I am trying the new web address. I have almost finished reading Eric's Ian W
Toll books on the WW2 in the Pacific. It is all excellent and thanks for the
review Eric
"A Southern View of the Invasion of the South", by Samuel Ashe was enlightening
and timely as there are lots of protests in Alabama about our Confederate
Memorials. So I will give an executive summary.
The slavery situation was not an issue because Dred Scott confirmed that
slavery in the South was legal. In fact under Buchanan administration the
House and Senate had passed an amendment to the constitution making slavery in
any State that chose it, legal in perpetuity. It had not been signed yet by
the President I guess or gone to the States. That said, Wisconsin and Vermont
had nullified the Fugitive Slave Act and often juries in the North would do
that as well. The John Brown raid and the support from the North that he had
made the South fearful of another Nat Turner insurrection with support from the
North. The Merrill tariff was passed in the final days of the Buchanan
administration raising tariffs from 17-34%. The South was paying 80% of all
the duties and 75% of the benefit was going to the North. So the South was
feeling tax enslavement from the North. (If States could nullify laws so could
they.)
Only some of the Southern States had voted to secede when Lincoln came in and
he said that slavery was safe under his administration. When the Confederacy
was started, their constitution banned tariffs and allowed any other State to
join them. They said that slavery would always be a State decision and they
invited slave free states to join their confederacy. The North shipowners
repositioned their ships to the South. The textile mills in the North told
Lincoln that their mills would be shut down in 60-90 days because of the tariff
on cotton going North. Lincoln needed the Merrill tariff to finance his
internal improvements and was under pressure to keep the South in. Of interest
is that West Point taught that under the Constitution the States were allowed
to secede as New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island had stipulated that in their
agreement to join the union and the other states had agreed. Virginia, North
Carolina, and Arkansas had not yet seceded and Virginia had even voted not to
secede at their convention. However, after Lincoln manipulated the Ft Sumpter
situation and then asked to raise 75.000 troops to attack the South, Virginia,
N Carolina and Arkansas refused to send troops to fight the South as they felt
that is was not legal to do so under the Constitution, so seceded. I
understand that there never was a declaration of war.
So to make a long story short, the South felt that they were leaving the Union
for much the same reason that the colonies decided to leave Britain. They felt
that Britain would aid them in a free trade zone as their textile mills were at
risk as well. Economically the South had more wealth, but much of it was in
slaves. When slavery was eliminated from the North gradually, the slave holder
would sell their slaves to the South just before they reached the age of
freedom under the law. Illinois had a law that Blacks were only aloud to
transit the State and could remain for 10 days only. The free soil movement in
the West did not want Blacks to get any of the free soil. That is why Lincoln
was all for sending the Southern slaves to Black colonies.
I could go on and on about the White supremest in the North as well as South,
but you get the gist of the thinking at this point in time. Our history is
complex and complicated with diverse narratives for the past as well as
present.
I hope that our list serve survives the transition. I always look forward to
it.
Doug Everett