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After losing election, 15 States form petitions to secede

EatLeadCommie said:
I think the only pertinent thing is that today's desire to secede is most certainly not driven by slavery.

All of this begs the larger question of why can't a state secede?
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Congress outlawed it after the civil war, didn't they?
 
Hello said:
The teacher who teaches the Civil War course at Wake agrees with this. I assure you, he knows more about it than anyone here.
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Are you referring to Professor Escott? If so, he definitely spends a lot of time emphasizing the role of slavery in the lead up to the war. Were there other issues? Yes, but in the end they almost entirely come back to the central role of slavery in the Southern economy and society.
 
deacvision7 said:
If there was no slavery, is there a prosperous United States in 1861? I tend to doubt it.
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You can make the argument that slavery ultimately hindered Southern economic growth. Slavery was a huge labor market distortion and diverted capital that could have gone to industry and infrastructure. It also discouraged immigration since few migrants wanted to compete with slave labor. As a result the South was almost pathetically dependent on cotton production by the 1860s.

The North was doing just fine economically without slavery in 1861.
 
I agree with pretty much all of that.

I also wonder how quickly the US could have hit the ground running without the use of slavery to help the economy get going -- even in the North for a very long time.
 
bym051d said:
Congress outlawed it after the civil war, didn't they?
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No. The issue of secession was "resolved" via the results of the war and the notion that secession meant a bloody civil war that nobody would dare want to fight again.
 
DV7,

That's a fair point. The North definitely benefited both indirectly and directly from slavery, particularly early on. Much of the old wealth of Providence, Rhode Island was built on the slave trade prior to 1808. Though I would argue the biggest drivers of Northern economic growth in the first half of the 19th Century were mass immigration, practically unlimited land to expand into westward, and protectionist policies to help Northern industry (policies that were deeply unpopular in a South dependent on export revenue).
 
Yes. Which led to my question of if not for slavery would the US as a whole been as rich as it was (economically; certainly not morally) in 1961.


I never intended it to attempt to divide the North vs the South at that point.
The nation was on a course for implosion thru many acts of Congress and the (relatively late) divide on slavery was just one of them. That's why I think it is intellectually lazy to say that slavery was THE reason for the Civil War. That argument will simply hold no water.
 
RJKarl said:
Or how many southerners try to say slavery wasn't the reason or that it wasn't treason to take up arms against the United States government.
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the common quote is "it was about states' rights!" what they mean is "It was about states' rights [to own slaves]!"
 
bmoneydeac said:
ooh me ooh me, i get it!
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1309300880715.jpg
 
EatLeadCommie said:
No. The issue of secession was "resolved" via the results of the war and the notion that secession meant a bloody civil war that nobody would dare want to fight again.
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Texas vs White SCOTUS 1869

the court ruled that Texas had remained a state ever since it first joined the Union, despite its joining the Confederate States of America and its being under military rule at the time of the decision in the case. In deciding the merits of the bond issue, the court further held that the Constitution did not permit states to unilaterally secede from the United States, and that the ordinances of secession, and all the acts of the legislatures within seceding states intended to give effect to such ordinances, were "absolutely null".
 
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