Civil war Books From the Southern Perspective

Discussion in 'History and Culture' started by 1stvermont, Dec 2, 2018.

  1. 1stvermont

    1stvermont Active Member

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    lets pretend that is true. What version do we get today? the winning sides. That is why i think the winner wrote the history, that is the side we get through media/education/politicians by and large.
     
  2. JakeStarkey

    JakeStarkey Well-Known Member

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    You have posted blogs and threads from a hard-core rightwing "christian" board.

    If you cannot support your assertions with peer-reviewed works, then (imo) you are not serious. You don't even post material from the blogs and threads.

    That's not history, just perspectives from christian blogs.

     
  3. bigfella

    bigfella Well-Known Member

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    No need to pretend that is true. It is. The Southern perspective was still predominant when virtually all of the 'winners' and 'losers' were dead & buried. It was left to their children, grandchildren etc to wade through the huge amounts of records left from that period to see if that perspective held up. It didn't. It doesn't. Reading a few carefully chosen blogs or cherry picking a few authors who already agree with you won't change that.
     
  4. JakeStarkey

    JakeStarkey Well-Known Member

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    Cognitive bias and confirmation bias involves only using what you like and discount what you don't like.
     
  5. ArmySoldier

    ArmySoldier Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Says the guy who gets all his news from MSNBC.
     
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  6. 1stvermont

    1stvermont Active Member

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    That is a great way to ignore history you dislike. To be expected from someone who holds your position. I sited original sources throughout, you must try any attempt to ignore those facts. History is the authority on my threads.
     
  7. 1stvermont

    1stvermont Active Member

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    Great, please support your claim. Show me where the "southern view" was the dominate view, and where revisionism has shown it false. You can even pick the subject. Otherwise it just looks like another baseless pro north claim to me.
     
  8. 1stvermont

    1stvermont Active Member

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    Such as you ignoring the large amounts of historical document presented to and believing a view you yourself cannot support? Otherwise by all means refute my threads or at the very least, support your position. Otherwise we have yet another baseless pro north post with no historical support.
     
  9. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    This is 2 questions, but I will answer the second.

    He did not. In fact, he specifically waited until after a significant battle was won to publish the declaration.

    The Emancipation Proclamation was drafted way back in July 1862, but at the advise of his Cabinet, he made the decision until after Confederate forces had been driven from Maryland.

    On 17 September Union Forces were successful in the Battle of Antietam (Battle of Sharpsburg). This battle was significant because it was the battle that drove Confederate forces out of Maryland, and was the single bloodiest day in US military history with over 22,000 killed, wounded, or missing.

    5 days later on 22 September the President did exactly what he said he was going to do, and issued the Proclamation.

    And by September 1862 the Union was making significant advances in almost all areas of the war. Confederate forces had been driven from all significant areas of Union territory, and large sections of the Confederacy (Tennessee, Southern Louisiana, West Virginia) were all firmly in Union hands.
     
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  10. bigfella

    bigfella Well-Known Member

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    One of the great things about having a view based on being well informed is that you aren't required to 'prove' anything to people who are ignorant or prejudiced. Thus far you tick both boxes, though the latter could simply be a function of the former. Long & painful experience has shown that putting in the effort here will be a waste of my time.

    You have clearly not done even the most basic background reading required to discuss this topic intelligently. Thus far you have an opinion, a sense of victimhood and some blogs. Do the background reading, show that you have some understanding of the topic and I might decide this is worth my time. If you prefer to build a fortress of agreeable opinions around your ignorance and declare some sort of 'victory' then have at it. My involvement is not necessary.
     
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  11. JakeStarkey

    JakeStarkey Well-Known Member

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    Your refusal to post material from even your blogs is a great way to ignore history you don't like.
     
  12. 1stvermont

    1stvermont Active Member

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    I dont think that is what he meant. I am assuming he meant more of the following


    Abraham Lincoln the Great Emancipator? The Emancipation Proclamation


    Never did a man achieve more fame for what he did not do and for what he never intended to do”
    - Lerone Bennett JR Forced into Glory Abraham Lincolns White dream


    To forestall a more revolutionary move against slavery...foreseeing he could not resits antislavery pressure much longer...using every weapon at his command to slow down, sidetrack or stop the emancipation flow”
    -Steven Oates With menace Towards none the Life of Abraham Lincoln


    The emancipation proclamation was given at a low point for the north near the end of 62. It was not designed to free slaves, it did not free a single slave, Lincoln himself knew it would not make the slaves free. It applied only to confederate controlled areas, not northern slave states or north controlled confederate area/states such as much of LA and VA. In fact all a confederate state had to do to not have this apply was rejoin the union , with slavery intact. The US Secretary of the state William Seward said of the emancipation proclamation “Where he could, he didn't. Where he did, he couldn't”.

    The Union government liberates the enemy’s slaves as it would the enemy’s cattle, simply to weaken them in the conflict. The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States.”
    -London Spectator in reference to the Emancipation Proclamation


    It was only on the basis of military necessity that Abraham Lincoln was able to implement the emancipation proclamation”.
    -The untold civil war National Geographic James Robertson


    The proclamation was given by Lincoln for a few reasons, the first was as a war measure. “As a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion.” The war was lasting longer than anticipated and northern abolitionist and hard war democrats put tremendous pressure on Lincoln threatening to withhold men, material and support for the war unless Lincoln hit the south where it would hurt them, slaves. Lincoln and his cabinet were concerned a rebellion would start in the north if they did not do something towards emancipation. The proclamation would end with the war and any slave freed by it would become subject to local state laws. The document did not deal with the institution of slavery at all. Lincoln constantly wrote it was “Merely a war measure” and “Have effect only from its being a exercise of war power”. Lincolns stated “It would have no effect upon the children of the slaves born hereafter.” A second reason was To keep England and France out of the war. If the war had a abolitionist objective, that would force England and France to be neutral. Also to encourage slave revolts in the south. This was seen by some in Europe as its clear objective. To encourage slaves to rise up, kill their woman and children masters in a revolt while the men were fighting at the front, was immoral.

    Cold-blooded invitation to insurrection and butchery.”
    -Harrisburg Patriot and Union Newspaper Pennsylvania


    Lincoln said of the emancipation proclamation “I am driven to it.” Close friends said Lincoln “Abhorred” and had “reluctance” about issuing the emancipation. Nathan Stevenson said it was “Not choice” that it was issued by Lincoln, but Lincoln was pressured to do something from the abolitionist in the party such as the Governor of Massachusetts [who threatened to stop support of the war] Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts Representative Thaddeus Stevens etc. Charles Sumner said god and history forced Lincolns Hand. Radical governors had set up a meeting for September the 24th with a plan to withhold war support and some to call Lincoln to resign. Lincoln knowing of this meeting and the growing radical support among congress, governors and the people, issued the proclamation just two days before. Lincoln called the proclamation a “civil necessity to prevent the radicals from embarrassing the government.” In a meeting trying to sell his colonization plan to the border sates representatives, Lincoln said on July 12 “The pressure in this direction [intimidate emancipation] is still upon me, and is increasing”.

    For a length of time it had been hoped that the rebellion could be suppressed without resorting to it [emancipation] as a military measure”
    -Abraham Lincoln The collective works


    The patriots of both houses... the American people whipped MR. Lincoln into the glory of having issued the emancipation proclamation”
    -Diary of Adam Gurowski NY 1862-1866



    The emancipation proclamation was actually “Regressive” in terms of abolition. On July17 1862 congress passed the second confiscation act. This act freed all rebel slaves “property” within the confederacy to be “forever free.” Later on Sep 22 1862 Lincoln sighed the preliminary emancipation nullifying the emancipation act of congress, re-enslaving slaves. It did not touch the slaves within the slave states in the union, It did not free any slave the confiscation act would not have. It was a conservative reaction to the radical abolitionist in congress.

    The proclamation had as its purpose and effect the checking of the radical [abolitionist] program”
    -Lerone Bennett JR Forced into Glory Abraham Lincolns White dream


    The D.C emancipation bill in 1862 was given to Lincoln who than held on to it for two days so a friend from KY could leave D.C with his two slaves. Lincoln regretted the intimidate emancipation of D.C slaves instead he wanted gradual release because “That now families would at once be deprived of cooks, stable boys and their protectors without any provision for them.”

    When he entered his presidency... that before his term of office would expire, he would be hailed as “The great emancipator” he would have treated the statement as equal one of his jokes”
    -John Hume The Abolitionist NY 1905


    The 13th Amendment And The 13th Amendment You Have Never Heard Of

    The original 13th amendment was called the Corwin amendment, one that Lincoln pushed to get passed. It would forever allow slavery in America and would make it unconstitutional for the federal government to abolish it.

    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.


    In his first inaugural address Lincoln stated on the Corwin amendment

    Holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable".
    -Abraham Lincoln


    He then sent a letter to the governor of each state transmitting the approved amendment for what he hoped would be ratification and noting that his predecessor, President James Buchanan, had also endorsed it. He told New York Senator William Seward, who would become his secretary of state, to push the amendment through the U.S. Senate. He also instructed Seward to get a federal law passed that would repeal the personal liberty laws in some of the Northern states that were used by those states to nullify the federal Fugitive Slave Act, which Lincoln strongly supported.

    Lincoln’s first inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1861, is probably the most powerful defense of slavery ever made by an American politician. In the speech Lincoln denies having any intention to interfere with Southern slavery; supports the federal Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution, which compelled citizens of non-slave states to capture runaway slaves; and also supported a constitutional amendment known as the Corwin Amendment that would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering in Southern slavery, thereby enshrining it explicitly in the text of the U.S. Constitution.”
    -Thomas Dilorenzo


    Today's 13th amendment that abolishes slavery Lincoln had less to do with, This is from Spielberg's Upside-Down History: The Myth of Lincoln and the Thirteenth Amendment

    “Harvard University Professor David H. Donald, the recipient of several Pulitzer prizes for his historical writings, including a biography of Lincoln. David Donald is the preeminent Lincoln scholar of our time on page 545 of his magnus opus, Lincoln, Donald notes that Lincoln did discuss the Thirteenth Amendment with two members of Congress – James M. Ashley of Ohio and James S. Rollins of Missouri. But if he used "means of persuading congressmen to vote for the Thirteeth Amendment," the theme of the Spielberg movie, "his actions are not recorded. Conclusions about the President's role rested on gossip . . . Moreover, there is not a shred of evidence that even one Democratic member of Congress changed his vote on the Thirteenth Amendment (which had previously been defeated) because of Lincoln's actions. Donald documents that Lincoln was told that some New Jersey Democrats could possibly be persuaded to vote for the amendment "if he could persuade [Senator] Charles Sumner to drop a bill to regulate the Camden & Amboy [New Jersey] Railroad, but he declined to intervene". "One New Jersey Democrat," writes David Donald, "well known as a lobbyist for the Camden & Amboy, who had voted against the amendment in July, did abstain in the final vote, but it cannot be proved that Lincoln influenced his change". Thus, according to the foremost authority on Lincoln, there is no evidence at all that Lincoln influenced even a single vote in the U.S. House of Representatives”.Lincoln late in the war being pressured to support the 13th amendment from abolitionist within his party also supported the amendment.

    Shortly before his death Lincoln said of the 13th amendment “He never would have done it, if he had not been compelled by necessary to do it, to maintain the union”. Missouri abolitionist John Hume said of Lincoln “The president was in constant opposition” to the abolitionist movement of Chase, Sumner, Stevens, Greeley and others.
     
  13. 1stvermont

    1stvermont Active Member

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    in other words you cant support your claims so we have yet another pro north post that cannot be supported historically. Showing they believe what they want rather than what history is.
     
  14. 1stvermont

    1stvermont Active Member

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    You asked for it sister, I tried to avoid large text copy/pasted.



    I'll Take My Stand – Causes Of Southern Secession-The Upper South

    “This consolidation of the states has been the obiet of several men in this country for some time past. Weather such a change can ever be effected in any manner whether it can be effected without convulsions and civil wars, whether such a change will not totally destroy the liberties of this country time can only determine.”
    -Richard Henry Lee 1787

    “The states of the deep south might have left the union because of slavery, but the upper south...did not...Lincoln waged war in order to create a consolidated, centralized state or empire. The south seceded for numerous reasons, but perhaps the most important one was that it wanted no part in such a system”
    -Thomas J Dilorenzo The Real Lincoln

    “If centralism is ultimately to prevail; if our entire system of free Institutions as established by our common ancestors is to be subverted, and an Empire is to be established in their stead; if that is to be the last scene of the great tragic drama now being enacted: then, be assured, that we of the South will be acquitted, not only in our own consciences, but in the judgment of mankind, of all responsibility for so terrible a catastrophe, and from all guilt of so great a crime against humanity.”
    - Alexander Stephens The Vice-President of the Confederacy


    There was two major successions from the union. The original seven “Cotton states” of AL, MS,TX,SC,FL,GA,LAand later the upper south secession of VA, NC, TENN, ARK, Pro south MO and KY. The upper south states of VA, NC, Tenn and Ark alone had a larger free population than the deep south representing the majority of the future confederacy. There was a difference in general between the The original seven seceding “cotton states” of the deep south, and of the remaining upper south's causes of secession. The upper south either turned down voting on secession, or voted against secession when the deep south left the union and were willing to stay in the union.

