Some say Haley was wrong for not mentioning slavery as the cause of the civil war

I believe you are referring the widely held view (hope) that slavery would die out over time.

 

Not really. The South most certainly didn't believe that slavery would die out over time and wanted to protect slavery for that reason. The North did, indeed, think that slavery would die out over time IF it was prevented from spreading. They were open about this.

 

Yes, that was the hope in the north and the fear in the south. Lincoln was careful to steer clear of advocating action.

 

You're ignoring the fact that the real grievance that Southerners had against the tyrannical behavior of the Northern faction was that Southerners felt that the individual states, and they alone had the right to decide how the status and uses of "property" (that's what slaves were regarded as at that time in history) would be determined -- period!

If you would read the Constitution as it existed in 1860, with focus on its Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3, you would see that it read (with my emphasis): "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."

This robust statement makes clear that each individual state makes its own rules concerning powers not given to the Federal Government -- exactly as intended by the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution! Sure, AFTER the Civil War had been won by the North, all that changed and the Constitution was further amended, but if we're seriously trying to figure out what actually CAUSED the Civil War in the first place, it was all about state's rights -- and everything else, including "slavery" per se, was ancillary!

 

True on that.

One of sad things that is NOT taught in schools is that the US was one of the very few countries that was not able to end slavery through peaceful legislative process.

It should be lesson on greed and its severe consequences. Tens of thousands of Americans died to keep a small group of slave holders wealthy. That's a lesson we seem to have a tough time learning.

 

The South didn't give two shits about individual states rights, which is why they didn't give THEIR OWN states rights when it came to EXACTLY THIS TOPIC. If they valued states' rights over slavery, they would have given their own states said rights . . . which they forbade. The topic was slavery from the beginning. The South wasn't shy about admitting this.

 

Lincoln wanted slavery to end, he just had a clever way about going about it. But he was never shy about admitting this, nor was the South shy about admitting that this was why they were leaving.

 

The South's paranoia was no excuse for attempting to overturn a democratic result.

 

Of course not. They were traitors attempting to revolt against our country for the express purpose of preserving slavery. It never had anything to do with democracy. Lincoln was in the right.

 

Even sadder is the realization is that with the continuing rapid developments in farming and other mechanical technologies, slavery would have become obsolete by about 1900 -- a relatively short forty years after the beginning of the most deadly and destructive conflict in this nation's history, by far!

Think! Slaves were expensive, both to purchase and to maintain, and their mortality rate was always high. Moreover, the whole impetus of western civilization was moving away from slavery. Both Britain and France had abolished slavery by the 1840's, and for all the economic reasons (and for the humanistic ones, too) slavery would have become a diminished, inefficient, uneconomical way to accomplish any task where it was employed -- especially those involving agriculture.

Yes, slavery would have disappeared from this country naturally, but the damage that those 19th-century Northerners inflicted on the 10th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States has remained to this day!

 

The seceding states DID NOT believe that slavery was on its way to becoming obsolete and, in fact, were willing to secede to stop that from happening.

 

"The damage that those 19th-century Northerners inflicted on the 10th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States" is a figment of your imagination.

 

Your "woe is me" thingy on the 10th Amendment only works if you ignore the slaves as human beings, so forgive me for putting the basic precepts of the Declaration of Independence above the Constitution in this matter ... "Life, Liberty ...." that whole thing.

 

No, Yardmeat, no one had a "crystal ball" about what the future of the world would be. Wouldn't it be great if people were able to look forty years into the future and see what was going to happen...?

No, everyone had to deal with the "here-and-now" of their lives and their situations as those stood in 1860. The simple truth is that the North was spring-loaded to subvert and wreck the 10th Amendment, which was the only real guarantor of the rights of STATES, as specified in the Constitution. The Southern states took the preemptive course of leaving the United States and forming their own country, but the North would have none of that -- so -- today, with the benefit of hindsight, all of us can see that slavery was discarded (good), but, that the 10th Amendment was forever wrecked (bad).

