Randy does have some valid points, I think he is correct that if slavery were ended before this time we still would have had a civil war. It would have ended eventually and at that time we might have still had a civil war, but these are guesses only. He is also correct there were other issues that get glossed over even in primary school text books. But yes, slavery was a big issue, the single biggest cause of the Civil War, he may not like that fact and try to gloss over that himself but there simply is no getting around that fact. Slavery was probably 75% or more the reason for the war, that leaves a significant 25% or possibly more "other" reasons and I understand his anger over the way it gets ignored but he is ignoring some real history in trying to get others to see those other reasons.

GMTom wrote:Randy does have some valid points, I think he is correct that if slavery were ended before this time we still would have had a civil war. It would have ended eventually and at that time we might have still had a civil war, but these are guesses only. He is also correct there were other issues that get glossed over even in primary school text books. But yes, slavery was a big issue, the single biggest cause of the Civil War, he may not like that fact and try to gloss over that himself but there simply is no getting around that fact. Slavery was probably 75% or more the reason for the war, that leaves a significant 25% or possibly more "other" reasons and I understand his anger over the way it gets ignored but he is ignoring some real history in trying to get others to see those other reasons.

There's very rarely just one single cause for events of historical magnitude, but usually there's one or two major ones. I'm not opposed to give minor issues their dues and put everything in perspective to get a complete picture. However from my experience there's quite often some social or political or worldview related agenda when people want to discuss some minor point.
I know that well from the various attempts in Austria to shed light on the years between 1933-1945.
It's usually not neutrally interested parties that want to discuss Austrian opposition to the Anschluss, or why no US or british soldiers were tried for warcrimes after WW2 just German and Japanese ones.
Maybe it's completely different regarding your civil war, but i can't help but detect somewhat similar patterns.

I'm surprised that people think there probably would have been a civil war even if there was no slavery issue. Were the other issues so major that the south would have seceded over them or could they have been compromised?

I'm surprised that people think there probably would have been a civil war even if there was no slavery issue. Were the other issues so major that the south would have seceded over them or could they have been compromised

Most people will declare loudly, "States Rights". However, those "States Rights" that the South thought were being infringed had, almost exclusively, to do with the right to hold slaves, and the right to pursue slaves into any other American jurisdiction.
There is no evidence to suggest that any other issue created the friction required to ignite a war.
Just stating that it is so isn't a cogent argument. Why, Tom, would slavery have "died out"? What other friction existed that you can point to in historical records that suggests an impending conflict?

In order to hold to the fiction that the Confederacy wasn't racist and that slavery wasn't the cause of the secession and subsequent war means that one has to ignore the declarations of the official documents of the seceding states and the recorded utterances of the leaders of secession .
Look, just believing something, and believing it strongly, doesn't make it true. Nor is this "belief" worthy of respect.

RUFFHAUS 8 wrote:

danivon wrote: Randy - so the transitional arrangements to end slavery are as racist as the institution of slavery itself? Sheesh! .

I did not say this, anywhere. How you draw your conclusions is fascinating, but troublesome. What are these transitional arrangements you speak of? You mean charming little euphemisms like indentured servitude? No, that in itself would not be considered racist, because it wasn't based on race. Slavery has nothing to do with racism.

Sigh.
No, randy, I was responding to what you were saying about how there was still some slavery for a few years after the Emancipation declaration.

Not all slavery is racist, but as has been shown by the statements of the Confederate leaders and the constitutional documents found, the slavery of the US South was racist. I can't see how that can be wriggled out of.

The assumption here is that the south succeeded to preserve slavery, a falsehood.

No, your assertion is false. Not only was the cause of the South in the years leading up to secession to maintain slavery in their own States, but they also pushed hard to extend slavery into the emerging territories and States to the West.

The conspriacsy continues that a racist south fought a war of independence soley based upon slavery against a noble north absent prejudice, and that upon being defeated became too embarassed to admit that they fough and lost for a racist cause, and fabricated an theory to justify it.

Let me juxtapose this statement that people believe in a 'noble north' with my statement that they were imperfect, and your response...

danivon wrote:Both sides were imperfect.

Well, how generous of you as an Englishman to acknowledge that both sides of the Civil War were imperfect. Doesn’t this go without saying? For what it’s worth the English of 1861 were imperfect as well. Is there some point here?

