Slavery & Civil War - was Re: [Peace-discuss] Membership, AWARE endorsement

[C. G. Estabrook]

The war was certainly over slavery -- and Zinn doesn't disagree -- just 
not over slavery *as a moral institution* but as an economic 
institution.  As he says:  "The slave [sic] interests opposed [free 
land, free labor, etc. -- i.e., an economy based on non-slave production]."

The Civil War, as Zinn says, was "a clash of elites," who had 
contradictory ways of exploiting labor.  The Northern elite lived by 
extracting surplus value from "free" laborers by means of the wage 
contract -- classic capitalism.  The Southern elite lived by extracting 
surplus value directly from unfree laborers.

The two systems couldn't exist side by side, and there was along 
competition over which would be extended.  As Lincoln said when he was 
nominated for the Senate, in his "House Divided" speech, "I believe this 
government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.  I do 
not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to 
fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided."

The Republican Party was founded explicitly to prevent the extension of 
slavery into the territories (i.e., "not in States where it exists") -- 
to be sure that labor there would be rented, not owned.  That's why the 
election of a Republican president caused secession -- the slave 
interests couldn't put up with such a program. (So slavery led to 
secession, but it need not have led to war: that was Lincoln's 
decision.) --CGE


        Chuck Minne wrote:
> Here is what this guy Zinn says about it:
>  
>  
> Behind the secession of the South from the Union, after Lincoln was 
> elected President in the fall of 1860 as candidate of the new Republican 
> party, was a long series of policy clashes between South and North. The 
> clash was not over slavery as a moral institution-most northerners did 
> not care enough about slavery to make sacrifices for it, certainly not 
> the sacrifice of war. It was not a clash of peoples (most northern 
> whites were not economically favored, not politically powerful; most 
> southern whites were poor farmers, not decisionmakers) but of elites. 
> The northern elite wanted economic expansion-free land, free labor, a 
> free market, a high protective tariff for manufacturers, a bank of the 
> United States. The slave interests opposed all that; they saw Lincoln 
> and the Republicans as making continuation of their pleasant and 
> prosperous way of life impossible in the future.
>  
> So, when Lincoln was elected, seven southern states seceded from the 
> Union. Lincoln initiated hostilities by trying to repossess the federal 
> base at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and four more states seceded. The 
> Confederacy was formed; the Civil War was on.
>  
> Lincoln's first Inaugural Address, in March 1861, was conciliatory 
> toward the South and the seceded states: "I have no purpose, directly or 
> indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States 
> where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have 
> no inclination to do so." And with the war four months on, when General 
> John C. Fremont in Missouri declared martial law and said slaves of 
> owners resisting the United States were to be free, Lincoln 
> countermanded this order. He was anxious to hold in the Union the slave 
> states of Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Delaware.
>  
> It was only as the war grew more bitter, the casualties mounted, 
> desperation to win heightened, and the criticism of the abolitionists 
> threatened to unravel the tattered coalition behind Lincoln that he 
> began to act against slavery. Hofstadter puts it this way: "Like a 
> delicate barometer,  he recorded the trend of pressures, and as the 
> Radical pressure increased he moved toward the left." Wendell Phillips 
> said that if Lincoln was able to grow "it is because we have watered him."
>  
> Racism in the North was as entrenched as slavery in the South, and it 
> would take the war to shake both. New York blacks could not vote unless 
> met- owned $250 in property (a qualification not applied to whites). A 
> proposal to abolish this, put on the ballot in 1860, was defeated two to 
> one (although Lincoln carried New York by 50,000 votes). Frederick 
> Douglass commented: "The black baby of Negro suffrage was thought to 
> ugly to exhibit on so grand an occasion. The Negro was stowed sway like 
> some people put out of sight their deformed children when company comes."
>  
>  A People's History of The United States 1492-Present, pages 188-189
> 
> 
> */Karen Medina <kmedina at uiuc.edu>/* wrote:
> 
>     Carl Estabrook wrote:
>     >The civil war was about slavery.
> 
>     I am the first to admit that I know very little about history
>     compared to just about anybody, but I think I agree with Carl on
>     this one as well.
> 
>     The South wanted to secede from the union. Dividing the union was
>     the one thing the President did not want to happen. But, ultimately,
>     the reason the South wanted to secede was because they were afraid
>     of financial setbacks if they could not use forced labor.
> 
>     -karen medina