Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts
In response to my short essay on November 9 ( https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/11/09/the-prevalence-of-myth-over-history/ ), a reader sent me a link to secession documents that implicated slavery, not the tariff, as the reason for Southern secession. It is typical for the uneducated to come across a document of which they have no understanding and to send it off with a rude “got you” note to one who does understand the document.
I have explained the Southern states secession from the union in long essays. See:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/08/23/know-called-civil-war-not-slavery/ and
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/08/28/weaponization-history-journalism/ and https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/09/18/whatever-happened-america/ and https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/04/13/power-lies/ and https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/08/21/trump-american-history-assassinated/ .
Once again:
When the Southern states seceded, they were concerned to do so legally or constitutionally under the Constitution so that the North could not legally claim that it was an act of rebellion and invade the Southern states. To make this case, the South needed to make a case that the North had broken the Constitutional contract and that the South was seceding because the North had not kept to the Constitution.
This presented a legal challenge for the South, because the reason for which the Southern states were seceding was the tariff, but the Constitution gave the federal government the right to levy a tariff. Therefore, the Southern states could not cite the tariff as a breach of the Constitutional fabric.
Slavery was the only issue that the South could use to make a legal case that it was not in rebellion. Article 4 of the US Constitution reads: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.” In defiance of Article 4, some Northern states had passed laws that nullified the Fugitive Slave Act and other laws that upheld this article of the Constitution. The South used these nullification laws to make its case that Northern states had broken the Constitutional contract, thus justifying the Southern states secession.
Lincoln understood that he had no authority under the Constitution to abolish slavery. In his inaugural address he said: “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.” The North had no intention of going to war over slavery. The same day that the Republican Congress passed the tariff, Congress passed the Corwin Amendment that added more constitutional protection to slavery.
Lincoln said that the South could have all the slavery that it wanted as long as the Southern states paid the tariff. The North would not go to war over slavery, but it would to collect the tariff. Lincoln said that “there needs to be no bloodshed or violence” over collecting the tariff, but that he will use the government’s power “to collect the duties and imposts.” The tariff was important to the North, because it financed Northern industrialization at the economic expense of the South.
During the decades prior to Southern Secession, the conflict between North and South was over the tariff, not over slavery. Slavery played a role only in the South’s effort to keep a balance in the voting power of “free states” and “slave states” in the attempt to prevent the passage of a tariff.
The South’s effort to exit the union legally and constitutionally was to no avail. Secession was declared a rebellion, and the South was invaded.
The misportrayal of the War of Northern Aggression as Lincoln’s war to free slaves is also impossible to reconcile with Lincoln’s view of blacks. Here is “the Great Emancipator” in his own words:
“I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation [of the white and black races] . . . Such separation . . . must be affected by colonization” [sending blacks to Liberia or Central America]. (Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln vol. II, p. 409).
“Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and . . . favorable to . . . our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime.” (Collected Works, vol. II, p. 409).
“I am not nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people” (Collected Works, vol. III, pp. 145-146).
How was Lincoln turned into “the Great Emancipator”?
Just as Civil War history is mistaught in order to support the Identity Politics agenda of fomenting hatred of whites, the histories of the two world wars were fabricated in order to blame Germany, more about which later.
Next to go will be the Lincoln Memorial. Lincoln was certainly in thrall to Rothchilds and their ilk. Annuit Coeptis
Robert (QSLV)
The South never seceded, the Confederacy never existed, and it’s quite impossible for the United States to invade itself.
“Considered as transactions under the Constitution, the ordinance of secession, adopted by the convention, and ratified by a majority of the citizens of Texas, and all the acts of her legislature intended to give effect to that ordinance, were absolutely null. They were utterly without operation in law. The State did not cease to be a State, nor her citizens to be citizens of the Union.” (Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700, 1867)
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/74/700
Baloney. There was nothing to prevent the states from departing the union. What’s more, they established for themselves all the trappings of nation, just as their forefathers several decades prior had done when they seceeded from their mother country. If the Declaration of Dependence is any example, there was nothing to prevent the voluntary participants in the union from revoking their participation. What’s more, it was Lincoln who refused to accept or recognize the CSA’s representatives, thus ensuring the conflict had no solution. That court decision you cite is bogus. A court decision handed down by the Occupation Government’s lackeys means nothing. The victors can make their laws and create their propaganda, but the truth is something else. Lincoln was a tyrant and his followers to this day deny and hide that fact. He was also a closet case, but they don’t like to talk about that part, either.
