I was brought up on the Whatever podcast
I do not have a working tower so for now I have to do a text response.
There is nothing worse than some idiot girl trying to preach Civil War history because she watched a YouTube video. She didn’t even know what the secession papers were called. The reasnon to secede and the reason there was a war are two different things. The South was not attepting to seperate simply over a policy reason. Donald Livingston goes over the Confederate constitution which will illuminate the the stark cultural differences.
The reason for the War is simple. Lincoln invaded.
Slavery was already legal on a state by state basis. The North was not trying to end slavery before the war. There was no bill or decree trying to force South Carolina to end slavery which made them secede. There were however crushing taxes that prompted BOTH secession movements by South Carolina. In fact the opposite happened, the northern states introduced the Corwin amendment to enshrine the protection of slavery from the federal government in constitution.
“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State”
It was introduced by New York and Ohio. Illinois, Ohio and Maryland all ratified this as did 2/3 of the house and senate. Had the southern states joined in ratifying the amendment that would have become the 13th amendment.
Lincoln who was a racial seperatist also supported this and personally wrote Southern governors encouraging them to ratify it. For his primary purpose was to presrve the Union and thus the revenue.
Abolitionists numbered under 100k people less than half a percent of the population or about half the size of the Libertarian Party today. They did not have power. The president and at least 2/3 of the legislators agreed as they did pass this amendment.
No Southern state took this deal because slavery was never the principle reason to secede. For had they stayed slavery was already legal and not being threatened. Even in the northern states that had gotten rid of it, that was done state by state and not by the federal government. And it wasn’t for moral reasons. By and large it was because Whites didn’t want to live around blacks at all.
West Virginia which was not coastal and not greatly affected by tariffs broke from Virginia and stayed in the union. They also kept slavery as that was not a requirement to be in the union. It couldn’t be as all the border states plus Delaware DC and New Jersey had legal slavery anyway. Kentucky New Jersey and Delaware retained slavery after the war was over with NJ not abolishing it until 1866. California had abolished slavery on paper but openly continued the practice and even after the 13th and 14th amendments they only ended black slavery but continued to use the Chinese.
Virginia and Tennessee both ended slavery during the war as did DC. West VA and Maryland. It didn’t matter. The Yankees were fighting as Lincoln said, to preserve the revenue.
Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation said two year into the war not at the begining of it, was a tactic trying to cause slave revolts in the South during the war. It did not free any slaves in Northern states and it did not end Grant’s contraband camps. It resulted in riots in the North as people did not want to be drafted to go fight for black people. Lincoln would end up with 40% of his army being mercenaries from over seas paid for by selling war bonds and racked up 1.74 billion in debt and inflated the greenback by 80%.
After the war ~a million blacks died of starvation and disease related to malnurishment as left to their own devices sharecropping as southern capital was strangled simply failed.
Of course some of the secession papers mention slavery, they are building a confederacy and want the northern states that had slaves to join it. The counter measure was the Corwin amendment which guaranteed the union wouldn’t abolish slavery. The fight was about slavery out west. Northern states simply sold all their slaves to the south right before ending slavery but then said no no you can use slaves to build the railroads. They were competing between a line from Illinois to California with one from Louisiana. However Utah had already legalized slavery. And eventually the rail lines were built by what any serious person would have to admit was still slave labor.
Just like today, people will oppose enforcing illegal immigration laws under the guise of fighting racism, yet the real reason is to maintain a cheap labor force for corporations and a voting block for the Democrat Party.
Bringing up slavery is an agreeable position TODAY. But it was camo. It’s like pretending invading Iraq was to liberate Kurds or invading Afghanistan was about women’s rights. Sounds great but isn’t real. Now Kurds were oppressed and women don’t have equal rights in Afghanistan and the South (and some of the North) did have slavery. But that wasn’t at all why Lincoln sent Revenue collectors to Fort Sumter, firing on the Nashville and causing the war. The North wanted the
3 of the confederate states didn’t secede until after shots were fired and involved created a blockade. This included the largest southern states North Carolina and Virginia. How did they think North Carolina would respond to a blockade on South Carolina?