    “The Majority sentiment in the upper south had been unionist until Lincolns call for troops....Upper south, which had cried equally against coercion as succession”
    -E. merton Coulter The confederate States of America Louisiana State University Press


    When historians and textbooks talk of the reasons for secession, they almost unanimous point to the cotton states and sadly, the upper south is almost always ignored.

    Lincolns Call For Volunteers/ Consent of the Governed/ State Sovereignty

    “The South maintained with the depth of religious conviction that the Union formed under the Constitution was a Union of consent and not of force; that the original States were not the creatures but the creators of the Union; that these States had gained their independence, their freedom, and their sovereignty from the mother country, and had not surrendered these on entering the Union; that by the express terms of the Constitution all rights and powers not delegated were reserved to the States; and the South challenged the North to find one trace of authority in that Constitution for invading and coercing a sovereign State.-the one for liberty in the union of the States, the other for liberty in the independence of the States.”
    -John B Gordon Confederate General Reminiscences of the Civil War

    “Lincolns republican party was determined to use coercive means to secure a centralized national system of government, a system incompatible with the compact theory of the union.”
    -Marhsall Derosa Redeeming American Democracy Lessons From the Confederate Constitution pelican Press 2007


    The single most important event that caused the upper south to join the confederacy was Lincolns call for volunteers to “suppress” the seven cotton states of the confederacy. Lincoln spoke loud by his actions when he called for volunteers to invade the confederacy of the deep south. His opinion was not that America was a collection of sovereign self governing States joined in a voluntary union by a constitution the compact theory, but a centralized nation or empire dictating to the states. He made it clear the deep south could not self govern themselves but were subject to their master the federal government. Lincoln in his inaugural address stated the union created the states, not the states ratifying the union [nationalist high federalist view] thus the power and authority lay with the federal government and not with the states.

    Northern States of a political school which has persistently claimed that the government thus formed was not a compact between States, but was in effect a national government, set up above and over the States...The creature has been exalted above its creators; the principals have been made subordinate to the agent appointed by themselves.”
    -Jefferson Davis Message to confederate Congress April 29, 1861


    The upper south and many in the north for saw Lincolns call for volunteers against the cotton states as a major violation of the constitution, a violation of those states sovereignty, and a main cause for secession. For example

    “opposing secession changes the nature of government from a voluntary one, in which the people are sovereigns, to a despotism were one part of the people are slaves”
    -New York Journal of commerce 1/12/61

    “The great principles embodied by Jefferson in the declaration is... that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed” Therefore if the southern states wish to secede, “they have a clear right to do so”
    -New York tribune 2/5/61

    Secession is “the very germ of liberty...the right of secession inheres to the people of every sovereign state”
    -Kenosha Wisconsin Democrat 1/11/61

    “the leading and most influncial papers of the union believe that any state of the union has a right to secede”
    -Davenport Iowa Democrat and news 11/17/60


    The southern states and many in the north [and the majority through American history] saw themselves as a collection of sovereign states joined by a contract [The constitution] and if that contract was violated or not upheld, it could, and should be discarded. When the cotton states felt there contract was violated by the federal government, they felt they had every right to leave.

    “That however wrongfully any state might resume its Independence without just cause, the only remedy was conciliation, and not force, that therefore the coercion of a sovereign state was unlawful, mischievous, and must be resisted, there Virginia took her stand”
    -R L Dabney a defense of Virginia and the South 1867

    “[upper south]Forced to chose between Lincolns demand and what they believed to be morally correct and Honorable...seceded as well”
    -Brevin Alexander Historian Professor of History at Longwood University


    Most both north and south felt no war would come from what was seen by many as a legal right to secession by sovereign states. To the upper south this was a war of self government of sovereign states vs a federal government that was willing to use military force to control its populous by forcing the states to stay in the union . We would no longer be a self governing populous and collection of states but a nation controlled by a powerful centralized federal dictator. The south held to the Jeffersonian view of the union best described in the 1852 democrat platform and the Kentucky resolutions by Thomas Jefferson in 1798 and the Virginia resolutions by James Madison of 1800 that of a decentralized union of states the compact theory and the majority view in the united states before the civil war.

    The war “Destroyed voluntary union of the founders and mad all Americans servants rather than masters of their own government”
    -Thomas Dilorenzo author of The Real Lincoln and Lincoln Unmasked

    "What we call liberty our founders called bondage...we have not freed the slaves we have extended the plantation, know, we are all slaves"

    -Peter Marshall JR The Great War Debate

    “Hapless would be the condition of these states if their only alternative lay between submission to a government of self construed, or, in other words, unlimited powers and the certainty of coercion.”
    -J.K Spauling State Sovereignty and the Doctrine of Cohesion 1860


    This also confirmed many southerners fear that Lincoln and the “radical” republicans would drastically transform the American republic. This is why many in the south saw the American civil war as their second war for independence.

    “Southerners would have told you they were fighting for self government. They believed the gathering of power in Washington was against them… When they entered into that Federation they certainly would never have entered into it if they hadn’t believed it would be possible to get out. And when the time came that they wanted to get out, they thought they had every right”
    -Shelby Foote


    Many in the north recognized that this war was one of self governing states vs a controlling central federal government. Before being deported by Lincoln, A northern politician saw Lincolns war and purpose of the war as to

    “Overthrow the present form of Federal-republican government, and to establish a strong centralized government in its stead...national banks, bankrupt laws, a vast and permanent public debt, high tariffs, heavy direct taxation, enormous expenditure, gigantic and stupendous peculation . . . No more state lines, no more state governments, but a consolidated monarchy or vast centralized military despotism.” later saying “instead of crushing out the rebellion,” the “effort has been to crush out the spirit of liberty” in the Northern states.
    -Clement L. Vallandigham D-Ohio NC spoke of the Reason for Lincolns war 1863



    Preserving the Constitutional Republic

    “The South's concept of republicanism had not changed in three-quarters of a century; the North's had. With complete sincerity the South fought to preserve its version of the republic of the Founding Fathers--a government of limited powers"
    -James M. McPherson Ante-bellum Southern Exceptionalism

    "All that the South has ever desired was the Union as established by our forefathers should be preserved and that the government as originally organized should be administered in purity and truth."
    -Gen. Robert E. Lee Quoted in The enduring Relevance of Robert E Lee

    “It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.”
    -Confederate General Patrick Claiborne 1864


    Lincoln and the republican party had set out to transform the union from a confederation of sovereign states, to a centralized nation controlled by the federal government. Lincoln sought to expand the central government far beyond the scope of what was intended by the founders or the constitution. He was dedicated to higher tariffs, centralization, national bank, internal improvements, protective tariffs, in support of the homestead act, [ in 1858 the northern vote supported 114 of 115 the south rejected 64 of 65] a pacific railroad act, and grants to states for agricultural and mechanical collages and other federal expansions. The republicans were openly big government nationalist with an overall disregard for the 9th/10th amendments and state sovereignty. Since the north had abandoned the Constitution and the republic replaced with a centralized democracy, the upper south had no choice but join the confederate Constitution witch maintained the original compact theory of the union.

    “We quit the Union, but not the Constitution—this we have preserved. Secession from the old Union on the part of the Confederate States was founded upon the conviction that the time-honored Constitution of our fathers was about to be utterly undermined and destroyed. ”
    - Hon. Alexander H. Stephens to the Virginia Secession Convention, April 23, 1861

    “When the South raised its sword against the Union’s Flag, it was in defense of the Union’s Constitution.”
    -Confederate General John B. Gordon

    “Southerners persistently claim that their rebellion is for the purpose of preserving this form of government”
    -Private John Harper 17 Maine regiment

    “I love the Union and the Constitution, but I would rather leave the Union with the Constitution than remain in the Union without it.”
    -Jefferson Davis


    It was commonly believed in the south, that it was the north that should secede. As Henry Wise of Virginia said “Logically the union belongs to those who have kept, not those who have broken, its covenants...the north should do the seceding for the south represented more truly the nation which the federal government had set up in 1789.” They saw the growing majority of the north interfering with their culture within their states and violating the constitution. They feared democracy would rule and mod rule would take over America. So they wished to restore America to its original Constitution republic of confederated states as originally created to safeguard individuals liberty from mob rule and democracy. To see the effects of this and why states rights and states sovereignty were so vital to our union, see here

    From Union to Empire- The Political Effects of the Civil war

    From Union to Empire The Political Effects of the Civil war

    “If they (the North) prevail, the whole character of the Government will be changed, and instead of a federal republic, the common agent of sovereign and independent States, we shall have a central despotism, with the notion of States forever abolished, deriving its powers from the will, and shaping its policy according to the wishes, of a numerical majority of the people; we shall have, in other words, a supreme, irresponsible democracy. The Government does not now recognize itself as an ordinance of God...They are now fighting the battle of despotism. They have put their Constitution under their feet; they have annulled its most sacred provisions; The future fortunes of our children, and of this continent, would then be determined by a tyranny which has no parallel in history.”
    -Dr. James Henly Thornwell of South Carolina our danger and our duty 1862

    “If the Confederate States, ever had any doubt as to the necessity of a separation from the people of the North, that doubt would be removed by the recklessness with which they allow their own liberties to be trampled on. They appear to have no idea of free Government. Those necessary restraints on power — those nicely adjusted balances, by which justice and liberty are secured in a free government, are not understood.”
    -Report on the confederate committee of foreign affairs 1861

     
  15. 1stvermont

    1stvermont Active Member

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    State Secession Documents

    “Under the favor of Divine Providence, we hope to perpetuate the principles of our revolutionary fathers”
    -Jefferson Davis Inaugural Address Richmond 1862


    Each of the upper south states made it clear by their actions and words that Lincolns call for volunteers, state sovereignty, and self government, were the major cause of secession.


    Virginia


    “The principle now in contest between north and south is simply that of state sovereignty”
    -Richmond Examiner Sep 11 1862

    “A union that can be only maintained by swords and bayonets... has no charm for me”
    -Robert E Lee

    “I had rather be a private in Virginia's army than a general in any army to coerce her.”
    -Jeb Stuart quoted in Jeb Stuart the last Cavalier by Burke Davis


    After the secession of South Carolina Virginia stayed faithful to the union and worked to bring the deep south back into the union, yet on January 7 1861 Virginia passed a anti-coercion resolution by a vote of 112-5 describing the right of secession and of state sovereignty. They would oppose any attempt at cohesion by the federal government and “we will resists the same by all the means in our power.” Warning the federal government not to coercion of the deep south. Than on April 4th 1861 voted by a 2-1 margin to stay in the union. After Lincolns call for volunteers Virginia voters gathered again and by a vote of 126,000 to 20,400 Virginia left the union making good on their promise. In the minds of Virginians, that reason was Lincolns call to volunteers and the violation of state sovereignty.

    “”This result has been foreseen since the beginning of the week. As soon as it was known, that it was the intention of the northern president to usurp war making powers, and wage war against sovereign states of the confederacy [deep south] and that Virginia was called on to contribute men and money....no one doubted what her action would be...when the union became an engine for oppression...she could not hesitate to throw herself on the side of freedom.”
    -Richmond Whig Editorial April 19,1861 Sic Semper Tyrannis State Independence

    “”Let us consider for a moment the results of a consolidated government, resting on force, as proposed by the dominate party at the north....a consolidated despotism, upheld by the sword and cemented by fear....now it [the union ] has been seized upon by a sectional party, it is claimed that its powers are omnipotent, it s will absolute, and it must and will maintain its supremacy, in spite of states and people, at the point of the sword...it is organizing fleets and armies to wage war upon the authors of its being [the states].”
    -Richmond Whig Editorial A Government of Force April 10 1861


    Governor John Letcher was opposed to secession until Lincolns call for volunteers when he became firmly a secessionist.

    “the Constitution of the United States has invested Congress with the sole power "to declare war," and until such declaration is made, the President has no authority to call for an extraordinary force to wage offensive war against any foreign Power: and whereas, on the 15th inst., the President of the United States, in plain violation of the Constitution, issued a proclamation calling for a force of seventy-five thousand men, to cause the laws of the United states to be duly executed over a people who are no longer a part of the Union, and in said proclamation threatens to exert this unusual force to compel obedience to his mandates; and whereas, the General Assembly of Virginia, by a majority approaching to entire unanimity, declared at its last session that the State of Virginia would consider such an exertion of force as a virtual declaration of war, to be resisted by all the power at the command of Virginia; and subsequently the Convention now in session, representing the sovereignty of this State, has reaffirmed in substance the same policy... and it is believed that the influences which operate to produce this proclamation against the seceded States will be brought to bear upon this commonwealth, if she should exercise her undoubted right to resume the powers granted by her people, and it is due to the honor of Virginia that an improper exercise of force against her people should be repelled.”
    -Governor of Virginia JOHN LETCHER”.
    http://www.nytimes.com/1861/04/22/n...-secretary-cameron-state-affairs-norfolk.html

    Virginia did not give a lengthy declaration of why it left the union [The voting showed already] just a short ordinance of secession and a mention of Lincolns call for men.


