Slavery

[L Verge]

Maddie,

My mother would have agreed with you completely. She always bristled at the treatment that the Native Americans received. Manifest Destiny was a dangerous thing in many ways, but that belief and that of free enterprise took the United States to great heights. I'm afraid that it is easier to justify the end results than it is to explain the actions it took to get there.

Personally, I have very soft feelings for the people of Appalachia, who suffer the same deprivations as those in the inner cities and have for many generations. I went to a small university on the fringes of that impoverished area, and in many areas it reminded me of the photos of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. We may profess that all men are created equal, but I don't believe it has ever happened and never will. Our forefathers should have amended the phrase to read "created with equal opportunity," perhaps; but I'm pessimistic about that also. I guess my youthful, optimistic, and liberal views have failed me.

[MaddieM]

Maddie,

My mother would have agreed with you completely. She always bristled at the treatment that the Native Americans received. Manifest Destiny was a dangerous thing in many ways, but that belief and that of free enterprise took the United States to great heights. I'm afraid that it is easier to justify the end results than it is to explain the actions it took to get there.

Personally, I have very soft feelings for the people of Appalachia, who suffer the same deprivations as those in the inner cities and have for many generations. I went to a small university on the fringes of that impoverished area, and in many areas it reminded me of the photos of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. We may profess that all men are created equal, but I don't believe it has ever happened and never will. Our forefathers should have amended the phrase to read "created with equal opportunity," perhaps; but I'm pessimistic about that also. I guess my youthful, optimistic, and liberal views have failed me.

yes, so true. I think it's the hypocrisy that gets to me. I do feel as though I'm tippy toeing through a minefield here, but I'm wondering if the Civil War was ALL about slavery abolition or something more. Was the abolition of slavery just an excuse? Or was it coming from a genuine place? Bearing in mind that, nobody seems to mind putting the Native Americans into a state of slavery at that time.

[KLarson]

Christine,
It hits you in the gut when you read those documents, doesn't it? Not only is the reality of valuing human beings as chattel difficult to imagine, but what is often revealed in those same documents is the separation of family members through sale or distribution to heirs when a patriarch dies. None of us can imagine having our children and loved ones taken from us and sold away, often never to be seen again. What happened then is as nauseating as what happens today in societies that still practice slavery. Back then there were folks who opposed the institution, just like there were thousands of years ago, and now today. Personal, ethnic, social, political, cultural, and economic power and domination drove the acceptance of enslavement of people for thousands of years. That doesn't make it any more acceptable because it has happened for so long. What is important, however, is not to feel guilty, but to be sure that slavery's legacy - racism, discrimination, poverty, etc., - is not perpetuated. And Laurie's reminder that Native Americans (and Native peoples of South and Central America too) have lived another version of slavery, and is perhaps an even more disgraceful legacy of European conquest. Isolated on reservations with no access to good healthcare, education, and economic opportunity has defined a bleak future for many. This continues to be unacceptable in America. But the solutions are complicated and much contested.

[Rob Wick]

MaddieM,

The history of the war is indeed fraught with major issues that are still in contention today. At the outset, the war WAS NOT a war to free the slaves. Very few people of that time were outright abolitionists. Lincoln certainly wasn't, although he personally found slavery morally repugnant. He favored colonization because he doubted the white man and the black man would ever be able to live in peace. Many neo-Confederates point to Lincoln's remarks in the debate with Stephen Douglas in Charleston, Ill., (where I went to college) on September 18, 1858 as proof that Lincoln was as much a racist as anyone in his time. They point to this passage:

While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. [Great Laughter.] While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]-that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

What they conveniently leave out, however, are the next few sentences.

I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied every thing. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and laughter.] My understanding is that I can just let her alone.

When the South seceded, it did so because of its fear that Lincoln and the Republicans would try to harm slavery, even though Lincoln consistently believed, and often said, that he had no legal power to do anything with slavery where it already existed. He, however, did believe (the Supreme Court notwithstanding) that the federal government had the power to keep slavery out of the territories. Had the war ended before the summer of 1862, it's likely slavery would have remained untouched.

Lincoln had a very delicate balance to wade through, because he had to keep the border states, especially Kentucky, out of the Confederacy, so he tiptoed slowly around the issue. Lincoln believed in compensated emancipation and colonization for several years, but the South wouldn't listen to any proposals Lincoln made.

He used his war powers to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, and saw it strictly in his powers as commander in chief. In fact, some later historians chastised Lincoln for failing to accept the moral challenge presented by slavery. Richard Hofstadter once said that the Emancipation Proclamation had "all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading."

