Was the civil war about slavery or economics?

[rockydem]

[Bush was AWOL]

1. It was about preserving the Union

[DireStrike]

2. The economics of slavery.

[ET Awful]

6. I was going to say the same thing. n/t

[gottaB]

3. yes

[Worst Username Ever]

4. The south wanted to break away largely because of economics

which also played a role in why the north won. THe north actaully lost twice as many troops, but the economy was much, much better and the north was just better armed and supplied. Slavery was a side issue that added fuel to the fire. "Socioeconomic" reasons is the best way to put it.

[Vincardog]

11. The north wanted tariffs on English cloth. The south wanted to sell cotton

to England. The Slavery thing was to keep France from coming in on the south's side. Economics killed slavery. It is cheaper to pay a little and let them feed themselves than it is to own them and have to take care of them.

[Jesus H. Christ]

5. It was about slavery.

The South wanted to secede because of slavery, the North didn't want them to secede.

[Maple]

7. Economics

the more industrialized north against the agrarian south.

[tx_dem41]

8. I don't see how you could possibly separate the two issues. n/t

[bleedingheart]

9. The war was about preserving the Union, Slavery was about economics

remember that Abe didn't go to war with the intention of freeing the slaves.

He didn't do that until the war was well under way.

Technically if the Southern planters hadn't been leaving the South to go into new territory with their slaves...we may have seen slavery extend into the 20th century.

[Jesus H. Christ]

12. The South started the war, because of slavery.

That is, because they were sure the election of LIncoln meant abolition.

[bleedingheart]

18. It was more about states rights (allowing slavery or not)

now it has been a long time since I really delved into the Civil War but as I recall many southerners were moving into the Kansas and Missouri territories (as were Northerners) and when the did the wealthier ones were bringing slaves. Some of the Northerners and Southerners who felt that slavery was bad and also put those with slaves at a greater advantage were pissed off. So thus started the states rights mess.

Lincoln by all accounts was not in favor of slavery but to be honest I don't think that he was adverse to letting it exist as long as it stayed in the "original south"...but as people moved and slavery started to emerge in the new territories and states...it became a hot issue.

[Lucky Luciano]

10. This is a very deep question...

Slavery...states rights...economics...All of it played a role. Hoever, I do think it is fair to say that the issues like states rights and the economic differences never would have come up in such a way as to cause such a horrific war were it not for slavery in the first place. So, you could say that slavery caused the other things that caused the war.

SO...yes...slavery caused the war.

PS - looks like we will both be breaking 1000 posts real soon!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. Both. They were entertwined.

The south was dependent on slave labor to bring in the profits for the large slaveholders. They were threatened by the abolitionists and cheap immigrant labor in the north. The only way for them to keep those magnolias and mint julips coming, was to secede and expand the use of slavery.

The tripe about "states rights" was about the individual state's "rights" to deny all rights to blacks.

[NewJeffCT]

15. good analysis

"State's rights" was just a cover to continue the enslavement of blacks...

[damntexdem]

20. Well, slavery was part and parcel of the artitocratic system ...

that he elites of the South wanted to preserve. 'States rights' had been used by elites north and south to protect their own turf.

[TO Kid]

25. You're the first here to nail it

The large landowners want to recreate an old-world social hierarchy for themselves. They fancied themselves as aristocrats, with poor whites in the middle and blacks at the bottom. It isn't so much that they wanted to keep their slaves (slavery is a false economy, and the vast majority of Southerners did not own slaves), they opposed any kind of social mobility. They used state rights as a rallying cry- interesting that they thought states mattered more than people because the Constitution they claimed to champion puts people first. They even tried to take slavery out of the equation by banning it in the Confederate constitution (you heard right- slavery ended in the Confederacy before it ended in the Union).

[Ms. Clio]

44. That is not correct

"In broad outline, the Confederate Constitution is an amended U.S. Constitution. Even on slavery, there is little difference. Whereas the U.S. Constitution ended the importation of slaves after 1808, the Confederate Constitution simply forbade it. Both constitutions allowed slave ownership, of course.

http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control=353

From the actual Confederate Constitution itself:

4. No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.

http://www.usconstitution.net/csa.html

Oddly enough, I am not surprised that you are completely wrong about this.


(edited to add links).