    Virginia ordinance of secession

    “Declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States” [Cotton States]

    “Had Lincoln not made war upon the south,[cotton states] Virginia would not have left the union”
    -William Thomas Poague Confederate artilleryman


    Arkansas

    “This convention pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any State that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful and ruinous to the State of Arkansas”
    -Arkansas causes of secession

    Before Lincolns call for volunteers the people of Arkansas voted to stay in the union by a vote of 23,600 to 17,900. Than on March 4 1861 the Arkansas convention voted 40-35 to stay in the union with the president of the convention a unionist. On May 6th 1861 after Lincolns call for men, Arkansas regathered and this time only 5 votes went against secession, 4 of them would relent and join the movement. The before and after votes, as well as the Arkansas declaration for secession give the clear reasons for joining the confederacy.


    “The people of this commonwealth are free men not slaves, and will defend to the last extremity, their honor, lives, and property, against northern mendacity and usurpation”
    -Arkansas Governor Henry Rector Response to Lincolns call for Volunteers



    North Carolina

    North Carolina will “Be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of the country, and to this war upon the liberties of a free people”
    -John Ellis Governor North Carolina


    Having previously turned down even voting on secession, North Carolina responded to Lincolns call for volunteers by than unanimously adopted a secession ordinance, showing the impact it had on the state.

    “Lincoln has made a call for 75,000 men to be employed for the invasion of the peaceful homes of the South, and for the violent subversion of the liberties of a free people.. whereas, this high-handed act of tyrannical outrage is not only in violation of all constitutional law, in utter disregard of every sentiment of humanity and Christian civilization, and conceived in a spirit of aggression unparalleled by any act of recorded history, but is a direct step towards the subjugation of the whole South, and the conversion of a free Republic, inherited from our fathers, into a military despotism, to be established by worse than foreign enemies on the ruins of our once glorious Constitution of Equal Rights. Now, therefore, I, John W. Ellis, Governor of the State of North-Carolina, for these extraordinary causes... in defense of the sovereignty of North-Carolina and of the rights of the South, becomes now the duty of all.the 17th Day of April, A. D., 1861, and in the eight-fifth year of our independence.
    -JOHN W. ELLIS Governor north Carolina
    LEARN NC has been archived


    Tennessee

    “Tennessee will not Furnish a man for purposes of coercion, but 50,000 if necessary for the defense of our rights, and those of our southern brothers”
    -Isham Harris Tennessee Governor


    On February the 9th Tennessee voters turned down secession by a 4-1 margin. However after Lincolns call to volunteers Governor Isham Harris wrote President Lincoln saying if the federal government was going to “coerce” the seceded states into returning, Tennessee had no choice but to join its Southern neighbors. Harris recalled the Tennessee legislature on May 6 for another vote this time to join the confederacy. Than on June 8 voters approved the measure by a 2-1 margin.

    Kentucky

    Kentucky originally acted on its sovereignty and remained neutral, however events forced it to join the war. The official Kentucky government was pro north by about about a 3-1 margin but chose to keep its neutrality. However there was gaining support for the south when Lincoln called for volunteers. The Kentucky Governor wrote "President Lincoln, I will send not a man nor a dollar for the wicked purpose of subduing my sister southern states.”

    Later neutrality would be violated by southern troops and the state would join the union, however a pro south Kentucky government was set up and was accepted by Jeff Davis into the confederacy on December the 10th as the 13th confederate state. States rights was the main cause for the pro south Kentucky government reason for secession.


    Declaration For Leaving The Union

    Whereas, the Federal Constitution, which created the Government of the United States, was declared by the framers thereof to be the supreme law of the land, and was intended to limit and did expressly limit the powers of said Government to certain general specified purposes, and did expressly reserve to the States and people all other powers whatever, and the President and Congress have treated this supreme law of the Union with contempt and usurped to themselves the power to interfere with the rights and liberties of the States and the people against the expressed provisions of the Constitution, and have thus substituted for the highest forms of national liberty and constitutional government a central despotism founded upon the ignorant prejudices of the masses of Northern society, and instead of giving protection with the Constitution to the people of fifteen States of this Union have turned loose upon them the unrestrained and raging passions of mobs and fanatics, and because we now seek to hold our liberties, our property, our homes, and our families under the protection of the reserved powers of the States, have blockaded our ports, invaded our soil, and waged war upon our people for the purpose of subjugating us to their will; and Whereas, our honor and our duty to posterity demand that we shall not relinquish our own liberty and shall not abandon the right of our descendants and the world to the inestimable blessings of constitutional government: Therefore, .... because we may choose to take part in a cause for civil liberty and constitutional government against a sectional majority waging war against the people and institutions of fifteen independent States of the old Federal Union, and have done all these things deliberately against the warnings and vetoes of the Governor and the solemn remonstrances of the minority in the Senate and House of Representatives: Therefore, .....have a right to establish any government which to them may seem best adapted to the preservation of their rights and liberties.”
    -Declaration of causes of Secession Kentucky


    Missouri

    “Your requisition is illegal, unconstitutional, revolutionary, inhuman, diabolical, and cannot be complied with”
    -Missouri Governor Jackson Response to Lincolns call for Volunteers


    The slave state of Missouri was almost universally pro union. When the south sent delegates to try and convince the state to join the south, they were booed and jeered so that the CSA delegate could not even be heard. On March 21 1861 the Missouri convention voted 98-1 against secession, but in its sovereignty, kept its neutrality. Later many in the state became angry and felt their state sovereignty was violated during the “Camp Jackson Affair” with General Lyon capturing the arsenal in St Louis and when union soldiers opened fire on civilians and pro confederates killing dozens. Many felt the federal government was violating the states neutral position and support for secession grew rapid in the state. Lyon would than push the official Governor and state legislature out of Jefferson city.

    “The events in St Louis pushed many conditional unionist into the ranks of secessionist”
    -James McPherson Battle Cry of Freedom


    This led to a end to neutrality and both a pro confederate and pro union government in the state. Missouri was accepted on November 28th as the 12th confederate state. Pro south Missouri reasons for secession, centered around constitutional violations of the Lincoln administration.

    Missouri Declaration For leaving The Union

    Has wantonly violated the compact originally made between said Government and the State of Missouri, by invading with hostile armies the soil of the State, attacking and making prisoners the militia while legally assembled under the State laws, forcibly occupying the State capitol, and attempting through the instrumentality of domestic traitors to usurp the State government, seizing and destroying private property, and murdering with fiendish malignity peaceable citizens, men, women, and children, together with other acts of atrocity, indicating a deep-settled hostility toward the people of Missouri and their institutions; and Whereas the present Administration of the Government of the United States has utterly ignored the Constitution, subverted the Government as constructed and intended by its makers, and established a despotic and arbitrary power instead thereof”
    -Causes of Secession Missouri
     
  16. 1stvermont

    1stvermont Active Member

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    Slavery's Impact on the Upper South

    “Secessionists were well aware that slavery was under no immediate threat within the Union. Indeed, some anti-secessionists, especially those with the largest investment in slave property, argued that slavery was safer under the Union than in a new experiment in government.”
    -Clyde Wilson distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina

    “The condition of slavery in the several states would remain just the same weather it [the rebellion] succeeds or fails”
    -U.S Secretary Seward to US Ambassador to France

    “The war was at first was not about slavery, but was a struggle over the limits of states rights and the powers of the government in washington”
    -David G Martin PHD in History from Princeton University



    With slavery equally protected north or south and even more so in the north, the upper south states of VA, NC, TENN, ARK, KY, MO makes it hard to conclude slavery had much or anything to do with their reasons for leaving. When the original deep south states left the union, there were more slave states remaining in the union, than within the newly formed confederacy. Most upper south state declarations did not even mention slavery or only in passing, and that usually associated with violations of states rights or the constitution. But they heavily spoke on states rights, states sovereignty and Lincolns call for volunteers as the reason for secession. Those states chose to stay with the union before Lincolns call for volunteers, that they saw as a massive violation of state sovereignty.

    “So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interests of the South. So fully am I satisfied of this, as regards Virginia especially, that I would cheerfully have lost all I have lost by the war, and have suffered all I have suffered, to have this object attained.”
    -Robert E Lee 1870

    “It was necessary to put the South at a moral disadvantage by transforming the contest from a war waged against states fighting for their Independence into a war waged against states fighting for the maintenance and extension of slavery…and the world, it might be hoped, would see it as a moral war, not a political; and the sympathy of nations would begin to run for the North, not for the South.”
    -Woodrow Wilson, “A History of The American People”



    Slavery was Safer in the Union Than the Confederacy


    “Howard county [MO] is true to the union” “our slaveholders think it is the sure bulwark of our slave property”
    -Abeil Lenord Whig party leader at the onset of the war


    For the upper south slavery in fact was safer in the union than the confederacy. Slavery was constitutionally protected in both the northern and southerner states for the entire civil war. Lincoln and the north supported the Corwin amendment that would have protected slavery forever in the the U.S constitution and used it to try and stop secession.

    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[ slavery], including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”
    -Corwin Amendment

    The united states supreme court had ruled in favor of the fugitive slave laws and the use of federal agents to return runaway slaves to their masters. A confederacy would have no protection for runaways north. Lincoln and the north did not invade the south to end slavery. Lincoln had no problem with the upper south slave states in the union as he called for volunteers to attack the deep south to repress the rebellion [not slavery]. The 1860 republican platform plank 4 said slavery was a state issue and they would not interfere with slavery. Lincoln also said the states had the right to chose on slavery and he would not interfere with slavery.

    “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere Untitled with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so”
    -Abraham Lincoln Inaugural address


    After the deep south left the union the federal government decided it would not end slavery in the house on Feb 1861 and senate march 2 1861. On July 22 1861 congress declared “This war is not waged , nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions [slavery] of those states.” October 8th 1861 the newspaper Washington D.C National Intelligence said “The existing war had no direct relation to slavery.”

    “Seven-tenths of our people owned no slaves at all, and to say the least of it, felt no great and enduring enthusiasm for its [slavery’s] preservation, especially when it seemed to them that it was in no danger.’ ”
    -John G. Barrett, The Civil War in North Carolina



    Fight to Maintain Slavery? Or put Down Arms to Maintain Slavery?

    “As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty per cent. of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution. No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the Union.”
    -Confederate Major General John B. Gordon Causes of the Civil War


    If the south fought only for slavery, it only had to not fight the war. Slavery was protected and not under attack by Lincoln in the states it already existed. At any time as Lincoln promised, the south just had to lay down arms and come back into the union with slavery intact, yet they chose to fight for another cause.

    “The emancipation proclamation was actually an offer permitting the south to stop fighting and return to the union by January 1st and still keep its slaves”
    -John Canaan The Peninsula campaign

    “Peace now would save slavery, while a continued war would obliterate the last vestiges of it”
    - Raleigh North Carolina newspaper July 1863 quoted in Americas Civil war Magazine


    Virginia alone freed more slaves prior to civil war than NY, NJ, Pennsylvania,and New England put together. South Carolinian Mary Chestnut said slavery was a curse, yet she supported secession. She and others hoped the war would end with a “Great independent country with no slavery.” On June 1861 Mary Chestnut said “Slavery has got to go of course.”

    “We were not fighting for the perpetuation of slavery, but for the principle of States Rights and Free Trade, and in defense of our homes which were being ruthlessly invaded.”
    -Moses Jacob Ezekiel



    Jefferson Davis CSA President/ Abraham Lincoln USA President


    “The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came, and now it must go on unless you acknowledge our right to self government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence.”
    -President Jefferson Davis, CSA


    It is interesting that both the CSA and USA presidents would agree that the war was not over slavery. Yet today we are told slavery was the sole cause of the war. In Jefferson Davis's farewell address to the US congress, his inaugural address in Montgomery as confederate president and second inaugural in Richmond, he explained liberty, states rights, tariffs and the founders were the main reason for states leaving the union. Jefferson barley mention slavery and only in passing in just one of the three important speeches. The south was leaving because Davis said the north fell to simple majority [Democracy not constitutional republic] what Davis called the “Tyranny of unbridled majority.” Near the end of the war Jefferson Davis sent a diplomat to both France and England to try and convince them to recognize the confederacy offering the confederacy would abolish slavery, yet keep their country. Few things Jeff Davis and Abraham Lincoln would agree upon, but one is the war was not over slavery.

    “So long as I am president . It shall be carried on for the sole purpose of restoring the union”
    -Abraham Lincoln Aug 15 1864



    Some of England's Opinion

    [T]he contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions…are the general opinions of the English nation.”
    -London Times, November 7, 1861


    I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy.”
    -British Lord Action Correspondence with Robert E Lee



    The vast majority in Europe at the time of the civil war believed the war was not over slavery but either tariffs or states rights. In the book The glittering illusion: English sympathy for the Southern Confederacy [http://www.amazon.com/Glittering-Illusion-Sympathy-Southern-Confederacy/dp/0895265524]

    its shows how the majority of lay people in England supported the confederacy and believed the war was not over slavery. Englishman Sir John Dalberacton convinced many in England to feel sympathy for the CSA because he said they were fighting a tyrannical government and defending states rights. English statesman Richard Cobden pointed out in December 1861, the British “are unani-mous and fanatical”; that subject was free trade.

