The Southern grievances
June 25, 2008
So, I’m up to about the election of 1856 in my Civil War history text and I’m still having difficulty wrapping my head around why the Southern states felt it was necessary to secede if it did not have anything to do with slavery. The line has been that the North was interfering with the South’s way of life, but I’m not even seeing much of that.
Wars are fought almost always fought because people see a threat to their “way of life.” So the details of how that way of life is threatened are vitally important. You don’t go running through the streets yelling “our way of life has been threatened” and expect to rally an army unless people have actually seen something happen that’s actually threatening. The threat needs to be credible and it needs to be specific.
I know people here have denied that the war was about slavery. But I really don’t see any other threats to southern autonomy. In fact, I barely see a threat to that.
Aside from a few deeply committed anti-slavery politicians and the occasional John Brown radical, no one seemed likely to try to abolish slavery in the Southern states. Most, if not all, of the political power was willing to leave slavery alone in the Southern states. There was strong opposition to the expansion of slavery into the territories and an active illegal movement helping fugitive slaves, but politically the South won capitulation after capitulation. Southern appeasement just led to more violence — even in the Capitol building.
As you probably remember, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 established protected boundaries for slavery within the Louisiana Purchase territory.
There were a few years of argument over whether or not this should apply to the territories wrested from Spanish control, but in 1850 a new agreement was signed that permitted slavery in the New Mexico territory. So slavery was permitted to extend into these areas. Abolitionists were appalled, of course. So were those who wanted to see slavery limited to the states in which it was already present. But these groups were in the political minority, and the South gained new land.
The Compromise of 1850 also significantly strengthened the fugitive slave laws in place since 1793. They added penalties for not helping slave owners, required Federal Marshals to help apprehend slaves, and gave Federal Marshals the power to force active cooperation in manhunts from the local citizenry. After these laws were passed, slave hunters could with a minimum of bureaucratic fuss take any black person they claimed was a slave back to the South — and require the assistance of free-soil citizens and law enforcement to do so. That was a clear imposition on free soil autonomy, but that doesn’t seem to have ruffled the principled South’s states-rights feathers any.
Even that was not enough for the South. Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska act in 1854 violating the Missouri and 1850 Compromises by allowing slavery in territories well north of the 36° 30′ parallel. Once this happened, pro-slavery Missourians flooded the territory, casting twice as many ballots as there were registered voters. The illegally-elected pro-slavery territory government acted aggressively against abolitionist and free-soil settlers: they criminalized criticism of slavery and instituted a death penalty for anyone who helped a slave escape.
When they attacked and burned the town of Lawrence after the anti-slavery shadow government had surrendered, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner gave an angry (and rude) speech about Southern aggression and violence. A few days later the southern states offered their rebuttal. South Carolinian Congressman Preston Brooks, bracketed by two allies, approached a seated, unarmed Sumner and beat Sumner with a walking stick. Sumner was not able to return to the Senate for three years because of his injuries. Brooks was hailed as a hero and role-model across the South and relected.
Kansas was not alone, however. The South already had a solid history forcing the spread their “way of life” with violence: southern states backed several failed invasions of Cuba and Mexico in an attempt to add these regions as slave-holding states. In 1856, Southern-backed “adventurer” William Walker helped Nicaraguan rebels overthrow the independent government named himself President, revoked Nicaragua’s emancipation laws, then sought annexation by the United States.
So what does the behavior of the South look like at this point? Political violence in Kansas sanctioned by the territorial government, coupled with unconstitutional restrictions on free speech. Newly opened slave territory north of the Compromise line and within Nicaragua. Federally-backed manhunts against fugitive slaves which violate free-soil sovereignty. A violent attack on a Northern statesman which Southerners are encouraged to emulate.
This does not sound like an oppressed population. If anything, it sounds like the North had more right to fear for its autonomy than the the South did. The South had gained more property and had been given the right to impose their definition of property on Northern states. Where the autonomy and lifestyle of anyone other than themselves were concerned, they didn’t care — and for the most part they got their way.
So why did the South secede? What were the injustices?
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June 25th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Here’s a short of an answer as I can come up with that at the same time gives some citations to back up my argument.
As the North industrialized and expanded its urban population, Hamilton’s vision of the central government as a cash cow for politically connected business slowly consolidated itself. This created a system of high tariffs collected in the South and used to benefit Northern business. I’ve seen estimates that 85% of the Federal revenues came from Southern agriculture, but 90% of all Federal expenditures went to Northern infrastructure.
The injustice was quickly noted:
“The North has adopted a system of revenue and disbursements in which an undue proportion of the burden of taxation has been imposed upon the South, and an undue proportion of its proceeds appropriated to the North.”
John Calhoun (1782-1850) political theorist, economist, Vice-President
“Wealth has fled from the South, and settled in regions north of the Potomac … Under Federal legislation, the exports of the South have been the basis of the Federal revenue … and nothing or next to nothing is returned to them in the shape of Government expenditures.”
Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton (1782-1858)
This led to the first secession crisis between South Carolina, which refused to pay what its people called the Tariff of Abomination, and the Federal government, which demanded its money. Here’s a brief summary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullification_Crisis
Notice that slavery had nothing to do with that showdown between South Carolina and DC!
Even though a compromise was achieved that headed off the Nullification Crisis, conflicts continued between North and South. While it was a conflict of economic systems, that is, between commerce and agriculture, the North began defining the debate as between “free” states and “slave” states. Of course, it was ok to run sweat shops that would cruelly dispose of workers who could no longer produce, as was common in the big Northern cities. For an objective account of how slaves were actually treated better than the lowest rung of industrial workers, read “Time on the Cross” by Fogel and Engerman.
“A balance of power between two combinations of states, and not the existence of slavery, gave rise to this unfortunate, and absurd controversy. Banking, funding, and tariff interests united to beget the Missouri project, and that project begat the idea of using slavery as an instrument for effecting a balance of power.”
John Taylor of Caroline, 1753-1824 decentralist political thinker, lawyer, planter, legislator
Since the beginning of the Republic, great care was taken to balance the sectional interests of North and South. But the election of Lincoln and Hamlin, both from the North, shocked Southerners. As North Carolina’s governor John Ellis noted:
“Two persons have been elected to the offices of President and Vice-President exclusively by the people of ONE SECTION of the country…A clearer case of foreign domination could not well be presented.”
When war came, it was clear that it was a war between two economic and political systems, as opposed to the post-war propaganda that it was a great, noble war of liberation. In the real world, nations do not go to war to do good deeds; they go to war for power, land, and treasure.
This, too, was noted at the time:
“Lincoln’s determination received the hearty applause of powerful northern interests. Eastern manufacturers worried that they would lose Southern markets to European competitors because of the Confederacy’s free-trade policy. Yankee merchants and ship builders faced an end to a monopoly on the South’s coastal trade that the government granted to US vessels. Holders of government securities were edgy about the Union’s loss of tariff revenue.” Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, professor of History and Economics, Golden Gate University, San Francisco, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War (1996)
Foreign observers quickly comprehended the real issue the South faced: “The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states.”Charles Dickens (1812-1879) literary champion of the poor, in an 1861 article.
Hope this inspires you to learn more. I suggest, for starters:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/jarvis/jarvis110.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo107.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo75.html
Enjoy!
June 25th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Thanks, Mike. I’m a little suspicious of Jarvis as a source since I’ve already run into
herhim cherry-picking sentences in a document to make a point contrary to the evidence (see Why did Lee free his slaves?), but it is at least something more to think about as I continue reading.June 25th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
“When war came, it was clear that it was a war between two economic and political systems, as opposed to the post-war propaganda that it was a great, noble war of liberation. In the real world, nations do not go to war to do good deeds; they go to war for power, land, and treasure.”–>
Ah. Yes. Now we seem to be moving toward the truth, somewhere between the great nobility of Lincoln written by the Northern victors and the romance of Gone with the Wind. A defense of a way of life centuries old or solely the defense of slavery?
June 26th, 2008 at 10:21 am
You know, I’ve always instinctively negatively reacted to arguments people would make in the past stating that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery but about other differences the South had with the North. It just didn’t seem that way to how I perceived things. Maybe thats because slavery seems like such an abominable injustice, one just feels like… come on, of course that’s got to be the big issue everyone was fighting about. However, Thud, your entry, in a way, seems to almost argue that the war wasn’t really about slavery. Like you’ve stated, if they had let things be, slavery wasn’t going away anytime soon and the South was being given almost everything they wanted in the context of slavery.
So, then, Tuggle shows that the South felt like all the money was going north while they were doing all the work to make the country a success. To them, all the politicians in control of things were coming from the North and they kept telling them what to do and they weren’t seeing any economic success from continuingly kowtowing to Washington. Thus, there is the argument that there WERE economic and social differences between the north and south separate from slavery. However, slavery is easier to explain and understand and it also happened to be a big dividing point between the two sides… even though the North wasn’t really as angelic about the issue as they now get written up to be. So, while it was about a lot of OTHER things… it got wrapped up in the symbology and rights of slavery since thats the BIG issue and the easiest issue to grasp.
This also seems similar to many so called “religious” wars throughout history. Where religion was used as the supposed reason for the two sides to go to war (Protestant vs. Catholics or Christians vs. Muslims, etc.) when really the reasons for war were the traditional ones of “power, land and treasure” as Mike points out.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Lasloo:
I probably wasn’t clear enough there. I think my point was that the North was more respectful of states rights than is generally acknowledged. I still think the Civil War was primarily about slavery. The South wasn’t being given everything they wanted, but they were slowly chipping away at the restrictions that had been placed on them. They were gaining, not losing, ground. And all that seemed to do was make them feel entitled to more. And confirm that intimidation and brute force was the way to get it.
