ABQCOWBOY;4395582 said:
Don't really agree with this NYC. I do acknowledge that Slavery was an issue but the bigger issue with the South was States Rights. That was what really drove Secession IMO. Economic and Social differences between the Northern and Southern States were pretty extreme and as Lincoln was elected into office, that divide only widened. Slavery was only one of these issues. An important one but not the driving force IMO.
The South really only had one economic strategy. That was to grow cotton. They could not do this without Slavery. The North's introduction of emancipation was really a death blow to the South and all who lived in the South. The fact that the North had no interest making emancipation nation wide suggests to me that this was more of a ploy to gain access to Southern Territories more then anything. Not saying that the South was right in their Slave Based economy but the reality is that if you took that away from the South, they would have starved and not only the White Southerners but the Slaves as well. Clearly, this was not something the North ever cared about. The end of the Civil War demonstrated that the North had no sympathy for Black or White and how they would survive. Many, many starved after the Civil War and the same would have happened had the War not occured. In fact, I believe that had the North taken control of the South with no War, they simply would have continued to use Slave Labor. How else do you take advantage of this very rich cotton cash crop? We will never know on this last but it makes some sense to me that this is the direction that this might have played out.
States Rights meant that the Northern dominated Federal Government could not dictate to States what could and could not be allowed. To me, that was the key for the South. Money drove the entire effort for the North IMO. Slavery was a good tool for the North to employ against the South but I don't believe it was Slavery over Money. JMO.
This is sorta the feel-good explanation of the conflict.
States Rights is a conveniant excuse. Clay, Calhoun and their ilk had used the Federal Government for decades to quash northern states attempts to exercise 'states rights' in regards to slavery.
For the North it was about the secessions, as the incoming administration had done absolutely nothing with regard to slavery. For the south it was all about slavery, or 'our way of life'. Check this link to several states declarations of secession. Search for 'slave' in them and see how much it was used as justification.
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html
The conjecture on the collapse of cotton causing the decimation of the south after the war flies in the face of certain truisms. You fight a war mostly on your territory, you will have severe consequences. Especially with the infrastructure being destroyed, reaching its zenith with things like Sherman's March. With a more graduated approach (most likely under Lincoln, given insights from his writings), even if there had been a peaceable 'Northern Takeover', this decimation would likely not have occured.
Cotton was certainly grown profitably after the civil war.
So much money was tied up in the actual chattel slavery, that it lead the southern aristocracy to willfully blind positions. Numerous American leaders understood that "slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil" - Robert E. Lee 1856. Some of the founding fathers considered it failure of the new country, and a problem that they were foisting off on their grandchildren and great grandchildren. And that was well before King Cotton.