[Razorback_Democrat]

14. Economics, pure and simple, the South couldn't survive without

slave labor

now they can't survive without Government subsidies for crops etc.

[MemphisTiger]

16. If you ask someone from the south they will

usually say it was about economics and states rights. These are the same people that think the civil war is still going on.

[JVS]

17. It was about States' Rights

And how some thought that the states should be free to govern their own economic affairs.

Which means making decisions about property, as in how to allocate resources or what is and isn't property.

And making decisions about whether a person can be property, which is slavery.

Follow the chain back up to the top and you see how some might say it was about States' Rights when the underlying issue was slavery.

[damntexdem]

19. In a word: Yes.

Slavery was part of a system incompatible with developing industrial capitalism. Once slavery was abolished, industrial capitalism quickly reconciled itself to the newer forms of racial oppression imposed in the South (and to some degree in the North) over the subsequent 50 years.

At the same time, abolitionists who opposed slavery on moral grounds did have influence on public opinion.

And a concern to preserve the Union was an important reason that the war was fought to prevent the secession of the Confederate states. But that was part-and-parcel of the concerns of northern industrial capitalists, who did not want to lose the raw materials, nor the potential markets, of the South; and who didn't want to see the union weakened as a political entity over which they intended to, and in fact did, hold increasing power.

[Forkboy]

21. What's your opinion?

?

[Bridget Burke]

22. Both.

The economy of the Old South depended on slavery.

[TO Kid]

28. To be more accurate...

The power of the Old South aristocracy depended on slavery. Economically, slavery was a drag.

[Bridget Burke]

33. Yes.

It was a pity they didn't consider diversification.

[Bridget Burke]

34. Yes.

It was a pity they didn't consider diversification.

[Ms. Clio]

45. The South was the 3rd or 4th largest economy in the world at the time

Slavery was working just fine for them economically--that's why they were so eager to extend it.

[el_gato]

23. What about this quote from Lincoln?

"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."
Abe Lincoln

Comments?

[el_gato]

26. "I have no purpose ... to interfere with slavery" Abe Lincoln

FULL Quote:
"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."
Abe Lincoln

If Lincoln said this, was he lying? Did he say this? If he did then, and he wasn't lying, then what was the war really about?

[Lexingtonian]

41. That's the position he took before the war

http://www.vectorsite.net/twcw78.html
http://www.vectorsite.net/twcw79.html
http://www.vectorsite.net/twcw80.html#m2

Here's the excerpt- very much in accord with what all sides said afterwards in the letters and such that we have- on the Peace Commission meeting on February 3, 1865- the last attempt to negotiate.

"Then they got down to business. Responding to a probe on how to resolve the conflict from Stephens, Mr. Lincoln replied: "There is but one way, and that is for those who are resisting the laws of the Union to cease that resistance." In response to further probes along this line, Mr. Lincoln made it absolutely clear that, as far as he was concerned, the war would only end with the restoration of the Union. Justice Campbell understood that as a given and asked what the policy of the North would be for handling the rebel states once they were returned to the Union. Mr. Lincoln made it clear that slavery was finished, with Seward informing the commissioners of the approval of the Thirteenth Amendment three days earlier.

Mr. Lincoln then added that he would prefer some scheme of compensation for slave-owners, but observed that Congress had shown no enthusiasm for the idea. As for the readmission of a state to Congress, the ultimate authority for such an action rested with Congress itself and was subject to their rules and conditions, though he would encourage them to be flexible. He would also grant executive clemency to rebel officials to the extent that he was able.

The commissioners had clearly been hoping for much more, but Mr. Lincoln was holding all the ace cards and did nothing to pretend otherwise. Robert Hunter finally said: "Mr. President, if we understand you correctly, you think that we of the Confederacy have committed treason; that we are traitors to your government; that we have forfeited our rights, and are proper subjects for the hangman. Is that not about what your words imply?" Mr. Lincoln thought it over for a moment, and then answered: "Yes. You have stated the proposition better than I did. That is about the size of it."

The men talked for four hours in all, but the two sides really had nothing to discuss."

[Ravenseye]

24. Slavery it is, sir

Proctor: All right, here's your last question. What was the cause of the Civil War?

Apu: Actually, there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists, there were economic factors, both domestic and inter--

Proctor: Wait, wait... just say slavery.

Apu: Slavery it is, sir.

