Southern Republicans (before 1948)

So, if I see a contradiction between your claims and what I read in wikipedia, I should not ask you for explanation but to submit that Big Iceaura knows this better?

Why I should answer this question? I do not claim to be a specialist, who is able to answer such questions. I see only that:
1.) They have started secession once he reached power.
2.) He was not an abolitionist - given that slavery remained legal in the Union too.
3.) He was elected from the North, not even on the ballot in the South.
4.) My analysis of the North suggests that were was a strong element of nationalism, thus, of taking away power from the states in favour of the central power.

(4) is, of course, in itself sufficient motivation for a secession.

But, of course, I'm not a specialist, this is based only on a few wiki articles, thus, I would be interested in your version.

 

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If the secession is illegal, then, of course, the South started the war. If the secession was legal, then, not leaving Fort Sumter and returning it to its legal owners, the seceeded South, was an act of aggression in itself, and attacking these guys in this Fort a legal anti-terroristic operation.

If it was legal or not is controversial, but the point is that in a war of secession the first shot does not really matter. This is different from a war between states, because before the war starts, there was a border line acknowledged by above sides. In the case of a secession war, there is no such state accepted by above sides. If a secession is illegal, the declaration of independence is a declaration of war, if the secession is legal, the declaration of independence changes the legal status of the miliary forces in the secessing territories - if they do not accept the secession, they become, automatically, occupiers in a state of war.

 

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You should recognize that you don't have the capability of seeing contradictions between my claims and wikipedia, in this topic. I know this, because I've read it and there aren't any to see.

Not quite - your declared that there was nothing significant motivating the North or the northern soldiers and citizens except nationalism.

What power, exactly, did the southerners fear they were going to lose?

That depends on exactly what powers were at risk. Trivial powers would not be sufficient motivation, significant ones would. So what was it?

Here's what the secessionists themselves said their good and sufficient motives were: http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/declarationofcauses.html
To quote Georgia:

Mississippi:

South Carolina:

Texas:

And so forth.

Because all your wrong assertions depend on your not having answered it. Which means they can change via that one answer. A teaching moment, like.

The government of the United States was the legal owner of Fort Sumter - bought the land, paid for the building, possessed clear title issued by the State involved, everything.

You might be interested in discovering that the South, the Confederacy, made and still makes a big deal out of trying to name that conflict "The War Between the States", or sometimes "The War of Northern Aggression". That is because they don't want the stain of starting and fighting a civil war, which would bring up the question of motive, which cannot be answered without shame.

btw: There were of course clear borders between the States involved, acknowledged by everyone. And the first shot does matter - although the initial declarations of secession were also by the States of the Confederacy, as well as the prior formation of an illegal government, the subornation of treason and oath-breaking from the military officers, the stockpiling of ammunition and preparations for assault, the design and printing of currency, etc.

 

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I have to recognize this because you say this? I have described the points where I see a difference. If there is no difference, fine, it should not be a problem to explain me where I have misinterpreted you or wikipedia.

The local power of their states. As usual in secessions, the people who want to seceede want to rule themself, or prefer to be ruled by their local rulers, which share at least the same local culture, in comparison with the other guys, from these other parts of the state.

That part of this fear was the fear of the slaveowners that in some future slavery will be forbidden, which would at least endanger their wealth, is nothing I would doubt. That even the poor non-slave-owners living in the South have supported the secession and fought for this is not explained by this economic interest of the rich. Of course, the rich had the possibility to control public opinion at that time too, and there may be a general fear of change - it is clear that abolition would change a lot in the South, and not at all clear if poor whites would be among the winners.

But, ok, this may be a reasonable economic point for the poor whites of the South: Fear that the freed slaves would lead to decreasing wages on the labor market, which would change from being a whites only to a mixed labor market. With the jobs made by the slaves becoming also part of the labor market for whites.

The source http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/declarationofcauses.html you have quoted is interesting, thanks. I have found there some other interesting economic reasons:

"The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the South not at all. 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.