“There was nothing to prevent the states from departing the union. ”
Well apparently there was! ( and his name was Sherman)
Might does not make right
Let’s face it, nearly anyone who is considered wonderful in the history books was in all likelihood a somm bitch of one kind of another.
“You can’t handle the truth”
The reality is white America has saddled itself with a parasitic race. Was at CVS today and an old black guy asked me for a donation for keeping kids off the street/out of gangs shit. I’m an old white guy. I looked him dead in the eyes and said……..”this song’s been playin’ all my life; not on my best day.” Had to leave it at that or I’d probably be accused of a hate crime. Just know this. You can’t run and you can’t hide. Wherever you move to, they’ll move to. They need white people to feed on. And they won’t stop until you’re financially dead.
I call BS.
The tariffs were a thorn in their side vs. the real reason for the Southern revolution as stated by the Confederate leadership.
Immediately after Lincoln took the oath of office on March 4th, the Confederate government called for 100k troops on March 5th, the Union had just 16k troops and most were stationed in the West and overseas.
This is what the Confederate VP said just weeks before the Confederate soldiers bombed Fort Sumter.
“Corner Stone” Speech
Alexander H. Stephens
Savannah, Georgia
March 21, 1861
“This old thorn of the tariff, which was the cause of so much irritation in the old body politic, is removed forever from the new.”
“The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact.”
Confederate Vice President Stephens goes on to say,
“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
These are the words of the Confederate leadership just after the ratification of the Confederate Constitution and just before the war started.
Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens was being forthright.
Paul Craig Roberts is trying to rewrite history.
Already I have two down votes which means that people really can’t handle the truth. They can beat their chests about the virtues of fighting for their own slavery, but they can’t handle the truth that the Southerners fought for their own slavery.
You ignored the arguments and documents Roberts posted. Further, slavery as a viable economic state was on it’s way out and could have been ended without the loss of 700,000 lives.
After 1808 it would have been taxed out of existence.
I did not ignore the arguments. I posted the words of the Vice President of the Southern Confederacy in early 1861 which completely contradict what historical revisionist Paul Craig Roberts want us to believe today. PCR is refuted by the words of Edmund Ruffin, Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, and Abraham Lincoln along with many others of that era.
“One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute.” – Abraham Lincoln – March 4, 1861
Furthermore, the South was not even collecting much in tariffs … diddly squat compared to the North.
Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog
Diddly squat!!
And it is an outright lie that slavery was on its way out. Slavery in America had been growing each decade since the Revolutionary War and had grown the fastest from 1850 to 1860. That is why the Confederates seceded. They had to expand slavery or lose it, just like they wrote in the Confederate Constitution. Read it. Lincoln was strict on no more expansion of slavery and the Southern slaveowners could see their economic devastation if slavery was not allowed to expand. They just could not stand for such an economic loss. Who could blame them?
Yet, the fact is that the tariff issue was not the reason for secession and everyone who pushes that nonsense sounds ridiculous to those of us who have studied history. The expansion of slavery was the stated goal and actual reason for the Confederate secession documented by the Confederate leaders themselves.
Read what Jefferson Davis said about it. Tariffs were a virtual non issue while the expansion of slavery was of vital importance.
Roberts’ article starts with a paragraph that includes, “…the uneducated to come across a document of which they have no understanding and to send it off with a rude “got you” note to one who does understand the document.”
That reads quite a bit like your comment here.
As a primer, you might try reading Thomas DiLorenzo.
