I don't know where you get this idea. Lincoln's response to the attack on Fort Sumter was to call for volunteers. VA's response was to secede. Anderson surrendered the fort on April 13. VA seceded on April 17. Lincoln didn't even have time to "invade" VA, nor did he have the troops to do so.

Not that this matters, but just how many free states would it have taken to ratify an amendment making slavery unconstitutional if all slave holding states would not have ratified said amendment?

Skyler- "This war was precipitated by Lincoln purposefully choosing to not evacuate only one fort, and he chose Fort Sumter because he knew that South Carolina was the most hot headed state. A true statesman would have found another way, or at least attempted it." Wow, just wow... so you think it would have been an effective bargaining tactic to fold and give up your own fort in the opening move? Appeasement typically is a poor bargaining method. Please explain how that wouldn't have further emboldened the South. I also find it amazing that you think Lincoln's abandoning the fort should have been done to avoid the war, yet don't argue that the South should have abandoned slavery to avoid the war.
"It was this invasion that convinced the other states that Lincoln was a mad man intent on establishing a dictatorship." Please explain how not abandoning a fort is a) an invasion, and b) the act of a madman.

subpatre:

Then Lincoln invaded Virginia, , , ,

Excuse me. "Invaded?" If a president of the United States sends troops into one of the states, that is an "invasion"?

Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution gives Congress the power "to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions." Congress did that, authorizing the president to call forth the militia to supress insurrections and repel invasions, and that is just what Lincoln was doing in Virginia.

In 1957, President Eisenhower sent 1,000 U.S. Army paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce the integration of Central High School. Was this an "invasion" of Arkansas?

In 1957, Arkansas was a part of the U.S. In 1861, Virginia was (in the minds of Congress, Lincoln, and ultimately the Supreme Court) still a part of the U.S.

Putting down an insurrection inside a country is not an "invasion."

Eigth Note: "I will concede that the South faught to keep slavery if you concede the North did not fight to end slavery."


Can't agree completely. The North initially fought for the Union. If Jeff Davis and co. had comke to their senses sometime before Antietam, they may well have been readmitted without emancipation. After some time fighting, however, the abolition of slavery did become a significant Union goal in the war. One sees this in the diaries and letter home written by Federal soldiers.

Thus, the Northern political goals in the war changed over the course of the war. So it is not accurate simply to say that the the Federals were not fighting to end slavery. You have to specify when you are talking about.

In any event, anti-slavery men like Lincoln were convinced from the beginning that the defeat of secession would mean the end of slavery, even if Washington did not compel emancipation. So even in that sense, Lincoln was fighting a war that he knew would bring the end of the institution.

Andy C.:

After the first batch of states seceded, didn't Congress pass a (proposed) 13th Amendment which stated that the federal government would never abolish slavery?

No. During the waning days of the Buchanan administration, Congress proposed an amendment (called the Corwin Amendment) that stated that the Constitution could not be amended to give Congress the power to abolish or interfere with slavery within any state. The text was:

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

Buchanan called this an "explanatory amendment," because he believed (correctly) that it did not change the Constitution, but merely "explained" it. Under the existing Constitution, Congress had no power to abolish or interfere with slavery within any state. The Republican Party platform agreed. The Corwin Amendment did not alter the power of Congress to control (even abolish) slavery in the territories or in the District of Columbia. Nor did it prevent an eventual amendment simply abolishing slavery throughout the country. It simply made it clear that Congress would not have the power to abolish or interfere with slavery within any state. The Corwin Amendment was an effort to placate the South. The South was not placated. The Amendment was not ratified.

From The Simpsons:

Through another sea of protestors, Apu takes the written [citizenship] exam, then the oral exam.

Proctor: All right, here's your last question. What was the cause of the Civil War?

Apu: Actually, there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists, there were economic factors, both domestic and inter--

Proctor: Wait, wait... just say slavery.

Apu: Slavery it is, sir.

-- "Much Apu About Nothing"

The stubborness with which certain posters (on this site and elsewhere) argue against the clear historical evidence demonstrates that there is some other reason than an honest pursuit of truth in play.

Indeed.

At best, as one commenter noted above, southerners are taught in school that the war wasn't really about slavery, and not many trouble to educate themselves on the subject afterwards.

We thus get books like Why the South Was Right.

Doubtless, Hitler and Himmler will have been similarly rehabilitated in 100 years.

In fact, I saw in the bookstore where Pat Buchanan was at work on that.

Your version of "self-determination" includes having the power to enslave.

This is what I find odd about the argument. The right of self-determination seems to come from an idea of natural law. So: Who had the inherent right to self-determination? If human beings, then there is no justification for slavery in the first place. it is not something that the state is justified in guaranteeing.

Yet the argument seems to be that states have a right to self-determination. That's why some people see in this issue a conflict of rights situation.

Now, I admit that I'm skeptical about natural law. That said, how can a human construct--say, the state of South Carolina--have any "natural" rights?

I have often wondered if slavery would have survived the 19th century without the Civil War. It was a dying institution within the western world. Brazil abolished it in 1888 without war.

Jeffrey Rogers Hummel wrote a very persuasive book on the topic of whether the Civil War was necessary because slavery would have died out anyways. It was entitled, "Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War."

Dave N- Jeffrey was remarking on northern slaveholding states, Missouri &Kentucky typically aren't considered "Northern".

Man's inhumanity to man remains well established, I see. The notion that the war was about states rights or self determination is a cop out. The states in question desired the right determine the correctness of allowing a traffic in human beings. In a word, slavery. There is no escaping that this was, indeed the root cause of the war. The notion that the war was one of 'northern aggression,' or for states rights is the sort of 'usable history' crap we normally expect from people like Michael Bellesiles. As someone noted above, the states rights / northern aggression thesis isn't following the historical evidence, it is manipulating history to serve a social and or political agenda.

Could slavery have been abolished in the USA without the war? Perhaps. But I don't think it was too probable, given the increasing stridency of the southern defense of their 'peculiar institution' from the 1780s through 1865. In some places, Britain, for example, slavery's abolition was accomplished without resort to war. But the number of slave holders was very small, the number of slaves was tiny, and it had little effect on the national economy. Much of the southern agrarian economy depended on slave labor, making this a more difficult process. I agree, it was inevitably going to die out, as the USA's economy moved from being primarily an agrarian one to an industrial base. But we really can't know if this would have happened peacefully,or if there would have been violence associated with it.

Slavery was legal in the USA in 1860. It was repulsive then, and many people, throughout the world, were calling for its abolition. Even though slavery had been a near universal fact in the sense that it was practiced in many societies, from the beginnings of recorded history until the 19thcentury, slavery was practiced by some Indian tribes in the Americas, by Africans against other Africans, and even classical Greece and Rome. The amazing thing, really,was the universal recognition developing in the 18th and 19th centuries that slavery was inherently evil. Given such a sea change, it is perhaps reasonable to at least recognize that some of our ancestors fought for this cause based on sincerely held beliefs. What I cannot countenance, however, is suggesting that these were good and positive social values,and that the war was for some noble cause. The so called noble lost cause was the ability to own human beings. I can find nothing noble or redeeming about it. I think U. S. Grant summed it up well, by remarking that he admired the valor and respected the courage of his foe, who fought bravely for a cause they believed in, though Grant believed that cause to be one of the worst men ever fought for.

No nation that allows itself to self destruct remains a nation for long. Lincoln noted that he had an obligation to defend and protect the nation and the constitution. The maintenance of existing federal forts is not an act of aggression. The south seceded,then fired the first shots of the war. Lincoln had little choice. He either had to defend the union, or preside over its destruction. Lincoln was willing to allow slavery to be gradually abolished when elected, but by 1862, the military advantages of emancipation began to look increasingly practical. The south, in their effort to protect slavery by destruction of the union, only hastened its abolition as part of the war effort. The fact that so many union men died to protect the union and also,after 1863, to bring about the destruction of slavery is one of our prouder moments in history.

