Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Cornerstone Speech by the Vice President of the Confederacy

Hard to overstate the economic impact of cotton, that product of the industrial revolution, flowing from mills from them newfangled steam engines.

Cheap, attractive, mass produced on machines, comfortable to wear, easily colored and patterned, likewise by machines. Quite unlike any mass commodity previously available. Everyone, everywhere, wanted it.

Just in time for the steam engine, Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin in 1794, making the the growth of short-staple cotton economically viable, cotton changes everything and sends the South down a dead-end path of cotton cultivation wherein chattel slavery becomes a very profitable proposition for those few with the means. Fortunes can be made growing cotton, in the first decades of the 19th Century cotton production grows exponentially, vast acreages given over to it,cotton producers and merchants financing and so making possible the Second Texas Revolution as an expansion of that cotton empire.

Most Southerners didn't own slaves, but all their wealthiest minority did; the Planter Class, who dictated domestic and foreign policy. Though few Southerners owned slaves, slaves represented the largest economic capitol of the South as a whole and slave grown cotton its major export. Slaves comprised about one quarter of the whole population of the South. In the States of South Carolina and Mississippi the enslaved actually outnumbered free folks.

Cotton is so profitable that little thought is given industrial development in the South, and while the North swells with immigrants, there is little incentive for said immigrants to move to the South where among other things, they would have to compete with slave labor.

Little wonder that by the time secession finally occurs in 1860, ALL the political leadership in the South comes from among the Planter Class. No wonder these people write a Constitution designed to perpetuate that way of life. Sad part is these people are also short-sighted to the point they try to pressure Great Britain into recognition by withholding their own cotton exports, a self-imposed and ultimately ruinous embargo. Britain responds to this embargo by taking the conceptually simple and necessary step of setting up cotton production inside their own empire, undermining the future economy of the South.

So was the war over slavery? The Confederate Veep said it was, so did the Declaration of Reasons of the first seven states to secede and these were all written by the Plantation Aristocracy.

But, as stated, it is doubtful that for the Confederate soldiers actually doing the fighting, the defense of wealthy planters and their slaves was the reason why they fought.

JMHO,
Birdwatcher

"The rewritten history of the Civil War began with Lincoln as a brilliant political tactic to rally public opinion. The issue of slavery provided sentimental leverage, whereas oppressing the South with hurtful tariffs did not. Outrage against the greater evil of slavery served to mask the economic harm the North was doing to the South.

The situation in the South could be likened to having a legitimate legal case but losing the support of the jury when testimony concerning the defendant's moral failings was admitted into the court proceedings.

Toward the end of the war, Lincoln made the conflict primarily about the continuation of slavery. By doing so, he successfully silenced the debate about economic issues and states' rights . The main grievance of the Southern states was tariffs. Although slavery was a factor at the outset of the Civil War, it was not the sole or even primary cause. "

http://www.emarotta.com/protective-tariffs-the-primary-cause-of-the-civil-war/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_of_Abominations

"The "Tariff of Abominations" was a protective tariff passed by the Congress of the United States on May 19, 1828, designed to protect industry in the northern United States. Enacted during the presidency of John Quincy Adams, it was labeled the Tariff of Abominations by its southern detractors because of the effects it had on the antebellum Southern economy. It set a 62% tax on 92% of all imported goods."


Mike

Boy oh boy, where do I start?

Back during the days of the civil rights struggle, a Yankee came into a little Southern town to help the local darkies "organize" for their marches. An old White fellow there in the town asked the Yankee if he had Negroes in his town back up north. The Yankee admitted he did not. The old Southerner then told the Yankee that maybe instead of helping the local Negroes, he should just move them all up north to his town, and that way, everybody would be happy. It seems to me like Yankees are pretty good at telling others what to do.

RickyD is a poster that has taken every opportunity he has been given on here to either bash anything about the South, tell some Southerner that he is wrong, or in this case, is a liar. Apparently, he must have gotten a speeding ticket he didn't think he deserved by a Mississippi state trooper, or maybe ole Ricky is a descendant of slaves himself, who knows. But, whatever the case, he is eat up with hatred towards anyone that has ever posted anything sympathetic towards the South.

Yes, the South was Democrat AND conservatives........the Democrats were the original conservatives. The North was Republican and liberal or socialist......take your pick, Ricky my boy. Abe Lincoln was a diehard socialist, not a conservatives as we think today. The original revisionist history.......that was when the North got to write about the lies of the war that they brought upon the South.

My people were in killer each other in Europe until recently so I have no "stake" in the slavery issue, or as much stake as a Confederate has in the Siege of Vienna war of 1683.

I have heard many talks at Gettysburg by historians that state rights, not slavery was the main reason that 97% of the people went to war for the South. As pointed out, very few southern people benefited from slavery, and many had to compete against it. Many feared the slaves and the uprisings from the slaves. 700,000 dead by northern aggression did not really solve the issue, it remains today.
In the end, the southern states had a right to leave, and slavery was going to die with the industrial revolution. In the end the war was not the answer.

Interestingly the democrat goofs want secession and state rights above federal law, but now that is just fine, but somehow they damn Confederates for the same vision.

Hell...I don't see a damn thing wrong with it! If we were operating under it today....we'd be shed of a helluva lot of troubles!!

Oh....it's highly understandable that there are many 'things' you haven't read before!!

So, I don't know about your states but I can prove my state didn't secede nor fight the war because of slavery. My state had an election for representatives to the secession convention. Electors opposed to secession won the election and the convention made no decision for four months. After FortSumter Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to invade the south and force it back into the union. At that point, the secession representatives for my state, including all but one of those previously opposed, voted for secession. The ordinance of secession mentioned only Lincoln's call for troops and war upon the states as the reason to leave the union.