Right, so what is it that you are arguing against me? That I think the North was flawed? Or that I think it was pure and noble? Am I wrong to say the latter because it 'goes without saying', or if I don't say it will I be wrong to believe the latter?

Please, if you are going to accuse me of misrepresenting you and lying, can you at least be consistent about what I am saying when you bash me for it?

The Lost Cause is not a southern myth. It's not revisionist either, since the entire concept has been in place since the cause was lost. The only myth here is that Civle War was a noble crusade fought to end slavery. The Civil War was about power and influence, and money, and about who was going to have it.

Slavery is about power and influence, and money. Secession was primarily about slavery. Tariffs were also a factor, but the issue of tariffs was also tied to slavery - the north did not have the 'advantage' of slave labour to help it industrialise and so wanted protectionist tariffs, but New England also hated tariffs and for some reason then didn't secede, did they?

But other than tariffs, it's all slavery. The South hated that people didn't want slavery allowed in the new lands. They feared that the emerging Republican Party would abolish slavery not just in the territories, but also in the 14 states. They had pressed for the upholding of the laws that meant slaves had to be sent back if they escaped to a non-slave State. When Abolitionism became more popular and widespread, they feared they might lose the power of veto and the advantages of the three-fifths rule (representation on behalf of slaves, but not of them).

States Rights? Do me a favour. The rights of people were considered to be less important than the rights of the States. And the basis of that was essentially racist, or they would not have referred to 'African slavery' and 'negro slavery', would they? How many slaves were not black? How many were white?

Pah! ARJ has cut right to it. But you, Randy, don't want to address his points because they are harder to dismiss, because you can label me as some kind of elitist Englishman looking down on dumb Americans, a socialist and atheist beyond reproach, and an annoyance. Well, maybe I'm some or all of those things, but that doesn't detract from the basic facts:

1) Slavery as instituted in the USA was racist
2) The southern states seceded primarily because they wanted to maintain and extend slavery.

Discussing how flawed the Union was is like discussing how flawed the Allies were in WWII (you brought it up). It's all very well, but it doesn't detract from what the aims of the Nazis actually were, what they did and the basis for them.

As for the anecdote, it was indeed an anecdote, and whatever you want to believe I meant by it, the only reason I didn't link to it is because I figured you'd dismiss the source.

Mississippi Goddam by Dave Osler. You'll see immediately that he's a lefty, and yes, he proclaims that he's educated. But he says the following:

Now, if I were in charge of tourism in a small economically depressed town, where the money visitors bring in just about keeps the place going, I would think twice before allowing people like her to show educated liberal Europeans around.
We were told, for instance, that back in the days of the civil rights struggle, blacks sometimes burned down their own churches and pinned the blame elsewhere, because that way the federal government would stump up for a brand new building.

Yep, church burnings were not about resisting the Civil rights movement or repressing blacks, they were inside jobs designed to extract Federal dollars and conveniently blame poor whitey into the bargain.

Interesting article Dan. Except that the Mississippi state flag does not include the stars and bars in it. It includes the Confederate Battle Flag which is different then the First National Flag, aka "stars and bars".

The Battle Flag, the most well known of the rebel flags, is the reversed St Andrews Cross on a red field with 13 stars in the cross. The Stars and Bars is 3 bars alternating red/white/red with a blue canton with a circle of 13 stars

Slavery, shmavery. The Civil War was caused by the Feds attempt to mandate private purchase of health insurance.

Randy, you do know that you live in the de facto north, right?

Clearly to us uneducated foreigners, these are confusing difference. We think of the Confederate flag as the 'Stars and Bars' to differentiate it from the 'Stars and Stripes' of the Union.

Similarly, the flag of the UK is not, contrary to popular belief, called the Union Jack. The Union Jack doesn't have the St Andrews cross, as it applied until Ireland was incorporated into the union in 1801. What we have flown since is called the Union Flag. I'm sure these are all set up to trap the unwary, as a kind of Shibboleth.

danivon wrote:Clearly to us uneducated foreigners, these are confusing difference. We think of the Confederate flag as the 'Stars and Bars' to differentiate it from the 'Stars and Stripes' of the Union.

It's not just you uneducated furriners but sum usin's over here make that mistake as well. However, the First National was actually called the Stars and Bars during the war. Here is what it looked like.

