If the U.S. Constitution had included a clause along the lines of the eventual XIII Amendment ("Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."), then there would not have been a United States as we know it. Georgia and South Carolina would certainly have declined to ratify such a constitution. (at the Philadelphia Convention, Gouverneur Morris, on July 11, 17817 said he "did not believe those (southern) States would ever confederate on terms that would deprive them of [the slave] trade." (Virginia, had already abolished the transatlantic slave trade by statute, if the Constitution proposed the abolition of slavery per se, the Commonwealth would have stood apart as well.) If the extension of the slave trade until 1807 had not been included, Rhode Island and perhaps Massachusetts might have declined. (On August 22, 1787 George Mason "lamented that some of our [North]Eastern brethren had from a lust of gain embarked in this nefarious [slave] traffic."Until 1807, the vast majority of the poor Africans dragged to America did so in American (i.e. New England) bottoms.
SI'm not going to go down the road of trying to argue small picture history about the Civil War with you because I think its been proven that the big picture the war was fought over slavery. To paraphrase the great Drew Carey, " If you don't like the fact that we wont accept your alternate take on history about the causes of the Civil War, then the confederates should've fought harder." or atleast not quit...That is really interesting. Northerners, then as now, have as little interest in airing their dirty laundry as southerners did and do (which is why you heae some southerners say the war had nothing to do with slavery, which is simply not born out by the facts).
At supper a few weeks, back, I was speaking with a woman from Massachusetts. When I explained my views on the war, she literally started sputtering. She had never even considered any viewpoint but the "all slavery, all the time" viewpoint common to New England society down to this day.
When she finally was able to compose a grammatical sentence, her first take was, "We should have let the South go." To which I responded, "That was kind of the point, wasn't it?"
When she had calmed down a bit, she went back to the old mainstay, the great northern alibi, "What about the slaves?" When I reminded her of Lincoln's first inaugural address ("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 the Congressional declaration of July 25, 1861 ("this war is not waged on their part in any spirit of oppression, or for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, or purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those (seceded) States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution, and to preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several States unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease”), she changed the subject.
It was not that she had examined and rejected any alternative view to the New England school. She was completely unaware that any alternative existed. I later found out she had majored in U.S. history in college.
Ive never seen a bigger obsession over trying to rationalize the motivations of a losing side more than the confederates. The simple fact is that we are talking about of traitors... or "rebels" that lost a war pretty much means that whatever cause they went in for wasn't worth the fight to see that history wouldn't look unkindly upon them. Maybe since underdogs like the NVA, Soviets during WWII, and even the colonists during the Revolution resisted certain defeat vs a superior power I just don't have much sympathy for the confederacy lost cause.
Last edited: