Comments by "Patrick Cleburne" (@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558) on "PragerU"
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@TheStapleGunKid And if Blanchard was wrong, most other abolitionists were wrong, too. Why do you disagree with what a large majority of abolitionists had been consistently advocating for over a decade prior to the war? And southern proponents of slavery made much the same argument for union. Congressman Joseph Rogers Underwood of Kentucky said in 1842: “...the dissolution of the Union was the dissolution of slavery... Just as soon as Mason and Dixon's line and the Ohio river become the boundary between independent nations, slavery ceases in all the border states. How could we retain our slaves, when they, in one hour, one day, or a week at the furthest, could pass the boundary? Sooner or later, this process would extend itself farther and farther south, rendering slave labor so precarious and uncertain that it could not be depended upon; and consequently a slave would become almost worthless; and thus the institution itself would gradually, but certainly, perish... Slavery in the States would fall with the Union.”
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@TheStapleGunKid It figures you didn't mean anything substantive with your initial claim to which I first responded. You presented that claim as if there were two separate things ("...both the reason... and the reason...") when the seceded states controlling their border defenses obviously and naturally followed from secession, as you now more or less recognize.
Not that the second point even follows from the first, because secession didn't immediately lead to war and didn't necessitate war... the North could have allowed the South to secede in peace as plenty of Northerners advocated... the war started because for reasons completely separate from any questions relating to chattel slavery (as is likewise the case with the reasons you give) the North refused to allow the South to secede in peace... and those reasons, the North's reasons (which were the same as your reasons for denying the southern states the right to independence), were what defined the war, what defined the North's war demands, what defined the central point on which the two sides couldn't come to terms and the central point over which they fought... so you really only have one point, and that point is indeed nothing but inexplicable nonsense.
If your claim that "Slavery was... the reason the Confederates seceded..." isn't inexplicable nonsense, explain in your own words what you mean. The southern states seceded because the Republican-led North was doing and/or threatening to do something/things the southern states didn't like, and that obviously wasn't slavery. The declarations of causes of secession of the states that seceded prior to Lincoln's call to war make perfectly clear that those things were things that seceding did nothing to protect slavery against, i.e. that they weren't seceding to "preserve slavery" from anything Republicans were doing or threatening to do. Seceding did nothing to protect the southern states' constitutional right to have fugitive slaves delivered up from the northern states. Seceding did nothing to protect their constitutional right to take slaves to territories like Kansas (the territory most central to their disputes over the question.) What other slavery-related grievances were there? Quote the declarations of causes if you think there was something else that was more significant and that wasn't even less directly related to the continuation of slavery in the South.
""Our position is thoroughly identified with slavery", they meant it."
Sure they did. So what? They also meant it when they began describing why they were seceding by saying, "...fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations..." They didn't secede because Northerners were anti-slavery. Northerners had been anti-slavery for decades without that fact presenting any cause for secession. They seceded because Republicans were trashing the constitution, and that's exactly what they said (as I've already quoted to you and as they said in other words multiple times in the declarations of causes.) They didn't secede in order to get the northern states to fulfill their constitutional obligations, because seceding didn't do that, and they never had any expectation of the northern states fulfilling their constitutional obligations after they seceded. Those obligations weren't in any way at stake in the question of secession (except insofar as the southern states chose to absolve the northern states of those obligations by seceding.) What was at stake was the constitution, and that's exactly what they said: "On the 4th day of March next, [Republicans] will take possession of the Government. ...
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist..."
"they seceded, in their own words, to avoid 'submission to the mandates of abolition.'"
And what would have forced them to submit? They had a constitutional right to practice slavery. The federal government had no constitutional right to interfere, neither directly nor indirectly, as Lincoln himself said. If they didn't want to submit and the North had no constitutional right to make them, then what did they have to fear other than the destruction of the constitution?
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@theonefisher The Republican party was founded to exploit a social issue without ending slavery in order to gain power to facilitate the age of robber barons. The antebellum Democratic party stood for respecting the framework of the law (the Constitution) for resolving differences and they stood in opposition to crony capitalism. Sure, antebellum Southerners were Democrats, but so was a very significant percentage of Northerners that were no less in favor of slavery than Republicans.