Had they been fighting to end slavery then why not at least introduce a constitutional amendment to end slavery instead of the opposite?
Slavery was a rationalization made After the war. The Civil War became about slavery in the 1960s not the 1860s bc of the Civil rights movement and presentism.
Hey, I’m an Andrew Wilson fan and this was the first time I heard your name. Just listened to a podcast you did on the Civil War and it was very impressive. Great stuff! I’ve also done a decent amount of research into the financial aspects to the build up to the war and just wanted to add that many of the aspects that people cite as “reasons” for the Civil War fall under the big umbrella of coast to coast trade dominance of the most American continent. You got into this topic a decent amount, but the parts that weren’t included in that particular podcast, was that Jefferson Davis was also a railroad man who had performed the Pacific railway surveys is the 1850’s. You were absolutely right in saying that preserving the union meant keeping 1 financial and political hegemony over continent, and this meant also not allowing a competitor on the same continent.
Long story short, Abraham Lincoln was successful in giving his financiers the coast to coast trade route of the Transcontinental railroad utilizing New York as the premier port of the east coast, the railroads that were in place from the northeast to the Midwest, and then from the Midwest to San Francisco. Davis, on the other hand, wanted to promote Charleston to its pre-revolution status as the premier east coast port and have the railroad go from Charleston, through the cotton belt, and end in San Diego. According to Thomas Kettell, the southern railroad companies could produce at roughly 66-75 percent the price of the northern railroads. They could do this in 2 ways, imported iron and steel, and slave labor. This gives a bigger picture as to why Lincoln was only concerned with slave labor moving westward into the newer territories. It also paints a bigger picture on the trade of the South with England, as the South would get its imported iron and steel from England while England got cotton from the South. The Morrill tariff hurt this 2 way street.
Davis, before secession, thought that he’d be able to propose a southern route to congress with these factors contributing to a lower cost for a transcontinental railroad. Lincoln’s first stated goals were to cut off these 2 advantages of southern railroad companies vs northern companies. Post-secession, Lincoln need to stop a competing trade hegemony on the same continent.
Hey, I’m an Andrew Wilson fan and this was the first time I heard your name. Just listened to a podcast you did on the Civil War and it was very impressive. Great stuff! I’ve also done a decent amount of research into the financial aspects to the build up to the war and just wanted to add that many of the aspects that people cite as “reasons” for the Civil War fall under the big umbrella of coast to coast trade dominance of the North American continent. You got into this topic a decent amount, but the parts that weren’t included in that particular podcast, was that Jefferson Davis was also a railroad man who had performed the Pacific railway surveys is the 1850’s. You were absolutely right in saying that preserving the union meant keeping 1 financial and political hegemony over the continent, and this meant also not allowing a competitor on the same continent.
Long story short, Abraham Lincoln was successful in giving his financiers the coast to coast trade route of the Transcontinental railroad utilizing New York as the premier port of the east coast, the railroads that were in place from the northeast to the Midwest, and then from the Midwest to San Francisco. Davis, on the other hand, wanted to promote Charleston to its pre-revolution status as the premier east coast port and have the railroad go from Charleston, through the cotton belt, and end in San Diego. According to Thomas Kettell, the southern railroad companies could produce at roughly 66-75 percent the price of the northern railroads. They could do this in 2 ways, imported iron and steel, and slave labor. This gives a bigger picture as to why Lincoln was only concerned with slave labor moving westward into the newer territories. It also paints a bigger picture on the trade of the South with England, as the South would get its imported iron and steel from England while England got cotton from the South. The Morrill tariff hurt this 2 way street.
Davis, before secession, thought that he’d be able to propose a southern route to congress with these factors contributing to a lower cost for a transcontinental railroad. Lincoln’s first stated goals were to cut off these 2 advantages of southern railroad companies vs northern companies. Post-secession, Lincoln need to stop a competing trade hegemony on the same continent.