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Wycoff
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quote:
Originally posted by Ted Striker
Yet abolition became the driving force of the war.
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The closest it came was the sense that abolition would punish the Slave owners and weaken the Southern cause and their ability to wage war. Not for moral reasons, for political and strategic reasons. The primary reason for the war, from start to finish, was to keep the union whole.
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MrFun
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of Iowa
Nov 2000
time: 23:19
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In the 1850s, industrialization was beginning to take off. The new Republican Party's program was in favor of full-throttle industrialization in lieu of expanding the federal government's investment in such development.
The Southern Democrats and a large number of Northern Democrats opposed such a program for fear of increased corrupt ties between corporations and government officials, along with centralization of federal power.
However, the Republican Party also opposed the expansion of slavery. They sought to preserve the western territories for white settlers and exclude black slaves as well as free blacks from the territories. Most Republicans adhered to a racist, anti-slavery ideology.
Yet, at same time, there was a distinct minority of Republicans who were sincerely racial egalitarians and opposed slavery in its entirety. They only gained temporary power in the legislative agenda though, during the post-Johnson years when they endorsed more radical acts that most moderate Republicans could not swallow.
With the ongoing guerrilla warfare, political terrorism, and racial violence in Reconstruction South, the Republican Party began to negotiate on the issues of race in favor of their program for mass industrialization with increased federal government investment. So after 1876, the Republican Party allowed the Southern redeemers to violently crush the last vestiges of black political participation and economic mobility in attempt to retain their party's political power in the federal government with the disputed election of 1876.
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Wycoff
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quote:
Originally posted by Ted Striker
However, the PEOPLE took it up as a moral cause, plain and simple. If it did not have any moral meaning to them, the action itself would have been irrelevent
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I completely disagree. The abolitionists were a minority, and the Emancipation proclamation was as much of a foreign policy tool as it was anything. Since the Brits and French had already banned slavery, it would have been politically difficult for them to diplomatically recognize the slave holding South if the South looked like it was an illigitamate rebellion. Lincoln feared foreign recognition of the CSA, as that could lead to foreign intervention in the war. The administration had to wait for some clear victories so the Proclamation wouldn't appear to be an act of desperation, and thus dismissed as a desperate strategy by the relevant foreign powers. After Vicksburg and Gettysburg the North clearly had the advantage. Lincoln could then proclaim the Emancipation Proclamation, giving the US the moral upper hand and effectively guaranteeing that the premier European powers would not recognize the South.
It would be nice to say that the Union and its citizens was motivated by moral obligation to liberate the slaves, but I fear that that's historically disingenuous. Though there was an abolitionist movement in the North it was not the driving force behind the war.
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Wycoff
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Good Post, Mr. Fun
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Ted Striker
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United States of America
Jan 1970
time: 21:19
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quote:
Originally posted by Wycoff
I completely disagree. The abolitionists were a minority, and the Emancipation proclamation was as much of a foreign policy tool as it was anything. Since the Brits and French had already banned slavery, it would have been politically difficult for them to diplomatically recognize the slave holding South if the South looked like it was an illigitamate rebellion. Lincoln feared foreign recognition of the CSA, as that could lead to foreign intervention in the war. The administration had to wait for some clear victories so the Proclamation wouldn't appear to be an act of desperation, and thus dismissed as a desperate strategy by the relevant foreign powers. After Vicksburg and Gettysburg the North clearly had the advantage. Lincoln could then proclaim the Emancipation Proclamation, giving the US the moral upper hand and effectively guaranteeing that the premier European powers would not recognize the South. |
Not really. Europe never really considered any real intervention in the war at all. There was one incident with the British but that was about it.
I will agree that it squashed all hopes of foreign intervention (which was never really seriously considered in the first place). But that was not the primary reason for it being issued. To ignore the domestic effects is a complete mistake and the primary reason for its issuance.
quote:
The Northern Government now was committed to a broader cause, with deep, mystic overtones; it was fighting for union and for human freedom as well, and the very nature of the Union for which it was fighting would be permanently deepened and enriched. A new meaning was given to Daniel Webster's famous "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable"; the great Battle Hymn now rang out as an American Marseillaise, and Northerners who had wondered whether the war was quite worth its terrible cost heard, at last, the notes of the bugle that would never call retreat. A war goal with emotional power as direct and enduring as the Confederacy's own had at last been erected for all men to see. |
http://www.civilwarhome.com/europeandcivilwar.htm
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14-11-2004 11:33
Still PWND! 
He's still PWND though.
ACK!
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