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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28223 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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We can debate whether or not the South would have abandoned slavery on its own initiative without it being forced to do so by the Union's victory in the Civil War

I think it's pretty clear they would have, and that the Civil War was more about Federal control over the states than it was about slavery. I judge this based on how other countries prohibited slavery, specifically England. I don't think they would have continued slavery indefinitely any more than Brazil did.

but I don't see how one could deny that the intent of the founders of the Confederacy was to preserve slavery in perpetuity

Their intent was to withdraw from an agreement that they felt their supposed countrymen were not following. The basis of this refusal was of course slavery, but it could have been something else. I think you should read the declarations of secession. I did, and while slavery is right up and down all of the documents, it's revealing how many different complaints they had, and how reasonable those complaints are. These independents states agreed to combine to form a union for mutual prosperity, and the conditions of that union had been trampled for decades because one side was unwilling to abide by the agreement they had made.

What's even more confusing is that, for most of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, it seemed like it was fine to like the Confederacy.

The vitriol towards Confederates I see in stories like this and in some of the comments here seems new. I can't say that those commenters are wrong--I share their reasons for disliking the Confederacy, although something (maybe just the loyalty of my Southern blood) prevents me from reacting with the same level of antipathy. I just wonder what happened to the truce that seemed to have once reigned in this particular culture war.

What happened was Obama, and then Trump. And it's not about the Confederacy, it never really was and never really will be. It's about me, and white people like me, here and today. The one single person whose actions were most responsible for this statue being melted down is Donald Trump. When he won in 2016, half the country declared war on the basket of deplorables, and sought to tear down their statues and destroy their culture. Literal culture war. The statue was melted this week because Trump won in 2016. It was melted to show whites that this country doesn't want them, it doesn't want their history, it wants to rewrite the history of their nation to exclude them.

I didn't even vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020, but I can tell when people hate me and want me, my parents, my brothers, and my children dead and gone from this world. I can tell when they take symbolic actions, and I can interpret the symbolism. Now I wish I did.

I think you should read the declarations of secession.

Mississippi's makes it as clear as possible that all other issues were sideshows in comparison to the conflict over slavery.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.

Hard to get more explicit than that.

Their intent was to withdraw from an agreement that they felt their supposed countrymen were not following. The basis of this refusal was of course slavery, but it could have been something else. I think you should read the declarations of secession. I did, and while slavery is right up and down all of the documents, it's revealing how many different complaints they had, and how reasonable those complaints are.

Can you cite a few? There were some complaints about tariffs and such (the agricultural South had different financial interests than the industrial North), but for over fifty years leading up to the Civil War, almost all political conflict between the North and the South was very explicitly about slavery. Every presidential candidate (whatever his personal feelings) had to primarily calibrate his position on slavery in order to win enough votes from the South. Every new acquisition by the US became an (often violent) battle over whether it would allow slavery. The Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, these were bitter attempts to reconcile states over slavery. You sort of brush past the fact that "slavery is right up and down all of the documents" - yes, it was, because that was the issue. The "agreements that they felt their supposed countrymen were not following" were all about slavery.

All other disputes between the North and South - economic, cultural, whatever else you're thinking of - were comparatively minor and would never have led to a secession. The Civil War was about slavery.

All emphasis mine.

The very first paragraph from South Carolina.

The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

Further reading, though I'm tempted to just copy the whole thing

In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.

The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.

It's not slavery, it's about reneging on the deal you previously made. None of the slave states would have joined the union in the first place without the concessions they received, concessions intended to prevent the North from controlling the South. Those concessions were systematically undermined and ignored for decades until finally it was obvious that the North never intended to perform on the duties it committed to, and never intended to respect the limits of the federal government.

South Carolina did not agree to be ruled by New York, South Carolina agreed to form a Union with New York under the condition that New York is obligated to return slaves to South Carolina. If New York doesn't want to do that, it's up to them to dissolve the Union, but instead they simply ignored the constitution and the agreement they had made with the free and independent states of the South in order to impose their rule.

