Why the American Civil War Happened (split from other topic)

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godofthunder9010

Active member
I do apologize for that, but I am heavy into the War Between the States & couldnt stand to see a blunt black/white comparison between the north & the south... I have to answer your question & then a mod can delete my posts if they wish.... or even perhaps create a new thread if possible! one of the final straws was the conversion of cotton to textiles... the north was buying the cotton at low prices, turning it into various products in their factories & selling it back to the south at outrageous prices. the south got sick of this & made a deal with the french to convert their raw cotton into fininshed product at a much lower price. the north didnt like this at all & imposed huge taxs on the Souths cotton exports. to the point of The Confederate states making up 87% of the total tax revenue of the Federal treasury in 1860. This was a prime example of taxation without reperesentation, one of the major causes of the revolutionary war. The south didnt like this one bit & took up arms.

The greatest underlying reason for the Civil War was the as yet untested theory that a state could secede and declare itself to no longer be bound by the Constitution of the United States.
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they didnt secede just to see if it could be done...
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Done!! We have a new thread for it. You don't have to be an admin or a mod to do that. :lol:

I know that the South did not secede just to prove that it could be done, but that was probably the greatest underlying controversy -- Does a state have the right to tell the rest, "I quit!" The question was whether or not they gave up that right when they accepted the Constitution of the United States. <--- But all of that is a very poor way to motivate men to fight and kill and die in a war. The poor of the South who were enlisted as soldiers were not likely to fight in a war over that principal and equally unlikely to fight over the right of some rich man's right to hold slaves as property. Men in the North were not very likely to rally to "Save the Union!!", but "Free the Slaves!!" worked pretty good.

The Constitutionality of conscription was a dilema that was faced after the war was already well under way. One does not have to like Lincoln, but it must be admitted by most that he was a man who faced more difficult circumstances than any President of the United States ever has been before or since.

Incidentally, the forum at www.militaryhistoryonline.com is one of the most Civil War obsessed places I've frequented. You should check it out if you're really into the American Civil War.
 
Im pretty stoked that Ive found some folks to chat history with... all the folks I know locally believe whatever they hear in our wonderful special-intrest-tainted-textbook schools & are no fun at all to debate with! Thanks for the link, BTW, Im gunna have to check this out!
 
excellent thread seeing as how we just stepped into the civil war in my history class. please, continue :)
 
from the other thread, sorry if its a wee bit drawn out... :D

The war wasnt about slavery to the extent it was made out to be. Taxation without reperesentation, the push west for agricultural/industrial land, the retention of states rights etc. had ALOT more influance then slavery in the creation of the confederacy. h**l, if you had money or owned slaves, you didnt have to fight anyhow. (30 negro law.) the fighting was done by the lower class that worked on plantations with the slaves.
I believe it was 1859, the southern states was leading the vote count in the US to abolish slavery. bottom line - the Slavery issue was a bleeding heart recruitment tactic for the north to give soldiers a cause to enlist & fight for. The very first conscription act was also a recruitment tool for the north.
As they say, to the victor goes the spoils, and the loser HAS to be the evil empire. but, interestingly, nobody ever talks about the child slavery going on in the northern states to make the uniforms, wepons etc. for the troops on the great crusade to end slavery. And dont forget this quote in the Emancipation Proclamation - "And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service. " The north was so short of soldiers by 1863, they had to add a recruitment pitch to the Proclamation. which, BTW, wasnt put into effect until 2 years after the war started.
IMO Honest Abe was the beginning of the end for the United States as the Founding Fathers intended it to be. with the constitutional cornerstone of States Rights & the concept of the purely volunteer militia gone with the conscription act, america started sliding into exactly what our forefathers were against.
The south was executing their right to stand up as Americans & fight for what they thought was right. They were trying to claim what they though was their birthright as the true Americans.
one of the final straws for the Southern states was the conversion of cotton to textiles... the north was buying the cotton at low prices, turning it into various products in their factories & selling it back to the south at outrageous prices. the south got sick of this & made a deal with the french to convert their raw cotton into fininshed product at a much lower price. the north didnt like this at all & imposed huge taxs on the Souths cotton exports, & also imposed tarifs on the cotton products coming back into the South. The taxes got to the point of The Confederate states making up 87% of the total tax revenue of the Federal treasury in 1860. This was a prime example of taxation without reperesentation, one of the major causes of the revolutionary war. The south didnt like this one bit & took up arms. in the meantime, with the secession the Union lost almost 9/10ths of its tax revenue & wasnt about to let that happen.
 
We shouldn't forget Andrew Jackson's influence, Lincolnd reacted to secession threats with the military simply because Jackson had used the same tactic and had been succesfull. Diplomacy instead might have delayed or prevented it.
 
Didn't Eli Whitney start the civil war, with his inventions, especially the cotton gin. At least that how the saying goes.
 
whitney died in 1825, so he didnt directly influance the war - but Whitneys inventions did contribute to certain aspects of the war. For instance his invention of muskets with interchangeable parts allowed mass production of affordable weapons as opposed to the hand made, one-at-a-time, expensive works of art firearms used to be... they say the cotton gin contributed to the war because its invention increased production of raw cotton, increasing the need for slaves to feed it. but then we get into the debate on how much slavery really influanced the war...
 
If anyone is interested in reading a truly interesting book on the subject, try James M. McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era".
The first few chapters of the book deal with the causes stemming from the sectionalism present in the years prior to war. An extremely well written book that earned the good Professor a Pulitzer prize.
I would recommend it to anyone.
 
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