Haleyed
By Mitch Berg
I don’t get the National Review hate – that might be worth a letter from Joe in and of itself.
Anywayt, Joe Doakes emails:
I know better than to read National Review Online but sometimes I can’t help myself. The recent article about Nikki Haley reminds me why that’s such a dumb thing to do.
I hate ‘gotcha’ questions. They are inevitably out of context and intended for use in a slanted, partisan media campaign. For instance (paraphrasing):
Q: What was the cause of the Civil War?
A: It was a dispute about who decides how a state will be run – the federal government or the people living in the state.
Q: You didn’t mention slavery.
A: Well, what do you want me to say about slavery? That wasn’t the cause of the war.
GOTCHA!!!!
Except she’s right. Elimination of slavery was not the cause of the war. We know this from two crucial pieces of history. You can look it up and should, because almost everything being said today is wrong.First of all, if abolishing slavery was the reason for the war, why did four slave states – Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri – fight for the North? If those states had wanted to abolish slavery in their state, they could have done it any time. Instead, they joined the Union side to fight against the Secessionist side. Slavery was not the issue. Secession from the Union was the issue.
Second the publicity campaign to make the war about abolition of slavery came with the Emancipation Proclamation, announced long after the war was already going. It only applied to the states in rebellion – NOT to the slave states in the Union – further evidence that the abolition of slavery was not the reason for starting the war in 1861, but was simply a tactic intended to divert attention from federal government over-reach to a high moral crusade of abolition which would justify Lincoln’s unconstitutional actions during the war.
The historical evidence supports Haley but you can’t convince anybody of that today. Slavery is everything and always the most important thing, to Liberals and RINOs alike. Haley didn’t mention slavery so GOTCHA.Infuriating.
Joe Doakes no longer in Como Park
I’m going to stake out one (actually two, given that I don’t get the zing at NR) difference Joe.
“Secession was the issue”. And what were they seceding about?
- “Preserving the Union” – and what was the political issue breaking up the union? Slavery.
- “Economics” – And what was the economic issue? Competition between an industralizing society and an agrarian plantation society based around slavery.
- “Why were border states exempt?” – For the same reason the US allied with a rogues gallery of dictators when it was in their interests.
“Abolishing slavery” wasn’t the reason for the war – and yet all of the reasons for the war were one degree of separation away from slavery.
So the real answer, as usual, is everyone is wrong.
January 4th, 2024 at 11:28 am
I appreciate the arguments of those who say the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, and they have some merit.
But I keep coming back to a simple chronological question — “If the South went to war in response to LIncoln’s ‘acts of tyranny,’ how come South Carolina seceded before Lincoln was even inaugurated? They weren’t responding to anything. They were preemptively acting on their fear that an antislavery president *might* do things to further limit slavery.” Which makes the war about slavery, as far as I can tell.
January 4th, 2024 at 11:59 am
I too am looking forward to Mr Doakes’ response. I haven’t seen much difference between his and my opinions but he writes so much better than I.
Were I to hazard a guess tho’ I would say that NR has shown in a number of instances a surprising and unexplained animosity towards the non-Country Club (or the non-Chamber of Commerce) conservatives like, say, Steyn or Coulter (or Trump for that matter) wedded together with a surprising and unexplained predilection for Democrat policies (LGBTQ… for example). I can find NR’s kind of conservatism on any MSM outlet that once a week pretends to show how open-minded it is. What’s the point?
I’m not excusing Haley’s comments in this regard, but I will mention that she was brought up in a small town in SC and as such is quite familiar with the term, The War of Northern Aggression, and the reasoning behind it. Perhaps she was unaware that this is pretty much only a Deep South thing.
January 4th, 2024 at 12:17 pm
We could get bogged down with the back and forth on causes of the Civil War. Do we want to lump several issues together or split everything up? My opinion is that had the institution of slavery not existed, there would have been no Civil War. It’s certainly true that Southern politicians had for years taken the States’ Rights position and the issue of nullification (see John C. Calhoun), so that leaves speculation about what besides slavery and its expansion, restriction, or elimination, could have caused such a bloody conflict. My own experience as a teenager from the North debating the issue with schoolmates in the South tells me a lot of the “not about slavery” talk was a swipe at Lincoln and their belief that he only signed the Emancipation Proclamation in order to further the prosecution of the war. That plus the (to them) harsh treatment meted out in Reconstruction. From a practical point of view, the winners of the war get to write its history. Did the USA enter WW II because of Pearl Harbor or because our allies in Europe were getting pushed around and we were paying for it anyway? Yes to both.
