This is quite a flimsy argument and is typical of pro-confederates. I am off to bed, but will assault he article in detail tomorrow or perhaps in the next few days. I am not sure. For now, allow me to make a few points.
Jack Anderson states
Until the election of 1860 the winning ticket or cabinet was always regionally balanced, but the Republicans of that year chose Abraham Lincoln of Illinois and Hannibal Hamlin of Maine. Their message was clear: Southerners were not welcome.
This was not the message. The clear message was that slave ownership was not welcome. Both Douglas and Breckenridge factions of the 1860 Democrat party explicitly placed provisions in their platforms to protect slave property and recognize slavery even in the then unsettled western territories. But the Republican platform was clearly against them:
From the 1856 Republican Platform
“Resolved: That the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign powers over the Territories of the United States for their government; and that in the exercise of this power, it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism--Polygamy, and Slavery.”
From the Republican platform of 1860
“8. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom; That as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished Slavery in all our national territory, ordained that "no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to Slavery in any Territory of the United States.
9. That we brand the recent re-opening of the African slave-trade, under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity and a burning shame to our country and age; and we call upon Congress to take prompt and efficient measures for the total and final suppression of that execrable traffic.”
Jack Anderson claims
This was not simply a matter of slave states versus free states, but of competing economies and ways of life. As a result, the Republicans did not even bother to campaign in the South…”
The Republicans did not campaign because it was started particularly to fight politically against slavery, and virtually all southern states were slave states. By 1849 the matter had grown so hot as to cause Henry Benning (who would become a Confederate General) to state
First then it is apparent, horribly apparent, that the slavery question rides insolently over every other everywhere -- in fact that is the only question which in the least affects the result of elections. It is not less manifest that the whole North is becoming ultra anti-slavery and the whole South ultra pro-slavery. Hence very small acts of deviation from the prevailing course of conduct of either section, being so conspicuous from their rarity, will attract immense animadversion.
(Benning to Howell Cobb found in “The Toombs, Stephens, Cobb Correspondence, published by the American Historical Association in 1913.”)
Jack Anderson claims In short, the average Southerner was not fighting for slavery or even secession.
Irrelevant. The average American grunt was not fighting for oil, or Kuwait, or anything of the sort in Desert Storm. They fought because their leaders told them to fight. They followed their leaders. To find the real meaning of war, we must find the motivations of leaders. I will visit these leaders in my next post on this issue. I will prove beyond doubt, that those leaders sent southerners to battle primarily to protect slavery.
Jack Anderson says After all, fewer than 5 percent of Southerners were slaveholders (385,000 out of a free population of 8,361,677, according to the 1860 Census)…
Irrelevant for the same reason above. Even so, according to Jeff Davis (the Confederate President), slavery formed a social substratum that elevated all white men to equality. Without slavery, many southerners argued, whites were degraded. Moreover, the census figures only counted heads of households as slave owners—not their wives and children. Many other omissions of the 1860 census caused one head of the census to say
When in charge of the national census office... I found that it had been stated by an abolition senator from his seat, that the number of slaveholders at the South did not exceed 150,000. Convinced that, it was a gross misrepresentation of facts, I caused a careful examination of the returns to be made, which fixed the actual number at 347,255, and communicated the information, by note, to Senator Cass, who read it in the Senate. I first called attention to the fact that the number embraced slaveholding families, and that to arrive at the actual number of slaveholders, it would be necessary to multiply by the proportion of persons which the census showed to a family. When this was done, the number was swelled to about two millions.
Since these results were made public, I have had reason to think that the separation of the schedules of the slave and the free was calculated to lead to omissions of the single properties, and that on this account, it would be safe to put the number of families at 375,000, and the number of actual slaveholders at about two millions and a quarter. James Dunwoody Debow, Debow's Review (Will give reference later)
Jack Anderson claimed …and the men in the ranks were hardly willing to die to protect their officers’ right to perpetuate that peculiar institution. They fought because they were invaded.
They fought for many other reasons also. As Debow, Jeff Davis and even a few grunts themselves claimed, slavery elevated all whites to the level of equals, and was worth fighting for.
Jack Anderson says And by fighting, they died by the thousands. More than 25 percent of all military-age Southern men and 10 percent of all military-age Northern men died in the war, making the Civil War America’s holocaust.
Ridiculous. Jews did not volunteer for the slaughter. Win or lose they would suffer and die. They suffered a holocaust. Civil War soldiers fought a war, and willingly.
Jack Anderson says It was an unnecessary war, which Lincoln claimed was endured solely to preserve the Union. As he wrote to Horace Greeley in 1862, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it....”
Lincoln was a politician, a president whose duty was first and foremost the protection of his country. So then he was exactly correct in taking his view. But he still believed slavery was wrong and he would not compromise at all with allowing slavery to expand to the western territories. He knew that cotton depleted the soil of nutrients, over time making southern soil worthless for planting. If southerners could not take slaves west to get new fertile land, they would be forced to plant in worthless soil – a certain death to slavery.
But there is a point many pro-Confederates miss in their consistent abuse of Lincoln’s statement. One ought not quote Lincoln to prove Confederate motives. The issue here concerns why Confederates fought the war, not why Lincoln fought it. I will show that Confederate leaders waged war to protect slavery and that they used the most abominable racist views to justify it, even invoking God to do it. The Confederacy was founded on racism. Indeed, according to Alexander Stephens, the Confederate Vice President, slavery was the cornerstone of the Confederacy and that Jefferson's view of human equality was false.
Jack Anderson says So when South Carolina flies the Confederate flag and Georgia retains the emblem in its state flag, the majority of their citizens are not celebrating slavery and secession.
Irrelevant, a complete non sequitur, and mere speculation to boot. The Swastika has a long and admirable history spanning thousands of years. Should I fly it today I would not mean to insult Jews. Nevertheless I would not fly it because, like Confederate symbols, it has a most abominable meaning-- an utterly reprehensible meaning and is unworthy of support by public American dollars. It at the very least represents an assault of the political integrity of the United States. People may fly the Swastika or the rebel flag until they puke, but I do not think they have a right to make blacks or any other decent American pay for it.
I will get back to you to drive my point home. |
