Your opinion of the CSA.

I've seen something of this explanation before, and it continues to confound me.

Secession was not a bottom-up movement that occurred due to grass-roots discontent with "the North." It was a top down movement initiated/instigated by the planter elite, not out of fear of an encroaching industrial state, but out of fear for the preservation of slavery.

The fact is, the North was not an industrial monolith. As moderator ole frequently points out, there were many more farmers in the free states than the slave states. Even today, there is significant farming in the north, certainly in the Midwest heartland but even in the so-called industrail midwest, New England, the mid-atlantic, and west coast states.

Northern farmers did not see the United States as a threat to their rural lifestyle. So why would southern farmers have that fear? (One idea that has been advanced is that farmers in the south either rented slaves, or had aspirations to become planters; thus their concept of an agrarian society was constructed with the use of slaves in mind. Meanwhile, the north was seen as a threat to slavery.)

Ironically, the signature conflict of the free and slave states - the extension of slavery into the territories - was one in which the Republican Party position was more favorable to farmers (vs planters), IMO. The Republicans advocated free soil, which was seen as a way to limit slave owners (planters) from using their superior resources to gain more and better land. Recollect that, many of the mid-westerners who supported Republicans had their roots in the South; these butternuts had migrated north for land and opportunity, and supported free soil/non-extension policies. (Of course, many butternuts supported the Democrats, who were pro-slavery.)

The bottom line is, the "North"/Republicans/the Union was not a threat to rural southerners, any more than it was a threat to rural northerners, outside of the threat to slavery. Modernity, technological change, and the economics of modern/global agriculture were and are the threats to a rural lifestle. And recollect that, even after the war, the South continued to remain more rural than the northern areas to the east of the Mississippi River. This was their choice, and many were happy with that. And it was a choice that could have been made without resort to a new Confederate nation.

Interestingly enough, many southerners complained for years when industries would not come to the South, citing sectional bias. One sometimes unappreciated benefit of the civil rights movement and the end of Jim Crow is that it made industrial investment in the South attractive... hence the "Sunbelt." To this day, people all over the South are seeking to bring more industry/more non-agricultural business to the region. For many southerners, industry and "Southern way of life" are no longer opposing terms.

True

You beat me to the punch, johan.

R

Well, yes I stand corrected. I should have said most. I do think your number is way too high unless you are allowing border states in your count. Also, usually they were whole areas or regions that banded together against the Confederacy. The point I was trying to make was if your neighbors and friends went with the Confederacy, you were more than likely going to do the same, but like everything else to do with that war there were exceptions. I have scenes in my novel on that very subject in Eastern Tennessee.

One has to be careful when they use absolutes when dealing with the American Civil War, don't they?

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.

Horse poop!
The entire country was still very much an agrarian society. The southern planters saw a threat to their free labor base. The slavery issue is the ISSUE and can never be put aside. Free labor was the basis of the southern economy and a political threat to it had to be answered. They chose the wrong answer.

Actually, the number of Southerners who fought for the Union is thought to be as high as 450,000 (that's including the nearly 180,000 USCTs).

Among the USCT, around 98,000 were from Confederate states. See here; note that 93,346 USCT were from CSA states; and that the count of troops from Union free states includes 5,052 men from Confederate states. FYI, there were also 1-2 thousand coloreds who were enlisted and served as servants that were attached to white units; they are not usually included in counts of black soldiers. Some number of them were from CSA states, but I don't know the count.

But the colored troops only count as 3/5 of a person a piece, so ......

I'm missing your point. How is this "in fairness"? How does it change what I said, that the desire of slaveholders to take slavery into the territories and expand it was not just their business, but everybody's business?

Willing? Are you sure of that? How many volunteered and how many were forced to serve?

How many of those "Kentucky" units were organized in Ohio?

Thank you for your thoughtful response, Sir.

I have no argument that politicians create these situations, and make life rough for the rest of us. My family members from Tennessee enlisted upon the activation of the state militia by the governor after Tenneessee voted not to secede (the first referendum). This included the one who was the town doctor in Moscow. My position is based on my personal experience and the knowledge I have picked up over a lifetime of looking at all this (I'm not a young man). My family is fortunate to have a number of letters written back and forth during the war and they give some input as to what they were thinking.