It also supports the point that the argument was about the western territories:

"We had acquired a large territory by successful war with Mexico; Congress had to govern it; how, in relation to slavery, was the question then demanding solution. This state of facts gave form and shape to the anti-slavery sentiment throughout the North and the conflict began. Northern anti-slavery men of all parties asserted the right to exclude slavery from the territory by Congressional legislation and demanded the prompt and efficient exercise of this power to that end. This insulting and unconstitutional demand was met with great moderation and firmness by the South. We had shed our blood and paid our money for its acquisition; we demanded a division of it on the line of the Missouri restriction or an equal participation in the whole of it. These propositions were refused, the agitation became general, and the public danger was great. The case of the South was impregnable. The price of the acquisition was the blood and treasure of both sections-- of all, and, therefore, it belonged to all upon the principles of equity and justice."

So, the union has won a war, and now every part, South and North, wanted to own what has been won. We have already clarified that forbidding slavery there would have ruled out the 1% of the South economically - because they would want to use the asquired territories in the same way as at home, plantages with slaves. Thus, slavery legal or not there was simply the issue who owns the new territories. And for this issue the question who is allowed to make the decision - the new territories themself or the central governement - was decisive once the central government was controlled by the North. Not?

The following seems also interesting:

"The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state. The question of slavery was the great difficulty in the way of the formation of the Constitution."

"The manufacturing interests entered into the same struggle early, and has clamored steadily for Government bounties and special favors. This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding States. ... These reasons prevailed, and they received for many years enormous bounties by the general acquiescence of the whole country.

But when these reasons ceased they were no less clamorous for Government protection, but their clamors were less heeded ... the act of 1846 was passed. ... but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people. The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy.

All these classes saw this and felt it and cast about for new allies. The anti-slavery sentiment of the North offered the best chance for success. An anti-slavery party must necessarily look to the North alone for support, but a united North was now strong enough to control the Government in all of its departments, and a sectional party was therefore determined upon. Time and issues upon slavery were necessary to its completion and final triumph. The feeling of anti-slavery, which it was well known was very general among the people of the North, had been long dormant or passive; it needed only a question to arouse it into aggressive activity."

Thus, the accusation is that anti-slavery was simply a propaganda tool in the North useful to gain control over the whole union for the own (republican) party. Nicely corresponds to the not really consistent as anti-slavery real politics, as well as with Spooners naming republicans hypocrites.

Not at all. This is the obvious defense of the legal position of the South. They are separate independent states, they have formed, some time, a confederation, but remaining states, and, because they remained independent states, could as well go out of this confederation. "Civil war" is, instead, the legal position of the North. The "United States" are not a union of states, but essentially a unitary state, thus, secession is an illegal riot, a civil war, because there is only one state, the US as a whole.

Yes, but they were considered, legally, as something like irrelevant internal administrative borders, not as borders between different states. Else, the first shot would have been self-defense of a legal government against an illegal military force on its territory which refuses to subordinate - so it is starting a civil war by an illegal gang of criminals naming itself government against the legitimate governement of the US.

 

Are you seriously that deranged? it was the Us that built fort sumter. the US was the legal owner. that you and your ideology continues to defend bigots and fascists doesn't make them the good guys.

for someone belong to an ideology that worships the sanctity of property you sure are defending attempted theft. the confederacy had nothing to do with the construction of the forts and such. attempting to take them was an attempt to illegally seize the property of another entity. your intellectual; trainwreck. seriously your making micheal look well versed in history. something i didn't even realize was possible. the south's aggression against the north is just that no matter your disgusting attempts at historical revisionism


this post once again showcases the stunning levels of dishonesty, double standards, and hypocrisy in the libertarian movement.

 

The question how property of a confederation is divided in case of a secession between the seceeding parts is always a complicate one, but the natural solution of this problem is that property located on the territory of a seceeding state becomes property of this state.