 

Yet the seceeding states DID state what they thought the crystal ball would hold. Why?

History just says you are full of **** here, dude. The South THOUGHT slavery was coming to an end, that's why they seceded, AND THEY EXPLICITICLY ****ING SAID SO.

 

Well, Daniel, from the relative distance and convenience afforded by looking BACK at the whole thing 163 years LATER, it's easy to make a pronouncement like that. But, as ugly as it seems to us today, back in the early 1800's nearly everyone in Europe and North America considered Negroes to be so primitive and backward that they weren't considered to be a fully-evolved part of the human race.

As a consequence, they were thought suitable only for servitude, and since they were being offered for sale by tribal Negro chieftains in Africa, White Europeans and other westerners had no qualms about buying and using them like any other livestock. Oh, I know, it's absolutely HORRID to make such observations in 2023, but if you refuse to see the whole thing as people back then saw them, then who's responsible for the inevitable lack of an accurate understanding of the history of it but yourself...?

 

Oh, so, the Southerners had a crystal ball which told them that slavery would be replaced by modern farming and other mechanical technologies that would yield greater efficiencies and profit, but they chose to cling to the inefficiencies and greater expenses involved in slavery just for the hell of it...? Or did they choose to leave because they no longer wanted to be yoked to a tyrannical faction that would forever after deprive them of their constitutional rights AS STATES?

You've already said that everyone, including Southerners knew that slavery was temporary -- but Southerners also knew that once Northerners had wrecked the 10th Amendment, the damage would still be there, long after slavery was gone.

C'mon, you can't have it both ways....

 

Most of the civilized world had ALREADY outlawed slavery through legislation and decree by the 1850's, so pretending it was some type of universal standard or accepted norm really isn't being truthful. The South's demand on "property" (a euphemism for slavery of another human being) was already seen by most of the world as barbaric at the time it was made, and they weren't fooling anyone by calling it "state's rights" - it was all about greed by a very few influential people who were willing to kill off thousands of their countrymen in order to preserve the inflow of money. End of story.

 

Oh? And in 1957 when the State of Arkansas decided to make its own state policies regarding public education, do you remember what the Federal Government did...?

I'm not saying it what the State of Arkansas did was a good thing, but, if you read the Constitution, WHO HAD THE RIGHT TO MAKE POLICY?

. Not the citizens of Arkansas, evidently.

 

The state of Arkansas acted as an outlaw, in violation of both the 14th Amendment and Brown v Board of Education. The federal government acted as duty required.

 

Yet we got step one after Antietam, and step 2 after Gettysburg. To be sure there were reasons beyond just freeing slaves. Such as the fact that many rebel field fortifications were built with slave labor.

 

Antietam was the opportunity. Lincoln needed a victory to give the Emancipation Proclamation weight.

 

No, she didn't "get it right." CSA apologists cook up a bunch of BS about a second American Revolution. They were so worried about "losing our way of life," they seceded thinking they would be able to leave without s fight.

The same "fathers" put in the general welfare clause knowing it would be used to greatly extend the power of government.

Haley knows there are plenty of Southern whites who still believe the states' rights propaganda (stoking a sense of grievance--great for getting votes) and she would be crushed by Trump in South Carolina if she told them states' rights was BS then and it's BS now. If your grievance is around special treatment by race, then I think you have a point. We should help people based on need. If blacks are more likely to require help because of racism, then it will show up in the numbers.

 

I think eight years of "crazy" should do it.

 

The secession was large part due to slavery and fundamental disagreement on how the federal government was supposed to function.

The real misinformation was that there was a civil war. There was never a civil war. That would be like calling a war today between Taiwan and China a civil war. The confederacy was its own country when it attacked the union.

Also the war did not continue in order to end or preserve slavery. The war continued because Lincoln wanted to "preserve the union".

So the secession was about slavery but the war was about territory and asset dispute and preserving the power of the federal government aka the union.