-- "Much Apu About Nothing", The Simpsons

[depakid]

27. Read the newspapers and the debates in Congress

for the 30+ years preeding the war.

Anyone who does that will realize the absurdity in claims that the Civil War wasn't fought entirely over slavery and its westward expansion. Period.

Call it "the economics of slavery" or some other such thing, but all of the Southern revisionist notions about "states' rights" you hear bantered about from time- are simply false and unsupported by the facts.

[Ms. Clio]

46. Thank you

The myth of states rights is one long ago discounted by professional historians, but unfortunately, too few Americans seem to know that.

[0007]

29. Economics of slavery.

[Wisc Badger]

30. In my history courses

including the ones I took in college I have alway been taught it was a mainly economic war.

With the North growing ever more economically and also politically stronger the south felt a need to alter the dynamics if possible.

Picking a fight with the United States has never been a real good idea just ask the South or the Japanese.:-)

[TO Kid]

31. LOL

Or Panama- remember Manuel Noriega's public declaration of war against the USA?

[MadHound]

37. Then answer this question friend.

In the preamble of every single Confederate states' constitution, the ones that they wrote when they seceeded, the issue of slavery is given prominent, if not singular play.

Besides, slavery was a LARGE part of southern economics, it was the basis of the southern economy and southern riches. Slavery was the key to the economic engine of the South, without it, the South was nothing.

To believe otherwise is simply flying in the face of historical reality.

[Wisc Badger]

38. No argument from me

as you stated in your post the South had an economy based on slave agriculture.

The south without the economic institution of Slavery would have to make drastic societal changes that as of circa 1860/61 they were unwilling to way. Hence secession and war was their choice.

Remember it was the Buchanan administration that facilitated the partial arming of the future CSA by storing large amounts of munitions in the south while he was president.

The north did not start the war, but it was apparent that they had the economic and social might to win it (bad generals not withstanding). So my central statement stands, that it is never a good idea to pick a fight with the United States.

[hughee99]

32. Economics!

Slavery was involved only so far as it related to the economics of the south. IMHO If the south had slaves, but the same economic scenario didn't exist, there would not have been a war. If the south did not have slaves, but (if it were possible) the same economic conditions existed, the war would have happened anyway.

[AngryAmish]

35. Or the economics of slavery

[Walt Starr]

36. IT was about the economics of slavery n/t

[leftofthedial]

39. neither, directly

it was about states' rights

[sweetheart]

40. false dichotomy

The proper word for "economics" is "Political Economy". In this regard,
slavery was part of the greater picture of the political economy of the
time, and the "or" in your question is false logic.

That is why people are responding "economics of slavery"... as the
two subjects are combined in the fact.

Beyond the false dichotomy of your question, slavery is free labour
and of course such a thing is economically relevant, the wet dream of
any unethical capitalist, to pay no wages.

Some southern state revisionists will say the war was fought for
states rights... and if you wanted to inflate that argument, a more
genuine title for the thread would have been "Was the civil war
about states rights or slavery". Clearly it was about slavery, as
every peice of empirical evidence shows of the time, from teh very
articles of secession to the states demands to preserve slavery.

It was, if you forgive the wooly historical comparison, an early
version of a violent labour dispute... one where "free" labour fought
to be valued, much as a union organizer fights for the worker's right
to be fairly compensated.

All of this harkens back to the issue at the time, that Karl Marx
wrote about, (as he supported lincoln's war, thinking it an example
of his labour revolution). What creates value, Kapital or labour?
To define a society by the former is to deny all labour rights and to
ultimately endorse slavery. To say that kapital is a tool of labour
is more correct by honest real-world standards, but US society is
decidedly against that recognition, 150 years after that war.

[Mike L]

42. It was about taxes.

Lincoln offered to punt the slavery issue if the South would re-join the Union.

[Old Mouse]

43. the first legal slave in the union was a white man

And at the beginning, many blacks were slave owners too.

The successful calculation to create and promote racism to institutionalize the low cost slave labor system shows the terrifying social manipulation possible of men.

[lumpy]

47. Was the civil war about slavery or economics?

This is not a question of 'either or'. Most issues/subjects are more complex than 'is it one or the other?'.

[Sterling]

48. Both, they were one and the same.

Next question?

[Mabeline]

49. Economics, States Rights..