The War of Southern Aggression: Who Started the Civil War?

[Rogue 9]

Indeed. Something I meant to work into the essay but couldn't find a good way to flow into was the majority sentiment in the South. The prevailing feeling was that without slavery there couldn't be freedom in equality for poor whites; they needed the slaves as an underclass and often lambasted the free states for degrading their white labor classes by having drudge work performed by wage-earning whites. I can provide sources for this as well, but right now I'm in something of a rush; expect a follow-up later tonight or tomorrow.

[The Dark]

Indeed. Something I meant to work into the essay but couldn't find a good way to flow into was the majority sentiment in the South. The prevailing feeling was that without slavery there couldn't be freedom in equality for poor whites; they needed the slaves as an underclass and often lambasted the free states for degrading their white labor classes by having drudge work performed by wage-earning whites. I can provide sources for this as well, but right now I'm in something of a rush; expect a follow-up later tonight or tomorrow.

This depended on region, though. The smallfarming regions of northwestern Virginia, western North Carolina, northeastern Georgia, and northern Alabama were considered heavily pro-Union by the Confederacy. The first of those regions seceded from Virginia and became West Virginia; the other areas were known within the Confederacy for being hotbeds of desertion and bushwhacking (reference: Katcher, Philip: The Army of Robert E. Lee, pgs. 87-88). Since the people in these areas were not plantation owners, did not aspire to be plantation owners, and were generally in economic competition with plantation owners, they opposed the secession movement very nearly to a person.

[Rogue 9]

Indeed. Something I meant to work into the essay but couldn't find a good way to flow into was the majority sentiment in the South. The prevailing feeling was that without slavery there couldn't be freedom in equality for poor whites; they needed the slaves as an underclass and often lambasted the free states for degrading their white labor classes by having drudge work performed by wage-earning whites. I can provide sources for this as well, but right now I'm in something of a rush; expect a follow-up later tonight or tomorrow.

This depended on region, though. The smallfarming regions of northwestern Virginia, western North Carolina, northeastern Georgia, and northern Alabama were considered heavily pro-Union by the Confederacy. The first of those regions seceded from Virginia and became West Virginia; the other areas were known within the Confederacy for being hotbeds of desertion and bushwhacking (reference: Katcher, Philip: The Army of Robert E. Lee, pgs. 87-88). Since the people in these areas were not plantation owners, did not aspire to be plantation owners, and were generally in economic competition with plantation owners, they opposed the secession movement very nearly to a person.

You forgot eastern Tennessee, which very nearly did counter-secede in the same manner as West Virginia; the Confederate army was simply faster to occupy it early in the war.

At any rate, I'm far overdue in backing up my assertion here, so I'll just do that. An 1856 editorial of the Richmond Enquirer made this assertion:

In this country alone does perfect equality of civil and social privilege exist among the white population, and it exists solely because we have black slaves. Freedom is not possible without slavery.

Why would they think this? Well, for the very reason I asserted in my last post; the underclass would either consist of black slaves or white laborers, and on the whole they much preferred that it not be the master race doing the drudge work. Senator Hammond's (remember him?) famous King Cotton speech said it in so many words:

[T]he man who lives by daily labor, and scarcely lives at that, and who has to put out his labor in the market, and take the best he can get for it; in short, your whole hireling class of manual laborers and "operatives," as you call them, are essentially slaves. The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either. Yours are hired by the day, not care for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any street of your large towns.

This idea finds its basis in Thomas Jefferson's assertion than a wage-laborer, not being independent, is unable to effectively function in governing a republic, since he is dependent upon his employer and therefore easily suborned. That is why ownership of real property was a voting requirement in the early United States; Jefferson and his party believed that only those who owned their own means of production, that is an independent farmer, artisan, business owner, planter, and so forth, were sufficiently independent to effectively use the vote.

This idea, while abhorrent today, at least did not include a mandate to exclude blacks or artificially make all whites non-wage workers as formulated by Jefferson. Jefferson feared that the growing working class would subvert the republic, saying:

Let our workshops remain in Europe. The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the human body. ... I consider the class of artificers [workmen] as the panders of vice, and the instruments by which the liberties of a country are generally overturned.