    The Northern onslaught upon slavery is no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states... the love of money is the root of this...the quarrel between the north and south is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel”
    -Charles Dickens, 1862
     
  17. 1stvermont

    1stvermont Active Member

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    I'll Take My Stand – Causes Of Southern Secession The Cotton States

    "Forced to take up arms to vindicate the political rights, the freedom, equality, and state sovereignty which were the heritage purchased by the blood of our revolutionary sires"
    -Jefferson Davis 1863 quoted in Battle cry of freedom James McPherson Oxford U Press


    The Election of A Republican President

    The election of Lincoln personified the trend of national centralization, as a reaction, some of the southern states [deep south]...seceded.”
    -Marhsall Derosa Redeeming American Democracy pelican Press 2007


    “To nationalize as much as possible, even currency, so as to make men love country first before their states, all private interest, local interests, all banking interests, the interests of individuals everything should be subordinate now to the interests of the government”
    -John Sherman Republican Senator of Ohio


    It [republican party] is, in fact, essentially a revolutionary party”
    -New Orleans Delta 1860


    “Lincoln was the founding father of big government”
    -Thomas J Diolernzo Author of the real Lincoln and Lincoln unmasked


    The election of the new “radical republican” party candidate Abraham Lincoln directly led to the secession of the deep south. This new political party was the first in American history based solely on sectional [northern] interests and boosted by recent immigration to the national stage. Many even in the north blamed the republicans voters for disunion. President Buchanan [who did not believe in legal secession] and other northern democrats and unionist blamed republicans and said the south would be justified in resisting if a republican was elected. This northern sectional party's interests were the antithesis to the southern interests. The south held to the Jeffersonian view of the union best described in the 1852 democrat platform and the Kentucky resolutions by Thomas Jefferson in 1798 and the Virginia resolutions by James Madison of 1800 that of a decentralized union of states the majority view before the civil war.

    “My politics are short and sweet...I am in favor of a national bank...in favor of the internal improvements system and a high protective tariff”
    -Abraham Lincoln


    "Lincoln and the Republicans intended to enact a high protective tariff that mothered monopoly, to pass a homestead law that invited speculators to loot the public domain, and to subsidize a transcontinental railroad that afforded infinite opportunities for jobbery."
    -David Donald Lincoln Reconsidered


    Those who elected Mr. Lincoln expect him to secure to free labor its just right to the territories . . . to protect by wise revenue laws, the labor of our people; to secure the public lands to actual settlers . . . to develop the internal resources of the country by opening new means of communications between the Atlantic and Pacific."
    -John Sherman Republican Senator brother of William T Sherman


    The republicans were for higher tariffs, protective tariffs, federal internal improvements, a national bank, in support of the homestead act, [ in 1858 the northern vote supported 114 of 115 the south rejected 64 of 65] a pacific railroad act, and grants to states for agricultural and mechanical collages among others. The republicans were openly big government nationalist who placed authority and sovereignty with the federal government and not with, as they south had maintained from the first, the peoples of the sovereign states. The south thought the republicans would disregard the constitution, states rights, and would rule the union by mob rule. All of these proved true.

    “We quit the Union, but not the Constitution—this we have preserved. Secession from the old Union on the part of the Confederate States was founded upon the conviction that the time-honored Constitution of our fathers was about to be utterly undermined and destroyed. and that if the present administration at Washington had been permitted to rule over us, in less than four years, perhaps, this inestimable inheritance of liberty, regulated and protected by fundamental law, would have been forever lost....We have rescued the Constitution from utter annihilation. This is our conviction, and we believe history will so record the fact ”
    -Hon. Alexander H. Stephens Speech to the Virginia Secession Convention, April 23, 1861


    The north sought to convert a union of brotherhood and mutual benefit into a “nation” which they would dominate in their own interests”
    -Clyde Wilson University of South Carolina Professor


    The republicans during the civil war and finishing with reconstruction, would radically transform the American union into their new centralized nation, their own version of America. So the south seceded.

    To save us from a revolution”
    -Jeff Davis quoted in battle cry of freedom


    Lincoln waged war in order to create a consolidated, centralized state or empire. The south seceded for numerous reasons, but perhaps the most important one was that it wanted no part in such a system”
    -Thomas j Dilorenzo The Real Lincoln


    Northern States of a political school which has persistently claimed that the government thus formed was not a compact between States, but was in effect a national government, set up above and over the States...The creature has been exalted above its creators; the principals have been made subordinate to the agent appointed by themselves.”
    -Jefferson Davis Message to confederate Congress April 29, 1861


    The Confederate Constitution

    It was clear from the actions of the Montgomery convention that the goal of the new converts to secessionist was not to establish a slaveholders reactionary utopia. What they really wanted was to create the union as it had been before the rise of the new Republican party”
    -Robert Divine T.H Bren George Fredrickson and R Williams America Past and Present


    when the dogmas of a sectional party, substituted for the provisions of the constitutional compact, threatened to destroy the sovereign rights of the States, six of those States, withdrawing from the Union, confederated together to exercise the right and perform the duty of instituting a Government which would better secure the liberties for the preservation of which that Union was established.”
    -Jefferson Davis Inaugural Address Richmond 1862


    The original deep south cotton States that left the union first acted as sovereign republics, it was called “Calhouns states right running riot.” But would soon join in a confederacy with its capital in Montgomery, Alabama. They joined and formed the Confederate constitution on March 11 1861. The CSA constitution limits central [ federal] power. The south thought to keep government weak and poor so that states would do the majority of governing. The CSA saw it as the original America constitution properly interpreted and clarified heavily influenced by Jefferson, Calhoun, and the anti federalists. President Jeff Davis said “The constitution framed by our founders, is that of these confederate states.” It was formed after the original united states constitution with some alterations. By these alterations we can see some of the reasons that the south left the union.

    The confederate revolution of 1861 was a reactionary revolution aimed at the restoration of an american democracy as embodied in the Constitution of 1789.”
    -Marshall L. Derosa Redeeming American Democracy Lessons from the Confederate Constitution Pelican Press 2007


    CSA State Sovereignty

    We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity — invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God — do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.
    -CSA Constitution preamble


    Each state being sovereign had only one vote on the confederate constitution ratification regardless of population. A main change in the CSA constitution from the United states version of “we the people of the US in order to form a more perfect union.... CSA version reads “we the people of the confederate states,each state acting in its sovereign and independent character ...” The confederacy formed a decentralized government resting on the ultimate sovereignty of the state witch allowed nullification and secession.

    It was not necessary in the Constitution to affirm the right of secession, because it was on attributive of sovereignty, and the states had reserved all they had not delegated.”
    -Jefferson Davis the rise and fall of the confederate government


    They clarified the people of the states had sovereignty and not the the mass of people [“we the people”] as held by Lincoln and Webster. Further they were a federated [confederated] government, not a consolidated one. The CSA constitution removed the term “general welfare” from the US preamble as they felt it was misused by Lincoln and earlier whigs to say the federal government had powers for internal improvements.

    The CSA framers placed the government firmly under the heads of the states”
    -Marshall L. Derosa Redeeming American Democracy Lessons from the Confederate Constitution


    The CSA congress can have no such power over states officers. The state governments are an essential part of the political system, upon the separate and independent sovereignty of the states the foundation of the confederacy”
    -Judge Robertson 1864 Confederate Virginia supreme Court Case
    Burroughs v Peyton

    The states had the right to recall powers delegated [not granted] to congress. In the CSA 10th amendment, In uncertainties in ruling between states and CSA government, the states would override the federal government. The confederacy never organized a supreme court since the final sovereignty lied with the states on the constitutionality of laws passed. When discussion arose of a confederate supreme court William Yancy of Alabama said “when we decide that the state courts are of inferior dignity to this court [csa supreme] we have sapped the main pillars of this confederacy.”

    The fear of centralizing tenancies, past experiences under the federal supreme court, and a desire to protect states rights led to the failure to establish a confederate supreme court.”
    -J G Deroulhac Hamilton the State Courts and the Confederate Constitution


    The establishments of the [federal] supreme court, with appellate power over the supreme courts of the states would be utterly subversive to states rights and state sovereignty.”
    -Henery S Foote of Tennessee dec 16 1863


    All power to amend the Constitution was taken out of congress and given to the states. A state convention could be called to amend the Constitution by three states allowing a minority of states to stop all federal action until their grievances were herd and dealt with. Senators were elected by state officials.

    The confederacy was founded upon decentralization”
    -Ken Burns The Civil War PBS documentary


    Some USA federal court cases were moved to the states in the CSA version. Confederate officials working only in a state are subject to impeachment by that state. The Confederate states also gain the power to make river-related treaties with each other. In the US, the federal government regulates bodies of water that overlap multiple states. CSA had Fewer members of congress. The states of the CSA had the right to coin money. The confederates had the idea that the country capital would not be permanent [ Even Richmond the second capital was never suppose to be permanent] but float from state to state to avoid centralizing power. The CSA Presidents could not be reelected, not wanting politicians to say what was needed for reelection. There were no political parties within the csa. Later during the war President Jeff Davis complained that he did not have the control like Lincoln to fight the war, because of local and states rights.

    States rights dogma...produced secession and the confederacy”
    -E Merton Coulter The Confederate States of America Louisiana State University press


    For other examples of the CSA Constitution moving to decentralization see Redeeming American democracy lessons from the confederate Constitution by Professor Marshall Derosa.
     
  18. 1stvermont

    1stvermont Active Member

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    CSA Weak Federal Government and Fiscal Responsibility

    "the confederacy was founded on the preposition that the central government should stay out of its citizens pockets"
    -Christine m Kreser Cash for combat Americas civil war magazine


    CS constitution emphasis on small government and states rights”
    -Lochlainn Seabrook The Constitution Of The Confederate States Of America Explained A Clause By Clause Study Of The Souths Magna Carta


    If the Confederate States, ever had any doubt as to the necessity of a separation from the people of the North, that doubt would be removed by the recklessness with which they allow their own liberties to be trampled on. They appear to have no idea of free Government. Those necessary restraints on power — those nicely adjusted balances, by which justice and liberty are secured in a free government, are not understood.”
    -Report on the confederate committee of foreign affairs 1861


    The CSA allowed for fair trade, had uniform tax code and restricted ominous bills and no corporate bailouts, or government subsides. The post office must be self sufficient within two years of ratification. The CSA President had line item veto on spending, No cost overrun contracts were allowed. Congress could not foster any one branch of industry and greater consensus was needed to pass spending bills.

    Montgomery [confederate constitution]...One leading idea runs through the whole—the preservation of that time-honored Constitutional liberty which they inherited from their fathers....the rights of the States and the sovereign equality of each is fully recognized—more fully than under the old Constitution...But all the changes—every one of them—are upon what is called the conservative side..take the Constitution and read it, and you will find that every change in it from the old Constitution is conservative. ..in it are settled many of the vexed questions which disturbed us in the old Confederacy. A few of these may be mentioned—such as that no money shall be appropriated from the common treasury for internal improvement; leaving all such matters for the local and State authorities. The tariff question is also settled. The presidential term is extended, and no re-election allowed. This will relieve the country of those periodical agitations from which sprang so much mischief in the old government. If history shall record the truth in reference to our past system of government, it will be written of us that one of the greatest evils in the old government was the scramble for public offices—connected with the Presidential election. This evil is entirely obviated under the Constitution which we have adopted...
    -Hon. Alexander H. Stephens Speech of the to the Virginia Secession Convention, April 23, 1861


    "The question of building up class interests, or fostering one branch of industry to the prejudice of another, under the exercise of the revenue power, which gave us so much trouble under the old Constitution, is put at rest forever under the new. We allow the imposition of no duty with a view of giving advantage to one class of persons, in any trade or business, over those of another. All, under our system, stand upon the same broad principles of perfect equality. Honest labor and enterprise are left free and unrestricted in whatever pursuit they may be engaged in....the subject of internal improvements, under the power of Congress to regulate commerce, is put at rest under our system. The power, claimed by construction under the old constitution, was at least a doubtful one; it rested solely upon construction. We of the South, generally apart from considerations of constitutional principles, opposed its exercise upon grounds of its inexpediency and injustice.”
    --Alexander Stephens "Cornerstone Address," March 21 1861


     
  19. 1stvermont

    1stvermont Active Member

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    Tariffs

    And so with the Southern States, towards the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress, is useless to protect them against unjust taxation; and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years, the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue–to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures... The people of the Southern States are not only taxed for the benefit of the Northern States, but after the taxes are collected, three-fourths of them are expended at the North. ”
    -Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States Convention of South Carolina 1860


    "The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole"
    -Daily Chicago Times, December 10, 1860


    The revenues of the General Government are almost entirely derived from duties on importations. It is time that the northern consumer pays his proportion of these duties, but the North as a section receiving back in the increased prices of the rival articles which it manufactures nearly or quite as much as the imposts which it pays thus in effect paying nothing or very little for the support of the government.”
    -Florida causes of Secession


    As so often is the case in wars, money, in this case tariffs, had long been a point of conflict between the two sides. In 1824 the government tariff doubled. The south voting against the tariff being raised and the north voted for it, dividing the country along the 1860 civil war lines in 1824 over tariffs. Tariffs supplied the government 90% of it income and even gave a surplus to what the government needed. The majority was paid by the south given its inport/export agrarian economy. Ye the money was used in the north to protect its manufacturing, industrialist, and federal internal improvement programs. This the south thought was unconstitutional for the government to aim at a section or industry of the economy specifically for a tax to benefit another.