I can't go into all the details of the issue of slavery and the war in this small a post. Suffice it to say that anyone who tells you the war was ALL about freeing the slaves from the outset is wrong, just as is the person who tells you it had nothing to do with slavery, but rather some nonsensical notion of "state's rights" or, even worse, the tariff (no soldier ever wrote to his family "tell mother I died for the tariff.").

I would recommend Eric Foner's book The Fiery Trial as a good place to start.

Best
Rob

[LincolnMan]

Dr. Stephen E. Ambrose had this to say:

The best definition of what the Civil War was all about came from Abraham Lincoln. It was a struggle "testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure." The conception and the dedication he was talking about were that all men were created equal and that they all had a right to participate in the decisions that governed their lives. Beyond that, they had an obligation to abide by the principle of majority rule. The men who died at Gettysburg, and at Shiloh, Vicksburg, and on scores of other battlefields, had not given the last full measure of devotion to free the slaves, nor to establish a modern nation nor to create an industrial empire. They had died for the Union, and beyond that for the idea of democracy, so that the ray of hope sent forth by the American Revolution would never dim. If the Confederacy triumphed, the hope of the world's masses would come crashing down with the Union. The issue of the Civil War was democracy. Lincoln saw to it that the North fought to insure "that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."

[Rob Wick]

Where's that from, Bill?

Best
Rob

[LincolnMan]

Rob: From an article in Civil War Times, February 1968- entitled: An Appraisal of Lincoln "The Savior of His Country."

[Rob Wick]

I can't agree that the men who fought the war weren't fighting to free the slaves, within the parameters I mentioned in my previous post. Once the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, the war became not only a struggle for preservation of the Union, but the "new birth of freedom" that Lincoln talked of was for the bondsman and for the larger society in which he lived. Unless I'm not reading something correctly, it seems to me that Ambrose is subjugating the role of slavery in the conflict after 1863 to that of Lincoln's stated goals in the opening days up to 1862. At that point (after 1863) Lincoln was ready to make the war about something equally great to his concept of Union, i.e., recognizing the rights of man extended to ALL men and that for democracy to be taken seriously in the rest of the world, it had to extend to every one regardless of color.

If I'm reading Ambrose wrong, someone please tell me.

Best
Rob

[Linda Anderson]

Here is an article from TIME Magazine dated April 18, 2011. The title in the print version is: "The Way We Weren't" - "North and South shared the burden of slavery, and after the war, they shared in forgetting about it. But 150 years later, it's time to tell the truth."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articl...-1,00.html

[Christine]

I really have enjoyed reading everybody's comments. I think that even the Northern Democrats understood what the result of Union victory would be - freedom for the slaves. Frederick Aiken, no great fan of Lincoln or emancipation, sent these comments to Frederick W Seward in the fall of 1861:

“ . . . if voting is to be allowed in the army, interested men, who hoping for future place and preference under Fremont if he shd. be successful as a candidate for the Presidency will get within the lives of the army and advocate emancipation and if politics shd. run high the army will be divided and the Union’s sacred cause humiliated. It was on this very subject of Emancipation wh. made leading northern democrats tender footed last spring & winter when it was apparent that war was surely coming and now I think I may safely say for every democrat in the army that for the cause of the Union they are ready to destroy; if necessary in preparing the way for victory, every species and description of Southern property and more than that, they expect to see the Emancipation of slaves follow as a natural consequence of the war, but I do not believe they can soon be brought to fight for that idea alone. To oppose fighting for emancipation would not be treason. In my judgment men who now advocate it are doing infinite mischief. . . many men . . comprehend the importance of preserving our nationality. For that the entire north will fight. For that the entire north will stand by the man whose wisdom best covers the whole subject."

[LincolnMan]

And to make the war even more complex one is wise to consider the implications of Lincoln's comments that both the North and the South "read the same Bible and pray to the same God..."(Second Inaugural Address). Each side had worldviews partially rooted in theology-and each side believed in the correctness of their views. Slavery, for instance, had pro-arguments espoused by Southern clergy. The North had it's scriptural arguments against slavery, as well. For a book on this subject, see The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark Noll. There are many others written on the subject.

[RJNorton]

At one point, in the pre-presidential years, did Lincoln embrace the theory that the institution of slavery would naturally decline and eventually cease to exist in the United States? In other words it would die by natural causes?

[LincolnMan]

Roger, yes that is absolutely true-which made the extension of slavery into the territories an unacceptable possibility as it was seen to be a means of further delaying it's eventual demise.