Fascinatinig read, Jon. I have a lot of opinions on all this, which I do not have time to state properly here. But this is an excellent treatment of the literature. Very helpful.
Well, what is certain is that all but one of the Ordinances of Secession explicitly cited slavery as the main reason. There's no getting around that. Alexander Stephens' Cornerstone Speech also must be noted.
That said, nothing is ever just one thing. Karl Marx tried to make it out as a tariff war, but the South would not have seceded merely over tariffs. They were a contributing factor to be sure, however. The biggest thing remains that Lincoln could be and was elected without a single Southern electoral vote, at which point the South knew that the old balance of power no longer existed, and so long as they stayed in the Union they were very much in the power of states that found them morally repugnant.
That was the moment at which secession boiled over. Slavery? Yes. Tariffs? Yes. States rights? Also yes. But the straw that broke the camel's back was the election.
The problem was that Lincoln and the Republicans were right about the difference between "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men" and a slave-based aristocracy. The latter wasn't just debilitating to a free society, it was also incapable of then-modern levels of production. So the North just nuked them. Pick a statistic, the industrial power of the North was overwhelming, precisely because it was free, entrepreneurial, and geographically and socially mobile (however imperfectly).
The thing is, that wouldn't have been enough to stop the South from successfully establishing itself as an independent nation. They really did start the war by firing on Fort Sumter. Doesn't matter what was right or wrong: at that point they handed Lincoln the pretext he needed for war, something he had lacked up until that point. There was absolutely no political will in the North to prosecute such a war until Fort Sumter, and even after that it was a recurring struggle, up until and including the election of 1864.
So the South likely could have walked away clean if they had just avoided war. And in some ways, that's the most interesting thing about the whole conflict.
Again this is a most excellent explanation of a most complex subject. One that few men can understand (or will at least take the time to read to understand). Just like the doctrines of grace many Christians hate it and still more don't understand it and then there is the few that do sleep well with it every night. As a very uneducated young man I still could understood the amazing financial cost of that war fought so long ago. I have in my old age have come to understand that this war was like any other war was fought over pride and greed. It's not just the American way it's the human way revealing our fallen nature. Jon I sent you that 1840 census of FC as I found it during my visit today at our Historical Society in town. After sending it to you I checked my email and discovered this article, so please don't misread anything into my sending that article. Thanks for all your hard work. Still working on the special delivery I have planned for you.
As a follow-up to my question below I once asked the same thing to Eudora Welty (as a southern author). In response she quoted Acts 26:28 "And Agrippa said to Paul, ""In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian""
Jon, Where would you place R.L. Dabney in the line of the "Lost Cause" defense? While I admire him as a Christian/Reformed leader I've always been shocked by the defense of slavery in his Stonewall Jackson biography. Given his rational and honest defenses of Christianity he seems to have gone off the rails in defense of the institution of slavery.
Thanks for this great article, Jon. I’m currently reading many of the slave narratives with my logic school students and your last couple of paragraphs ring true to our recent class discussions.
Elijah, Thanks for sharing your thoughts and efforts. I’m 75 yo and grew up in MS. As a consequence of that I knew people who were parented by ex-slaves and kept the stories passed on to them. The thing that always stood out to me that in spite of all the injustices endured, the insult that remained through the generations was family separation. I hope that recent advances in DNA testing will help to reunite more family groups.
What I’ve read from him makes me think he held fairly standard views of the time—the slave trade was “iniquitous,” participation in slave/master relationships was not a sin though abuses of it were. I’m not sure off the top of my head if he adopted a gradual emancipation position (like Lee), but I cannot remember reading anything suggesting that. Most people of the time, North and South, including abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, believed descendants of Africans in general lacked civilizational qualities that would have made social equality possible.
Fascinatinig read, Jon. I have a lot of opinions on all this, which I do not have time to state properly here. But this is an excellent treatment of the literature. Very helpful.