The rise of European immigration from the 1820s on made this an untenable position, and the vote was expanded to include wage-earning white males in the North. This triggered the Southern reaction that I've cited here, as the new Northern voting blocs proceeded to vote in ways not favorable to Southern interests, particularly slave and territorial interests. Working conditions of industrial laborers in the 19th century were of course deplorable, and Southern agriculturalists were horrified to think that this would be their fate if not for the slave underclass taking that role for them. To go back to Calhoun for a moment:

With us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black; and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals, if honest and industrious; and hence have a position and pride of character of which neither poverty nor misfortune can deprive them.

That should be sufficient, I think. If anyone wishes more, I can readily go on. In the meantime, I recommend this essay, which I stumbled upon just now looking for a place to copy the Calhoun quote from; it's quite good (despite being from the Claremont Institute).

[D_DEATH55]

I think every one is forgetting one thing. The south fired the first shots upon Fort Sumter Not! in retaliation for anti-slavery legislation, but in rejection of a legally elected president. Lastly Lincoln had no plans for ant-slavery legislation at all (he was a free soiler not an abolitionist).

[Thanas]

Nobody is forgetting that.

You, however, are forgetting that we have rules against thread necromancy. Please observe them more closely in the future.

[D_DEATH55]

Nobody is forgetting that.
You, however, are forgetting that we have rules against thread necromancy. Please observe them more closely in the future.

Please excuse my newb status, but what is thread necromancy? I would assume that it has something to do with resurrecting old thred arguments when the general opinion of the forum is that the argument is conceded stupid and disregarded.

But on to my point the south started the war not the north because although there had been attempts to limit the power of the slave states (see the admittance of California/ the Missouri compromise) there had been no outright attack on slavery by the vast majority of politicians of the time. Thus the war was started as an overreaction to a perfectly legal election.

O and while we are on the subject of The War of Southern Aggression here is a question that for my sister's final College History test. Who won the civil war?

[Ghost Rider]

Please excuse my newb status, but what is thread necromancy? I would assume that it has something to do with resurrecting old thred arguments when the general opinion of the forum is that the argument is conceded stupid and disregarded.

Shiny happy annoucements! Please read.

Specifically Posting Rules #11.

But on to my point the south started the war not the north because although there had been attempts to limit the power of the slave states (see the admittance of California/ the Missouri compromise) there had been no outright attack on slavery by the vast majority of politicians of the time. Thus the war was started as an overreaction to a perfectly legal election.

Again, as Thanas stated, no one is forgetting that and adding it at this juncture is akin to going "And remember the sky is blue in ancient Rome!".

O and while we are on the subject of The War of Southern Aggression here is a question that for my sister's final College History test. Who won the civil war?

...yes, because history to where we are now hasn't shown us that. You'll get far more snark or other bits for having that type of question presented.

[Kuroji]

If you can't figure that answer out, just tell me which side still has a government and which does not. If they say the south won, then they're as pants-on-head retarded as any other number of professors whose personal views are taken over that of historians, because there is no Confederate States of America in the current world.

Thread necromancy is posting in a thread where the last post was made more than a month ago and you're not adding anything of significance to it. If you have something to say... don't say it unless it's adding something that was not in the thread and takes up a whole lot more space than one line.

edit: whoops, Ghost Rider said it before I could... all of it. Ha.

[D_DEATH55]

First off thank you all for your timely replies. Right after I posted I had the incredibly bright idea of searching for the rules and reading them ( I know who would of thought such a simple action could better prepare me for discussion on this forum) and will try to refrain from acting as Jesus in the future.

If you can't figure that answer out, just tell me which side still has a government and which does not. If they say the south won, then they're as pants-on-head retarded as any other number of professors whose personal views are taken over that of historians, because there is no Confederate States of America in the current world.

As to your question (or rather mine) it was the only question on my sister's final exam. If i remember her telling it correctly she said the south got the better deal because the federal government took upon itself the dept of the south pardoned many of the high ranking southern officers and politicians and the south still had its way of life even after the war thanks to sharecropping.(she must of had a southern professor)

Now I am off to less dead threads.

[Ghost Rider]

As to your question (or rather mine) it was the only question on my sister's final exam. If i remember her telling it correctly she said the south got the better deal because the federal government took upon itself the dept of the south pardoned many of the high ranking southern officers and politicians and the south still had its way of life even after the war thanks to sharecropping.(she must of had a southern professor)

Now I am off to less dead threads.

Which is an asinine answer since that's equating that Japan won WWII because of the reparations made to it, and the fact that it didn't face the same trials pushed upon the Germans in different arenas...thus they got a better deal then Germany. Only a pants on head retard would consider that a win given they had to submit to another authority and did not achieve their goals they started the war with.