If you look on a map of Tennessee, Hwy 57 runs east out of Memphis right on the Mississippi state line, to within a few miles of Shiloh. There is a railroad that parallels the highway and was there during the WBTS, named then the "Memphis & Charleston Railroad". Notice there are towns along the entire highway spaced about 5-10 miles apart. These were the economic centers for that culture. They sported an average population of around one thousand and were thriving communities. The trains stopped at each town daily picking up cotton during harvest season, carrying the mail, and running passenger service. It was still like that when I was growing up, but now, the trains don't stop at these towns, the depots are closed and the populations have shrunk by about 75%. Most of the businesses are closed. Most of the people in my age group, myself included, had to leave the area in order to make a living.

There are some books that have given me some information on the economics of the time. The first is:

Southern Wealth and Northern Profits
as exhibited in statistical facts and official figures
by Thomas Prentice Kettell
Published 1860 by G.W. & J.A. Wood in New York

Now there are two things of major interest brought out by Kettell. First, the New England area did not have a growing season sufficient to produce the crops necessary to sustain their population, thus they turned to industry to be able to trade on the open market for food. Second, there are several varieties and qualities of cotton. The one most desirable for making clothing could only be grown in one place in the world at the time - the American South.

The second book is:

I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition
by Twelve Southerners
New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers 1930

This was written by a group of scholars associated one way or another with Vanderbilt University. It is a collection of essays detailing the aspects of the South that are preferable to those who live here and warning of the danger of allowing the loss of these by the industrialisation of the section.

The third book is:

I'll Still Take My Stand
by Frank Ellis Smith, John Maury Allin
Vicksburg: Yazoo Press 1980

Toward the end of the Carter administration, some people found it necessary to publish this book in rebuttle to the previous one. To paraphrase, the messages conveyed here are, no family farms, only corporations should do the faming, everyone else should leave the rural areas for the cities and work in factories. There should be no need for large forests or other natural areas, trees and such should be on display in parks within the cities (remember the song with the line about the tree museum?).

Whether you agree with me or not, I highly recommend reading these books. Kettell's is chock full of statistics, and the second book does a much better job than I in communicating what the South is all about and why we feel the way we do about things. The third just gives evidence there is opposition to an agrarian culture or economy.

There is a joke down here about Atlanta. "Where is Sherman when you need him?"

Robert

The way you worded it made it sound like southern politicians were doing it for kicks. I get the impression that southern politicians wanted to expand it to get more slave states to balance with the free states, and after secession went for only a strip of Mexico to get a Pacific coast. They are completely different motives.

Sorry, I wasn't saying "for kicks," and I'm sorry if I misled. They were deadly serious. But motives weren't part of my comment anyway. The thing was their position - for whatever motive - was that slavery needed to be expanded into areas of the country that both North and South had an interest in.

No forcible draft in the North? How do you explain the draft riots in the North? Were these just good old boys skylarking a bit before going off to war willingly?

GG Grandfather John M. Carlisle -- Chaplain 7th SC Inf.
GG Uncle James H. Carlisle – signer of SC Ordinance of Secession
G Grandfather Nathaniel L. McCormick—Private, Battery E 40th [3rd] N C Artillery
G Grandfather Thomas M. Bolton – Private, Co. G 19th Va. Inf.
G Uncle Dougald McCormick--Private Co. D 46th NC Inf.
G Uncle Duncan McCormick – Private, NC Home Guard
G Uncle Alexander Mc Cormick –1st Sgt, Co. B 6th Ms Inf.
G Uncle Murdoch McCormick—Private, Ms Home Guard
G Uncle James W. Bolton – Private, Co. B (Rives) Nelson Light Artillery (Va.), 1864 Co. G, 19th Va. Inf.
G Uncle Albert G. Bolton – Private, Co. F 27th Va. Inf.
G Uncle Alexander H. Bolton – Private, Co. D 7th Va. Inf.
G Uncle Lindsey C. Bolton – Private, Co. B. 1st Va. Reserves
G Uncle Thomas D. Boone – Captain,. Co. F 1st NC Inf.
G. Uncle James D. Boone -- Quartermaster sergeant, Co. F 1st NC Inf.
G Uncle James W. Boone -- Private, Co. D 59th (4th Cav.) NC, 1st NC Inf. Co. F
G Uncle Peter Lindsey Breeden—Captain, Co. E, 4th SC Cav.
G Uncle A.J. Breeden – Private, Co. E. 4th SC Cav.
Cousins –Daniel McKinnon, Luther McKinnon, John N. McKinnon, McKay McKinnon, Murdoch McKinnon -- all privates in Company E 40th (3rd) NC artillery [heavy]

Then you are not telling the truth.

I have stated that many were forced into service which is true.

Do you think any 'particular' states had a right to secede?

I agree that if there had been a different president at that time, one that respected and abided by the Constitution, that there would have been a different outcome.