gwern comments on Closet survey #1 - Less Wrong

53 [deleted] 14 March 2009 07:51AM

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Comment author: wnoise 14 April 2010 07:08:39PM *  5 points [-]

(If slavery was an issue, then the North should've just bought out the South - likely would've been much cheaper than the actual war.)

The North (well, congress) tried to buy out the South (well, slaveowners). The South rejected it. There were actually multiple attempts at this, some before the war, some during the war.

The thing is, the War between the States really truly was about slavery, nothing else. The dodge that it was about states' rights comes down to exactly one right -- the right to keep slaves. Compare with such travesties as the fugitive slave acts, which they pushed through congress, which actually did greatly infringe the rights of the northern states. The southern states, despite some of their propaganda, did not generally support the right of secession. Their Constititution explicitly forbade it. Every single article of secession passed by their state legislatures explicitly called out slavery as the reason for secession.

The odd thing is that slavery was not in any immediate danger. But with the election of Lincoln the southern states saw that their grip on the country was not as absolute as they desired, and they threw a tantrum, because they demanded not only the right to have slaves, but that the rest of the country not judge them for it.

Comment author: gwern 14 April 2010 08:57:43PM *  3 points [-]

I was struck by one quote from Lincoln's first inaugural address (emphasis added):

"The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. Where hostility to the United States in any interior locality shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist in the Government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating and so nearly impracticable withal that I deem it better to forego for the time the uses of such offices."

In other words, as long as they rendered unto Caesar and didn't take his stuff, Lincoln was willing to abandon all other federal government functions no matter how constitutionally mandated. This seems like secession in all but name.

Remember also that the casus belli was that Fort Sumter was supposed to be handed over to the Confederacy, but the federal government refused to.

Both seem more consistent with a power theory than a slavery theory.

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