    "The instant the Government was organized, at the very first Congress, the Northern States evinced a general desire and purpose to use it for their own benefit, and to pervert its powers for sectional advantage...until they have saddled the agricultural classes with a large portion of the legitimate expenses of their own business. We pay a million of dollars per annum for the lights which guide them into and out of your ports. We built and kept up, at the cost of at least another million a year, hospitals for their sick and disabled seamen when they wear them out and cast them ashore. We pay half a million per annum to support and bring home those they cast away in foreign lands. They demand, and have received, millions of the public money to increase the safety of harbors, and lessen the danger of navigating our rivers. All of which expenses legitimately fall upon their business, and should come out of their own pockets, instead of a common treasury...The North, at the very first Congress, demanded and received bounties under the name of protection, for every trade, craft, and calling which they pursue, and there is not an artisan in brass, or iron, or wood, or weaver, or spinner in wool or cotton, or a calicomaker, or iron-master, or a coal-owner, in all of the Northern or Middle States, who has not received what he calls the protection of his government”
    -Robert Toomb's Speech before the Georgia Legislature, November 13 1860


    In the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests of the North began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests. Even the owners of fishing smacks sought and obtained bounties for pursuing their own business (which yet continue), and $500,000 is now paid them annually out of the Treasury. The navigating interests begged for protection against foreign shipbuilders and against competition in the coasting trade. Congress granted both requests, and by prohibitory acts gave an absolute monopoly of this business to each of their interests, which they enjoy without diminution to this day. Not content with these great and unjust advantages, they have sought to throw the legitimate burden of their business as much as possible upon the public; they have succeeded in throwing the cost of light-houses, buoys, and the maintenance of their seamen upon the Treasury, and the Government now pays above $2,000,000 annually for the support of these objects. Theses interests, in connection with the commercial and manufacturing classes, have also succeeded, by means of subventions to mail steamers and the reduction in postage, in relieving their business from the payment of about $7,000,000 annually, throwing it upon the public Treasury under the name of postal deficiency.”
    -Georgia causes of secession


    The people of the Southern States, whose almost exclusive occupation was agriculture, early perceived a tendency in the Northern States to render the common government subservient to their own purposes by imposing burdens on commerce as a protection to their manufacturing and shipping interests. Long and angry controversies grew out of these attempts, often successful, to benefit one section of the country at the expense of the other....abuse of the powers they had delegated to the Congress, for the purpose of enriching the manufacturing and shipping classes of the North at the expense of the South.... ”
    -Jefferson Davis Message to confederate Congress April 29, 1861 (Ratification of the Constitution


    Tariffs would be Raised again in 1828. Congress passed what southerners called the tariff of abominations to help northern industry. Only 1 out of 105 southerners voted positive [the agrarian north west sided with the south], yet the north east voted for it [as they received free southern money that was used largely in the north] and it passed. This led South Carolina to first use a threat of secession. South Carolina Senator John Callhoun in the 1820's said of conflict between the north and south over tariffs “The great central interest , around which all others revolved” South Carolina argued they had states rights to reject unconstitutional federal ruling as a sovereign state, something Thomas Jefferson had recommended. Over the tariff Mary Chestnut said South Carolina "heated themselves into a fever that only bloodletting could ever cure." The tax had been 15% and the south had been complaining for decades.

    It does not require extraordinary sagacity to precive that trade is perhaps the controlling motive operating to prevent the return of the seceding states to the union”
    -Boston Transcript March 18 1861


    High protective tariffs reduced the price of cotton and effective imposed a tax between 10-20% while they raised the income of northern labor and the profits of northern manufacturers”
    -Robert William Fogel The Rise and fall of American Slavery


    The Morrill Tariff Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives on May 10, 1860, on a sectional vote, with nearly all northern representatives in support and nearly all southern representatives in opposition.

    The last session of Congress they brought in and passed through the House the most atrocious tariff bill that ever was enacted, raising the present duties from twenty to two hundred and fifty per cent above the existing rates of duty. That bill now lies on the table of the Senate... The result of this coalition was the infamous Morrill bill - the robber and the incendiary struck hands, and united in joint raid against the South.”
    -Robert Toomb's Speech before the Georgia Legislature, November 13 1860


    “The passage of an obscure, ill-considered, ill-digested, and unstatesman like high protectionist tariff act, commonly known as the‘ Morrill Tariff. The result was as inevitable as the laws of trade are inexorable. Trade and commerce . . . began to look South . . . .Threatened thus with the loss of both political power and wealth, or the repeal of the tariff, and, at last, of both, New England –and Pennsylvania . . . demanded, now coercion and civil war, with all its horrors . . .”
    -Clement L. Vallandigham Congressman Ohio 1863


    With the election of Abraham Lincoln whose central campaign objective was to triple the tariff and the tariff issue was the “keystone” of the republican party “protection for home industry” was the campaign poster of the 1860 republican party. South Carolina did what it had done decades before, and seceded from the Union over the higher tariff rates soon to be imposed on the south by the north. It was not just the south, NYC mayor Fernando Wood wanted to make NYC a “free city” [free trade] and secede from the Union. As John Randolph of Roanoke said in a speech in congress in 1823 “ If the old [founders] congress had possessed the power of laying a duty of 10% as walorem on imports, this Constitution would never have been called into existence.” The debate over tariffs and internal improvements was not just a debate over those items, but a debate over the nature of the federal government. Free trade was a vital aspect of southern agrarian interests. The CSA Constitution allowed for free trade.

    “An agricultural people, whose chief interest is the export of a commodity required in every manufacturing country, our true policy is peace, and the freest trade, which our necessities will permit. It is alike our interest, and that of all those to whom we would sell and from whom we would buy, that there should be the fewest practicable restrictions upon the interchange of commodities. There can be but little rivalry between ours and any manufacturing or navigating community, such as the Northeastern States of the American Union.”
    -Jefferson Davis inaugural speech in Montgomery Alabama


    the agitation concerning African slavery in the South was commenced. This institution was purely sectional, belonging to the South. Antagonism to it in the North must also be sectional. The agitation would unite the South against the North, as much as it united the North against the South; but the North being the stronger section, would gain power by the agitation. Accordingly, after the overthrow of the tariff of 1828, by the resistance of South Carolina in 1833, the agitation concerning the institution of African slavery in the South was immediately commenced in the Congress of the United States. It was taken up by the Legislatures of the Northern States; and upon one pretext or another in and out of Congress, it has been pursued from that day to the fall of 1860, when it ended in the election of a President and Vice President of the United States, by a purely sectional support. The great end was at last obtained, of a united North to rule the South. The first fruit the sectional despotism thus elected produced, was the tariff lately passed by the Congress of the United States. By this tariff the protective policy is renewed in its most odious and oppressive forms, and the agricultural States are made tributaries to the manufacturing States. It has revived the system of specific duties, by which, the cheaper an article becomes, from the progress of art or the superior skill of foreign manufacturers — the higher is the relative tax it imposes. Specific duties, is the expedient of high taxation, to enforce its collection. This tariff illustrates the oppressive policy of the North towards the South, and abounds in high taxation by specific duties. It is a war on the foreign commerce of the country, in which the Southern people are chiefly interested. Exclusively an agricultural people, it is their policy, to purchase the manufactured commodities they need, in the cheapest markets. These are amongst the nations of Europe, who consume five-sixths of the agricultural productions of the South. The late tariff passed by the Congress of the United States, was designed to force the Southern people, by prohibitory duties to consume the dearer manufactured commodities of the North, instead of the cheaper commodities of European nations. What is this but robbery? Does it not take from one citizen or section and give to another? The foreign trade of the United States, has always been carried on, by our agricultural productions. Our exports, are the basis of the imports, of the United States. Upon what principle of justice or of the Constitution, have the people of the North intervened between us and our natural customers, and forced us by the use of the Federal Government — laying prohibitory duties on the production of foreign nations — to consume their productions?
    -Report on the confederate committee of foreign affairs 1861
     
  20. 1stvermont

    1stvermont Active Member

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    Loss of Political Power

    The majority, mean to plunder and wrong the minority. They mean to make the weaker section their tributaries. Between a representation incompetent to protect, and no representation, there is no difference, where there are conflicting interests in a legislative body. And in the election of a Chief Magistrate, of what use is the right of suffrage, when, if every man in the oppressed section should vote against the candidate of the stronger section, (as the Southern States did in the late Presidential election) they cannot prevent his election. …. By the forms of a free government therefore, a many-headed despotism may be established by a stronger section over a weaker section, far worse than the despotism of one man. One man may have a conscience; but men acting in masses, seldom exhibit conscientious scruples. Individuality and responsibility, are lost in numbers. That “a corporation has no soul,” is the proverbial aphorism of English law, indicating the unscrupulousness of men acting in masses. A single despot has no motive to oppress one portion of his people, more than another; but here, one half of a country rises up to plunder and oppress another half.”
    -Report on the confederate committee of foreign affairs 1861


    The majority section may legislate imperiously and ruinously to the interests of the minority section not only without injury but to great benefit and advantage of their own section. In proof of this we need only refer to the fishing bounties, the monopoly of the coast navigation which is possessed almost exclusively by the Northern States and in one word the bounties to every employment of northern labor and capital such a government must in the nature of things and the universal principles of human nature and human conduct very soon lead as it has done to a grinding and degrading despotism.”
    -Florida Declaration of Causes of Secession


    The Southern States, now stand exactly in the same position towards the Northern States, that the Colonies did towards Great Britain. The Northern States, having the majority in Congress, claim the same power of omnipotence in legislation as the British parliament. “The General Welfare,” is the only limit to the legislation of either; and the majority in Congress, as in the British parliament, are the sole judges of the expediency of the legislation, this “General Welfare” requires. Thus, the Government of the United States has become a consolidated Government; and the people of the Southern State, are compelled to meet the very despotism, their fathers threw off in the Revolution of 1776.”
    -Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States Convention of South Carolina 1860



    Between 1800-1850 the House was controlled by the north but the south could block anything from the north in the senate. However with the edition of states like Minnesota 1858 Oregon 1859 and Kansas 1861 for the first time the north controlled the senate. Lincoln said he would not allow any more slave states into the union. Southerns saw as a excuse for northern political dominance for the republican political agenda. The south had seen their political power decline, and now saw the attack on slavery into new territories as a attack on the whole economic system of the south by the majority or mob of the north. The south saw the loss of political power, economic power, and rights granted by the constitution under threat from the majority north. In 1860 Pennsylvanian and New York alone had more seats in congress than the entire deep south of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Texas and even Arkansas and North Carolina added on to that. A Georgian sated “we are either slaves in the union or free men out of it” in time the north would control the south politically with no safeguards from the constitution or state sovereignty as they placed authority with the federal government.

    liberty is always destroyed by the multitude, in the name of liberty. Majorities within the limits of constitutional restraints are harmless, but the moment they lose sight of these restraints, the many-headed monster becomes more tyrannical, than the tyrant with a single head; numbers harden its conscience, and embolden it, in the perpetration of crime. And when this majority, in a free government, becomes a faction, or, in other words, represents certain classes and interests to the detriment of other classes, and interests, farewell to public liberty; the people must either become enslaved, or there must be a disruption of the government. ”
    -Confederate Admiral Raphael Semmes 1868


    Equality and safety in the union are at an end”
    -Howell Cobb of Georgia 1860


    The real issue involved in the relations between the North and the South of the American States, is the great principle of self-government. Shall a dominant party of the North rule the South, or shall the people of the South rule themselves. This is the great matter in controversy.”
    -Robert Barnwell Rhett Montgomery, Alabama, 1860


    The contest on the part of the north was for supreme control, especially in relation to the fiscal action of the government.. on the other hand southern states, struggling for equality, and seeking to maintain equilibrium in government”
    -Rose Oneal Greehow My Improvement and the first year of Abolition rule in Washington 1863


    Northern Violations of the Constitution- Majority Rule or Constitutional Republic?

    The people of the North have endeavored to destroy its limitations. To make it sectional in its operations, and subservient to their sectional interests, and to make the government of the United States itself a consolidated government, has been the aim of their steady and unintermitted efforts. …..All encroachments by Congress on the Constitution of the United States, they have uniformly upheld; until at last the Constitution, by their interpretation, is virtually abolished, and now consists only in three words — “the general welfare,” of which they are the judges and dispensers....With the Constitution overthrown, and the government of the United States in the hands of a hostile section, not only liberty, but self-preservation, demanded their separation from it.....In seceding therefore, from the United States, the Confederate States have only exercised a right inherent in all Sovereignties. In their judgment, the agreement they had made with the Northern States had been grossly violated. Its whole purpose was overthrown. Instead of an agency of very limited power, having for its object the defence of the States against the aggressions of foreign nations, it has been converted into a government of unlimited internal powers. Unless the people of the Confederate States were prepared to surrender forever their liberties, there was but one course left for them to pursue — they must escape from the domination of such a government...“The people of the North have steadily upheld the policy of setting aside the Constitution, and of thus rendering the government of the United States omnipotent in its legislation. They have endeavored to drain the treasury, to carry on internal improvements, and at the same time by its exhaustion, to afford a pretext for higher tariff duties to replenish it! They pushed their oppressions, by the tariff, to such an extent in 1828, that the whole South protested against it; and when one of the Southern States resisted it, and a compromise was effected by which the taxes were to be reduced and limited, they overthrew the compromise, and renewed the oppressions..... With these various means of sectional aggrandizement — protective tariffs — appropriations from the treasury — the exclusive settlement of our territories — and anti-slavery agitations — they have at last succeeded in uniting the North against the South. To escape their ruthless mastery, the Southern States were compelled to secede from the Union with them”
    -Report on the confederate committee of foreign affairs 1861


    Announce a revolution in the government and to substitute an aggregate popular majority for the written constitution without which no single state would have voted its adoption not forming in truth a federal union but a consolidated despotism that worst of despotisms that of an unrestricted sectional and hostile majority, we do not intend to be misunderstood, we do not controvert the right of a majority to govern within the grant of powers in the Constitution.
    -Florida Declaration of causes of secession


    South Carolina has twice called her people together in solemn Convention, to take into consideration, the aggressions and unconstitutional wrongs, perpetrated by the people of the North on the people of the South.”
    -Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States Convention of South Carolina 1860


    We are fighting for the god given rights of liberty and independence as handed down to us in the constitution by our fathers”
    -Confederate General John B Gordon to Pennsylvanian woman at York 1863


    I believe most solemley that it is for constitutional liberty”
    -Confederate General Leonidas Polk June 22 1861 Reasons for Southern Secession


    The south saw the north as violating the constitution in many ways. The south thought their liberties threatened by a growing northern majority and political influence. Had the constitution not been violated, and their rights maintained, there would have been no need to separate. The south saw the tariffs aimed at certain industry as a violation of the constitution. They saw the north's attempt to use that money to benefit the Norths wanted internal improvements as another violation of the constitution. The federal government under the control of Lincoln sought to violate the 10th amendment and states rights by not allowing the western states to decide on slavery, instead the federal government would overpower the states, and violate the constitution to the benefit of northern polices. Among others.

