Here we are over 150 years since the start of America's most costly war and contention over the causes of the war abounds. In a world infected with "alternative facts" and "fake news" it seems appropriate that perhaps we return to directly listening to the words of those who lived through the conflict. Period newspapers, broadsides, and books provide the best evidence of the actual causes of the conflict. I have clipped two of the hundreds of articles from the period to provide illustrations. The first is a speech from Parliament delivered in 1862 by P.A. Taylor. Taylor has the benefit of being an informed member of a supposedly neutral government almost a full year into the war. Of course, the British Empire's neutrality was tipped ever-so-slightly toward hoping the Confederacy would succeed in splitting from their trade competitor, the United States. Taylor was quite clear that the perspective from across the ocean was that "slavery and slavery alone which inevitably caused the severance of the Union."
What could a foreigner possibly know about such things? There is little doubt that Taylor and others got that impression by reading any of the hundreds of speeches and opinions of people living in the Southern Confederacy. I have included an example printed in late 1860 in a Mississippi newspaper. That document reprints a speech in the Georgia legislature at a time when the slave-holding states were beginning to secede. The Georgia speech and it's white supremacists assertions that "Our fathers made this a government for the white man, rejecting the negro, as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race... strips the mask off of the fantasy.
The fiction that the war was started over "States' Rights" is more of a modern construct. If you read Taylor's comments he lucidly presents the concept that the Fugitive Slave Act and similar laws infringed upon the State sovereignty of the free states by forcing taxpayers in those states to support a system illegal in their own states. Southerners calling for secession constantly referred to rights related to the use, transport, and possession of property (slaves). They did not feel that they wanted to establish their own currencies, postal systems, treaties with foreign nations, or relationships with Indian tribes. The right they were worried about was the right to own people. In future blogs I'll post more of these.
Much is made of the fact that many Union soldiers were adamant they were not fighting to free the slaves and that most Southerners did not own slaves. This is a red herring. The war was started by the Southern state governments explicitly to protect slavery. This was done in several cases with the consent of the governed. Why people fight in any conflict involves a variety of reasons, as complex as the populations involved. If those in the North want to believe all their ancestors fought to set men free, that is a fantasy. If those in the South want to believe that few on their ancestors cared one way or the other about slavery and fought to protect their state's rights, that is a fantasy as well. Our ancestors deserve to remembered for what they were and did, not what we wish them to be.
What could a foreigner possibly know about such things? There is little doubt that Taylor and others got that impression by reading any of the hundreds of speeches and opinions of people living in the Southern Confederacy. I have included an example printed in late 1860 in a Mississippi newspaper. That document reprints a speech in the Georgia legislature at a time when the slave-holding states were beginning to secede. The Georgia speech and it's white supremacists assertions that "Our fathers made this a government for the white man, rejecting the negro, as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race... strips the mask off of the fantasy.
The fiction that the war was started over "States' Rights" is more of a modern construct. If you read Taylor's comments he lucidly presents the concept that the Fugitive Slave Act and similar laws infringed upon the State sovereignty of the free states by forcing taxpayers in those states to support a system illegal in their own states. Southerners calling for secession constantly referred to rights related to the use, transport, and possession of property (slaves). They did not feel that they wanted to establish their own currencies, postal systems, treaties with foreign nations, or relationships with Indian tribes. The right they were worried about was the right to own people. In future blogs I'll post more of these.
Much is made of the fact that many Union soldiers were adamant they were not fighting to free the slaves and that most Southerners did not own slaves. This is a red herring. The war was started by the Southern state governments explicitly to protect slavery. This was done in several cases with the consent of the governed. Why people fight in any conflict involves a variety of reasons, as complex as the populations involved. If those in the North want to believe all their ancestors fought to set men free, that is a fantasy. If those in the South want to believe that few on their ancestors cared one way or the other about slavery and fought to protect their state's rights, that is a fantasy as well. Our ancestors deserve to remembered for what they were and did, not what we wish them to be.
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