January 4th, 2024 at 12:49 pm
I used to be amenable to the notion that it wasn’t about slavery, but those who’ve read the secession documents from the Confederate states will note that they pretty much all mention slavery. But that said, you don’t persuade hundreds of thousands of young Confederate men who don’t own slaves to fight and die for the cause without something else being perceived, which is federal government oppression; the 45% Tariff of Abominations was about the North funding its industries at the expense of the South, for example.
It is as if history is a bit complicated, and not just a listing of saints and rogues.
January 4th, 2024 at 1:01 pm
Golfdoc,
I’m inclined to agree with you.
January 4th, 2024 at 1:05 pm
“But I keep coming back to a simple chronological question — “If the South went to war in response to LIncoln’s ‘acts of tyranny,’ how come South Carolina seceded before Lincoln was even inaugurated?”
Because what prompted the southern states to secede was not any act that Lincoln had taken it was the fact that he was elected at all.
The problem is that he was elected without a single southern state’s electoral votes. The southern states determined by this that they no longer had a say in the running of the federal government, which they had joined voluntarily; therefore, they should leave the union and start their own separate federal government that they did have a say in.
Slavery was absolutely the question of the day that brought all of this to a head, but was not the reason for secession. Lincoln was of the view that Slavery was outmoded and was going to die a natural death in due course anyway. With that in mind, he was willing to allow it to continue in the states that practiced it in order to preserve the union, under the presumption that it would end at some point in the near future anyway.
The southern states had no reason to secede over slavery, there was no indication at all that the practice would be impacted other than the premise that no new slave states would be admitted to the union.
“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
…
No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”
-Abraham Lincoln; first inaugural address
They didn’t secede because they feared their slaves were going to be taken away, they seceded because they feared their votes no longer counted and the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency without a single southern vote proved it to them.
January 4th, 2024 at 1:06 pm
I’d say that even more complicated.
Slavery was the fundamental issue. The South believed that if the expansion of slavery could be curtailed, it would eventually be eliminated. The North realized much of the same. Both sides realized that if the economy of slavery couldn’t be expanded, then the industrializing North would come to dominate the economy and bring about the gradual elimination of the Southern way of life.
That said, Lincoln came in and governed making sure he was committed to attempting to preserve the Union by allowing slavery to continue. He really did try to downplay slavery during his early governance, despite the problems it caused within his own party.
To see when the war really shifted to being tangentially about slavery into openly about it, look to the details of why and when the Emancipation Proclamation was made.
The South’s main hope from the beginning was to get the European powers involved. Davis knew that the South had little hope of winning by itself. In Europe, Russia was solidly behind the Union. France was, as always, horribly corrupt and Napoleon III took a bribe of 100K bales of cotton to support the South. The key, however, were the Brits.
France couldn’t move without British acquiescence. The Brits, however, were still recovering and paying off the debts of the Napoleonic Wars and weren’t really keen on another war. The “elites” of the era thought about weakening the USA by supporting the split, but the drain of running a war and seeming to support slavery were rather distasteful to them. Thus, the British never formally accepted the Southern envoys who were hoping to sway Brits, although early on they did take meetings with them, and they did give hope to the South that they might make progress with them. The South’s key hope that the Brits would burn through their reserve of cotton and the British mills would shut down and really hammer the British economy. That might have worked, but then Antietam happened.
Right up until Antietam the Union on land was rather inept. The South had by far the better generals, and Davis was a former military man and knew better than the incompetent Lincoln how to manage the Army. Lincoln meddled excessively and really hamstrung his relatively incompetent generals in the East. Antietam, however, was the first victory that showed that the Union might just be able to defeat the South.
And it was after Antietam, where world public opinion began to shift and expect the North might eventually win. Into this environment Lincoln did his foreign policy masterstroke of the Emancipation Proclamation. The elites in Brittan had been split about supporting the South, but when the proclamation came out the British public actually came to believe that the war was fundamentally about slavery, and the moral issue of slavery overwhelmingly swung public opinion towards the Union. The shift was so overwhelming that there became no hope that the South could sway the Brits to supporting them.
Please remember that Lincoln himself said that he didn’t have the authority under the Constitution to free the slaves. He claimed he had the authority as Commander in Chief to issue the Emancipation Proclamation as part of the war on the states in rebellion. That was a key rationalization that allowed him to essentially freeze out the European powers from intervention.
