We are getting old.

[Galen]

(10-01-2016, 02:27 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(10-01-2016, 12:47 AM)Galen Wrote:

(09-30-2016, 03:49 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(09-30-2016, 12:17 PM)Galen Wrote:

(09-30-2016, 07:21 AM)Odin Wrote: A far-right crackpot who peddles Neo-Confederate BS. His crap ends up on Reddit's /r/BadHistory board a lot. Most of the posters on that board are actual historians, by the way.

Have you actually read his work and then followed up on his sources?  If not then you don't know anything.

O for Christ's sake. http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~ras2777/amgov/stephens

Lincoln was the one to start the war by re-enforcing Fort Sumter.  Prior to that it was the South Carolina that was providing them with food.  It was the Union that rejected the which was sent to negotiate the price of federal property and the amount of the federal debt they were to pay.  The Corwin Amendment had already passed both the Senate and House of Representatives.  Seven of the Southern States had seceded by this time and did not vote on the amendment.  It would not have passed unless the northern States were willing to vote for it.  Lincoln himself in his First Inaugural Address made it very clear that he had no intention to interfere with the institution of slavery.  Since the political elites of both the Union and the Confederacy were in agreement about slavery than there had to be another reason for the war.

Elites have ultimately to bend to the popular will, if it's strong enough. The southern hotheads were hell-bent on arming themselves and seceding after the Harper's Ferry episode, from what I have read. The northern abolitionists were pushing the North into war, and Lincoln (who was at heart one of them and had said the union could not continue half-slave and half-free) was being pushed too. The north could have allowed Ft. Sumpter to be seized, I suppose, or negotiated a deal. It's quite plausible to say that the North started the war, since they wanted to preserve the union and many there wanted to end slavery. The southern rebels by seceding and arming and seizing federal property certainly provoked the north into action, so both sides are to blame. Certainly without slavery there would have been no war.

The Union had a choice.  They could either allow the southern states to go or keep them in by force.  The Confederacy clearly intended a peaceful separation but the Union would not allow it.  If you bother to read the Constitution, which clearly you haven't, you would see there is nothing in it that prevent a state from seceding.  Prior to 1865 it was commonly understood that the union was a voluntary association and the states were in fact sovereign nations in their own right.  You might want to read the text of Virginia's ratification of the Constitution.

Truth is southern secession was a last resort measure because they could see no other way to preserve what they saw as their rights.  By the way Fort Sumpter was never in any danger of being seized, if it was the Confederacy would never have sent a peace commission in the first place.