Wow.







P

Yes sir! I bet when you read that.....someone wouldn't have been able to drive a ten penny nail up your arsehole with a 40# maul!!

THIS^^^^^^^

I think it's creepy that you were thinking about my backside. Latent homo, maybe?

You're weird.





P

How does that prove anything? You believe that it means your state wasn't in it for slavery...

Equally valid point could be made that they were just letting other states take the big risk while sitting back and hoping it would be resolved without your state taking any risk.

Every state in the Confederacy allowed slavery. Every Single One. If it was about state's rights, wonder how it came about that not ONE SINGLE non-slave owning state joined the Confederacy?

There is no doubt that many, probably even a majority of the Southern men who fought weren't fighting for slavery - but there is also no doubt that every state joined to the Confederacy to protect slavery.

Lincoln made war against the South because the south wanted to keep the blacks in America and Lincoln wanted to send them back to Africa.

John Wilkes Booth is the reason we have blacks in America.

I wish that all you posters on here who love to get on the South for wanting to keep their slaves would come down here and get the Negroes and take them all back with you, and that way maybe y'all would finally be happy.

Are you [bleep] retarded? They elected representatives to the secession convention AFTER seven states had already gone out. The candidates ran on the basis of being in favor or not in favor of secession. Those not in favor of secession won a clear majority DESPITE three counties having no candidates who were against. Yet after and ONLY after Lincoln's call for troops, all of those representatives previously against secession changed their positions. And the Ordinance of Secession made not one single reference to slavery. It only referenced the US government making war in the states.

Slavery was not enough for my state. It took an illegal call for troops to make it go out.

Yes, the war was so much about slavery and it was such a critical issue that it appeared half way through the speech. How about Mr. Lincoln's take on the matter?

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything."
by:

Abraham Lincoln
(1809-1865) 16th US President
Source:
Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858

Many on both sides felt the negro was inferior. When is the last time a major power went to war for something other than economics? Religion is often another cause but this too is often just a cover for economics.

I've seen PhD historians pretty much give up in the face of explaining why we went to war. I gather that it's complicated.

As I understand it, early in the war the North was fighting to preserve the Union. As the war progressed, Lincoln, ever the shrewd politician, cast the war as a fight over slavery because that would better advance his cause.

I can certainly sympathize with the South's concern over being forced to comply with federal laws that they didn't like or agree with. As I see it, their main problem was that in resisting, they were supporting the vile and immoral institution of slavery. I wonder how their intellectual and political position would have unfolded if the issue had been gun control.

Before the war, we said "The United States are...". After it, "The United States is...".

Bears repeating because some people here are so fuggin stupid , they didn't get it the 1st time

Mike

There is a lot of stuff that made it 'complicated'....

The only part of Virginia that had slaves in any numbers was the southeast...

after FT Sumter, the VA Legislature was in recess....the SE politicians called a 'special session' and
went up to Richmond, and with not even a quorum, seceded the state.

Afterwards the Legislature convened and actually to rescind the secession... however
Washington DC had an enemy right across the Potomac, so they invaded Virginia to set up a
safe perimeter defense... occupying Arlington and Fairfax County...

When that happened, the State Mobilized and considered it self invaded.

Robert E Lee would have taken command of the Union Troops until that happened...

He gave his allegiance to Virginia....

The Western Counties of the State were so pissed, owning no slaves or anything else to go to war
over, they seceded from the State of Virginia...by 1863, they formed a new state.. originally called
Kanawha named after the river that goes thru the center of the State, but later changed to West Virginia..

However many people from Western Virginia still fought for Virginia, not necessarily the confederacy.

Traveling around the State it is hard to find statues to Union Soldiers from what is now West Virginia.
but it certainly is no problem finding statues to the local boys who fought for Virginia.

Virginia was so destroyed by the Civil War and all the repercussions that were thrown on it,
decided it was better to remain a separate state.

And those invading troops were stopped at a town called Manassas...the south called it after the creek that
ran thru the area, Bull Run...

as kids in the early 1960s, we were still discovering stuff left over from the two battles there... it was all over the place..

I even remember finding the remains of a cannon, with a couple of my friends in a sand bar on Bull Run, just 1/2 mile
down the dirt road from our school in Yorkshire.

The south certainly had no shortage of brave men, nor were they lacking in competent leaders and they have every right, if not duty to honor them through statues, memorials or any other method they see fit. I'm a proud yankee but not because we won, rather in spite of it.

They fought because they were DRAFTED:



The first general American military draft was enacted by the Confederate government on April 16, 1862, more than a year before the federal government did the same. The Confederacy took this step because it had to; its territory was being assailed on every front by overwhelming numbers, and the defending armies needed men to fill the ranks. The compulsory-service law was very unpopular in the South because it was viewed as a usurpation of the rights of individuals by the central government, one of the reasons the South went to war in the first place.

Under the Conscription Act, all healthy white men between the ages of 18 and 35 were liable for a three year term of service. The act also extended the terms of enlistment for all one-year soldiers to three years. A September 1862 amendment raised the age limit to 45, and February 1864, the limits were extended to range between 17 and 50. Exempted from the draft were men employed in certain occupations considered to be most valuable for the home front, such as railroad and river workers, civil officials, telegraph operators, miners, druggists and teachers. On October 11, the Confederate Congress amended the draft law to exempt anyone who owned 20 or more slaves. Further, until the practice was abolished in December 1863, a rich drafted man could hire a substitute to take his place in the ranks, an unfair practice that brought on charges of class discrimination.

http://www.wtv-zone.com/civilwar/condraft.html