Was slavery the primary cause of the war?

O'Bruadair · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 8:39 am Post subject:

“The war started later because the union needed be preserved.”

The question is WHY did the union “need” preserving?

There is absolutely NOTHING about the “union” that is sacred, decreed by God or even inevitable, no matter that reciting mindless statist propaganda like the “pledge of allegiance” may have convinced you otherwise. The “union” was and is (at least according to the constitution and the likes of Thomas Jefferson) a VOLUNTARY political arrangement between sovereign States in which certain specific powers are delegated to the federal government.

This being the case why is it that lincoln and his yankee allies felt that they “needed” to wage an aggressive, illegal “total war” on the South and Southern women and children and kill 620,000 American soldiers and God only knows how many civilians in order to “preserve the union”? More than this why did it become necessary for the federal government to keep the South in political and economic subjugation for the next 140 years?

I have demonstrated quite plainly elsewhere on this forum that had the Lincoln administration been concerned with ending slavery then the best and surest course of action would have been to let the first seven States that seceded depart in peace.

Truth is they didn’t give a whit about the slaves one way or the other. The slaves were just not their concern, except as a tool that they could use to accomplish their objectives. The question we need to ask is what were they concerned about?

N.W.15thAR · Captain Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 167

Thank god someone else said something after my post. I was getting a little worried! God bless you O'Bruadair.

Pvt. Gale
N.W. 15th Arkansas

gladewater_chick · Corporal Joined: 20 Apr 2007 Posts: 2

gladewater_chick · Corporal Joined: 20 Apr 2007 Posts: 2

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PatriotGuardian · Corporal Joined: 20 Apr 2007 Posts: 1

[color=blue]I think it was over states rights but slavery also became an issue later on in the war. Most people learn through elementary school that the war was over slavery, because it is easier to understand than states rights. But now, as I learn more on the subject, I believe it to be states rights that started the war with slavery entering the list of reason later on.[/color]

Very Happy

Nick · Sergeant Major Joined: 25 Apr 2007 Posts: 51

No slavery, no war.
No Republican party, no war.

Simply claiming slavery was the primary cause of the war, explains nothing, its also directly contary to what the President and congress said the war was fought for and to achieve. But why let ugly facts ruin a flawed premise?.

O'Bruadair · Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2007 5:08 pm Post subject:

Nick · Sergeant Major Joined: 25 Apr 2007 Posts: 51

O'Bruadair · Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2007 10:57 pm Post subject:

The point here is that the war (and all wars, at least the ones I can think of) was fought to decide who was going to control the wealth. Whether Southern labour was free, indentured or slave just did not enter into the equation.

Lincoln and his yankee mercantilist backers wanted a centralized federal government that they could use for their own economic purposes. Who picked cotton in the South just didn’t make a hill of beans difference to them one way or the other.

“The war did not end slavery, it simply changed white southern labour lords who exploited a section of society for gain white a different set of white land lords who did exactly the same thing.”

You are right about that in a way and you make my point in a way too. The difference was in who reaped the profit from the resources and labour of the South.
Before the war it was mostly white Southerners afterward it was mostly white northerners. The “section of society” that got exploited changed a lot too, at least in complexion. Before the war it was mostly African slaves after the war there were more White sharecroppers than Black ones.

Nick · Sergeant Major Joined: 25 Apr 2007 Posts: 51

O'Bruadair · Posted: Tue May 01, 2007 3:47 pm Post subject:

Well we seem to be getting closer here!

One thing though, you said:

“…. just as how the Southern states had operated the Union for a century”

Most Southerners were “Jeffersonian Democrats” They were in no way in favor of a strong central government and a mercantilist system. They favored just the opposite. Strong state governments, low tariffs and free trade.

This was the basic economic/political difference in north and South and it had existed since the foundation of the Republic.

cwalenta999 · Sergeant Major Joined: 17 Mar 2007 Posts: 60

"They were in no way in favor of a strong central government and a mercantilist system."