Parallels between the Confederacy and Nazism or Communism are, however, unfair. Firstly, slavery was generally accepted world wide before the 18th century, Communism and Nazism are very recent developments (19th, 20th centuries). Slavery was predicated on the bondage of people; Nazism and Communism have depended on repression of people to work, and both Communism and Nazism have practiced the wholesale liquidation of people it found undesirable because of who they were. This feature is not found in the Confederacy,where the undesirable classes were slaves. Slavery, repugnant as it is, is generally considered to be a better fate than death. None of these systems are desirable systems to live under.

Secession was a bad idea, and it was undertaken by the southern states in support of a loathsome social system.

Connecticut Lawyer:

What would it have cost for the Federal Government to have condemned every slave, taken them all by eminent domain, and then freed them?

Lincoln estimated that it would cost $300,000,000. This works out to about $750 per slave, which was close to the market value at the time. He said this would be less than the war would cost, and thus it would be a good bargain. However, he did not believe the federal government had the authority to force this on the South. Where in the Constitution is the federal government given the power to condemn private property for the purpose of racial justice? He offered this as an inducement to any state that would voluntarily end slavery within its borders. He had hopes particularly that Kentucky would accept the bargain. The state would abolish slavery, and the federal government would compensate each slaveholder for his or her lost property. Kentucky said no, and Lincoln despaired of achieving emancipation in this way.

IME--In my experience--the idea that the Civil War was not about slavery is an outgrowth of the "there shall be no good thing about America" view of historical education.
We see it explicated above.
Nothing noble is allowed, even if we have to rewrite history.
Despicable.

Would slaves have been better off if England had won the Revolutionary War?

Slightly, perhaps. Slavery didn't really end in British colonies until about 1840.

But the American Revolution probably accelerated that decision. Loss of the territories in North America, and loss of shipping from New England ports especially, reduced the value of the slave-based Atlantic trade for the Brits. So: no independence, no abolition? Not exactly, but the timing may have been affected.

States do not have natural rights, but the people of the state do. The people of a state have the right of self-determination. That this right was put in conflict with the abolition of slavery is the entire tragedy of the war.

Hoosier answers this well, and I would emphasize that in the slave South a large minority of people were denied the right of self-determination.

To take the most extreme case, 57% of the people of South Carolina were slaves. That means the conflict you talk about was non-existent. The Confederacy was fighting for slavery and against the right of self-determination.

Further, no one was against the right of the slaveholders to self-determination, it was their power to deny self-determination to others that was at issue.

The 1860 election made it clear the south was encircled- they were never going to carry another national election as long as they were slave states. The growth in population and economic might of the western states and territories, along with the growing might of the north, made their position impossible. The handwriting was on the wall- they were going to lose slavery and become economically and politically isolated. In the circumstances they felt they had little to lose.

The claim that the South was merely fighting to preserve its liberties (or as some here say, its right of "self-determination) is transparent. As usual, Lincoln said it better than most of the rest of us can:

We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word many mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name - liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names - liberty and tyranny.

-- April 18, 1864 - Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, Maryland

Hoosier dude, don't look now, but I think Jeffy Davis may be a commenter on this site...

Skyler- still not cite huh? And you're argument is the completely illogical... you say Lincoln shouldn't defend his fort before the war. A fort is always defended, in case there is war, that's the entire point of forts! For a sovereign country to give up a fort to avoid a potential conflict would be completely asinine, one doesn't give up away ones' tools of war to a potential enemy when conflict is brewing. And I'm still confused what you think was the provocation before the war... not giving up one's own under threat of force is considered provocation now?

Also, Lincoln didn't seize any forts, the Federal government rightfully owned these forts. SC seceded, and a few months later attacked US federal government property... yet it was Lincoln who was aggressor... riighhhht

Finally, "The people of a state have the right of self-determination." To use self-determination as a justification for upholding slavery (an institution that takes away any any right of self-determination whatsoever) is the definition of hypocricy!!

Seamus:

It's hard to see how secession--which meant renouncing any title to the Western territories--was going to make expansion of slavery into the territories more likely.

Where did you get the idea that the Confederate states renounced the Western territories? That of course was one of the illogical assumptions of secession--that all of the property acquired by the Union over the years could be neatly divided by the passage of ordinances of secession. The common property of the Union would have been fought over if the South had won. And very likely would have led to wars over the territories. One war would have settled all the outstanding disputes? Not likely. It would have taken many, maybe in the style of the warring republics of Central and South America. During the Civil War, the Confederates invaded New Mexico and Arizona (yes, "invaded"), claiming a right to those territories (in which, of course, they proposed to install slavery). And they made it clear time and again, that they wanted to annex Cuba, possibly other parts of Mexico, even Central America. Yes, they were just as expansionist as they had been before the war, and just as convinced that war was the way to achieve their goals. It took Appomattox to persuade them otherwise.

pluribus:

Where in the Constitution is the federal government given the power to condemn private property for the purpose of racial justice?

So Kelo came 150 years too late to actually do any good. They could have just called the slaves blighted or that freeing them would raise local tax revenues.

Anderson:

At best, as one commenter noted above, southerners are taught in school that the war wasn't really about slavery, and not many trouble to educate themselves on the subject afterwards.

I had a girlfriend in college from Louisiana who told me she did not figure out until high school that the civil war and war of northern aggression were the same thing. And she was born in the late 70's and I think was fairly liberal politically. However, for the most part I think this has died out at least in Texas and in the younger generations. I have lived in the south for the last 13 years and have only met one person who even remotely thought (or at least said out loud) that the civil war was not primarily about slavery, and that was in Mississippi and I think also he was relatively liberal and was just being contrary.

Finally, "The people of a state have the right of self-determination." To use self-determination as a justification for upholding slavery (an institution that takes away any any right of self-determination whatsoever) is the definition of hypocricy!

Right. It's not as though the slaves (or free blacks) got any say in the matter.

It's hard to see how secession--which meant renouncing any title to the Western territories--was going to make expansion of slavery into the territories more likely.

The Knights of the Golden Rim. Filibustering. Cuba. Not that the South's secession was all that rational, but it was at least a tiny bit rational.

Many Southern officers, including Robert E. Lee, were against slavery. And Lincoln made it perfectly clear that he could care less about whether the slaves were freed.

Why struggle to make this such a complicated issue, when it is so simple? DO we really need to whitewash history? The "civil war" was a war for southern independence and it's chief causes were TAXES and NORTHERN OPPRESSION.

I had a girlfriend in college from Louisiana who told me she did not figure out until high school that the civil war and war of northern aggression were the same thing. And she was born in the late 70's and I think was fairly liberal politically. However, for the most part I think this has died out at least in Texas and in the younger generations. I have lived in the south for the last 13 years and have only met one person who even remotely thought (or at least said out loud) that the civil war was not primarily about slavery, and that was in Mississippi and I think also he was relatively liberal and was just being contrary.

A college roommate of mine who I thought was a decent guy went all batshit-crazy one day when one time talk wandered onto the civil war. The irony was, we were in the College Republican club and were talking about Lincoln (the first Republican president), and he refused to see Lincoln as anything other than a brutal dictator who destroyed the South. Then he said, not jokingly, "The South will Rise Again." Underlying everything he mentioned was a tacit acceptance that "states rights" meant "slavery" and that it was wrong and unfair for the South to have been forced at the point of a gun to end slavery.

The stupid thing is, he grew up in Maryland, not the deep south, and should've known better. I wrote him off, chalked up his stupidity to base tribalism, and never spoke to him again.

guest- "Many Southern officers, including Robert E. Lee, were against slavery." Seeing as Lee was a documented slaveholder, it's kinda hard to make that stick. Of course... it also is documented he intended to grant them freedom when he died... just like the fella he inherited them intended to do... Being "against slavery" doesn't just mean you'd be willing to give slaves freedom when you croak, it implicitly means not owning slaves and freeing them if they did come into your possession. Lee didn't do this, and therefore pretty clearly wasn't against slavery.