Here's one pretty good explanation from a famous Massachusetts abolitionist, Lysander Spooner:
these Northern merchants and manufacturers... were willing to continue to be the accomplices of the slave-holders in the future, for the same pecuniary considerations. But the slave-holders, either doubting the fidelity of their Northern allies, or feeling themselves strong enough to keep their slaves in subjection without Northern assistance, would no longer pay the price which these Northern men demanded. And it was to enforce this price in the future – that is, to monopolize the Southern markets, to maintain their industrial and commercial control over the South – that these Northern manufacturers and merchants lent some of the profits of their former monopolies for the war, in order to secure to themselves the same, or greater, monopolies in the future. These – and not any love of liberty or justice – were the motives on which the money for the war was lent by the North. In short, the North said to the slave-holders: If you will not pay us our price (give us control of your markets) for our assistance against your slaves, we will secure the same price (keep control of your markets) by helping your slaves against you, and using them as our tools for maintaining dominion over you; for the control of your markets we will have, whether the tools we use for that purpose be black or white, and be the cost, in blood and money, what it may...
And now these lenders of blood-money demand their pay; and the government, so called, becomes their tool, their servile, slavish, villainous tool, to extort it from the labor of the enslaved people both of the North and South. It is to be extorted by every form of direct, and indirect, and unequal taxation. ...these holders of the debt are to be paid still further... by such tariffs on imports as will enable our home manufacturers to realize enormous prices for their commodities; also by such monopolies in banking as will enable them to keep control of, and thus enslave and plunder, the industry and trade of the great body of the Northern people themselves. In short, the industrial and commercial slavery of the great body of the people, North and South, black and white, is the price which these lenders of blood money demand, and insist upon, and are determined to secure, in return for the money lent for the war...
The meaning of this is: Submit quietly to all the robbery and slavery we have arranged for you, and you can have “peace.” But in case you resist, the same lenders of blood-money, who furnished the means to subdue the South, will furnish the means again to subdue you...
The whole affair, on the part of those who furnished the money, has been, and now is, a deliberate scheme of robbery and murder; not merely to monopolize the markets of the South, but also to monopolize the currency, and thus control the industry and trade, and thus plunder and enslave the laborers, of both North and South. And Congress and the president are today the merest tools for these purposes... And to hide at once, if possible, both their servility and crimes, they attempt to divert public attention, by crying out that they have “Abolished Slavery!” That they have “Saved the Country!” That they have “Preserved our Glorious Union!”...
The pretense that the “abolition of slavery” was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud... Who, but such usurpers, robbers, and murderers as they, ever established slavery? Or what government, except one resting upon the sword, like the one we now have, was ever capable of maintaining slavery? And why did these men abolish slavery? Not from any love of liberty in general – not as an act of justice to the black man himself, but only “as a war measure,” and because they wanted his assistance, and that of his friends, in carrying on the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both black and white. And yet these imposters now cry out that they have abolished the chattel slavery of the black man – although that was not the motive of the war – as if they thought they could thereby conceal, atone for, or justify that other slavery which they were fighting to perpetuate, and to render more rigorous and inexorable than it ever was before...
Still another of the frauds of these men is, that they are now establishing, and that the war was designed to establish, “a government of consent.” The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this – that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot. This idea was the dominant one on which the war was carried on; and it is the dominant one, now that we have got what is called “peace.”
Their pretenses that they have “Saved the Country,” and “Preserved our Glorious Union,” are frauds like all the rest of their pretenses. By them they mean simply that they have subjugated, and maintained their power over, an unwilling people. This they call “Saving the Country”; as if an enslaved and subjugated people – or as if any people kept in subjection by the sword (as it is intended that all of us shall be hereafter) – could be said to have any country. This, too, they call “Preserving our Glorious Union”; as if there could be said to be any Union, glorious or inglorious, that was not voluntary. Or as if there could be said to be any union between masters and slaves; between those who conquer, and those who are subjugated. All these cries of having “abolished slavery,” of having “saved the country,” of having “preserved the union,” of establishing “a government of consent,” and of “maintaining the national honor,” are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats – so transparent that they ought to deceive no one – when uttered as justifications for the war, or for the government that has succeeded the war, or for now compelling the people to pay the cost of the war, or for compelling anybody to support a government that he does not want.