If you disagree, feel free to propose counterarguments. But the fact that something was build by the union is, in itself, not an argument. Given the secession, the union in its previous form cleraly no longer exists.

It is not the goal of libertarian ideology to subdivide the world into good guys and bad guys. This is a goal libertarians leave to totalitarian ideologies.

Of course, if the secession itself would be illegal, this would be a clear case of attempted theft. But in this case the situation is anyway clear.

If, instead, the secession is legal, the idea that all property of the former union belongs completely to the non-seceeding remains of the union is absurd. It is clear that this property has to be somehow divided into parts. The principle for subdivision which is the most natural one is, clearly, that all immobile property localized in the territory of one of the states belongs to this state. That there will be disagreement about how to subdivide property is natural and expected, but in this case I see no base for this.

This has nothing at all to do with libertarian movement. It has something to do with honesty - I take into account the historical facts as I see them, as I read them in wiki and your posts, and make my conclusions, based on arguments you can see here. As a libertarian, I'm against slavery. But this does not mean that automatically all the Southerners become subhumans for me and all Northerners automatically the good guys. Not at all. I'm able to evaluate all this on a more neutral point of view.

Up to now, the most plausible position seems to me that of Spooner, who rejected slavery, but despised the republicans as hypocrits and rejected the war against the secessionists.

If you disagree, feel free to give arguments. I see that a lot of people here often use personal attacks instead of arguments. I see this as evidence of the low level of education of civilized behaviour in the modern Western school system, but otherwise irrelevant, and would guess that this is a general problem, shared by all political directions.

 

Uh, no, - - -
- - lessee, how do I deal with somebody who wants to tell me what motivated the American Civil War without knowing what a State in the United States is? Anybody else want to give that one a try?

C'mon, quit dodging, this is the third or fourth time now - which ones? Which local powers were they afraid of losing?

I provided you with plenty of primary sources for evidence. They state explicitly which power they feared losing. They talk of almost nothing else, from the first paragraphs to the last. They go on for paragraphs about the threat of losing this one power, how they know the threat is serious and why they regard Lincoln as embodying it. You can't possibly have missed it.

It's like playing croquet with a hedgehog ball.

Look, how do figure "anti-slavery propaganda" - which was not just "a tool" mentioned in those sources, but the only tool, the only major aspect of Lincoln's election mentioned - would be useful in "gaining control" of anything? You have declared that abolitionism was not a major factor in the North, remember - that northerners were not in fact opposed to slavery, or motivated by such opposition.

And why would the people of these States use election year propaganda as their overwhelming, even sole, justification for secession? If it was just talk, why did it fool them so badly they actually feared the loss of slavery in their own States?

But it's the opposite of your distinction.

It's not a legal position. It's the term used for wars of secession. The South wants to deny that they started a war of secession, and since everyone knows they started the War itself that means finding a term that does not imply that it was a war of secession, but instead a war between separate countries.

It was about slavery in the western territories, and nothing but slavery. No other feature of the western territories is involved.

Ownership of the new territories was not involved. These were incoming States, and they would own themselves. The citizens of these new States would be the slaveowners, if any, not the citizens of Georgia or Mississippi. So what was the threat these citizens of Mississippi perceived, in the admission of Western States as non-slave?

 

natural solution doesn't mean legal or what actually happened. the United states continued as if their property still belonged to them. it is up to you to show legal ownership was transfered which you haven't.

well that's a straight up lie.

so if your a government you can't own anything? again the south launched in illegal assualt on the US and its property. I'm sorry running away and stealing territory doesn't mean you have a legal right to the property with in it.

in other words please stop showing me for the hypocrite i am. no i won't your a hypocrite and your going to get called on it.

lol honesty. your entire ideology is based on lies and historical revisionism.

than i suggest you relearn how to read because nothing of what you said has any passing resemblance to historical facts.

and yet here you are defending an armed insurections whose sole purpose was to continue it.

how is lying about history to defend the confederates crimes a nuetral position

than you and him are loony tunes. the civil war was one of self defense by the US. had the confederacy not attacked the US would have ignored them as they intended to.

you must be reading your fellow libertarian micheal posts all he does are insults.

really cause i see your low level of education as a sign of that. seriously if your dumb enough to wade into a debate without even doing basic research and reading comprehension you deserve to be mocked.