After that, it’s history.
January 4th, 2024 at 1:08 pm
By the way; I’m a yankee born and bred. I’m not some “son of the confederate revolution” trying to rationalize my ancestor’s folly. My statement above is simply the truth as I see it based on reviewing the facts and history of the time.
January 4th, 2024 at 1:13 pm
And if you want to see just HOW core slavery was, there was a Southern general in the West from Ireland. After Vicksburg, he actually wrote a proposal saying that slavery would eventually die anyway (and even Davis believed that), and suggesting emancipating the slaves so that Europe might be more willing to help, and to get the blacks to help support the Southern rebellion. When presented to a gathering of 20 generals the other generals were horrified. It caused such a scandal that the whole thing had to be covered up, the proceedings burned, and the rumors of the meeting were vehemently denied. It wasn’t until nearly a half century later that the proposal was actually found.
So yes, the war was fundamentally about slavery. It may have been gussied with more noble language, but slavery was at its very roots.
January 4th, 2024 at 1:42 pm
^ Some pretty darn perceptive comments in the above.
January 4th, 2024 at 1:52 pm
I agree, golfdoc, somewhat.
The US got into WWII because of Pearl Harbor directly. The US public would have not supported the war without it. Sure, FDR would have kept trying to get them into supporting war in Europe, but he was having great difficulties in getting that before Pearl Harbor.
That said, Hitler solved FDR’s problem with the US public by declaring war on the US. That declaration came from FDR’s behavior in supporting the Brits, but WWII could very easily been very, very different without Hitler’s blunder. Just take a look at the history of making the Merlin engine in the US. Ford was originally the one going to build a few engines for the Brits before they backed out, not wanting to support a belligerent in Europe.
The whole question of how different things might have been without a state of war between the US and Germany is interesting. The Brits turned over a ton of very advanced and super-secret technology after the war started. Jet engines, cavitrons, etc were examples of knowledge transfer where the Brits had state of the art knowledge transferred to the US. How much of that transfer would have been possible without a German declaration of war is an interesting question.
January 4th, 2024 at 4:46 pm
I am thoroughly enjoying this discussion. Thanks to all. More Joe Doakes, we miss you.
January 4th, 2024 at 4:53 pm
^ Psst, Scott, I’ve seen indications, all circumstantial, that John “Bigman” Jones is Joe Doakes. I can’t explain the change.
January 4th, 2024 at 7:28 pm
Slavery was a cause of the Civil War because it was one of the use cases on which Sen Calhoun’s Concurrent Majority was tested as was the imposition of tariffs that disproportionately harmed individual members of The Compact.
See John C Calhoun’s A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States and his posthumous 1851 work, A Disquisition on Government, further elaborated his concurrent majority theory. “This provision must be of a character calculated to prevent any one interest, or combination of interests, from using the powers of government to aggrandize itself at the expense of the other,” Calhoun argued. “This, too, can be accomplished only in one way,” he believed, “and that is . . . by dividing and distributing the powers of government, give to each division or interest, through its appropriate organ, either a concurrent voice in making and executing the laws, or a veto on their execution.”
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/activities/is-the-concurrent-majority-theory-faithful-to-the-ideals-of-the-constitution
January 5th, 2024 at 5:37 am
I’m from Missouri. Saint Louis & Kansas City fought for the North. Outstate Missouri was mostly Southern and there were numerous skirmishes across the state. My hometown was occupied by Krekel’s Battalion to protect the railroad trestle west of town.
January 5th, 2024 at 6:35 am
Joe Doakes makes a good argument but as a well-read Civil War buff I disagree, the essential element causing the Civil War was slavery. Others in the comments have made excellent references to back up the slavery claim so I won’t bore you all with more arguments. The cause of the war is complicated but at the bottom of every argument is slavery.
The comment from Jay Dee is fun as Missouri was a mess of secessionists and abolitionists. There is a great story out of St. Louis where the city fathers were solidly pro-Confederate but the mass of new German immigrants were pro-Union. The local officials formed a militia and seized the local arsenal planning to turn it over to the Confederate side. But the Germans were all military veterans, hated slavery and met regularly in Turnerverein clubs. An enterprising young Union officer organized those clubs into 5 regiments right under the noses of the upper class southern sympathizers. They marched out and re-captured the arsenal. My g-g-grandfather’s brother marched in one of those regiments.