Your opinion of the CSA.

What is your opinion on the political entity known as the CSA? I got into a huge discussion of this sort on another site which kind of boiled down to a "CSA=Evil Traitors Who Beat Slaves For Kicks & The Confederate Armies were incopetent and if they won they'd turn into a dictatorship" arguement. I think the CS had a right to secede, but too many people look at it with 21st Century morality.

What do y'all think?

I think they had right to secede, not based on any legal arguments, just my opinion. I think that seceding states should have brought that issue to SCOTUS to avoid the war.. Incompetent armies..? No way. Too many brilliant victories, if there was incompetens that was mostly with the AoT (read Bragg) and Union commanders, AotP..

I think that the Confederate States of America is a fantasy, a non-existent state along the lines of Forgotonia. It was born through an illegal rebellion and died by suicide when its leaders initiated an armed conflict to achieve their goals.

And what rights did the non-seceding states have?

Not to invade..

The state where I grew up and the state I am living in now were both part of the CSA. I am fortunate enough to have been raised in an area away from the big cities and before the interstate systems were built. I had just a taste of the old South during that time, and I think I have a grasp of why the CSA came into being. The issue of slavery aside, the CSA was made up of states which did not want to be taken over by the industrial system of economy. Even in my youth, everything was centered around agriculture and the economy was not built on factories in large cities, but on the small towns along the railroads that provided support for the farmers. I have a website listed in my signature that discusses an industrial economy vs an agricultural economy.

That's my definition of the CSA, at least why it came into being. It quickly turned into a matter of self defense.

Even Jefferson Davis was not convinced there would or should be a CSA. As late as '58, '59 he was touring Maine speaking about the fraternity of the sections, the mutual cooperation, nationalism and believed that the whole thing was being driven by a handful of radicals on each side. Trouble was when the Cotton States elected delegates to meet at a convention in Montgomery and see what to do, instead of getting back to the people on it they got carried away and turned themselves into a Congress. That was way exceeding the authority most of them had (three or four states were for secession) and usurping power from the people. Then things went down like dominoes. And, this was indeed driven by the planters who didn't want to lose their cash cow - slavery.

The United States has always had a section or region that doesn't want to be part of the rest for one reason or another. A few states have been republics, one a kingdom. These various independent spots usually find it to their best interests to get back into the fold, some are pushed to it and some economically brought back. With the CSA, though, it was half the country. That's a whole different situation than a state or region alone.

In retrospect, the motivations of the Confederacy were not altogether unreasonable. The economy and society of the slave states was such that slavery was a vital and necessary institution. A threat to slavery was a threat to "the South" itself. Thus, the slave states exercised their revolutionary right to secede. Whether they had a constitutional right to secede is another question; the Supreme Court said no to this, after the war was over.

The Union's victory was not inevitable, just as the victory of the American colonists in the Revolutionary War was not inevitable. A key factor in the victory of the colonists - support from foreign governments - never happened for the CSA. Had the CSA gotten British and French support, who knows what would have happened? But it was not to be.

I would say two other things about the CSA:
(a) It was on the wrong side of human progress. CSA President Davis and Vice President Stephens both articulated that the idea that all men are created equal was an anathema that would not be accepted in the Confederate state. Modern society rejects these ideas as immoral and unacceptable.

It is interesting that, in the aftermath of the war, pro-slavery rhetoric on the part of ex-Confederates almost magically disappeared, even among the most ardent supporters of the institution. Clearly, a defense of secession based on the preservation of slavery was no longer tenable. Unfortunately, it took a war for that idea to take root in the slave states in particular and in America in general.

(2) The CSA did not fully anticipate the risks and consequences of its actions. As with the USA, it either thought there would be no war, or, if there was a war, that it would win in a brief conflict. The CSA did not understand or appreciate the resolve, will, skill or resources of the United States in prosecuting the war. As a corollary to that, the CSA did not fully anticipate the level of resources that it needed to win the war (resources that the Confederacy didn't have). Had it known, perhaps it would have chosen not to go to war or even secede.

The secessionist movement leaders was essentially revolutionaries and like most revolutionarys were engagted in nation building by the use of terror and violence. It had no real claim to legitimacy except by the success(or failure) of a planned insurrection.
The csa was a insurrectionary state, engaged in a revolutionary movement.

Thank you for yet another well reasoned and articulate post. I am of the opinion that the leaders of what Johan callse the "slaveocracy" and the leaders of the abolutionists were equally responisble for the escalating reteric which flamed passions to the point that war became inevitable. Did they have the right to secede? I believe so as any people have the right to throw off an oppressive government and institute one more to their liking. What defines a "people" I don't that can be answered geographically or solely on the basis of population. Some will argue that the government was not oppressive. I would argue that it is not for us in the 21st century to pass judgement of what was seen as oppressive in the 19th.
Larry, I think, said it best... "If you secede, you had best succeed" The CSA did not.

Here we go again, a topic that will never die! I am happy to quote your post, Glorybound, because I believe it says it all in a nutshell.

History is an arguement that never ends.

But no rights to protect themselves from the harm done by the seceding states. When the Southern states left, they walked away from responsibility for debt and all other obligations incurred by the nation as a whole when they were a part. They cut off a whole section of the country from access to the sea. They took every piece of federal property they could get their hands on without compensation. And the only right the remaining states had was to do nothing about it? In other words, the Constitution protected those leaving the Union but not those staying. With all due respect, that is just plain ridiculous.

Nor should it.

In my own opinion...

The entity known as the CSA was created in order to fight the future because it feared that future and only wanted to remain fixed in the present that it knew.

In other words, it wished the impossible for it wished for time to stand still.

And as each of us look in the mirror every morning, we know the futility of that wish.

I haven't really thought about the national debt, and would be interested in seeing what the leaders of both sides had to say about it. Maybe another thread?

"We have only those rights we can take and hold."
The colonists in 1776 took the right to secede from English rule, and they were able to hold it.
In the 19th Century, the South took the right to secede from the Union, but failed to hold it.

Will

There are also no unencumbered rights.