 

There's nothing natural about that in the American Civil War. In the US, title to property is from the State. Since none of the States of the Confederacy dissolved themselves or were taken over by other States, all the titles to property they granted would naturally remain unchanged - if someone had title to property in the State of Virginia, say, whether that State was a member of the Confederacy of the Union would be irrelevant.

The government of the United States had title to Fort Sumter, granted by the State involved.

 

Maybe you learn to identify polemical exaggerations?

I don't know. Of course, the right to hold slaves was, in the long run, among them. Of course, there was also simply the issue of money - once the North rules, it is clear that all the investments made by the union will favour the North, and the taxes paid by the South. What one has to expect if one sees that a northern-based party has won the elections and will probably win following elections over a long time, given they have managed to unite the Northern states.

Of course, I have not missed it - it is obvious that you want to reduce everything to this single issue which supports your ideological convictions.

It was explained, and I have quoted it above. To win elections, one has to find something supported by a majority and make it a political issue. The North was anti-slavery, but it was not a big issue for most people - slavery was forbidden in their states, fine.

I have explained reasons why they were anti-slavery, and even found an important economic issue - who gets the land in the new Western territories - large plantation owners using black slaves or pure white farmers. An important issue for some part of the North. The implicit danger that pro-slavery states become the majority, with the symmetric fear that then the South states get a stable majority for a large time, has been also an issue.

And, note, I'm collecting information from many sides. I have not thought many years about this, but the last few days. That some of this information will be, in part, contradictory, is to be expected in such an initial state. So, in fact, I'm not sure how many people were anti-slavery and how strong. What I have seen until now seems that there was large agreement but not very strong, of type, yes, of course, I'm anti-slavery, but the weather is really nice today.

A legal declaration of secession is a formal juristical document. Given that there was no explicit "each state has the right to secess whenever he likes" in the constitution, it would be helpful to add something more, like some more or less clear violations of the constitution by the North (in their opinion, of course). If the slavery question gives this, it will be used. That the fugitive slaves laws had nice support in the constition, but were de facto in the North paper only (at least this was claimed), it is a nice justification for secession.

Just to clarify: I name it a war of secession. For the South, it is natural to diminish the role of the union, thus, to present all this as a loose confederation one can leave whenever one wants, and if the troops of another state, after this breakdown of the confederation, do not leave the territory, they are occupants and one can fight them as occupants, and the whole thing is presented as a war between different states. For the North, it is natural to diminish the role of the states, thus, to present it as if the states would be irrelevant - thus, the appropriate name is civil war.

Yes, and I thought we have clarified that this was the key question regarding who ownes the land - plantation owners from the South or small white farmers from the North. But, it seems, not:

For the slaveowners it would mean they could not obtain cheap big plantages there and use slaves to make big money out of this. And, if slavery would be allowed, the danger for the North was that the rich southern slave owners would get the best land there for big plantations, leaving only small bad pieces for Northern farmers. As far as I understand, at that time there was yet a lot of land in the West yet to be robbed from natives considered as subhumans by all whites, North as well as South, not?

Ok, fine. And I would guess, that with the dissolution of the union, the grant was cancelled, not?

Whatever, I have not cared about this, it is simply my guess that there have been also some lawyers in the South, and I would wonder if they would not have been able to make a sufficiently plausible case that Sumter has to be returned to the secessed state. And, of course, the North did not accept the secession as legal, so they, of course, continued to hold Fort Sumter.