The more I’ve studied it the more complicated it becomes. Would of course be curious to hear your thoughts one day.
Well, what is certain is that all but one of the Ordinances of Secession explicitly cited slavery as the main reason. There's no getting around that. Alexander Stephens' Cornerstone Speech also must be noted.
That said, nothing is ever just one thing. Karl Marx tried to make it out as a tariff war, but the South would not have seceded merely over tariffs. They were a contributing factor to be sure, however. The biggest thing remains that Lincoln could be and was elected without a single Southern electoral vote, at which point the South knew that the old balance of power no longer existed, and so long as they stayed in the Union they were very much in the power of states that found them morally repugnant.
That was the moment at which secession boiled over. Slavery? Yes. Tariffs? Yes. States rights? Also yes. But the straw that broke the camel's back was the election.
The problem was that Lincoln and the Republicans were right about the difference between "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men" and a slave-based aristocracy. The latter wasn't just debilitating to a free society, it was also incapable of then-modern levels of production. So the North just nuked them. Pick a statistic, the industrial power of the North was overwhelming, precisely because it was free, entrepreneurial, and geographically and socially mobile (however imperfectly).
The thing is, that wouldn't have been enough to stop the South from successfully establishing itself as an independent nation. They really did start the war by firing on Fort Sumter. Doesn't matter what was right or wrong: at that point they handed Lincoln the pretext he needed for war, something he had lacked up until that point. There was absolutely no political will in the North to prosecute such a war until Fort Sumter, and even after that it was a recurring struggle, up until and including the election of 1864.
So the South likely could have walked away clean if they had just avoided war. And in some ways, that's the most interesting thing about the whole conflict.
Again this is a most excellent explanation of a most complex subject. One that few men can understand (or will at least take the time to read to understand). Just like the doctrines of grace many Christians hate it and still more don't understand it and then there is the few that do sleep well with it every night. As a very uneducated young man I still could understood the amazing financial cost of that war fought so long ago. I have in my old age have come to understand that this war was like any other war was fought over pride and greed. It's not just the American way it's the human way revealing our fallen nature. Jon I sent you that 1840 census of FC as I found it during my visit today at our Historical Society in town. After sending it to you I checked my email and discovered this article, so please don't misread anything into my sending that article. Thanks for all your hard work. Still working on the special delivery I have planned for you.
As a follow-up to my question below I once asked the same thing to Eudora Welty (as a southern author). In response she quoted Acts 26:28 "And Agrippa said to Paul, ""In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian""
Great Article! check out www.confederatelibrary.com
Jon, Where would you place R.L. Dabney in the line of the "Lost Cause" defense? While I admire him as a Christian/Reformed leader I've always been shocked by the defense of slavery in his Stonewall Jackson biography. Given his rational and honest defenses of Christianity he seems to have gone off the rails in defense of the institution of slavery.
Thanks for this great article, Jon. I’m currently reading many of the slave narratives with my logic school students and your last couple of paragraphs ring true to our recent class discussions.
You’re studying the primary sources!
Go back to the curse put on Ham's offspring and it all makes sense. (Gen. 9:22-25). Observe South Africa for the next decade.
Elijah, Thanks for sharing your thoughts and efforts. I’m 75 yo and grew up in MS. As a consequence of that I knew people who were parented by ex-slaves and kept the stories passed on to them. The thing that always stood out to me that in spite of all the injustices endured, the insult that remained through the generations was family separation. I hope that recent advances in DNA testing will help to reunite more family groups.
What I’ve read from him makes me think he held fairly standard views of the time—the slave trade was “iniquitous,” participation in slave/master relationships was not a sin though abuses of it were. I’m not sure off the top of my head if he adopted a gradual emancipation position (like Lee), but I cannot remember reading anything suggesting that. Most people of the time, North and South, including abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, believed descendants of Africans in general lacked civilizational qualities that would have made social equality possible.
This can be observed in real time or it can not. Easy Peasy