    Northern population was increasing, by immigration and other causes, in a greater ratio than the population of the South. By degrees, as the Northern States gained preponderance in the National Congress, self-interest taught their people to yield ready assent to any plausible advocacy of their right as a majority to govern the minority without control. They learned to listen with impatience to the suggestion of any constitutional impediment to the exercise of their will, and so utterly have the principles of the Constitutionbeen corrupted in the Northern mind that, in the inaugural address delivered by President Lincoln in March last, he asserts as an axiom, which he plainly deems to be undeniable, of constitutional authority, that the theory of the Constitution requires that in all cases the majority shall govern; and in another memorable instance the same Chief Magistrate did not hesitate to liken the relations between a State and the United States to those which exist between a county and the State in which it is situated and by which it was created.”
    -Jefferson Davis Message to Congress April 29, 1861 (Ratification of the Constitution)


    The experiment instituted by our revolutionary fathers, of a voluntary Union of sovereign States for purposes specified in a solemn compact, had been perverted by those who, feeling power and forgetting right, were determined to respect no law but their own will. The Government had ceased to answer the ends for which it was ordained and established. To save ourselves from a revolution which, in its silent but rapid progress, was about to place us under the despotism of numbers...The tyranny of an unbridled majority, the most odious and least responsible form of despotism, has denied us both the right and the remedy. Therefore we are in arms to renew such sacrifices as our fathers made to the holy cause of constitutional liberty
    -Jefferson Davis Inaugural Richmond 1862



    Under the latitudinarian construction of the Constitution which prevails at the North, the general idea is maintained that the will of the majority is supreme; and as to Constitutional checks or restraints, they have no just conception of them..to keep the federal government within its proper sphere of delegated powers, that the Confederate States, each for itself, resumed those powers and looked out for new safeguards for their rights and domestic tranquility. These are found not in abandoning the Constitution, but in adhering only to those who will faithfully sustain it...They [the north] do not seem to understand the nature or workings of a federative system. They have but slender conceptions of limited powers. Their ideas run into consolidation...Whilst I was in Congress I knew of but few men there from the North who ever made a Constitutional argument on any question. They seemed to consider themselves as clothed with unlimited power...They looked upon it simply as a government of majoritiesThey did not seem to understand that it was a government that bound majorities by constitutional restraints. ”
    -Speech of the Hon. Alexander H. Stephens to the Virginia Secession Convention, April 23, 1861
     
  21. 1stvermont

    1stvermont Active Member

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    Two Separate Cultures and Politics “Yankees” and American


    If their was not a slave from Aroostock to the sabine, the north and the south could never permanent agree”
    -Richmond Daily Whig April 23, 1862

    Slavery has nothing whatever to do with the tremendous issues now awaiting decision. It has disappeared almost entirely from the political discussions of the day. No one mentions it in connection with our present complications.“The question which we have to meet is precisely what it would be if there were not a negro slave on American soil.””
    -New York Times quoted in the Richmond Whig April 9 1861


    The Southern people...maintained a species of separate interests, history, and prejudices. These latter became stronger and stronger, till they have led to a war which has developed the fruits of the bitterest kind.”
    -General Sherman to Union Maj. R.M. Sawyer 1864



    The best definition ever given. It was a war of one form of society against another form of society”
    - Shelby Fotte


    The north and south started growing apart from each other socially, religiously, economically and politically. At times both would refer to each other as a separate race of people, usually northern Anglo-Saxon and southern scotch-Irish. These divides went back to early America. In some ways the war started politically with the federalist/anti-federalist and the nationalist vs the compact theorist of the Constitution . The south being largely Jeffersonian and anti-federalist/compact and the north federalist/nationalist.

    Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or consolidated government; a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting solidly on the basis of the sovereignty of the States, or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, violence, and force must ultimately prevail.”
    -John Calhoun South Carolina Senator J 1831


    The confederate states of america was the consequence of a constitutional crises the origins of which could be traced back to the US Constitution of 1789.”
    -Marshall L Derosa the Confederate Constitution of 1861 University of Missouri Press 1991


    Not over slavery but centralization and local sovereign government going back 70 years to federalist and anti federalist...they[ The south] quit the union to save the principles of the constitution"
    -Alexander Stevens A Constitutional View of the late war Between the States 1870


    In 1819 a future disunion was predicted over the fight over a national bank. Later these differences were predicted to lead to the civil war back in 1824. A Congressional committee on northern interference in the south stated

    “The hour is coming or is rabidly approaching, when the states from Virginia to Georgia, from Missouri to Louisianan, must confederate, and as one man say to the union we will no longer submit our retained rights to the sniveling insinuations of bad men on the floor of congress. Our constitutional rights to the dark and strained contraction of design men upon judicial benches. That we detest the doctrine, and disclaim the principle, of unlimited submission to the general [Federal] government.... Let the North, then, form national roads for themselves. Let them guard with tariffs their own interests. Let them deepen their public debt until a high minded aristocracy shall rise out of it. We want none of all those blessings. But in the simplicity of the patriarchal government, we would still remain master and servant under our own vine and our own fig-tree, and confide for safety upon Him who of old time looked down upon this state of things without wrath.”

    The cultures were separating as well. The south was generally conservative in cultural and religion compared to the north adding God to the Constitution and whos motto was “God will vindicate.” The north was being transformed by large number of European immigrants who often came from the failed socialist revolutions of 1848. The north was also increasingly influenced by New England. Before the 1850's new england was seen as out of the american mainstream and “southern” was the American mainstream. 9 of the first 11 presidents were southern plantation owners, 7 of the first 12 were Virginians [many two term] 9 were southern, and 1 from New York, at that time was “southern” in politics. Washington, Jefferson, Jackson were the norm in America. After the war of 1812 New England was often seen with disdain by the rest of America.

    There is at work in this land a Yankee spirit and an American spirit”
    -James Thornwell 1859


    New Englander's settled in western States and New York. Over time New York became half populated by decedents from New England and flooded with socialist European immigrants. Once new England could control half the north, the south was taken care of after the war, and new england was no longer outside mainstream, but know the south was out of the mainstream and the problem that needed to be fixed.

    The north changed radically after the founders of the united states, especially in the 1850's”
    -Dr. Clyde Wilson Professor of History University of South Carolina


    Southern society has never generated any of the loathsome isms, which northern soil breeds...the north has its Mormons, her various sects of Communists, her free lovers, her spiritualists, and a multitude of corrupt visoniaries”
    -R.L Dabney A defense of Virginia and the South 1867



    It was a profound conservative movement. It was in fact a counterrevolution against the excess of northern demagoguery, mob rule, and dangerous fanaticism imported from Europe”
    -E. merton Coulter The confederate States of America Louisiana State University Press


    The union became a synonym for “modern” and a really counterpart to the south”
    - David Goldfeild War is good for Business Americas civil war Magazine
     
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    1stvermont Active Member

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    Slavery's Impact On the Cotton States- Slavery Decided by State or Federal?


    The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”
    -10th amendment U.S Constitution


    Slavery has nothing whatever to do with the tremendous issues now awaiting decision. It has disappeared almost entirely from the political discussions of the day. No one mentions it in connection with our present complications.“The question which we have to meet is precisely what it would be if there were not a negro slave on American soil.””
    -New York Times quoted in the Richmond Whig April 9 1861


    Slavery's involvement in southern secession is often overstated because slavery was the “occasion” to witch the fight over states rights and the nature of the constitution was fought. Just as Calhoun had said of the tariff of abomination was “The occasion, rather than the real cause” that cause was federal power expansion past its constitutional limits and its encroachments upon the rights of the states.

    This consolidation of the states has been the obiet of several men in this country for some time past. Weather such a change can ever be effected in any manner whether it can be effected without convulsions and civil wars, whether such a change will not totally destroy the liberties of this country time can only determine.”
    -Richard Henry Lee 1787


    Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or consolidated government; a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting solidly on the basis of the sovereignty of the States, or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, violence, and force must ultimately prevail.”
    -John Calhoun South Carolina Senator 1831


    The deep south saw the republicans as violating the 9th and 10th amendment – and Dred Scott v. Sandford 1857 Supreme Court ruling for trying to decide the fate of slavery by federal control rather than state and individual. Democratic plank 9 of the 1852 elections [and carried on to 1860] plainly stated that a attack on slavery was a attack on states rights, the two issues could not be separated. The question was, is the federal government confined to the powers in the constitution, or was it allowed to step outside of its delegated powers by the states thus nullifying the constitution and transforming the republic, into a centralized nation.

    That Congress has no power under the constitution to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several States, and that such States are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs not prohibited by the constitution; that all efforts of the abolitionists or others made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences; and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our political institutions.
    -Democrat plank 9 1852

    That the federal government is one of limited powers, derived solely from the constitution, and the grants of power made therein ought to be strictly construed by all the departments and agents of the government; and that it is inexpedient and dangerous to exercise doubtful constitutional powers.
    -Democratic Plank 1 1852

    It has often been said that we were fighting for the perpetuation of slavery. This was not so. We were simply fighting for our right to keep slaves if we wanted to. We were fighting for state rights- rights to be allowed to make our own laws for our particular states”
    -Joseph F Burke Confederate colonial



    Secession and Slavery a States Rights and Constitutional Issue


    The people who say slavery had nothing to do with the war are just as wrong as the people who say slavery had everything to do with the war”
    -Shelby Foote


    Slavery, although the occasion, was not the producing cause of dissolution”
    -Rose Oneal Greehow- My improvement and the first year of abolition Rule in Washington 1863


    Slavery is no more the cause of this war than gold is the cause of robbery”
    -Joel Parker New jersey Governor 1863


    Slavery had varying degrees of influence on the deep south reasons for secession, from none at all, to the main reason. No question there were some in the south that were willing to leave the union simply to preserve slavery. The slave owner thought slavery was a constitutional, biblical, and state right. A southern slave owner would view a northern abolitionist as a foreigner who was violating their rights. In the cotton states they had more financial gain and loss riding on slavery and were more apt to maintain slavery and their economy. No better example than Mississippi. With 4 billion dollars worth of value and almost the whole economic system of the state dependent on slavery, they wished to defend their economic system that had brought them so much wealth. However even in Mississippi, slavery was not the sole cause.

    Let not slavery prove a barrier to our independence...although slavery is one of the principles that we started to fight for... if it proves an insurmountable obstacle to the achievement of our liberty and separate nationality, away with it”
    -The Jackson Mississippian 1864 quoted in McPherson's Battle cry of Freedom


    The south viewed slaves as any other legal property that the federal could not interfere with, if they tried to do so, it was tyrannical. Unlike today in antebellum America was at a time when the federal did not extend into the states domain and Southerners who were still of the Jeffersonian tradition well understood that if the federal was allowed to encroach on the states on the issue of slavery [or any other issue] it would continue to expand until it became a tyrannical body that no longer followed its limitations under the Constitution such as we have today.

    When all government domestic and forighn in little as in great things shall be drawn to Washington as the source of all power. It will render powerless the checks provided of one government [states] on another, and will become as vegal and oppressive as the government which we have separated”
    -Thomas Jefferson


    "The greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers."
    --Thomas Jefferson


    I consider the foundation of the [Federal] Constitution as laid on this ground: That “all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.” [10th Amendment] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.”
    – Thomas Jefferson, “Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank” [February 15, 1791]


    Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society. “
    – John Adams, Novanglus Letters, 1774



    slavery was not the cause, but the occasion of strife...Rights of the states were the bulwarks of the liberties of the people but that emancipation by federal aggression would lead to the destruction of all other rights”
    -R.L Dabney A Defense Of Virginia And The South 1867


    If the government has the right to interfere in the private affairs of white men, it can do the same with Nige$s”.
    -Mr. Etheridge of Tennessee 1860 quoted in NY Herald column on the debate in the senate on “the slavery question”


    It would be hard to accept that southerners were willing to leave the country they loved and fight a war simply to have slavery extended into new territories where it would simply provide more competition to southern slave states domination on cotton. In 1843 many rich southern planters and no less than Calhoun voted against Texas for statehood because they said it would reduce the price of cotton. Instead they would want a monopoly within the south. By leaving the union the south was giving up federal protection for there runaway slaves under the fugitive slave laws, as well as giving up there right to bring there slaves into the united states territories something they fought so hard for.