Of course, the winner (re)writes the history, so if one wants to get a more or less realistic picture, one has to try to compensate this. Quite comfortable for the defenders of the mainstream, so they can present me as a defender of the fascists and so on of the South, but so what, such is life.

 

It was the only one mentioned, in the short or long run.

No "investments" or "taxes" except those related to slavery were mentioned. It was not "the North" whose rule was feared, but the "non-slave States" and the "anti-slavery forces" that Lincoln had united.

It is not me, but the authors of those documents, that make slavery the single, predominant issue of secession.

The declarations of secession I linked to you were not legal documents, not "juristical". They were not filed in court.

It was a civil war, under both scenarios, as all wars of secession are.

The small farmers of the North or the big slaveowners of the South would continue to own land in the North and the South. We are talking about the future States of the West. The landowners there would be citizens of the West, not the North or the South. If slavery were allowed, big slave plantations would be owned by rich slaveowners who came from the North or the South or were born in the West. If only free citizenry was allowed, then the free citizens who owned and worked on the land would be citizens from the North or the South or born in the West.

There were plenty of rich people in the North, capable of buying the best land in the West and making big ranches or slave plantations or whatever worked best for them. There were plenty of small farmers in the South, who would benefit by having less money competing for the best land, and couldn't afford many slaves in the first place. The issue was not whether the landowners would be from the North or South, but whether they would own slaves or not own slaves.

Why? The State of Virginia did not dissolve. Legal land ownership in the State of Virginia was not canceled. What does the dissolution of the Union have to do with it?

It never left. It was a physical place, with a registered and titled owner, in the State of Virginia, before and during and after the Civil War.

You can't have it both ways. Either 1) anti-slavery sentiment in the North was so significant that Lincoln could use it to unite the entire region, gain so much political advantage from anti-slavery sentiment he could win a national election in which he wasn't even on the ballot in several States, or 2) it wasn't a big issue for most people in the North, despite its overwhelming importance for the people in the South.

Either way, the racially bigoted and slavery-favoring residents of the South ended up almost entirely Democrats and stayed Democrats from the end of the Civil War until - for some reason - they switched Parties, starting around 1960 and en masse around 1968. The question is: those few and minority Republicans in the South from before the switch - what happened to them during this switch?

 

The civil war was about the right to own slaves.

The end.

 

They jumped parties because LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act.

 

Note - I can't edit the post above, where I was thinking about something else while typing and mistakenly wrote that Fort Sumter was in Virginia. It was and is in South Carolina.

The error is in post 51, second to last response. It makes no difference to the argument, as all States in the US grant and register title to real estate.

 

No. I have even quoted one from your own source.

"The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the South not at all. 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."

"The manufacturing interests entered into the same struggle early, and has clamored steadily for Government bounties and special favors. This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding States. ... These reasons prevailed, and they received for many years enormous bounties by the general acquiescence of the whole country."

The quote mentions slavery only to identify the states which have caused this problem as being among the non-slave states. The issue itself had no relation to slavery at all.

It makes clear that what was feared was that Lincoln has created a stable majority, and they were not part of it. Thus, they would be the losers.

It was not you who made it a very important issue. It is your reading who made it the single, only reason. And, as I have already described, one should expect a large difference between official documents, who have the aim to justify a political decision as legitimate, from the real issues.

Nice nitpicking, not more.

Under your and the Northern definition it was, I think it is more useful to distinguish secessionist wars from civil wars, but think this is quite irrelevant, the South described it as a war between states. What is your problem with this?

The small farmers of the North or the big slaveowners of the South would continue to own land in the North and the South. We are talking about the future States of the West. The landowners there would be citizens of the West, not the North or the South. If slavery were allowed, big slave plantations would be owned by rich slaveowners who came from the North or the South or were born in the West. If only free citizenry was allowed, then the free citizens who owned and worked on the land would be citizens from the North or the South or born in the West.

Yes. So what? You want to suggest there no strong correlation?