"DO we really need to whitewash history?," says the fella trying to argue the South wasn't rebelling to uphold slavery and making false claims that Lee was against slavery.

I think the author comes very close to answer when he wrote of the use of patronage to turn border states against slavery.

Before the Civil War, federal patronage played a huge role in the party system, and it centralized the political system to an extraordinary degree that is not often recognized.

Most newspapers survived on public contracts of some kind, ie contracts to print the laws or govt advertising. Many newspaper editors were also postmasters or had postal delivery contracts. Federal officials used federal offices to control and build up local parties.During the 1850's, southern politicians and the Pierce/Buchanan administrations used federal offices to stifle free soil sentiment among northern Democrats.

I think proslavery southern politicians feared that the Republican administration would build Republican state parties in the South on the strength of federal offices and contracts, and weaken the domination of slaveowners in those states. Southerners had been successful up to that point in keeping antislavery thought from entering their states, and they rightly viewed this control as endangered by a Republican administration that was unlikely to be reticent in using federal power to spread an antislavery message. That is why the southern states rushed to get out before Lincoln took office--antislavery federal officials, ie collectors of customs, postmasters, land office personnel--would have begun showing up in their states in a matter of days.

My mistake, Lee did eventually free his slaves, although it should be happened this didn't occur until the war had already begun and holding the slaves for several years (and selling other slaves to boot).

Look it's really simple--millions of NON-SLAVE-OWNING southerners fought in the civil war. Why would they risk their lives for the right of some aristocrats they did not know who actually did own some slaves?

Becuase if slavery was abolished you would now have millions of free black people. Millions of "NON-SLAVE-OWNING southerners" could still be opposed to that for reasons like not wanting to compete with freed black labor to the most obvious reason: these same southerners were racists and wanted to keep the black man in his place and away from things like ballot boxes, white women, and guns.

Here's my line on why this is relevant to today's national security debates. Lincoln's stated justifications for the war were preserving the union and abolishing slavery. This is the synthesis of realism (ie, preserving the union) and idealism (abolishing slavery). "Preserving the union" meant expanding the union after the South seceded. Realism, for the US, has always meant expanding, but hardly ever in the territorial sense, as in the Civil War. Idealism has meant different things according to the times: freedom of the seas (the "Barbary Pirates" war); independence of Latin America (the Monroe Doctrine); freedom (Truman Doctrine); and so forth. I think that the expansionist aspects of these national security doctrines are obvious. In every case, expansionism has meant survival for the US. In the case of the Civil War, this "expand or perish" imperative meant that the North could not survive for long on its own. For one, the South was expansionist itself and they would have used their independence and military power (in a militarized society to boot) to expand into Latin America at least and later, well... why not expand into the North itself? That aside, it's impossible to imagine a nation composed of the Northern States surviving for long as an independent nation in the sea of sharks that was world politics in the 19th century.

The Bush Doctrine (if I can call it that) falls into this tradition and in fact updates it for the challenges we face today. Idealism, or the spread of democracy and human rights is joined with realism, or the expansion of our influence into the Islamic world means our survival according to the doctrine, "expand or perish". The Islamic world gets to be democratic and people get to have their rights respected while we protect our commerce on the high seas, as I think Washington proclaimed as our national interest. I should say that we get the business and especially the oil business, to make it even clearer. It's a win-win proposition. Win-win unless one hates the US, which I surely do not.

The liberal brainwashing I got at Brigham Young University and in the National Review still hasn't quite burst:

Lack of equal representation of slave states is a much larger cause than the precise owning of slaves.

Number of Senators per free state -- 2.
Number of Senators per slave state -- 2.

Number of Representatives per 10,000 citizens in the free states - 1.
Number of Representatives per 10,000 citizens in the slave states - More than 1.

Changes in tax policy were also linked to that, since the south was still agricultural while the north was industrializing.

Number of tax policy changes Lincoln made before the Confederacy seceded-- 0.
Number of states that seceded in the 1832 tariff crisis, which really was about tax policy-- 0.
Number of soldiers South Carolina risked before it caved on the tariff issue in 1832-- 0.

There were many reasons.

Sure-- the issue of slavery in the territories, the issue of a federal slave code in the territories, northern liberty laws, a strengthened fugitive slave act, fears of abolitionism, fears of slave revolt, annexation of Cuba with its 400,000 slaves, fears of "Black Republican" federal office holders, etc. These were all reasons.

Lincoln did not free the slaves

The emancipation proclamation freed a great many slaves, de jure and de facto. Probably an absolute majority.

nor was it a requirement for southern states to rejoin the union (which they all did voluntarily).

Voluntarily? One wonders what the fighting was about. Emancipation was de facto a requirement.

Slavery was not abolished until the 13th amendment was ratified

Which happened shortly after the Civil War and wouldn't have happened without it.

Peter Zavodnyik, your explanation is very good. William Freehling makes a very similar argument in Vol. II of his "The Road to Disunion".

As for "Why would they risk their lives for the right of some aristocrats they did not know who actually did own some slaves?" you should look at Edmond Morgan's American Freedom/American Slavery. He makes the point that slavery existed in the early years of the colonies independently of race in the form of indentured servitude. He says that the racist ideology was created to divide the slave class.

So the answer to the question is "because they were racists".

Seriously, Ubu Walker , interpreting laws has NOTHING to do with history.

Could we please get back to discussing abortion and it's connection to the porn industry?

"Lack of representation" is in reference to new free states w/out slave states as balance. After the tax problems it was clear that the south was going to get dictated to and be unable to stop it.

The emancipation proclamation freed a great many slaves

It declared freedom for slaves in states that were not part of the union, and exempted confederate states that were under union control.

Slavery did not end until the 13th amendment was ratified. Period.

I think it is correct that the south did not secede because of a danger to slavery. There was no immediate danger to slavery, and they knew it. (That is not to say this was not used to gain support for secession)

The south seceded because the rise of the republican Party, and the general opinion abouyt slavery in the North, meant that no southern politician could hope to hold national office. They cerated a separate country in order t create positions for themselves, although most of the fire-eaters - the people who started it - never got the high positions. White people in the south had beciome intimidated. They had become intimidated from arguing against slavery - and then in 1860/1861 this was extended also to arguing against secession.

It is probably also true, of course, that the contempt with which slaveholders were held in the North might mean that the south would lose every important vote that divided sectionally, especially the tariff, and that this would get worse with the admission of new states -
but I do not beleive this was a reason for secession - the extremely dismal career prospects of southern politicians at the highest level was the reason. They would be in a permanent despised minority and could not hope for a Cabinet position or any recignition in Congress (No southern politician could even contemplate trying to move his constituency back toward a little toleration of opposition to slavery so taht way out was out)

Brian G- It also seems to be completely unpartisan too! Just a bunch of Lost Causers (although I suspect they are[ironically] predominately Republican) getting their arguments crushed.

Well, I think it was more about the economics of the agrarian South than slavery per se. Southerners weren't particularly committed to slavery as the be-all and end-all of human existence. They believed--with some justification--that without slavery, the southern economy would go to hell. Now that is no excuse for enslaving people, but if the purpose of this post is to understand the motivation of the secessionary South, then it's worth some consideration.

He" forced the issue by deliberately attempting to resupply Ft. Sumpter no matter the response.

He did? Why, why, why, the villain! [Splutters. Indignantly.]

Ursus - What Mr. Mandias said. Also, slick of you to misquote yourself. Your original phrasing was "lack of equal representation", which I assume you admit is a clearly indefensible statement. The three-fifths compromise ensured that slave states had, and would have maintained, their disproportionate representation in national government (Congressional seats and electoral votes) regardless of how many new free states were formed.