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@theonefisher Big difference between what you said about "ending" slavery and, as your link says, keeping slaveholders from taking slaves to the territories. The latter was significant especially insofar as it offered a political advantage to the party. Besides the political advantages of getting new states to align against the Democratic South, the chief motivation was summarized well by Lincoln when he said, “There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races … A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas…” And also:
“Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man.”
And Georgia's declaration of causes of secession similarly described the Republicans' crony capitalist motivations: "[after] the act of 1846 was passed... 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. There was but small hope of its reversal; upon the direct issue, none at all. 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."
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@sabin97 What do you mean when you say the South fought for slavery? Yes, obviously the South was for slavery, but it's not as if the North had been threatening to abolish slavery in any kind of constitutionally legitimate way (or really in any way at all) prior to or even after secession, so the South definitely wasn't fighting for slavery in the sense of fighting against abolition, because there was no war over abolition, not even close.
And there's nothing the Confederacy could have done about slavery (e.g. to abolish it) that would have appeased the North's war aims. The North's basis for denying the Confederate States the right to self-government was completely independent of anything to do with slavery.
And the South's declarations of causes are declarations of causes of secession. The South never, according to their own documents, said they were fighting for slavery. They seceded states said they were fighting for their right to choose their own government. And that's obviously what the war was about: the South was fighting for the right to govern itself, and the North was fighting to be able to subjugate the South by force against its will (much like a slave master subjugates a slave.) Even some abolitionists recognized that it was the North, not the South, that was fighting for slavery.
But it's not even accurate to say that the South seceded for slavery. The grievances they listed in their declarations of causes certainly related to slavery, and the southern states certainly wanted to maintain slavery, but seceding did nothing to protect the southern states' ability to take slaves to Kansas or Nebraska; and seceding did nothing to ensure the extradition of terrorists that murdered random Southerners under shallow abolitionist pretenses -- in fact, seceding meant forfeiting any extradition rights; and seceding did nothing to ensure the return of fugitive slaves from the non-slave states -- in fact, seceding meant forfeiting the rights of the fugitive slave clause even from the slave states that remained in the union. So even those abuses of the slave states' constitutional rights which played a major role in leading the Confederate states to secede weren't rights for which those states seceded.
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@sabin97 Hiding behind vague and misleading statements is the only way you're going to justify the North's side in the war and deny the justice of the South's side against the North. One thing you can't show is that the South was "fighting for slavery" in any sense that made their cause in the war unjust or the North's cause against them justified.
As one prominent northern abolitionist, George Bassett, said in 1861, “Such is the deranged and distracted condition of the political elements of our country at the present time, that, while the South are bravely fighting the great battle of national liberty in the name of slavery, the North are maintaining the principles of oriental despotism in the name of Liberty!”
Or as another abolitionist, Lysander Spooner said shortly after the war, "The pretense that the 'abolition of slavery' was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud... And yet these imposters now cry out that they have abolished the chattel slavery of the black man – although that was not the motive of the war – as if they thought they could thereby conceal, atone for, or justify that other slavery which they were fighting to perpetuate, and to render more rigorous and inexorable than it ever was before..."
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@Ben00000 If Lincoln had been considered radical he wouldn't have won a majority of the votes in the majority of the northern states. He was the mainstream Republican candidate. And he was just as racist as northern Democrats. And, according to the most famous observer of 19th century America, the French author of Democracy in America, Northerners, especially in the Midwest (state like Lincoln's Illinois), were more racist than Southerners. Of course, that didn't mean they were for slavery, but Illinois, for example, did amend its constitution in 1862 to prohibit blacks from moving to Illinois, even though they already had a law making it illegal. At least one of the states that Lincoln won in the 1860 election allowed blacks to transit through the state but punished them with lashings if they didn't pass through and out of the state fast enough.
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