Perhaps not, but not for nothing, the South, in 1860, is STILL practicing the 'colonial' end of the mercantilist system, essentially providing a raw material and trading it for manufactured goods, that is the quintessential position of a colony in the mercantilist system and it still persisted despite the fact that the South is no longer a colony.

Nick · Sergeant Major Joined: 25 Apr 2007 Posts: 51

O'Bruadair · Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 10:49 am Post subject:

I really have no clue what you are trying to say here and I am certain that you do not understand what I am saying either. Here are the statistics that I posted before. While these only compare 4 States (2 of the wealthiest in both regions) I believe that the overall relative comparison between north and South would certainly hold if you care to run the figures for each state in each region.

Since my contention is that within that disparity of real wealth lie the real reasons for the War to Suppress Yankee Arrogance then the comparison should be between the 11 states that actually seceded with perhaps the addition of Kentucky and Missouri and the rest of the nation.

State----pop.------Total real value------Per Capita

Ala. 964,201 $556,725,646 $577.40

MISS. 91,305 $507,720,484 $641.62

MASS. 1,231,066 $321,465,759 $261.13

CONN. 460,147 $151,058,835 $328.28

Data From: http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/php/state.php
Historical Census Browser, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center
University of Virginia Library • PO Box 400129
Charlottesville VA 22904-4129

You are confusing GNP and annual income with wealth. They are simply NOT THE SAME thing as WEALTH and looking at the figures you provided and those above clearly illustrate that point if you really understand what they say. (BTW you don’t say where your stats come from so I will take your word that they are accurate. Also to be directly relevant you need to find the 1860 statistics and not use those from 20 years before the war).

In my previous post I also pointed out that the REAL disparity in wealth between north and South in 1860 was very much greater than the numbers indicate.

Most Southerners were land owners and/or had ready access of large tracts of land available for free range grazing and hunting. The average Cracker in Alabama either grew or killed just about everything he ate or wore. The value of those items was “off the books” and would not have even shown up in the census data. On the other hand the average mill hand in Massachusetts had no land or free grazing and thus had to PURCHASE everything he ate or wore from his meagre wages.

Those factors are a large part of why the personal wealth was so disparate between the two regions.

Simply put the RESOURCES of the South were just much greater and FAR greater on a per capita basis than those of the north.

Here is a quote from “Cracker Culture”, Grady McWhinney that might put this in perspective for you:

“In New England” he (a yankee) boasted, “a man may put a hundred dollars in a bridge, a turnpike, a rail-road, a bank, an insurance company, or a mill dam, and thus blend his private advantage with the public good.” But in the South even the small planters squandered more money every year than most New England farmers saved in a “lifetime of toil and close economy”.

You seem to be labouring under the same preconceived notions and misunderstandings about the history of the South as most modern Southerners are.

We have always been taught and really want to believe that the South lost the war because she was poor. Nothing could be further from the truth!

The South didn’t lose the war because we were poor! We are poor because we lost the war!!

“Before the war, the South was the wealthiest part of the United States” Wikipedia

“Before the war, the South was the wealthiest part of the United States” knowledgerush

“contrary to common misconceptions, the South was the richest part of the country in 1860” Dr. Frank Towers, historian at the University of Calgary

“By 1860, the region (the South) was one of the wealthier areas of the WORLD,” (empahsis mine) Answers.com

cwalenta999 · Sergeant Major Joined: 17 Mar 2007 Posts: 60

Slavery itself acts to retard the economic development of the South. First, it it a disincentive to immigration and the stats do show that while immigrants do ‘go south’, the lions share of the immigrants does ‘go north.’ Secondly, slavery essentially acts as a labor subsidy, so the economic actors making rationale economic decisions are less likely to finance and employ machines/capital. As a result, since there was less incentive to minimize labor inputs, labor productivity sagged. Of course by 1860, there is almost a certain disdain for industrialism referring to Northerners in a derogatory sense as ‘pasty faced mechanics’