    As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty per cent. of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution. No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the Union.”
    -Confederate Major General John B. Gordon Causes of the Civil War


    If the south fought only for slavery, with no connection to states rights, it only had to not fight the war. Slavery was protected and not under attack by Lincoln in the states it already existed. At any time as Lincoln promised, the south just had to lay down arms and come back into the union with slavery intact, yet they chose to fight for another cause.

    The emancipation proclamation was actually an offer permitting the south to stop fighting and return to the union by January 1st and still keep its slaves”
    -John Canaan The Peninsula campaign


    Peace now would save slavery, while a continued war would obliterate the last vestiges of it”
    -Raleigh newspaper July 1863 quoted in Americas Civil war Magazine


    Virginia alone freed more slaves prior to civil war than NY, NJ, Pennsylvania,and New England put together. South Carolinian Mary Chestnut said slavery was a curse, yet she supported secession. She and others hoped the war would end with a “Great independent country with no slavery.” On June 1861 Mary Chestnut said “Slavery has got to go of course but they did because the issue was much deeper as it involved states rights, constitutional protection, and the nature of the union.

    When the Government of the United States disregarded and attempted to trample upon the rights of the States, Georgia set its power at defiance and seceded from the Union rather than submit to the consolidation of all power in the hands of the Central or Federal Government..her sovereignty the principles for the support of which Georgia entered into this revolution.”
    -Joseph E Brown Georgia Governor 1862


    In antebellum America north and south the states resisted federal expansion in various ways. The first federal vs state issue arose over the alien and sedition acts and later internal improvements, national banking, conscription, protective tariffs, land disputes, freedom of speech, free trade, state control of militia, fugitive slave laws etc. No matter what the issue states held firm to the union and fought against federal expansions. The south was doing what states north or south had done in antebellum America, resisted federal expansion past its constitutional bounds. The consequences of the new radical Republican victory over the battle of a centralized nation vs a union of states with a limited federal government has led to the modern tyrannical government that shows no regard for its supposed limitations proving Jefferson correct. See [From Union to Empire- The Political Effects of the Civil war From Union to Empire The Political Effects of the Civil war ]

    The South's concept of republicanism had not changed in three-quarters of a century; the North's had. With complete sincerity the South fought to preserve its version of the republic of the Founding Fathers--a government of limited powers that protected the rights of property, including slave property, and whose constituency comprised an independent gentry and yeomanry of the white race undisturbed by large cities, heartless factories, restless free workers, and class conflict. The accession of the Republican party, with its ideology of competitive, egalitarian, free-labor capitalism, was a signal to the South that the Northern majority had turned irrevocably toward this frightening future."
    -James M. McPherson Ante-bellum Southern Exceptionalism



    South Carolina Secession Document
    Avalon Project - Confederate States of America - Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union

    South Carolina was the first state to seceded from the union. If read in full it gives a good example of slavery as a states rights issue. Slavery was an occasion that states rights were fought over, not the sole cause. The cause of dissolving the union is given right off the bat “Declared that the frequent violations of the constitution by the united sates, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union.” The document is a states rights succession document. The writers of the document wanted that to stand out, that is why the first thing noticed at a glance of the document you will see “FREE AND INDEPENDANT STATES” capitalized three times in the document to stand out. South Carolina was also letting it be known in their declaration of Independence, that it was “FREE AND INDEPANDANT STATES” and state rights, that they were declaring independence. The document goes into the history of states rights in America mentions the failure of the federal government in upholding the constitution and its interfering with states rights. South Carolina said if they were to stay in the union the “constitution will then no longer exists, equal rights of the states will be lost” and that the federal government would become its enemy. While slavery is mentioned four or five times, states rights, independent state, and state sovereignty is mentioned sixteen times. States rights are mentioned not in connection with slavery, yet slavery is always mentioned in connection with states rights. Just as southern democrats had been saying for decades in there political party planks, an attack on slavery was an attack on states rights. Just as South Carolina when it first threatened to success was over states rights, that time [1830's] over tariffs, not slavery.
     
  23. 1stvermont

    1stvermont Active Member

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    Western States Free or Slave?

    The one great evil, from which all other evils have flowed, is the overthrow of the Constitution of the United States. The Government of the United States is no longer the government of Confederated Republics, but of a consolidated Democracy. It is, in face such a Government as Great Britain attempted to set over our Fathers; and which was resisted and defeated by a seven years’ struggle for independence. ....The great object of the Constitution of the United States, in its internal operation, was, doubtless, to secure the great end of the Revolution — –a limited free Government– — a Government limited to those matters only, which were general and common to all portions of the United States. All sectional or local interests were to be left to the States.... the limitations in the Constitution have been swept away; and the Government of the United States has become consolidated, with a claim of limitless powers in its operations.
    -Address of South Carolina to Slave-holding States Convention of South Carolina 1860


    That when the settlers in a Territory, having an adequate population, form a State Constitution, the right of sovereignty commences, and being consummated by admission into the Union, they stand on an equal footing with the people of other States, and the State thus organized ought to be admitted into the Federal Union, whether its Constitution prohibits or recognizes the institution of slavery.
    -Southern Democrat Party Platform 1860

    The fight over new western territories was a battle over the very nature of the federal government. Were these states coming into the union allowed their state sovereignty and states rights as had all previous states, or was the federal government allowed to violate those rights and dictate the states? Where states sovereign or subject to a federal master? The republicans and Lincoln said they would not allow new states the rights granted in the constitution to decide on the issue of slavery. What the south asked for was that these new states coming in be allowed on their own to chose. Was the federal allowed to bar slave holders and their property from entering the new territories thus giving political control to the north, ensuring their political and economic agenda? The end results the south would no longer be represented by its government and the constitution would be abolished and replaced by a democracy.


    Fight Over the Expansion of Slavery- A Fight to Control the Government and Agrarians vs Industrialist

    They are now divided, between agricultural–and manufacturing, and commercial States; between slaveholding and non-slaveholding States. Their institutions and industrial pursuits, have made them, totally different peoples.”
    -Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States Convention of South Carolina 1860


    It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.”
    -Mississippi Declaration for Causes of Secession


    The struggle over the expansion of slavery into the territories....was almost a purely political issue”
    -Robert William Fogel The rise and Fall of American Slavery


    The Souths primarily agrarian and agricultural lifestyle contrasted with the growing northern industrial and urban lifestyle led to difference of opinion on culture, education, religion, role of government, tariffs, trade policies, internal improvements and many other differences. There were as many factories in the north, as there were factories workers in the south. From Americans agrarian roots the south had “little dynamic change, weather through immigration, the growth of new cities or new industrial manufacturing, was allowed to come in and stir up the pot.”

    [For a in depth look at the cultural, political and religious differences between agrarians and industrialist see here Southern Agrarians- did America Lose its Liberty When it Lost its Agrarian Roots? Southern Agrarians- did America Lose its Liberty When it Lost its Agrarian Roots? ]

    Ours is an agricultural people, and God grant that we may continue so. We never want to see it otherwise. It is the freest, happiest, most independent , and, with us, the most powerful condition on earth”
    -Montgomery Daily Confederation 1858


    1850's southern agrarians had mounted a counter attack against the gospel of industrialization”
    -James McPherson Battle cry of freedom


    Leisure orientated agrarian society is the antithesis to materialistic northern life”
    -Rapheal Semmes CSA navy commander


    As argued in the book “I'll Take my Stand the south and the agrarian tradition.” The main cause of the war was the fight over western territories coming into the union. All men are created equal, so slave owners had just as much rights to go into the territories [federal owned land] as northerns did. Before the civil war northern big business and industry needed industrial workers for factories for expansion, not farmers and planters. If these states were allowed to decide on their own slave or free, than the south might maintain agrarian, free trade, policies.

    The political and economic implication of agrarian expansion westward were alarming to certain mercantile interests in the east who red the loss of their political and economic control of an expanding America”
    -Merrill Jensen The New Nation Northeastern University Press


    The struggle in our territories between the free and slaveholding States, has not been a struggle for the emancipation of slaves. It has been a contest for power, between the two great sections of the Union...The Southern people, in claiming a right to settle in territories with their slaves, assert a right sanctioned by the Constitution. The Northern people, in attempting to preclude the Southern people, by the legislation of Congress from our territories, war against the Constitution. This is the declaration of the Supreme Court of the United States. If the Northern position has prevailed by the late Presidential election, as the Northern people maintain, it has overthrown the Constitution. For by this result, a party hostile both to the Constitution and the decisions of the Supreme Court, have been placed in control of the Government. This alone would justify a dissolution of the Union....Whether all the States composing the United States, should be slaveholding or non-slaveholding States, neither the Northern nor Southern States ought to have permitted to be a question in the politics of the United States. ”
    -Repot on the confederate committee of foreign affairs 1861


    If they were to all become free, than northern industrialist would dominate congress and high tariffs, protective tariffs and internal improvements would rise. Both the industrialist and the southern planters backed politicians in the fight over western territories. Northern politicians thought slavery “Stifled technological progress, inhibited industrialization, and thwarted urbanization” and would lead to the “Destruction of all industry” Something had to happen.

    “Professor Holt quotes Ohio Congressman Joshua Giddings explaining: “To give the south the preponderance of political power would be itself to surrender our tariff, our internal improvements [a.k.a. corporate welfare], our distribution of proceeds of public lands . . .”
    -Micheal Holt The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War quoted by Thomas j Dilorenzo


    Theodore Weld declared that the South had to be wiped out because it is “the foe to Northern industry—to our mines, our manufactures, our commerce.”
    -Clyde Wilson Professor of History at the University of South Carolina


    The game plan of northern industrialist, who were fighting not for black freedom, but for the freedom to exploit and devolve the American market...The only people who could say “free at last” after the civil war were northern industrialist and their allies”
    -Lerone Vennett JR Forced into Glory Abraham Lincolns White Dream


    The industrialist “hired” politicians to go anti-slavery and pro industrial expansion, fighting hard for western states to go anti slavery. Former slave trader James De Wolf became anti slavery when he started manufacturing companies. All of a sudden he wanted internal improvements and protective tariffs. The south wanted agrarian lifestyle, free trade, and states to decide on slavery. So as was said “The south had to be crushed out, it was in the way, it impeded the progress of the machine” if slavery could be abolished, than southern agrarian representation in congress would be reduced, if not

    Then the old whig economic agenda of protectionist tariffs, corporate welfare, and central banking, which had become the republican agenda, would continue to fail in congress”
    -Thomas J Dilorenzo Lincoln Unmasked


    “The more the north became industrialized, the more the need arose for stronger national government to support its growth and finical interests.” The industrialist wanted higher tariffs as well to slow the flow of trade on the Mississippi. They instead wanted trade to flow west through railroads supported by higher tariffs and internal improvements. Northern General Sherman said the civil war was a war between agriculturalist vs mechanics. Confederate General Jubal Early said Lee's army was defeated by “Steam power, railroads, mechanism, and all the resources of physical science”

    The freeing of the slaves was “Only an accident in the violent clash of interests between the Industrial north and the Agricultural south”
    -African American Ralph Bunche


    The south saw the attack on the issue of slavery not so much as an attempt to end slavery in the united states as much as an attempt to end southern influence in the national government”
    -Walter D Kennedy Myths of American slavery


    In the book Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War by Marc Egnal he said “Economics more than high moral concerns produced the civil war.” The heart of the war was economical differences growing between the protectionist, manufacturing northeast and the free trade agrarian south. In the book I'll take my stand a book on southern agrarian life, the authors argue if no other differences, the war would have still happened over industrial vs agrarian interests. The industrialist won. After the war the north profit went up 45% the south down 15%.

    Military defeat moved the scepter of wealth from the agrarian south to the industrial north”
    -Robert William Fogel The Rise and Fall of American Slavery


    If the North triumphs, it is not alone the destruction of our property; it is the prelude to anarchy,infidelity, the ultimate loss of free and responsible government on this continent. It is the triumph of commerce, the banks, factories. ”
    -Confederate Gen. Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson


    Southern movement was a revolt of conservatism against the modernism of the north” a “Reaction to industry.”
    -E Merton Coulter The Confederate States of America Louisiana State university press
     
  24. 1stvermont

    1stvermont Active Member

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    From Confederation to Consolidation

    This consolidation of the states has been the obiet of several men in this country for some time past. Weather such a change can ever be effected in any manner whether it can be effected without convulsions and civil wars, whether such a change will not totally destroy the liberties of this country time can only determine.”
    -Richard Henry Lee 1787


    If ever this vast country is brought under a single government.... you will have to chose between reformation and revolution.”
    -Thomas Jefferson



    Antebellum American Politics

    Resolved, That the several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral part, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself...each party has equal right to judge for itself”
    -Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 written by Thomas Jefferson


    "That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.
    -Virginia Resolutions 1800 Written by James Madison


    For the Constitution of the union....can never assume any powers, that is not expressly granted by that instrument, not exercise a power, in any manner than is there prescribed. This is indeed, a short, clear, and concise exposition of the principles of a limited government, founded upon a compact between sovereign and independent states.”
    -St George Tucker 1803


    While the compact theory of the union was not the universal opinion of the founders [the nationalist view was held by men like Danial Webster, Joseph Story and John Jay, was the minority view] it was the majority that dominated politics in early American life before the civil war. The dominate political philosophy of the day Known often as Jeffersonian democrats were of a political belief that flowed from the state ratification conventions especially the Virginian ratification convention. And led by southern [mainly] Virginian planters. In 1803 Virginian St George Tucker authored “A view of the constitution of the united states” the dominate view of the federal government at the time the compact view of Jefferson and James Madison, the “principles of 98” expressed in the Virginia and Kentucky resolution of 1798. And continued with John Taylor of Carolines 1820 “Construction construed, and constitutions vindicated” Abel Parkers Upshar's “ A Brief Enquiry into the Nature and Character of our Federal Government: Being a Review of Judge Story's Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States and John C Calhouns Disquisition on Government and Discourse on the Constitution and government of the united states. This view of the union [that went back to even before the ratification conventions] would dominate the political landscape for decades, and the Virginia conventions understanding of the union would dominate American life before the civil war.