You may be unable to understand more subtle relations, I have no problem with this. To unite some otherwise very different states, one has to find something where they all agree. But this something does not have to be important - this is the job of the public relation team to make it important.

Then, I'm sure it was of overwhelming importance for the 1% in the South, the large plantation owners. How relevant it was for others I don't know. Maybe there have been a lot of middle class people with one slave to manage their housework, this is something I don't know. Maybe there was a general fear (certainly supported by the 1%) that something which hurts the 1% would be a catastrophe for the whole state. This works today for banks too big to fail, why not at that time?

This is certainly not my question, I couldn't care less. The switch only nicely illustrates that the two big parties differ only in symbolic politics, and even this symbolic part they switch without any shame.

 

Your example is of advantages only objectionable because they were granted preferentially to non-slave holding States. Again, the central issue is whether or not a State allowed slavery.

The identification of all political conflicts as between slave and non-slave States is completely based on slavery. The identification os States as non-slave is an identification based on slavery.

Between what and what? Rich people and the ability to buy the best land? Small farmers and poverty?

So you agree that slavery seemed important to the people who fought the Civil War, in fact seemed more important than anything else. You regard that as a consequence of public relations - Republican campaign rhetoric that got out of hand.

It's the thread topic.

In the US, racial bigotry is not symbolic. The Party that represents racial bigotry and the interests of racial bigots is not playing with symbols of something else. Their voters and policies are actually motivated by racial bigotry, and derived from racist assumptions. It's a real world phenomenon.

 

Sorry, but this is nonsense. The advantages have nothing to do with slavery at all. The point is they there given to northern states. The particular interests of these favoured industries would not disappear into nothing if they would allow slavery, thus, it was only mentioned to underscore that this subdivision is along the same lines.

This is identification. Identification needs a name. They could have used Southern states, slave-holding states, whatever. Of course, they wanted that as much as possible states would participate - so they have presented their case as a case of slave-holders - without success, because several states where slave-holding was legal have not participated in the secession.

Between being rich, being a slaveholder, from the South, being interested in creating large plantages in the West. On the other hand, being poor, without slaves, from the North, interested in creating a small farm in the West.

In fact it is not clear to me, yet, how important this issue really was. But I have a quite strong impression that your position that it was the only relevant one is much more based on your actual ideology than on historical facts.
Just to summarize what my small search has found: Several slave states not seceeding, slavery remaining legal there, fugitive slave laws remaining laws, an important leader of abolitionists being against the war and naming republicans hypocrites, the only real economic issue directly related with slavery being the control over the new western territories, another economic dividing line (agrarian South, manufactoring/industrial North).

No doubt at all that the issue is even very important for racist bigot sheeple, as well as for the antiraccist sheeple from the left.

But it is not an issue at all for the 1%. As well as gay marriage or abortion rights are not an issue for them. Their issues are different: How much is spend for the military and for the secret service. How some industries will be regulated to get rid of competitors. Which governments of foreign countries have to overthrown. How the narcotraffic has to be organized.

 

I posted for you the reasons the States that seceded did so. In every case, they said they seceded because they feared Lincoln was a threat to their slavery. So we know why the South seceded - to escape abolitionist sentiments that had united the North behind Lincoln.

Whether or not that was a delusion on their part we leave to others - we know what they themselves thought.

And that's all that we need for this thread. If you want to think of the North as not really caring about slavery one way or another, despite uniting against slavery behind Lincoln, it doesn't matter here. Here, the thread topic is the fate of the Republicans before the Great Bigot Party Switch around 1968.

 

No. You extracted from the official reasons what supported your ideas about this. And you complitely ignore the very idea that there is always a difference between reality and documents written by states.

Its all what you need for the thread.

I don't start to read something about history with some wishes what I want to read. I leave this to you.

I have simply looked at easily accessible sources like wiki and links you have provided and have found, as expected, that history is a little bit more complex than what the winner writes in schoolbooks for the sheeple.