Lincoln & Slavery: why preserve the union?

~Abe Lincoln was not an abolitionist and the USA did not go to war to end slavery, nor did the CSA states secede to preserve the "Perculiar Institution".

The right to own Slaves was protected by the US Constitution (Article I, sections 2 and 9, Article IV, section 2, Amendments IV, V, IX and X). Abolition could come only by state law or Constitutional Amendment. Lincoln knew that and said as much throughout the 1860 campaign. As he repeated in his First Inaugural Address, he had neither the desire nor the authority to abolish slavery where it existed. He may have ignored that basic fact when he promulgated the illegal and unconstitutional Emancipation Proclamation, but as a elementary principle of constitutional law, neither the Chief Executive not the Congress could legally abolish slavery or emancipate slaves.

No abolition amendment was ever introduced before 1864 for a very simple reason. The was insufficient support in the north for ratification. The south would not even have had to vote to defeat it. In 1864, with the CSA states absent, Congress considered an abolition amendment for the very first time. It was defeated. Had it been passed in Congress, it would never have been ratified at the polls or in convention. In March, 1861, the Republican dominated northern majority in Congress passed the Corwin Amendment. If ratified, Corwin would have become Amendment XIII. By its terms, Corwin would have prohibited any future attempt to propose an abolition amendment. Rather than to stick around to ratify Corwin, the CSA states seceded. Why would they have seceded to protect a right that was guaranteed, especially when Lincoln and the northern states wanted to extend that guarantee into perpetuity? It is axiomatic that the CSA states did not secede over the slavery issue.

Consider the problems if some four million people, angry, homeless, uneducated, unwanted, penniless, with no means of support and no marketable job skills were unloosed on society. Who would care for them? Who would foot the bill? Who would put down the hordes of rampaging freed slaves set on revenge or marauding, rioting and looting just to obtain the means to survive? How were the owners to be compensated for the wrongful governmental taking of their property. Given the total absence of a labor force in the south, the plantation owners needed the slaves to run the farms and the lion's share of southern fortunes were tied up in the human chattel and in the land that would lie fallow without the slaves to work it. The north relied on those slaves at least as much, if not more, than did the south. Abolitionists were always a minority faction, albeit a vocal one, and they had very few viable solutions for the chaos they were trying to create.

Preserve the Union? Not so. When Great Britain granted independence to the colonies by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, thirteen new nations were created. Those nations joined together into an alliance, a confederation of nations, under the Articles of Confederation. When the Articles proved to be an abysmal failure, the compact was scrapped and a new one was drafted at the Philadelphia (Constitutional) Convention in 1787. The member nations who allied with the new confederation, the USA, did not surrender their independence, sovereignty and autonomy and opt to become subservient political subdivisions of a single nation. They created a FEDERAL, not a NATIONAL, government and the delegated only limited powers to that government over only expressly delineated and enumerated areas of common interest. They, and each of them, otherwise retained full independence, sovereignty and autonomy. The right to secede from the confederation was an implicit, if not express, given.

The right to secede for a government that fails to serve, defend and protect the rights and interests of the governed is the very core principle of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison understood there was a right of secession when they authored the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798. The New England states knew it when the threatened to secede in 1803 and again in 1812 and yet again in 1814 and still yet again in 1815. States on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line understood they had the right when they threatened to secede in 1820/21 over the illegal and unconstitutional Missouri Compromises. They also knew it when, especially in New England, they threatened secession of the Taney Court decision in the Dred Scott case. South Carolina understood it in 1837 when she threatened secession during the Tariff Act/ Nullification Acts crisis. Abe Lincoln understood the right when he argued in support of it on the floor of Congress on January 12, 1848.

The south had been totally disenfranchised and had no voice in the federal government, as the 1860 election so painfully proved. Lincoln was elected without carrying a single southern state and without having even appeared on the ballot in several. The House, with representation being based on population, had long since been a northern club. Representation in the Senate was ostensibly equal, with 2 senators per state. The north held an overwhelming majority there, especially when slave states like Maryland, Delaware, Missouri and Kentucky voted, as they often did, with the northern block. Although 75% of federal revenues were raised in the south, 75% of federal spending occurred in the north. Northern tariffs were making it all but impossible for southern planters to trade on the international market, then northern money and industrial interests were setting bargain basement prices on southern goods. Those same interests were making it impossible for the south to industrialize or expand its economic base. The southern crops, especially cotton, rice and tobacco, and the taxes they produced, were necessary to fuel the northern money machines. In addition, northern states refused to give full faith and credit to southern laws, and some went so far as to render it criminally punishable to do so or to obey the strictures of the US Constitution.

Having had enough, the democratically elected representatives of the people of the southern states passed the Ordinances of Secession. The people, in full accordance and compliance with constitution strictures and due process of law, ratified the Ordinances at the polls or in convention. Taking the words and principles of the Declaration of Independence to heart, and remembering history and the words of the Founders and Framers, they simply reclaimed the independence, sovereignty and autonomy the had never surrendered. The remaining nations in the USA confederation responded by launching an invasion, a war of aggression, with the goal being the conquest and annexation of the CSA nations. It was NOT a civil war. The democratically elected, free and independent governments of the people, by the people, for the people of the CSA perished from the earth.