    The Constitution of the united states is to be considered as a compact or confederation between free independent, and sovereign states.”
    -Abel Parker Upshur


    The federalist attempted a national government at the conventions, but this was rejected for a union “the united states” Madison said “The truth is, that the great principle of the Constitution proposed by the convention may be considered less as absolutely new, than as the expansion of principles which are found in the articles of Confederation.”

    "The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the states; and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people.
    -Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America


    9 of the first 11 presidents were southern plantation owners, 7 of the first 12 were Virginians [many two term] 9 were southern, and 1 from New York, at that time was “southern” in politics. The future confederate states would provide 13 of the first 18 us presidents before Lincoln. Before Lincoln The south provided 14 of the 19 attorney generals, 17 of 28 supreme court justices, and 21 of 33 speakers of the house came from the south. The democrat party was the main party of antebellum America who's 1852 platform gives the Jeffersonian view of the union. 1852 Democratic Platform

    “Resolved, That the democratic party will faithfully abide by and uphold the principles laid down in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798, and in the report of Mr. Madison to the Virginia legislature in 1799; that it adopts those principles as constituting one of the main foundations of its political creed, and is resolved to carry them out in their obvious meaning and import.”
    -Winning Democrat platform 1852


    The dominate view of the federal government. as a limited, delegated agent of the sovereign people of the several states, and not the judge of the extant of its own powers, was buried by the outcome of the civil war”
    -Clyde Wilson From Union to Empire


    Today the federal government has the authority over all peoples and states. Everything is subject to its authority. This is not how it has always been or intended by the founders. The federal government only had power and authority that was delegated it by the states. That authority was only within the limits specifically stated in the Constitution.

    The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.”
    -James Madison Federalist Papers #45


    The federal government is the creature of the individual states.”
    -President Franklin Pierce 1855 veto message


    The states were to govern the rest.

    The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”
    -10th amendment U.S Constitution


    Everything not expressly mentioned will be presumed to be purposely omitted”
    -James Wilson Pennsylvanian Ratification convention


    The powers that the federal government had were not Superior to the states, but inferior, since deriving its delegated powers from the states, who existed before the constitution. Madison stated the meaning of the constitution is found “In those state conventions where it received all the authority which it possessed.” The original constitution reads “A constitution for the united states.”

    I consider the foundation of the [Federal] Constitution as laid on this ground: That “all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.” [10th Amendment] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.”
    Thomas Jefferson, “Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank” [February 15, 1791]


    Our government is not to be maintained or our union preserved by invasions of the powers of the several states... its true strength consists in leaving individuals and states as much as possible to themselves ..not in binding the states more closely to the center”
    -President Andrew Jackson


    Even Federalist at the state conventions assured the people that if the federal overstepped its clear delegated powers, these actions were unconstitutional and void.

    We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected,…in behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known, that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them, whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression;and that every power not granted thereby, remains with them and at their will: that, therefore, no right, of any denomination, can be canceled, abridged, restrained or modified. In such a system “rights” are given by government— and what a master gives to his slaves, at the master‟s discretion, can be taken away. The ultimate reality is that in any system in which the central government is the sole arbiter of rights, the people are in fact mere subjects whose purpose is to hear and obey .”
    -Virginia‟s ratification



    no legislative act, therefore contrary to the constitution, can be valid”
    -Alexander Hamilton federalist #78


    Congress cannot assume any other powers than those expressly given them. Powers of congress are all defined and clearly laid down. So for they may go, but no further”
    -Samuel Johnston North Carolina convention


    Every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by the said constitution clearly delegated to the united states of America, or or of the government thereof remains to the people of the several states, or to the representatives state governments”
    -New York ratification convention


    Sovereignty lied with we the people represented by elected officials of our states.

    The attributes of sovereignty are now enjoyed by every state in the union”
    -Alexander Hamilton


    The thirteen states are thirteen sovereign bodies”
    -Oliver Ellsworth


    A compact between separate communities”
    -James cooper New yorker 1833


     
  25. 1stvermont

    1stvermont Active Member

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    States Rights in Action

    The support of state governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies.”
    -Thomas Jefferson First Inaugural Address


    The duty of state governments, to protect themselves from encroachments”
    -Joseph Desha Kentucky Governor 1825


    The true barriers of our liberty...are the state governments”
    -Thomas Jefferson


    It was the states in their sovereignty that did almost all the governing “State authority was the rule, federal the exception.” As president Pierce said in 1855 “the power is in states alone.” The federal government had no right to exercise powers not specifically delegated to it in the constitution. For example Jefferson was not against internal improvements as many believe, he just said their had to be an amendment first to the constitution to have authority. If the federal government assumed such powers that were not granted it by the constitution, its acts could be declared unconstitutional by the states. States could decide the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress. At North Carolina’s ratifying convention, James Iredell told the delegates that when “Congress passes a law consistent with the Constitution, it is to be binding on the people. If Congress, under pretense of executing one power, should, in fact, usurp another, they will violate the Constitution.” In December 1787 Roger Sherman observed that an “excellency of the constitution” was that “when the government of the united States acts within its proper bounds it will be the interest of the legislatures of the particular States to Support it, but when it leaps over those bounds and interferes with the rights of the State governments they will be powerful enough to check it.”

    Unconstitutional [laws] void and of no effect. It is the right and the duty of the several states to nullify those acts”
    -John Breckenridge Kentucky


    Sir they [the states] ought not to submit, they would deserve the chains which there masters are forging for them, if they did not resist”
    -Edward Livingston NY house of representatives


    Consolidate the states by degrees, into one sovereignty, the obvious tendency of witch would transform the present republican system of the united states, into an absolute”
    -James Madison

    Before Lincoln states determined their own domestic affairs the federal was mostly for foreign as John Randolph of Roanoke said in a speech in congress 1823-24 “Cause of the existence of the federal government was the regulation of foreign commerce.” They were not forced by an all powerful authoritative federal government to comply to its standards. States could nullify unconstitutional rulings and laws from the federal government. One of the first times the federal government, in this case the supreme court, tried to force itself on a state, in the court case Chisholm V Georgia 1793. The state of Georgia declared that to submit to a federal court would destroy the “Retained sovereignty of the state.” The federalist supreme court voted 4-1 that Georgia must comply with the federal court ruling. So the Georgia legislature passed a bill that any federal agent in the state that attempted to enforce the federal supreme court ruling, should be hanged. So no federal agent dared enter the state. This resulted in the passing of the 11th amendment as congress itself supporter state sovereignty against the supreme court. In 1850 a dispute in Texas over land in the New Mexico territory almost led to the secession of Texas. Texas called for force to be used to maintain its integrity. South Carolina nullified the tariffs of 1828 and 1832. Virginia and Kentucky nullified alien and sedition acts in 1798. In 1824 when John Quincy Adams proposed the “American system” of internal improvements, protective tariffs, and a national bank. Jefferson responded with “the solemn declaration and protest of the commonwealth of Virginia” reaffirming the principles of 98. States rights were more common in the north in antebellum Americas [descendants of the federalist] since the southern view was the majority and often controlled the general government. The colonist had nullified the british stamp act, the Townsend acts, and the tea act.


    The solemn duty of the state governments...to interpose”
    -Daniel Webster Federalist/ Nationalist



    The Embargo of 1807-1809

    Thomas Jefferson as president declared an embargo on all American ports. Massachusetts nullified the federal law and replied

    “While this State maintains its sovereignty and independence, all the citizens can find protection against outrage and injustice in the strong arm of the State government..not legally binding on the citizens of this State.”

    Connecticut responded with the resolution of the general Assembly

    “Resolved, That to preserve the Union, and support the constitution of the United States, it becomes the duty of the Legislatures of the States, in such a crisis of affairs, vigilantly to watch over, and vigorously to maintain, the powers not delegated to the United States, but reserved to the States respectively, or to the people; and that a due regard to this duty, will not permit this Assembly to assist, or concur in giving effect to the aforesaid unconstitutional act, passed, to enforce the Embargo”

    Pennsylvanian 1809

    Over the Olmstead controversy said

    “And whereas the causes and reasons which have produced this conflict between the general and State government should be made known, not only that the State may be justified to her sister States, who are equally interested in the preservation of the State rights; but to evince to the Government of the United States that the Legislature, in resisting encroachments on their rights…they are contending for the rights of the State, that it will be attributed to a desire for preserving the Federal government itself, the best features of which must depend upon keeping up a just balance between the general and State governments, as guaranteed by the Constitution. … Whilst they yield to this authority, when exercised within Constitutional limits, they trust they will not be considered as acting hostile to the General Government, when, as guardians of the State rights, they can not permit an infringement of those rights by an unconstitutional exercise of power in the United States courts. …Resolved, that the independence of the States, as secured by the Constitution, be destroyed, the liberties of the people in so extensive country cannot long survive. To suffer the United States‟ courts to decide on State Rights will, from a bias in favor of power, necessarily destroy the Federal part of our Government: And whenever the government of the United States becomes consolidated, we may learn from the history of nations what will be the event.


    The war of 1812

    When Connecticut was called to bring out its militia to guard the cost they replied

    "It must not be forgotten, that the state of Connecticut is a FREE SOVEREIGN and INDEPENDENT state; that the United States are a confederacy of states; that we are a confederated and not a consolidated republic. The governor of this state is under a high and solemn obligation, “to maintain the lawful rights and privileges thereof, as a sovereign, free and independent state,” as he is “to support the constitution of the United States,” and the obligation to support the latter, imposes an additional obligation to support the former."



    and the Governor stated

    It is their right, [states] it becomes there duty, to interpose their protecting shield between their rights and liberty of the people, and the assumed power of the general government”
    -Governor Jonathan Trumbull Connecticut



    1813 Embargo

    In response to the embargo Massachusetts General Court approved

    "A power to regulate commerce is abused, when employed to destroy it; and a manifest and voluntary abuse of power sanctions the right of resistance, as much as a direct and palpable usurpation. The sovereignty reserved to the states, was reserved to protect the citizens from acts of violence by the United States, as well as for purposes of domestic regulation. We spurn the idea that the free, sovereign and independent State of Massachusetts is reduced to a mere municipal corporation, without power to protect its people, and to defend them from oppression, from whatever quarter it comes. Whenever the national compact is violated, and the citizens of this State are oppressed by cruel and unauthorized laws, this Legislature is bound to interpose its power, and wrest from the oppressor its victim."



    In 1820, when Ohio was fighting against the unconstitutional Bank of the United States, it recognized and approved "the doctrines asserted by the Legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky, in their resolutions of November and December, 1798, and January 1800 — and do consider that their principles have been recognized and adopted by a majority of the American people"

    Bank of the United States Controversy 1821

    Ohio wrote “The committee are aware of the doctrine, that the Federal courts are exclusively vested with jurisdiction to declare, in the last resort, the true interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. To this doctrine, in the latitude contended for, they never can give their assent…. That this General Assembly do protest against the doctrine that the political rights of the separate States that compose the American Union, and their powers as sovereign States, may be settled and determined in the Supreme Court of the United States…

    Fugitive Slave Laws/ Liberty Laws

    The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them.”
    -South Carolina Causes of secession


    Many northern states nullified the fugitive slave laws or passed liberty laws that nullified the federal law. Wisconsin nullified the supreme court law.

    “Resolved, That this assumption of jurisdiction by the federal judiciary, in the said case, and without process, is an act of undelegated power, and therefore without authority, void, and of no force. Resolved, That the government, formed by the Constitution of the United States was not the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress... that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism, since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the Constitution, would be the measure of their powers; that the several states which formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a positive defiance of those sovereignties, of all Unauthorized acts done or attempted to be done under color of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.”


    States rights held the federal government in check and held it to only what it was granted to do in the constitution. So from the American revolution until The civil war, you had the same constitutional republic. The states doing the self governing in there state sovereignty.

    States rights, which prior to 1860 had been an important northern belief as southern. Were overturned by Lincolns war”
    -Dean Sprague Freedom under Lincoln


    "Jeffersonianism still prevailed in the minds of most Americans but was all but snuffed out by Lincolns war"
    -Thomas J Dilorenzo the real Lincoln
     

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