I'm tired of people lying about it. The South was right to secede, and they have every justification to do so. They stuck a deal which was ignored and undermined for 80 years, until finally they had had enough and left.

And then Lincoln conquered them and forged the American Empire, and now we don't hear about the Free and Independent State of South Carolina, or These United States.

The Civil War was about federal conquest of the continent.

From Texas:

The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.

By the disloyalty of the Northern States and their citizens and the imbecility of the Federal Government, infamous combinations of incendiaries and outlaws have been permitted in those States and the common territory of Kansas to trample upon the federal laws, to war upon the lives and property of Southern citizens in that territory, and finally, by violence and mob law, to usurp the possession of the same as exclusively the property of the Northern States.

The Federal Government, while but partially under the control of these our unnatural and sectional enemies, has for years almost entirely failed to protect the lives and property of the people of Texas against the Indian savages on our border, and more recently against the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico; and when our State government has expended large amounts for such purpose, the Federal Government has refuse reimbursement therefor, thus rendering our condition more insecure and harassing than it was during the existence of the Republic of Texas.

...

The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions-- a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation.

...

For these and other reasons, solemnly asserting that the federal constitution has been violated and virtually abrogated by the several States named, seeing that the federal government is now passing under the control of our enemies to be diverted from the exalted objects of its creation to those of oppression and wrong, and realizing that our own State can no longer look for protection, but to God and her own sons-- We the delegates of the people of Texas, in Convention assembled, have passed an ordinance dissolving all political connection with the government of the United States of America and the people thereof and confidently appeal to the intelligence and patriotism of the freemen of Texas to ratify the same at the ballot box, on the 23rd day of the present month.

Those concessions were systematically undermined and ignored for decades

By other states - not the federal government. As recently as 1859 the year before Lincoln's election, the supreme court ruled in Ableman v Booth that state "personal liberty" laws didn't supercede the Fugitive Slave Act.

The irony is that framing the civil war as a matter of states rights isn't wrong...but it was over northern states asserting their rights to reject constitutional but morally unjust laws.

For an extra dose of irony, South Carolina nearly seceded during the 1830's...because they felt that states should have the right to nullify federal laws they found unconstitutional. And when the federal government capitulated, but reasserted that they could use military force to make states comply, South Carolina symbolically nullified that!

The secessionist states wanted a federal government that would force states to follow laws they found morally abhorrent - yet only for specific laws that would benefit the South.

the Civil War was more about Federal control over the states than it was about slavery.

I don't buy it. The only reason the southern states feared federal control was because they feared it would be used to end slavery.

basis of this refusal was of course slavery, but it could have been something else.

Could I ask what that something else could possibly be? It would have to be an extreme wedge issue that the seceding states considered an existential risk to their continued way of life.

In an alternate timeline where the southern states remained in the union but abolished slavery, the only thing I could think of would be the enfranchisement of former slaves.

I am curious and confused why you have lumped “white people” in with Confederate history. Surely most white people in America were not Southern rebels, and there’s more to that culture than Robert E Lee? I realize that as a Southerner yourself it feels a bit more personal but… again, I really feel the Confederate issue doesn’t generalize. And part of it is just that Southern primary education more or less lies to its own people about this part of history. Not only do many texts outright lie about the causes of the Civil War, the South may have claimed that slavery would die out, but their actual actions reveal an active attempt at spreading it. A lot of these “reasonable complaints” just boil down to economic issues, made worse because the South didn’t want to take steps to rebalance their economy away from slavery. And they certainly didn’t want to treat Black people like the humans they are. That’s not something you can just glaze over.

They don’t just attack confederate symbols. Last time I checked Christopher Columbus was cancelled too. They pull his statues down which do have significant to my people.

I think his post was a little hyperbolic but it’s also sort of true.

And part of it is just that Southern primary education more or less lies to its own people about this part of history.

Ah, yes. This old canard.

Sorry, but I had to take 400-level history courses on Southern history before the notion that 'Well, the Civil War may have had other factors beyond slavery that caused it' even got brought up.

I'll believe my own eyes and experience, thanks.

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