Why did the USA want the CSA back in the fold? There were many reasons. The southern cash cow was necessary. The USA did not want competition for the theft of Native American lands in the west. The USA did not want a potential enemy nation or confederation of nations on its southern or western border, especially if that (those) nations allied with the likes of The United Kingdom, France, Prussia or Spain. If the CSA states were allowed to secede, the floodgates might open elsewhere, especially given the number of times the New England states had threatened to do it, but folks in some of the western states weren't terribly happy with some of the policies coming out of Washington. There was good reason to worry that the map of North America would come to resemble the ever changing map of Europe, complete with the constant petty wars that were the tradition there. Industrialization had made it desirable that the USA be a single nation with subservient political subdivisions called states, rather than a federation of states (think "nation-state", as did the Founders and Framers).

The Constitution was set aside. The basic precepts of the Declaration of Independence were forgotten. The oaths of office of every government official and military officers (to defend, protect and serve the constitution) were cast aside. It was not about slavery. It was about money and power.

So why pass Amendment XIII after the war? That was not a human rights decision. Ratification of the Amendment was coerced for the same reason Lincoln issued the EP (and why congress had done the same then months earlier, equally illegally and unconstitutionally, with the Confiscation Acts). Emancipation, and later, abolition, were tools of war. They were intended to destroy the southern economy, the southern financial base, southern society and the southern way of life. During the war, they were intended as weapons. After the war, the goals were the same to insure that the south would not soon rise again.

There is a lot more. You won't find it in your text. Remember, "history" is written by the victors. That does not mean that the myths and legends comport with the "truth" or the "facts". The bottom line is, the war was not about slavery. The war did not, and could not, abolish slavery. When the war ended, the constitution was unchanged - until ratification of Amendment XIII was coerced. The war did bring to and end the government the Founders and Framers had tried to establish, and the all powerful central NATIONAL government they had tried to avoid and prevent came into being, the independence of the member nations was lost for all time, and the Declaration of Independence became just so many empty words. So it goes.

Probably not true, but it certainly was the predicate. Lincoln had no constitutional duty to abolish slavery, but he very much had an obligation to preserve the union because the Constitution commands him to suppress rebellions. As the Civil War developed, it soon became apparent to most that the Union could not be restored unless slavery -- the cause of the conflict -- were abolished. Under these circumstances, the objective of the war changed, especially after Lincoln found it necessary to appeal to British workingmen via the Emancipation Proclamation to keep the Palmer Government from recognizing the South and bringing the British navy into the war.

Lincoln was a member of a new part - the Republicans. The Republican party was very open about having *big* *ideas*. They wanted to transform the nature of the 13 independent nation states who had joined into a limited confederation (the federal government) where the federal government had very limited powers (for defence and trade and a set of common rights) ... and change all of that into a NEW format... one with a massive central government where the STATES have limited powers. They were called "Republicans" because they wanted the US to be like Rome.

The separation of the south was the right of those states. They were really pissed off. They had no true representation and were fed up. The south was supporting (financially) the Federal Government. They were being used like a "cash cow" without enough votes for any self-determination. And so the south left.

The war was a fight over the rights of states to CONTINUE to behave in the original system that the founders laid down - which included the right to succeed.

But the new Republican party hated the idea that the states had that right. They wanted it gone. Lincoln admitted it was real, but they still didn't like it. Republican leaders openly spoke of the idea that even TALKING about succession was TREASON (people are killed for treason - and so much for the Bill of Rights).

The north won. The states lost most of their Autonomy. The US's behaviour after that war, in the Spanish Civil War ... involved KEEPING an independent nation (the Philippines) as spoils of war. This nearly ripped the nation apart again, but the states were terrified of being treated the way that the North had treated the south (war crimes everywhere). Fear has kept the states in line ever since.

Preserving The Union

I think it was the other way around - in order to preserve the Union Lincoln supported abolishing Slavery.

I can image what North America would be like with two dis-united States of America. Border bickering, fighting over the use of the Mississippi river, offshore fishing rights, possession of Federal property in Confederate territory, being constantly in a state of near war. The European powers hovering over the situation waiting to swoop in and take over the weaken States North or South. If I were Lincoln I would desperately want to keep the US together for the future generations.

Lincoln realized that in order for the South to succeed in setting up a separate nation it needed two of three things: political recognition by a foreign power, financial aid or military assistance, and northern acquiesce to the separation. In order to stop the possibility of political recognition by a foreign power, financial aid or military assistance Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation knowing that the European powers (England and France) had outlawed Slavery and would not recognize the Confederacy, as long as they continued in legalized slavery.

Lincoln said it himself, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that." and that's precisely what the Emancipation Proclamation did.

The proposition here is stated in such a way that it allows for a deceptive answer. Preserving the union may not have been a necessary condition for abolishing slavery, but that does not mean that the Civil War was not caused by a desire to prolong slavery, which is the conclusion that at least one response reaches. The actual documentary evidence is very clear: In their letters of secession to the U.S. Congress, the southern states declared that their desire to maintain slavery and to have escaped slaves returned.