It still remains a fact that the Emancipation Proclamation led to the freedom of an absolute majority of slaves

First of all, I don't know that it's a fact, all I've seen on the point of a "majority" is your back of the envelope math.

The demonstrable "fact" is that Lincoln did not "end" slavery. The proclamation actually exempted states, meaning slavery was allowed to continue in some states. That is not an "end" to slavery.

The 13th amendment, did however "end" slavery, was voluntarily ratified by all of the southern states, and many of them did so sooner than the northern states

p.rich.- "He" forced the issue by deliberately attempting to resupply Ft. Sumpter no matter the response. What does this mean "no matter the response"? Golly gee, and here I thought supplying a fort was ordinary practice... So apparently Lincoln couldn't resuppy a federally owned fort because South Carolina would attack the fort if resupplied? And I suppose we're And that's Lincoln's fault!?!? Let's apply that logic to the modern day... we must immediately change our nation to a Muslim religious theocracy in order to avoid any further war with terrorists. After all, this choice would avoid further attacks by terrorists and promote peace and harmony forever!!! Let's weigh the two choices here... on one side we have a federal government that refuses to surrender your own property (or defacto surrender by abandoning the fort). On the other side we have a state government intent of seizing the fort so they prevent federal interference in slavery. Gee, you're right, Abe's actions are completely reprehensible.

It's ashame and all that the South wasn't politically empowered enough to protect their institution, but they did make a bargain by signing the Constitution. Maybe it ended up being a poor choice for them, but please let me know when did slaves get a similar choice?

the Civil War wasn't really about slavery, it was just about the fact that new *slave* states weren't being created anymore

I had hoped this site's commentators had outgrown the strawman.

As I wrote, if you want to sum it up, you could say that the southern states felt they were losing their political defenses. The addition of free states is part of that, not the sum total of it.

Is it possible that both of the following propositions are true?:

1) Slavery is morally reprehsible.

2) The southern states/people also had a legal right to secede.

It's hypothetically possible for there to be such a world -- there's no logical conflict between them -- but they're not both true in this world; there was no legal right to secede. And that means that #2 would have to be rewritten to say "The southern states/people had a moral right to revolt." And that is logically in conflict with the first point, since their reason for revolting was to preserve slavery, which obviates any moral argument they may have.

(Contrast that with the American Revolution; although slave states were among those revolting, they were not doing so for the purpose of protecting slavery.)

I take it that you are admitting that the Emancipation Proclamation did, in fact, free slaves? Those of us who aren't pro-slavery ideologues would see that as a good thing.

The 13th amendment, did however "end" slavery, was voluntarily ratified by all of the southern states, and many of them did so sooner than the northern states

Sure. The reconstituted southern states that the Union armies put together at the end of the Civil War excluded a great many Confederates from voting, allowed blacks to vote in many case, had a lot of carpet-bagger voters, were occupied by Union armies, and no longer had an interest in protecting slavery elsewhere since the emancipation proclamation had largely ended slavery within their own territories. How this shows that the secessionist states didn't originally secede because of slavery, I do not know.

was voluntarily ratified by all of the southern states

With Reconstruction legislatures.

They did not all have them. Tennessee rejoined the union on their own will, and voluntarily ratified the 13th amendment before Connecticut, New Hampshire, Oregon, California, New Jersey, and Delaware (who did not pass it until 1901).

David, I think another question that your post raises, is does the legal right to secede depend on your reason for exercising that right?

Obviously it does not... no more than the right to speech will be curtailed (by the law) for people who want to exercise that right for "morally reprehensible" purposes, such as proposing slavery be reinstated.

Ursus - "The 13th amendment, did however "end" slavery, was voluntarily ratified by all of the southern states, and many of them did so sooner than the northern states." It's becoming clear that this all a case of trying to prove my dad is better then your dad where you're trying to prove that the 19th century South was somehow more moral then the 19th century North. Maybe you should focus more on the present then trying to whitewash the past. And while I don't really want to exacerbate this, I should point out it I don't believe the state governments in power at the time weren't democratically elected, so I don't think you get any points for that one.

Erica_01- No government has ever granted its citizens a legal right to secede... secession can only be justified morally. The founders knew this, they didn't try to argue they had legal justification, they made their case based on morality.

you're trying to prove that the 19th century South was somehow more moral then the 19th century North

Seriously, where do you get this shit? I said nothing about morality anywhere. It's a real pity that you cannot respond to the points that are raised and so you have to make up your own conversation. We can't help you with that, mkay?

1) Where does the constitution expressly prohibit secession?

Asked and answered many times. See this post and this one for two of the more recent answers.

deepthought,

Freeling and McPherson seem to be in agreement on this:

"... the collision between the ideals of freedom and democracy and the strong desire of Southern slave owners and their supporters to defend white enslavement of blacks."

Also see No Doubt's post here:

"A few slavery-related motives you might have left out:

1) The end of censored mail in the south. Unified Republican control of both the legislative and executive branch was going to mean Republican postal appointees, who would have almost certainly allowed anti-slavery literature to flow through the southern mails."

The Confederate constitution contained three substantive provisions which were not in the American one. It gave the President a six-year term, it established a line-item veto and it guaranteed "property in human beings."
Nothing about tariffs here. Just slavery.

As to the legacy of slavery, one of the things that I found remarkable is that the Royall bequest that was done to start Harvard Law School was the result of the Royall's selling off some slaves they had in Antigua at the time. If you go to the Harvard Law School site you will see the school's insignia - it is not three stacks of wheat but three stacks of sugar cane - the coat of arms of the Royall family.

Citation? I have never heard that Royall's gift was funded with the sale of slaves--I thought it was a testimonial bequest. You are certainly mistaken about the crest, which features three sheaves of wheat, not sugar cane. HLS took them from the Royall crest.

Ursus- "Secession is not at all about overthrowing the government, it is instead about separating from the government and making your own government on a separate land mass." That's kind of ludicrious distinction... rebellion seeks to overthrow the entire government from all land it controls and secession only seeks to overthrow it from some of the land it controls. So if you want to avoid all those clauses regarding rebellion, you just claim you're not intending to overthrow rhode island, just the rest of the country. Also, those clauses imply that succession is unconstitution are far more explicit then what state rights are encompassed by the 10th amendment.

Or, to clarify my point, I don't think "it was about the economics of slavery" establishes that it wasn't about slavery. Rather, it establishes that it was about slavery.

As for whether the Constitution circa 1860 gave states a right to secede: who cares? The war ended slavery: that is more than sufficient justification in my eyes, whatever the original Constitution (an agreement with death and covenant with hell) had to say about it.

trad,

Cross-posted. I see you already corrected it.

Then he said, not jokingly, "The South will Rise Again."

Given presidents from Georgia, Arkansas, and Texas, and well-entrenched congressional leadership from many southern states, I would say that the South has achieved by political methods what it failed to achieve militarily.

He was personally opposed to the war,but he felt honor bound to stand with his state when it seceded. After 1865, most people increasingly thought of themselves as citizens of the American republic - the United States of America, of which their state was imply one part of the larger whole.

I think it was Shelby Foote who said that the War Between the States transformed the way people viewed the country. He had a quote, I think it was, the United States are...became the United States is....

While I agree that slavery was the essential cause of secession, I find it hard to look disparagingly on the individual CSA soldier. It was a different time, and I imagine most of them viewed an army from New York as a foreign invader. Much like we would view a French army today.

I also think many who disparage the South do so for the purpose of absolving the North. After all, if the South didn't have a right to leave the Union, then it stands to reason that the United States permitted slavery, and is a stain of history that should be borne by everyone.

I also think many who disparage the South do so for the purpose of absolving the North. After all, if the South didn't have a right to leave the Union, then it stands to reason that the United States permitted slavery, and is a stain of history that should be borne by everyone

??? By this logic, shouldn't we be arguing that the South did have the right to leave the Union, in order to absolve the North?

