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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KonKilo who wrote (348162)	1/27/2003 6:44:12 AM
From: Johannes Pilch	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Did we have war all those decades we had slavery? There was no credible threat to slavery for all those years. Indeed, the Quakers were amongst the first to lobby against slavery and even they did not initally do so politically. They did it by pressuring their own members. This began around the 1740's and grew slowly such that by the late 1780's southern planters were growing fearful. That is why they used their considerable political might to put a law into the Constitution protecting against high import tariffs on slaves. They also pushed mightily for a Constitutional article that clearly gave them the right to enslave blacks. As historian Eric Foner has point out, due to the South's wielding considerable political might to protect its slave interests, something like 13 of the first 18 presidents were southern slave owners. The South had for years benefitted of a provision they forced into the Articles of Confederation allowing southerners to count slaves as citizens while not paying taxes on them. Southerners also pushed to link Congressional representation to headcount. Since slaves were counted as citizens, southerners had an amazing political advantage over the North. Not only did their power give them the Executive Branch. It gave them the Legislative and Judicial Branches also. And they used their power over the North mercilessly to protect their slave interests. Northerners complained bitterly for years and years about the treatment, but Southerners did not listen. At the Constitutional Convention Northerners threatened to bolt should Southerners try to count slaves as citizens as they had in the Articles. Finally it was decided to count 3 of every 5 slaves as southern citizens. That compromise is the now infamous, much misinterpreted 3/5ths compromise (many people claim the Founders were saying blacks were only 3/5ths human. They did nothing of the sort.) So Southerners still enjoyed an amazing political advantage over the South. And Northerners still hated it bitterly. But the changes the Southerners forced through ultimately led to their own undoing. By 1810 the North was heavily industrializing and many people fled North to get the new jobs that resulted of it. Since Southerners had forced a link of Congressional representation to headcount (to give them benefit of their slaves), the North began to garner political influence. Southern growth peaked in 1810 and began declining for ages thereafter. Growth was in the North. Soon, Northerners became more numerous than southerners despite southern slaves. Correspondingly, the North gained more political power than the South. And, most predictably, the Northerners began to wield that power to protect their industrial interests in the same way Southerners had wielded their power to protect their slave interests. All the while, with all the new Northern growth and industrialism, anti-slavery sentiment began to spread and become a vibrant movement. It existed even in the South for a time. But was squashed by Southerners, many of whom used violence to threaten southern abolitionists. So ultimately the ending of slavery became mostly a Northern enterprise. Here is where serious threats to the union began because a serious threat to slavery began here. Slavery had been contentious from even as far back as the 1740's. But because this contentiousness had not in all the years afterward taken the form of a credible movement, slavery had no serious challenge. When that challenge began to raise its marvelous head, the South aimed to kill it.

To: KonKilo who wrote (348162)	1/27/2003 11:19:02 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

ShilohCat, I'm baffled by your attempt at logic here. You state that the Civil War started because of secession, not because of slavery. But that's utterly crackpot because the reason for secession was the determination by Southern oligarchs precisely to maintain and spread slavery. Cf. Missouri Compromise. Again, I'm baffled -- why do you suggest the South seceded if not to protect the perogatives of the elites w/r/t "their property rights" which meant slaves? Read Kevin Philips "Wealth and Democracy" for a startling economic analysis of the wealth of the South in the antebellum period. About 80% of the wealth of the South consisted of slave holdings. So, if you want to argue that the South went to war to protect its "way of life" or its wealth, you are still saying that the war was started to preserve the institution of slavery. -Ray