“Give them an inch” comes to mind, as does the word “appeasement.”
On the Southern side, you had people who view slaves as a natural resource — like oil or coal — to be used and exploited. And the South certainly used slaves for that purpose, just as it had been used by other civilizations for centuries.
On the Northern side, you had people who saw slaves as humans rather than resources, and therefore entitled to the same rights as everyone else.
There were also less radical people who figured slavery was on the way out if we just waited around. They resisted attempts to extend slavery into the territories, but were willing to compromise on the issue to keep the peace.
So what I am saying is that this was not a war over States rights because those appear to have been mostly honored — and anyway, Southern states didn’t seem to apply that principle evenly either. The south seceded because they were not content to stay in their own states with their slaves, they wanted to expand and grow slavery, whereas the North wanted to see it go away. But most anti-slavery people were willing to see it drift away rather than get rid of it all at once.
Whether Northerners wanted to see slavery ended for their own economic good or out of a sense of human justice (and I think there were both) is not of any real concern to me. The important thing was that slavery be ended because it was brutal, inhuman, and immoral.
June 26th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Thats an interesting argument. Not sure if I’ve seen it portrayed that way before. While the South made the first aggressive move to start the Civil War (Fort Sumter), succession is often portrayed as the South just wanting to be left alone and the North being the aggressive one and not letting them be.
However, it seems, you’re also making an additional argument that the South probably wouldn’t have been happy with just winning the Civil War. They would have wanted to expand slavery to other places even AFTER they won their independence. Possibly, again, to the Northern U.S..
I think there could definitely be some decent arguments for this point of view. Especially, if you focus on the Confederate politicians and the rich politically influential plantation slave owners.
My only problem is that I don’t truly think that most of the people doing the actual fighting were THAT passionate about slavery. Heck, I’m sure most of them couldn’t even afford to have slaves. They could hardly feed themselves and their families much less house and feed slaves. Somewhere in all of this, for most people, it became an issue of social, and economic differences. For Southerners, anything that was going wrong in their lives was because of the North regardless of whether that was true. And also, most people saw themselves a citizen of their state before they saw themselves a citizen of America. Thus, nationalism (or in this case, state-ism) was a big reason for their willingness to go to war. I do truly think this describes the reasons for someone like Robert E. Lee as well as. Even, Grant was mostly apolitical and while only briefly a slave owner himself, he borrowed his father-in-law’s slaves throughout his pre-Civil-War struggles to make a living. Now, at the same time, I don’t think he was pro-slavery either. Again, I believe Grant fought for nationalistic reasons rather than any clear-cut abolitionist feelings.
June 26th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Wow, I was going to post a simple response, but the comments above have cowed me. :) Seriously, with all the reading I’ve done over the years, I, too, believe it was still over slavery. The case laid out by John regarding states rights is exactly how I’ve come to see it.
It’s all spin and will remain spin in perpetuity.
June 26th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Is it kowtow or cowtow or cowed? :-) Were they being frightened by force or showing deference? Mooo…
June 26th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Thud said:
“So what I am saying is that this was not a war over States rights because those appear to have been mostly honored — ”
Except the right to slavery.
lasloo : http://www.cfhi.net/BlackSoldiersinRedBlueandGrey.php
You may have seen this, but if not its interesting.
And another, it’s a short vid : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8hPo6mYnks
June 27th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Someone referred your comments about one of my articles to me. You accused me of “cherry picking” for stating that Robt E. Lee freed the slaves his wife inherited without mentioning that her father’s will called for their freedom. Before I respond, I should point out that you did not read my article. I know this because my picture is printed at the end of all my articles which clearly shows me to be a man although you referred to me as “her.”
If you had read the article, you would see that my point was that slaves under Lee’s control were freed before those under Grant’s control. Many slaveowner’s wills called for the manumission of their slaves at their death or within a reasonable time thereafter so there was nothing unusual about the will Lee worked with. If we consider that the war consumed most of Lee’s time, his ability to free slaves within the time frame specified in the will is amazing - he refused to just dump the slaves within any means of support if he could avoid it. Lee even kept some of the slaves as paid employees.
It seems to me that you “cherry picked” my article - or possibly someone else did and you relied on their interpretation. If I had time I could do the same with your comments. Based on what I read of your “research” I would not recommend that you pursue a career as a history professor.
Gail Jarvis
June 27th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Gail, first of all I apologize for the gender confusion. You’re right — I didn’t see the the photograph at the end of the article.
What I refer to as “cherry-picking” is your assertion that Lee “vigorously opposed” slavery based on a sentence in a letter to his wife. The rest of Lee’s letter goes on to explain that Lee — at the very least — considers slavery a necessary evil and part of God’s plan to civilize black people. He goes on in that letter to criticize abolitionists as interfering in that plan.