Given presidents from Georgia, Arkansas, and Texas, and well-entrenched congressional leadership from many southern states, I would say that the South has achieved by political methods what it failed to achieve militarily.

To a point. However, Bush41 is indisputably a northern migrant who saw the potential for earning wealth in the South--and no one is ever going to confuse either Midland or Houston, Texas with Mobile, Alabama or even Atlanta.

Actually, in the same way that the first President Bush is a northerner, despite what his driver's license might say, President Woodrow Wilson was a southerner, having been born in Virginia and growing up in Georgia before finally moving to the north for his academic career.

But overall, the point is well taken. The 100+ years that the South was basically one-party, combined with a seniority system that promoted longevity over talent gave Southern politicians a disproportionate amount of power for a long, long time.

Mandias, I butchered the wording of my post (Should always preview).

My point is this...if you are a Yankee arguing that the South did not have the right to secede, then you should not lay the sins of slavery solely at the feet of the South.

The North profited from slavery, as well.

Ursus - I don't think anyone is suggesting that racism wasn't rampant in both the North and South back then. I don't think this is particularly controversial. Racism and slavery are two different animals however- as evidenced by the racist views prevalent in a number of abolitionist writings- one is the belief that all men should be free and the other is that blacks are inferior. They both relate to African Americans, they're both immoral and backwards beliefs, but they are obviously two seperate and distinct ideas. You might use the later to buttress your support for the former, but most Northerners believed the freedom took precedence.

Also, Yyou can't really demonstrate there was slavery in the North, since slavery only existed in two (nominally) northern states, delaware and maryland. I believe the lack of slaves is largely due not being profitable, not any superior morality of the north (although I believe there was significant religious opposition) The difference between the North and South was that Northerners weren't economically dependent on slaves and therefore it was much easier to do the moral thing. Money always seems to get in the way of morality, as it did for many 19th century southerners. And as for those that didn't make money from slavery, the non-slaving owning population was probably indoctrined by the elite slave owning population to believe slavery was good. (note no doubt's excellent earlier post relating to southern fears of uncensored mail).

Anyways, the Southern states signed the 13th with basically a gun to their heads, and quite vicious white supremicist movements developed soon thereafter, so it doesn't really seem like all southerners were eager to put their peculiar institution behind them.

A.W. wins the thread. Home run!

Re secession - wasn't it true that during the 1850's and 60's that secession was considered a perfectly reasonable course of action for any state - and that this opinion was prevalent even in the North?

Since the fed govt was created by the States (not vice versa), it seems bizarre that any federal clause could expressly prohibit secession.

Since the mid 19th century we have become subjects of a monolithic, behemoth top-down centralized government. The states are nothing but pesky keepers of jaywalking laws, sucking at Washington's teat and begging for handouts. Welcome to The Hamiltonian System.

When a myth is passed from the parent to the child, who files it away in their mind as one of life's survival lessons, it is very difficult for logic and reason to prevail against it. I think that effect helps explain the obdurate persistence of the myth that the Civil War was not fought over the issue of slavery..

- Art I (9): One of the cases when the writ of habeas corpus may be suspended is in cases of rebellion.

Rebellion is likewise, not an attempt to leave and become independent.

So the american colonists never rebelled against the British since they did attempt to leave and become independent. Better tell King george that.

So Chechnya never rebelled against Russia. So Kosovo never rebelled against Yugoslavia. Etc.

Southerners weren't particularly committed to slavery as the be-all and end-all of human existence. They believed--with some justification--that without slavery, the southern economy would go to hell. Now that is no excuse for enslaving people, but if the purpose of this post is to understand the motivation of the secessionary South, then it's worth some consideration..

This argument is self-defeating. If a plantation can't exist economically without slave labor it is already not viable economically. An economy based on that kind of business is already a wreck. The only thing it does is steal from the slaves for the benefit of the slaveholders.

The economy you talk about protecting is just a criminal enterprise. It is not a productive economy, since it does not produce enough to justify the labor it uses. If it did, it would survive simply by paying market wages to free workers, and would not need slaves.

Re secession - wasn't it true that during the 1850's and 60's that secession was considered a perfectly reasonable course of action for any state - and that this opinion was prevalent even in the North?

It is true that some people thought this way everywhere. It is not true that this was "prevalent," certainly not by the time of the Civil War.

Since the fed govt was created by the States (not vice versa), it seems bizarre that any federal clause could expressly prohibit secession.

The first statement is wrong, and the conclusion wouldn't follow even if it were right.

The first statement is wrong because most states were indeed created by the federal government, not vice versa as you suggested. Only the original 13 colonies "created" the federal government. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Florida, Texas -- none of them "created" the federal government; it predated them.

The conclusion is wrong because, well, it's not at all bizarre. Enter into a contract with me. (I want to reiterate that I'm not actually saying that the Constitution was a contract; I'm just using a contract as an example.) Can you leave just because you feel like it, simply because you're the one who created it? No.

Randy - In fact, the proposal of paying slave owners to free their slaves (whether via a legal mandate or through a voluntary program) was floated in the years prior to the Civil War. The hard core abolitionists opposed it for just the reason you cited. This opposition might have been got over, since hard core abolitionists were a very small portion of the population, if not for the fact that the slave owners and their representatives opposed such a program. Also, there was significant opposition to the idea of such an expenditure, on constitutional and fiscal grounds.

The first statement is wrong because most states were indeed created by the federal government, not vice versa as you suggested. Only the original 13 colonies "created" the federal government. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Florida, Texas -- none of them "created" the federal government; it predated them.

Wasn't Texas briefly an independent republic before it became part of the U.S.? So it seems wrong to say the U.S. created it (though it obviously didn't create the U.S. either). But you're right as to the rest of them.

Incidentally, the Constitution purports to have been established by "We the People," rather than by the states.

Secession was to provide the departing states with the power to control their own future. Slavery was a very large part of that, no question about it. However it was not the singular defining factor that created a sudden overnight compelling need to GTFO from the union because zomg Lincoln got elected.

That's not what the Southern states themselves said.

Ursus: "However it was not the singular defining factor that created a sudden overnight compelling need to GTFO from the union because zomg Lincoln got elected. "

Then please enlighten and tell us what WAS the singular defining factor that created a sudden overnight compelling need to GTFO from the union.

Wasn't Texas briefly an independent republic before it became part of the U.S.? So it seems wrong to say the U.S. created it (though it obviously didn't create the U.S. either). But you're right as to the rest of them.

Texas was an independent republic for a decade before it became a state. So was Vermont, for that matter. Hawaii was for many years an independent kingdom. California was an independent republic for a very short period of time, sort of.

But Texas as a state was created by the federal government's (friendly) annexation thereof. So you can look at it either way. But one thing you can't do, obviously, is say that Texas created the federal government.

Ursus: "They made it a confederacy by design. Poor people gave up their lives to defend it."

Your point seems to be that because poor people, non slave owners, fought in the war, that they could not possibly be defending slavery because they didn't have any slaves. Therefore, it must be for some other reason.

First, that implies that the confederate army was solely volunteer, and there was no conscription. Is that true? I don't know.

But more importanly, aside from the fact that you keep ignoring explanations of why even non-owners would defend such an institution, let's examine the north. Why did those soldiers fight? If it wasn't about slavery, then why did any northern soldiers join the blue army?

Dangermouse: "Randy, you know that while money is usually the 900 pound gorilla in the room, it might not ALWAYS be about money. Sometimes, people do have clear philosophical differences."

Well, that's true. I should have said that money is often the hidden motive. My belief is that for the southerners, it was more about money than they are willing to admit (slaves were capital, afterall). In the north, I think it was more about principles, since the abolishists were gaining much ground throughout the antebellum period.

if you are a Yankee arguing that the South did not have the right to secede, then you should not lay the sins of slavery solely at the feet of the South.