Thomas DiLorenzo? Are you kidding me? Thomas DiLorenzo is a historical hack and he knows it. I am sure he loves that you believe his crap, but do your own homework. DiLorenzo is not a credible source for historical facts.
DiLorenzo claims that Lincoln was not really opposed to slavery when in fact the only reason you have ever heard of Abraham Lincoln is because of his opposition to slavery. Lincoln would have been a nobody in history if not for his moral opposition to slavery. He would not have won the presidency otherwise. It is flat out stupid to make the claim that Lincoln was not opposed to slavery. Ignorant.
Owning a slave back then was a serious 1%er kind of deal. Like owning an expensive sports car. Estimates of the modern value of a slave from 1850 range between 100,000-200,000. I doubt the average man today would fight for the 1%’s right to own a Bentley or a Ferrari any more than Southern patriots were signing up to die for the 1%’ right to own expensive farm equipment. No doubt, Stephens was being forthright. For him. But the average Southerner was no more fighting for his business criminal class than our soldiers today are enlisting and fighting for ours. And yet, soldiers in both eras were/are ultimately propping up and enriching that same business criminal class.
All I know is that slavery is wrong. Anyone here like to be kidnapped & sent off to another country to be a slave?
A bit of an aside: Muslims are the dominate slave traders of today. In the ‘old fashioned’ method, as in how blacks were kidnapped & sent off as chattel workers before the (un)civil war.
I’m just glad US ‘old style’ slavery is gone, on it’s face anyway. The ‘federal’ income tax makes us all a new kind of slave.
Can anyone prove that the income tax amendment was ever ratified by all the necessary states in the legal timeframe?
SamFox
An interesting exercise is to first read the short essays of James Lafond on early day slavery in The Colonies and then read the scholarly books he references. You can find his essays on jameslafond.com.
According to Lafond and his sources, at the time of the American War of Independence, there were 600,000 to 800,000 Black slaves in all the South, but, at the same time, 200,000 Irish slaves in Pennsylvania alone. There were White slaves in every one of The Colonies, or The Plantations, as they were known in Britain.
George Washington (PBUH), of sacred memory, held not only black slaves but also white slaves.
Why is slavery wrong?
It’s been the default setting for humanity for probably 99.99% of its history. It was only ended officially in the 1970s when Saudi and Sudan and 1981 Mauritania finally officially ended it under UN pressure. You would be forgiven if you didn’t believe it was ended. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2012/03/world/mauritania.slaverys.last.stronghold/index.html
So what’s so bad about owning other people?
Is it the payment part? Or the lack of freedom part?
Because I feel like we still have de facto slavery if the debt system is any indication.
Kids with tens of thousands in debt and a useless Underwater Basketweaving degree backed up by FedGov police enforcers and poor job prospects and no way to pay it off seems kind of like slavery to me.
And the millions of folks out there who literally can’t scrape $400 together to deal with an unexpected emergency or unplanned expense and who get no medical insurance/vacation/sick days kind of sounds like slavery to me.
Amazon’s business model where you can’t take a 15 minute break or even leave the line to pee sounds like slavery to me.
The vast majority of American workers feel compelled to watch their cell phones and laptops when they’re not at work, even on vacation (if they actually take it- most are too scared to take their vacation, from the stats I’ve read), lest they miss a message from their boss. That sounds a lot like slavery to me.
The military’s idea it can call you up after you complete your service honorably and separate to compel years of additional service afterwards sounds like slavery to me.
By the way- have you ever seen the emergency orders that say in a time of emergency the govt can take you away and put you to work anywhere and in any way they want? That sounds like slavery to me.
And how about the govt’s imminent domain laws that let them just take your property when they feel like it? That story about how New London took an entire neighborhood away from its owners to suck up to a drug company? That kind of sounds like slavery to me.
So why can’t we just own people? I don’t get the problem with that.
My two cents in a fascinating thread…I agree with the quote below:
“Leaving aside this annoying constitutional problem (which I seem unable to leave aside) most of us (at least us northerners) were brainwashed at an early age to believe in the legality and the nobility of Lincoln’s stand.”