Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 00:48:05 -0500
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
From: Samuel Lubell <lubell at cais.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Interesting Inventions
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

At 04:35 PM 4/2/02 -0500, ronkean at juno.com wrote:
>
>Technically, the South agressed first, when they fired shots at a federal
>fort.  But in the larger picture, I think it may be fair to say that the
>North aggressed against the South more so than vice-versa, because the
>Southern war aim was merely to be allowed to secede, whereas the Northern
>aim was to conquer the South and re-incorporate it into the Union.  The
>question really turns on whether the Northern aggression was justified.
>Before the Civil war, it was generally agreed (so I have read) that
>states have a right to secede.

No actually it wasn't.  The Federalists got into a lot of hot water for
threatening to secede at the Hartford Convention which ultimately led to
the ending of the party.

>If it were not for the strong will of
>Lincoln to uphold the Union, I think it is likely that Southern secession
>could have been peacefully negotiated, and if someone else had been
>president, that might well have happened.

Except that the election of a Republican president was the immediate
impetus for secession.  Had someone else been elected (Douglas?) the South
probably wouldn't have seceded just then.

Connecticut, I think, actually
>passed a secession bill in protest of the War of 1812, though they did
>not apparently follow through with it.  It would be interesting to know
>whether Connecticut's act of secession was ever formally repealed.
>
>Given that secession was a right of states, the Northern war aim was
>unjustifed, on the face of it.

Nowhere in the Constitution does it give states the right to leave

>Also, the South was being victimized by
>unfair import and export tax policies, which had the effect of taxing the
>South disproportionately more than the North, since the South was more
>dependent on exports than the North.  Also, the import tax protected
>Northern industrial interests, enhancing their profit margins at the
>expense of domestic buyers of manufactured goods, including buyers in the
>South.  But there was also the great evil of slavery at issue, so it yet
>may be argued that right was more on the side of the North.  It is far
>from conclusive, though, that ending slavery was really a Northern war
>aim.  Slavery ended because the South was politically powerless to
>prevent its abolition, after the war.

Actually, the real cause was the issue of expansion of slavery into the
territories.  The south was afraid that if slavery was forbidden in the
territories than they would become nonslave states and disrupt the balance
between North and South in Congress. I wrote my history master's thesis on
this.

Ending slavery in the Southern states wasn't a war aim until Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation, established largely to prevent Europe from
supporting the Confederacy, which specifically exempted slaves in states
that had not left the union (such as Maryland) and territory already
conquered by the army.