I'm a New Mexican descended from a long line of New Mexicans and Arizonans. During the Civil War my ancestors were all either out here or in the South. In any case I do not lay the sins of slavery solely at the feet of the South. This is not a thread about whether the South was uniquely wicked or immoral. This is a thread about whether slavery was a principal or primary motive for secession in 1861. The weight of learning and of evidence says that it was, and so do I.

Re secession - wasn't it true that during the 1850's and 60's that secession was considered a perfectly reasonable course of action for any state - and that this opinion was prevalent even in the North?

DMN already answered this, but I'm going to re-phrase his answer more strongly: prior to 1860, secession was generally considered illegitimate by a strong majority of the American people, including Southerners.

Mr. Mandias,

I agree with you. I believe my original post said as much.

Your point seems to be that because poor people, non slave owners, fought in the war, that they could not possibly be defending slavery because they didn't have any slaves. Therefore, it must be for some other reason.

Is anyone aware of the predominant justification cited by ordinary CSA soldiers in diaries and letters home as to why they were fighting?

I suspect many resented (what they saw as) a foreign government telling them what to do. I'm sure others supported slavery. Some may have done so because their brother or neighbor joined.

Actually, no. Tennessee was occupied militarily and until the 1864 election, its military governor was Andrew Johnson.

Lets put aside for a moment the way the war itself changed people's minds. Johnson, for example, started the war as slaveholder but became more and more of an emancipationist as the war went on, as slavery increasingly became associated with treason.

But lets put that aside and just ask whether the population that voted for the Civil War government was the same population that voted for the secessionist government? The answer is clearly no.

Actually, no. Federal authorities imprisoned or banished those who refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Union; many secessionist citizens fled; many of the most ardent secessionist men were in the Confederate military; secessionists refused to acknowlege the legitimacy of the occupation government by participating in the elections; and much of the pre-war election machinery was not functioning in rural areas. See here. On top of this, most of the slaves in Tennessee had already been forcibly liberated by federal troops or had escaped, so Tennesseans were no longer slaveowners. In short, the folks who voted for the 1865 legislature that approved the 13th Amendment were not representative of the 1861 population that voted on secession.

DangerMouse- Sure, it's not always about the money, which is why the abolition movement was so strong in the North- they didn't have financial reasons for upholding the peculiar institution, so it was relatively easy for them make the moral choice. However, if you were raised a free man in the South back then you mostly either were a) wealthy thanks to slavery and therefore rationalized that slavery was okay (and its the rare person who puts principle first) cause you were doing what is best for african americans or b) indoctrinated by the politically elite a to believe their rationalizations. The Northerners only benefited from slavery indirectly, so they didn't have as much cause to rationalize the evil practice.

Didn't even Buchanan reject the legitimacy of secession, (though he obviously stood by and let it happen)?

Yeah. He thought that secession was unconstitutional, and that the president had no authority to prevent it.

On what do you base this? Is this the same "strong majority" who disagrees with the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence?

Sigh. Once agan: the second paragraph of the DoI is about the natural right of revolution, not the legality of secession.

Thomas Jefferson didn't write, "There's a law which says we can become our own country whenever we feel like it." He said that it is the right of people to alter or abolish despotic government.

Southerners certainly couldn't argue that they had the natural right to revolt to prevent despotic government, because the ones trying to secede represented despotic government.

Well thanks to everyone for the kind words on the subject. And the nit is well taken and correct, Johnson was a military governor for a while, too.

But I would add two more points on larger subject. First, which is I never get mad any more at Southerners who miss what the war is about (and even some northerners—the first time I heard the states' right version of it was in Pennsylvania). I have lived in, and been educated in both the North and the South. There is a whole industry out there designed to lie to Southerners about their history. Why? Because overwhelmingly Civil War buffs tend to be Southern. Not all, of course, but most. So market forces push in a certain direction.

The modern Southerner may not know what his ancestors fought for, but I can say with confidence that the values of the average modern Southerner would have utterly appalled their ancestors, and vice versa. If you somehow transported General Lee from his time to our time, and let him watch TV for a day, I swear his head would pop like a grape. I picture it would go something like this: "The Republicans nominated an Irishman? And the Democrats have nominated a black man?! *pop*" Having been lied to about what the war was about for so long, the South has been able to reject Confederate values, at least on the subject of race. In a perverse way, then, the persistent myth of states rights as the cause of the war may have served a purpose.

So I don't get angry about it, but right is right and it is time for us to recognize who were the real heroes of that era. The South fought and died for evil. Its not a happy thought, if those are your ancestors. I admit I am proud that my family both avoided serving the confederacy and the German government in the two world wars, but I know a fair amount of luck was involved in that.

But conversely, the North fought and died on the side of angels. Which is not to say they were angels, or even entirely self-sacrificing. The average white northern soldier believed that his (or in a few rare cases, her) freedom was on the line, too. They believed that there was a Slave Power Conspiracy that endangered their freedom. And bluntly, they were right, mostly. There was no conspiracy, just a group of people who worked to keep slavery secure at the expense of the freedom of whites.

What really changed between the founding of our nation and the Civil War was that the nation shrunk. Not literally (it literally expanded all the way to the pacific coast), but with the improvements of transportation and the invention of the telegraph, the nation shrunk and what was said far up north was heard far down south, and vice versa. The North was appalled at the lack of respect for freedom in the South, and the South was afraid of all this freedom talk being overhead by their slaves. Those who are free tend to want to see others liberated, and that is the mortal threat to tyranny. So long as they can't talk to each other, everything works. So suddenly the house divided could no longer stand—it had to become all slave or all free.

Which matters today because I think the world has shrunk again. Today we might see commenters from as far away as Japan in this very thread. I might pick up a copy of madden and deliver the smackdown to someone in Russia or Iraq. We are able to talk to each other like never before. And in that atmosphere, freedom becomes a mortal threat to tyranny. So we see all the arab countries urging the world to adopt anti-blaphemy laws (with the unsaid threat of terrorism if we don't comply) and china tries to trade access to its country for censorship. Not only did google bite (censoring themselves for China's benefit), but so did Comedy Central when they refused to show a reportedly inoffensive cartoon of Mohammed on South Park, but moments later showed Jesus and George W. Bush defacating on each other, on random people and on the American flag. (By the way, a few commentors think that the creators of South Park deliberately created this contrast, knowing that Comedy Central would chicken out of showing Mohammed—and I tend to agree with that theory.)

The point is, folks, I suspect now the whole world is exactly where America was in 1860. This house can no longer persist as half-slave and half-free. It will become all one thing or the other.

btwnc- If you can't see the distinction I feel really sad for you. Both were obviously rebellions, however one was a rebellion against oppression, and one is rebellion to uphold oppression.

"In a perverse way, then, the persistent myth of states rights as the cause of the war may have served a purpose. "

I would agree, were it not for Civil War reenatcors. I mean, ick. All VCers who trust my judgment (i.e, 'Hi, mom!'): Read "Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War," by Tony Horwitz. Just a fascinating book.

Just to add, a fair number of slave state citizens fought on the Union side. This number happens to include my g'g'g'father (pride and patriotism showing here), who was a Unionist Democrat from Bracken Co. KY. He wasn't alone among the white population by any means, and of course tens of thousands of former slaves fought in the Union army.

Ursus: "Perhaps it was a sequence of events," Perhaps, so let's take a look-see, huh?

"such as imposition of tariffs" Please name any. The constitution strickly forbids treating one state differently from another. Others have pointed out that there were no tariffs targeting the south that preceeding the war. If you know of any, please list them..

"the addition of unbalanced free states," Really? Ever hear of the Missouri Compromise? One free state, and one slave state would be admitted to the union. What's the problem?

Oh yeah. Some of the new states wanted to be free. So big deal. What sort of threat is that to the South?

" and the long-term outlook of living under a Lincoln that contributed to the decision that they would be better off under some other flag."

What exactly was the problem with Lincoln? Did he have some maniacal hatred towards the south? He hated fried green tomatos? What was the problem that Lincoln had with the south.