Slavery was THE major issue, no doubt.
Other issues did exist, those other issues are so rarely discussed and are even ignored in grammar school. The entire war is now taught as being about this one and only issue. Would a rebellion have happened if slavery did not exist? One can never say for certain but it certainly MAY have, the south was an agricultural society, they felt they were second class to the more industrialized north. The south absolutely hated the north while the north looked down on the south, tensions were high and civil war was ready to break out. Slavery was easy to latch onto as a reason to rebel, it was a real reason and a real problem but with the situation the way it was, it was just too easy to use as the rallying call.

If slavery were not an issue, who knows? But tensions were that high and the conditions did exist that certainly allowed for civil war. We will never know!

GMTom wrote:. Would a rebellion have happened if slavery did not exist? One can never say for certain but it certainly MAY have, the south was an agricultural society, they felt they were second class to the more industrialized north. The south absolutely hated the north while the north looked down on the south, tensions were high and civil war was ready to break out.!

The problem here Tom is that the South was agricultural because of slavery. The people who would have invested in building the industry like the north had all of their wealth tied up in the slaves, i.e. the value of a single field hand was approaching $2,000 in 1860. So without slavery, perhaps capital would have been more liquid and invested in to the industry seen in the north. Then the South would have been just as interested in tariff's to protect their businesses as the North was. You know how we know this? One of the first things the Confederate Congress did was pass a tariff that was only 2% or so less then the U.S. Tariff at the time of secession.

maybe, but the thing is, the south was agricultural vs the north's industrial power. the north looked down on the south, the south hated the north, tensions were high. If slavery had ended and the war never happened, the difference was still there, the resentment still there. Eventually the change would (and did) happen but that resentment was there and the war may very well have still happened. We just don't know, we do know there were other reasons, why are those other reasons ignored in all but the more advanced text books?

tom

the north looked down on the south, the south hated the north, tensions were high

Why were tensions high Tom"?
Tensions were high because the South wanted to preserve slavery, and ensure it was accepted in at least half of the new states admitted to the union.
The reason your school text books have focused on slavery as the divisive issue is that it was the divisive issue.
Maybe you could actually point to some difference between the North and South that didn't actually involve slavery as a part of the difference?
1. Economic and social differences? Fundamentally only slavery made the difference..Although the North had more industry than the South, the majority of the North's population still lived on farms or in small towns.... Not so different than the South.
2. States versus Federal rights? Only really became an issue when the Southern slave states sought to protect and expand slavery.
3. Election of Lincoln. 7 states had seceded even before he was elected.

I can understand why descendants of Southerners admire their ancestors efforts in the civil war and yet are repelled by their ancestors beliefs and behaviors regarding slavery. I'm sure that German descendants have the same problem loking at the way their forbears often bravely fought the Second WW but are appalled by the cause for which they fought .
Maybe in a hundred years their descendants willl try and revise the history of WWII ...but i doubt it. In order to learn from history we have to accept reality when it stares us in the face. In germany there are laws regarding the distortion of the reality of the Nazis to ensure this happens. In the US there's sometimes a casual acceptance of the romanticized Southern cause.
Maybe thats why it took another 100 years for the USSC and the Civiil rights battles of the 60's to effectively bring racial equality rights to fruition?

Thanks for the history lesson on my country Ricky, problem is you are taking a partial truth and making an entire case out of it.
Why did the north look down on the south?
Because they had slaves? Hardly
They did have slaves, the north did not care for that and it was part of a larger problem, the south was far more rural and agricultural than the north and the "rich" northerners would think of the south as slow country bumpkins. Slavery had no big part of that, the bumpkins owned slaves, and only the richer ones did at that, it's not like every southern farmer owned a plantation. The entire south was looked down upon, even those who lived in cities without slaves, how do you explain that away?

Tensions were quite high, slavery certainly did not help, it was that proverbial straw that broke the camels back and became a rallying cry of sorts.
And the change in perception still exist to a large part even today, far less than then but even now many southerners are thought of as slow and backwood hicks. Only amplify these stereotypes 100 times and you get the idea, war was in the offing regardless. Slavery was certainly a real big part, I am not denying this to be so, it was not a simple rallying point only, it was a major contributor but things were bad, real bad in terms of tensions, heck read up on why Washington was chosen the first president, it was a way to keep the north sand south unified almost 100 years before the civil war, things had been tearing the two apart for a long time, it was not a simple slavery only issue. Not by a long shot!