Originally posted by miko2d
Strictly speaking, the term "civil war" referes to fractions fighting for the control of the government of a country. That was hardly the case. Anyway,
I realize that some call it still the "War for Southern Independence", but I thought that for at least the last 75 years or so, was all just tongue in cheek.
There are many a battlefield monuments and graveyard markers inscribed "Civil War" perhaps they are incorrect. We will also have to let Ken Burns know.
You appear to have been misled. Southern slavery was not in danger form the North. Quite the opposite.
On March 2, 1861, the U.S. Senate passed a proposed Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.... {which was passed three months after the Dec 20 1860 secession of South Carolina, quickly followed by the secession of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. looks like the politicians were trying to lock the barn door after the horse got out.[HM]}
ARTICLE THIRTEEN
No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.
Two days later, in his First Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln promised to support the amendment even though he believed that the Constitution already prohibited the federal government from interfering with Southern slavery. As he stated:
I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution . . . has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, ....
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it" -- Lincoln in a a letter to newspaperman Horace Greeley on August 22, 1862
"I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position." -- Lincoln in August 21, 1858 debate with Stephan Douglas
Holden, just out of curiocity, where did you get the info stating otherwise?
No doubt Lincoln was as imperfect as the rest of us, and he was a pragmatist and tried to do what he thought he could do. He was limited by the politics and culture of his times, and one must endeavour to understand the various forces pushing historical figures to the decisions they made.
In the "house divided", Lincoln did say: (speaking of a then advocated policy of sort of a slavery detante')
"Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crises shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South."
In an 1837 statement while a member of the Illinois legislature, "[T]he institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy; but that the promulgation of abolitionist doctrines tends rather to increase than to abate its evils."
"We must not call it wrong in the Free States, because it is not there, and we must not call it wrong in the Slave States because it is there; we must not call it wrong in politics because that is bringing morality into politics, and we must not call it wrong in the pulpit because that is bringing politics into religion; we must not bring it into the Tract Society or the other societies, because those are such unsuitable places, and there is no single place, according to you, where this wrong thing can properly be called wrong!"
"Them's fightin' words"
In 1860, this sort of rhetoric from a man who was the president-elect was what concerned the south enough to believe that the end of their plantation culture and economy was at hand. Whether they were correct in their assessments will never be known, but that is what they thought, and then they fired on the fort.
Jefferson tried to write the anti slavery language into the founding documents, only to have the motion tabled until 1860. The proposed amendment you refer to was after the insurrection was nearly four score and seven years in the making. Too little too late for the south to gain much confidence.