Oh, yeah, that little thing called slavery.

" That being able to control their own destiny would actually be worth going through all the hassle of establishing an alternative union."

To control their own destiny? What, to build railroads? They already had them. To raise their own taxes? Each state can do that. To string telegraph lines across the state, to prohibit prostitution, to allow gun ownership? What specifcally were they worried about that they thought they would not be able to control?

Oh yeah. That's is. The ability to continue slavery. Which you admit as much when you suggest that there was an inbalance of power with the new states. Now, if you have some other issue that the south was worried about regarding their own destiny, please list it.

There is a difference between being ordered to abandon something that is central to your economy and choosing how to deal with it yourself, wouldn't you agree

The first slaves came to VA in 1619. Just how long do you think would be "fair" to let the slaveholders "deal with it themselves"?

Now, let's re-phrase that question a bit more realistically: Under what theory of justice should someone be allowed to delay, even for a single day, giving up the claim to "own" another human being whose ancestors were kidnapped and taken forcibly from their homeland across the ocean, where they were held as property under threat of beatings, rape, and other torture?

I always thought the Civil War was one of those voter initiatives that got out of hand.

Now, let's re-phrase that question a bit more realistically: Under what theory of justice should someone be allowed to delay, even for a single day, giving up the claim to "own" another human being whose ancestors were kidnapped and taken forcibly from their homeland across the ocean, where they were held as property under threat of beatings, rape, and other torture?

I don't regard any theory of justice that omits prudential political considerations (particularly one that cannot countenance a delay of one day) as being very realistic or just.

I don't regard any theory of justice that omits prudential political considerations (particularly one that cannot countenance a delay of one day) as being very realistic or just.

That's not very persuasive when the delay has already been 140 years.

There is a difference between being ordered to abandon something that is central to your economy and choosing how to deal with it yourself, wouldn't you agree

Those bastard northerners wanted to enslave the southerners!

The Southern economy would have collapsed - and, indeed, DID collapse - with the end of slavery. The end of slavery did not mean the end of prejudice, injustice, or racism. It was exacerbated; the Ku Klux Klan arguably would not have existed had it not been for the war. We fought for slavery, because without it we could not survive.

Slavery was dead already in the court of popular opinion. It would have ended within the lifetimes of the people who fought the war, many of whom would have lived much longer and happier lifetimes without that war, but the North simply could not wait for progress. Instead, it forced the issue, making profitable plantations destitute overnight. A century and a half later, the region still has not recovered. It was an economic holocaust no less contemptible than the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The true battle of the war was not about ending the exploitation of human life for profit, but changing it. Slavery was not profitable in the North; what was profitable was immigrant labor at starvation wages. Slaves needed to be housed, clothed, and fed. In the urban North, that meant heat and winter coats and imported produce. In the rural South, that meant wood nailed into a rough cube, potato-sack dresses, and access to a river for fishing.

The purpose of the North in fighting the war was not to improve the quality of life for exploited human beings, but to bankrupt their competition. They continued to pay their immigrant factory workers far too little money to live such luxurious lives as were lived by slaves in the South; those workers huddled together for warmth in tiny apartments that housed multiple families, counting pennies to see how many beans they could afford for the week.

But they were white, so nobody cared. The plight of the black man was romantic and attractive. Who cared about the plight of the Polack, the Mick, or the Wop? Or, for that matter, the Russky?

Sure, we fought to keep slavery. We fought to keep the basic human right of our workers to be housed and fed and clothed, as many of those immigrant workers could not. We fought to be responsible for the continued health and well-being of our people, as the factory owner was not. And at the same time, the North fought tooth and nail for the right to treat human life as a different sort of commodity, to be rented at will instead of bought. Slavery would have gone away regardless - the economic reality was that plantations would need to fundamentally change the way they did business over the next fifty years.

But if the North had left well enough alone, the eyes of those progressive liberal socialites would have landed on industry. So they manufactured a distraction, as evil men so often do, and people continue to believe it to this day.

The South fought to keep what they had, while the North fought to take it away. It doesn't take a genius to see which of those positions is wrong.

Doubtful i'm a genius, but i'll tell you the wrong position was the position of those fighting to keep their slaves--not the ones fighting to take them away.

Slavery wasn't dead in the court of public opinion—if it was, the practice would have been dead too. It's a bizarre claim given that there was no method of testing public opinion at that time. I think the best evidence that slavery wasn't moribund is that the south was willing to fight a war for it. I know that others have claimed that it was fought for the Tenth Amendment, self-determination, etc., but those are just euphemisms for slavery. There is no way to argue any of these points without the issue returning to slavery. It is ridiculous how easily, 150 years later, people are still falling for southern propaganda.

You can't argue (intelligently, morally) that slavery was a moribund institution and therefore fighting to end it was not a moral position. You don't know that it would have ended during the lifetimes of those people that fought the war. Fighting it, moreover, was a moral imperative. It is not a moral position to say that slavery might end in the amorphous future, therefore it is moral to sit back and wait for such cessation rather than fighting to end the practice. The north absolutely had to force the issue—regardless of the fact that it was an economic holocaust. Moreover, just as neither the bombing of Hiroshima, nor the bombing of Nagasaki was contemptible given the situation, it cannot be said that any "economic holocaust" resulting from the immediate cessation of slavery is contemptible either. No one gets time to get their economic house in order, if it means maintaining slavery in the process.

Saying that racism wasn't ended (and was exacerbated) or that the KKK wouldn't exist without the civil war is not even tangential to the arguments supporting fighting to end the institution of slavery. That sort of argument and the arguments supporting the war are two ships passing in the night. So are arguments that there was any morality in the practice of slavery based on the conditions of labor in the north—either comparative or independent of such comparisons. It's also tenuous to suggest that the greater expense of slavery in the north had any causal relationship with abolition of the practice in the north. Somehow northern laborers managed to survive (literally)—as such it must be that the wages earned by northern labor were sufficient to survive. Therefore, keeping northern labor as slaves must have been feasible as matter of cost. Finally, even though slavery was more expensive in the north than the south, that doesn't mean that it was more expensive than would be non-slave labor in the north.

The North, furthermore, as you put it, wasn't fighting to bankrupt their Southern competition. The North was England's competition. The South was rural—their products were used by the "urban north" to make a final product. North : South :: General Motors : Delphi Corporation. The North's interests, therefore, lay in having the cheaper labor that southern slavery provided. If, moreover, using immigrant labor was cheaper, then any rational southerner would have the cheaper labor. Regardless, Northern labor practices aren't even in the same Hemisphere as Southern.

There's so much foolishness in your post I can't address it all fluently. Suffice it to say, just about everything said above was wrong and some of it heinous.

But if the North had left well enough alone, the eyes of those progressive liberal socialites would have landed on industry. So they manufactured a distraction, as evil men so often do, and people continue to believe it to this day.

If the North waited too long, the Europeans, which were already meddling in Mexico around this time, could've easily done the same to a CSA that also owed them money and was similarly insolvent.

Ben--I will contact you. Thanks again for organizing this.

I won't plan on coming due to the sciatic nerve, so I will not propose a paper. But if I end up with some improvement with the sciatica, I'll at least show up.
Like I said, this topic is part of my current book project. And you are only a few hours away.

Caliban

I have not followed every comment, but your comment was so wrong I am truly stunned. Let's start toward the end, when you say this:

> The South fought to keep what they had, while the North fought to take it away. It doesn't take a genius to see which of those positions is wrong.

Right, because no one ever has anything that is bad or evil. So if a man has a 13 year old girl in his basement he is beating and abusing, and the government takes that away from him, then clearly it wrong. If a government has all its Jews in camps and another country takes those Jews out of the camps and frees them, that is wrong. And so on. Indeed it doesn't take a genius, but it takes a twisted logic to argue that liberating 4 million people was a wrongful act.

