A FEW THOUGHTS ON THE CIVIL WAR
1. Slavery was definitely the root cause of the Civil War. It came up at the Constitutional Convention but the North had to give in on the issue or the South would have bolted.
You contradict yourself with this statement, IMO. Competing nationalisms, political turmoil, the definition of freedom, the preservation of the Union, the fate of slavery and the structure of our society and economy could all be listed as significant contributing factors. It is rather hindersome to name a "root cause" after something which can be broken down even further.
1. "rather hindersome" ?
2. It was the slavery based economy that led to the list of causes you have given. Agricultural and trade issues were important also, but it was the cotton/tobacco based economy that made them important.
2. Even before that the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 had prohibited slavery in the new states.
Hardly revolutionary as it contained a rather harsh fugitive slave clause.
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Enlighten me. What did the clause say?
Remember that the main cause of the Mexican war was Southern desire for more slave states to be carved out of Mexican lands.
Are you referring to the Mexican-American war led by President James Polk? Its causation can most definitely be attributed to his extreme expansionist views, with little to do with slavery. Now, the North and the South fought
over the issue of slavery in regard to this new land, but the appropiation of it was rather politically neutral.
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Lucas, thousands of Southerners moved to Texas in order to receive Mexican land grants. The reason they wanted land was to grow cotton, for which purpose they brought their slaves. By 1830 the slave population of Texas was 10%. When Mexico abolished slavery, they refused to obey the law, which led to Mexican attempts to enforce it. Resultant fighting led to open rebellion and their declaration of independence.
In the 1840's Andrew Jackson worked to get congress to annex Texas, and in 1844 President Tyler submitted a statehood treaty to the Senate...but it was voted down by anti-slavery northern states.
you are correct that expansionist pressure led to the annexation of Texas in 1845, but the leaders of the expansionists were Southerners, and wanted to expand slavery as well.
7. Lincoln was the first anti-slavery president, so with the North's growing population making control of the House solidly anti-slavery, the South turned to State's Rights theory to justify secession.
Quoted from
The Price of Liberty:
As early as the Revolutionary period, Thomas Jefferson proposed relocating African Americans beyond the boundaries of the new nation. Similarly, as late as the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln still envisioned a great black exodus that would purge the country of African Americans once and for all. Colonization, as this idea became known, rested upon the contention that blacks and whites (due to innate racial differences, polarized societal statuses, and pervasive racism) could not live together in social harmony and political equality within the same country. To many of its advocates, colonization was an ideological middle ground between the immediate, nationwide abolition of slavery, which seemed an ever remote possibility, and perpetual black bondage, a proposition that even some southern slaveholders found discomforting. True, free the slaves.....but he didn't want to live near any of them
One can hardly call Jefferson, a slaveowner, anti-slavery. True, when discussing political philosophy he opposed it in theory, and even advocated abolishing it at times. But in his practical life he was a member of the Virginia gentry who's wealth and power were supported by the sweat of slaves. He also is known to have fathered children with one of his slaves. He was no abolitionist.
Lincoln was outspokenly anti-slavery. That does not mean he was an egalitarian. He pretty much reflected the racial attitudes of his times.
10. The South was already the poorest part of the Union, even before the war. They were way behind in every measure of wealth, except for cotton and tobacco production.
This is because industry was based in the North, and a very new North at that. Not exactly comparative to today's situation.
The reason industry was based in the North was that Southerners had discovered a way to make money without working for it. Slavery.
Thomas Maddux