Lincoln once said "The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep is a black one." I find it stunning that in 2008 I can actually find people who advocate for the wolves.

The rest of your arguments are based on factually untrue claims and paternalistic claims. Your claim that the northern worker was abused, for instance, utterly discounts the fact that they were choosing their abuse—a luxury that the Southern slave didn't have. If it was so unremittingly awful to be a blue collar worker in the north circa 1860, then why did so many people agree to do it? Indeed, thousands of people fled Europe to come to here and be abused, according to you.

The claim that the slaves were better off was so wrong as to border on evil. I suppose you thought Aushwitz was a happy day camp, too. So, if given the choice, you would prefer to be beaten, prefer your wife, your daughter to be made the unwilling concubine of another, to see your children sold away from you, rather than be a Northern worker in that time? I can tell you there were no Yankee workers going down south and asking how they can apply for the job of slave. I guess they were not as well informed as you. To hear you say it, this was an invidious discrimination against white northerners that they could not enjoy the "pleasure" of slavery, and indeed during the debate over the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Thaddeus Stevens made a "modest proposal" that this discrimination should be ended by allowing white people to be enslaved. There were no takers.

[In case it is not exceedingly obvious, Stevens was joking, just as Jonathan Swift was in his Modest Proposal. Stevens was mocking the concept that slavery was good for the slaves in the same terms I did, by pointing out that no one chose this supposedly charmed lifestyle.]

A few other factual points:

> The Southern economy would have collapsed - and, indeed, DID collapse - with the end of slavery.

Actually, the endless "free" labor from slavery depressed the wages for everyone outside of the plantation system and generally led to the stifling of the economy. If there is one truth proven again and again, it is that a free economy beats a tyrannical economy every time. Look at the U.S. v. Mexico, South Korea v. North; Taiwan v. Mainland China; Eastern Europe under the soviets and Western Europe; and, hell, even East Germany and West Germany. While the Plantation owner would have undoubtedly been worse off (not to mention losing his godlike power over other men and particularly women), the average quality of life and the economy of the South as a whole would have been better without slavery.

> The end of slavery did not mean the end of prejudice, injustice, or racism. It was exacerbated; the Ku Klux Klan arguably would not have existed had it not been for the war.

Um, actually that is wrong. As of 1776, most southern planters admitted slavery was bad and had to go. By 1860 they argued it was a positive good to restrain the irredeemably savage black people who would go on a murder and rape spree if not restrained, and therefore slavery had to stay. There is a term for that attitude: propaganda. It was created in order to sell slavery and as often happens in tragic history after a while even the propagandists believed its transparent lies—lies, which you happily repeat today. That is what led to and exacerbated the prejudice.

As for the KKK, all it really was, was an extension of the Slave Patrols begun under slavery, or at least the principle of it.

> Slavery was dead already in the court of popular opinion.

Wrong, it was far from dead. It was being argued to be a positive good, needed to restrain the "dangerous negro." That was an important shift in popular attitudes from 1776.

Maybe if you mean in America as a whole, you would arguably be right. But the constitution pretty clearly allowed states to choose slavery, so it wasn't the national consensus that mattered, but the consensus of the slave-holding states. And if anything, Southern attitudes toward slavery backslid away from freedom as time went on.

Too many people think history goes in on direction. They think once you have women liberated, gays out of the closet, etc. you can't go back. Ask the women of Iran if progress can be undone. Ask the gays of the Weimar republic if change only goes in one direction. You may think it is natural as the falling rain that slavery would eventually die, but there was no evidence on the ground to back up your faith on this point.

> It would have ended within the lifetimes of the people who fought the war

There is absolutely no evidence of that. instead rather than shifting from talking about gradual emancipation in the founding era, many states were making voluntary emancipation illegal. If anything, in the South slavery was becoming more entrenched, not less.

> but the North simply could not wait for progress.

The North had waited "four score and seven years" for progress. Not one single southern state had ended slavery, and in the meantime the Supreme Court had the balls to claim that slavery could not even be banned in the territories. Meanwhile a congress had the balls to pass the fugitive slave act of 1860, which allowed for people to be conscripted against their will and over their moral convictions, into helping to capture slaves, and where a free black man could be declared a slave based on nothing more than an affidavit presented at a special hearing where he was not allow to offer any evidence, and where the judge was paid by the decision: $10 if the man was declared a slave, $5 if declared free. As one abolitionist said (paraphrase), it set the price of a black man's freedom at $10 and a white man's conscience at $5. And it was as flagrant a violation of due process as you are likely to see. There is a lot that can be debated about due process but no one can seriously question the notion that a person whose liberty is threatened deserves 1) a chance to be heard and 2) an unbribed judge.

You put that in with everything else: the overthrow of representative democracy in Kansas. The murder of abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy when he was defending his presses from an anti-abolitionist mob. The beating of Senator Charles Sumner because he said the wrong thing, effectively denying Massachusetts one of its chosen senators for years to come, and the universal praise in the South for that act, including newspapers who advised beating other anti-slavery and abolitionist foes. If you were a white man living in the North at that time, you had every reason to see slavery as growing more aggressive and not less, and becoming more and more a threat to your freedom as well.

> Instead, it forced the issue, making profitable plantations destitute overnight.

By forcing the issue, you mean they elected a man who wanted it to end in the territories and was otherwise unacceptable to the south. As for making the plantation destitute, that only happened after years of war, when Lincoln's attempt to reach out to white people in the south failed, after not only returning slaves to their masters in the middle of war, but having those who tried to escape from union troops shot, then Lincoln said, more or less, "f--- it" and decided to reach out to black people instead. The real issue Lincoln forced was whether the South could stand to lose an election for once, and the answer was "no."

> A century and a half later, the region still has not recovered.

Bull on that. The South is doing better today than much of the North. Ask Mark Steyn.

> It was an economic holocaust no less contemptible than the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Good to see you always know which side to be on. Do you want to sympathize with bin Laden too, and go for the trifecta?

Just for fun, look up the death rate for the Royal Navy in its anti-slavery work, aka "The West Africa Station". Called "Death but no glory." Or, "Beware and take care of the Bight of Benin. There's one comes out for forty goes in."

Yep. There's been some suggestion that the US Africa Squadron was stationed at Cape Verde in order to prevent it from having any impact on the slave trade.

In fact, this choice was a result of the commander's decision not to lose half his men to malaria within six months. Before quinine prophylaxis, being stationed on the West African coast was close to a death sentence. Until quinine was broadly adopted, the first year death rates for Europeans were 250-750 per thousand, depending on location, weather, and so on.

"We have an easy but false connection between slavery and race. In fact, it is only in the US that we made it so."

I see what's easy about it but I don't see what's false. Slave codes throughout the New World distinguished and protected "negro" and "indian" chattle slavery.

Golda. What's false--I apologize for shorthanding my thought--is that slavery and race are inevitably intertwined, that you can't have the first without the second.
In fact, we (apologists for slavery) invented our particular brand of racism in order to counter the anti slavery arguments of abolitionists. Elkins is interesting in this.

In many historical situations, slaves were of a different race than the slaveholders only because it's cheaper to capture them elsewhere than enslave your neighbors. They might object, as would their relatives.
Or their owners.
But, especially in less organized times, a slave is a guy who got enslaved by somebody with more spears. Race was irrelevant.
This is not exactly thread drift. One of the concerns southerners had was what would happen if the entire slave population was suddenly freed. Would they be (justifiably) pissed? Were they savages? Could they take care of themselves? Would they be a drag on the society? Due to the efforts of the apologists, some southerners resisted the end of slavery for the simple reason that they could not see how it would work out other than as a catastrophe. Because the apologists made it clear that the Negro race was not best enslaved, in great detail. The reasons that was so made freeing them look like catastrophe.
After that, the plutocracy of the south used race to set poor white against poor black when both should have been opposing the economic structure. That became even more vicious.