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Causes of the U S Civil War

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    Posted: April 18 2013 at 12:29pm
To avoid further thread sway on the Molon Labe thread I invite anyone who wishes to contribute their theory on why the Civil War was fought.
 
Personally I believe that had the Confedracy not sent troops into the border state of Tennessee to subvert the democratic process by intimidation, kidnapping, torture and occasionally murder (common enough practice for the democrats of that era), then the war might never have continued. The South would not have had the prospect of obtaining Iron ore and Steel in quantities large enough to equip their armies.
As it was resistence to the invaders in East Tennessee along with Union forces occupying stategic areas of Middle and West Tennessee greatly reduced the amount of food and munitions diverted to the South.
 
Tennesseans had voted against secession in an earlier referendum, a close vote but many Middle Tennessee residents, even those who owned slaves, were against dissolving the union.
 
In the second referendum Confederate troops registered to vote as Tennesseans. Confedrate troops waylaid pro union Middle Tennesseans on the way to the polls and assaulted or scared them into going home rather than risk retribution if they voted against secession. 
Some ballot boxes simply disappeared before the votes were counted and have never been found.
 
While Tennessee is known as the volunteer state and many volunteered to fight on one side or the other, the Confedrates sent out pressgangs to conscript men to fill up the ranks of the decimated CSA army that had been defeated in Kentucky. The Confederate Army of Tennessee was actually the remnants of the army of Mississippi fleshed out by conscripts and some volunteers.
 
In some areas anyone who was conscripted and refused to bear arms against the United States were hung up by their thumbs to be torn apart by dogs.
When a Tennessean tried to escape over the mountains to join the Federal forces, they were often hunted down and murdered by North Carolina Bushwackers. The Bushwhackers had plenty of pre war practice hunting runaway slaves.
On some occasions the Confederates would murder family members of men who'd escaped to join the Union Army.
One such incident is mentioned in my Family Tree, and the story of the revenge hunt that followed may have inspired the western movie "Hang 'em High".
At the end of the war 25 Confederate generals who'd been party to war crimes in Tennessee were stalked and killed by relatives of those murdered by the Confederates.
 
When after the war ended many Tennesseans asked that the results of the phony referendum be set aside and Tennessee removed from the list of Confederate states they were told that if it came to a trial over two thousand of those involved in hijacking Tennessee into the confedracy would face the death penalty for treason. Such executions would have derailed attempts to rebuild the southern states and caused further bloodshed. Convictions followed by pardons or commutations would have been even worse at that time, so the subject has never been properly settled.
 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote hoadie Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 18 2013 at 7:45pm
I'm sure there were atrocities on both sides - both isolated & overt.
I also am aware that family histories have a habit of changing slightly with the passage of time.Generations remember the stories differently(I can relate to that with my own family history-it had to be cross-referenced through museums & exsisting documents to be put back on track).
As for causes of the un-civil war, the actions in Tenesee didn't start the war on the national scale.
As for the atrocities..note that the North had their share as well.ELMIRA comes to mind.How about Sherman's march through Georgia?Burning of Atlanta..& ALL farms & homes found along his march? We could go on and on. The REAL cause of the war..since we're using some personal conjectures..In my humble opinion, came from the passing of Daniel Webster, John C Calhoun & Henry Clay.Their leadership was never replaced, & things sank after that.
What is slavery? Is slavery owning a piece of paper that says you own a man..or is slavery keeping a Irish immigrant and his whole family working in a sweat mill-earning .25cents LESS than it costs to live, & indebted to the company store...and he cant leave his job until the debt is paid. So what is slavery?
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote A square 10 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 18 2013 at 10:25pm
when i was quite young i was taken aback by the missouri/kansas war aspects , my grandfather raised in north west arkansas was very interested in that part of the war , it seemed to me at the time to be a case of lawlessness more than an extension of the war , it appeared that certain factions used the war as an excuse to committ crimes , it was only later that i read of the raiders involvement in eastern battles ,
 
you have a point hoadie , not playing down the injustice committed on the black population in any way , nor trying to minimise the inhumanity of slavery , the immagrants of early times and the populations of various mining and industrialised communities were indentured by the very industry that fed them , no diferent than the southern farming industry , except perhaps the selling of broken families ,
 
that said - the end of slavery in this country was a neccessity , and its sad that it took a war and the deaths of so many ,
 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote hoadie Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 18 2013 at 11:27pm
Well said. The slavery issue is a stain on American history. But it wasn't confined to the U.S. alone.
As I said-the slavery issue wasn't the main driver-it was another "log" on the fire.
Dont forget..the NORTH was eyeballs deep in the slave issue from the beginning.
..And no matter how nobel the abolishonist cause was, they still wouldn't tolerate blacks living/working among them as equals.
The western injustices are as you said-excuses to commit crimes(& settle scores), and the backdrop of the war provided a great excuse.
There is a fair bit chronicled about the Kentucky & Tenesee conflicts, but you hafta really look for it.I think its one of those things America would rather forget.
As R.E.Lee said: I find the institution of slavery to be particularly abhorrent.But I cannot raise my sword against my native Virginia."
Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson sent regular stipends to the black church in his home county, until his unfortunate death.
The actions in the west were taking place, in what was then -still largley frontier territories.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote LE Owner Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 18 2013 at 11:37pm
Lots of irish immigrants did very well for themselves in the North.
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Michael Cudahy is an immensely inspiring name in the history of Irish people who have had to made immigration to America. The name of Mr. Michael Cudahy deserves a great place of significance because he started really low but could manage to make it really big.

Michael Cudahy was born in County Kilkenny, Ireland in the year 1841. It was in 1849 when he had to immigrate to the United States along with his family.

After coming to United States, they settled in Milwaukee, situated in the confluence where Menomonee and Kinnickinnic rivers merge into Milwaukee Bay. This place was a natural preference to many Irish immigrants who escaped from the shackles of autocratic rules. Cudahy was admitted to a local school over there.

After completing his study at school, Michael managed to get a job of a meat packer in that place. After being in this job for quite some time, he decided to go for a change.

With the aim of getting self employed, Michael along with his brother John Cudahy and friend Philip Armour kicked off his own business. He started meat – packing business in Omaha, Nebraska. His profit level was estimated to reach the sky.

In 1870 he pioneered the process of summer curing under refrigeration. It was a revolution in the industry. Cudahy breathed his last in 1910.

Written by srini on August 3rd, 2009 withno comments.
Read more articles on Immigrant Success Stories.

Many Blacks did well for themselves once freed from slavery.
The point being that free men had to opportunity to change their working conditions and did so.
I have yet to find any federal or state laws of that era that limited the freedom of movement or freedom of speech of the Irish or any other ethnic groups. The Irish could vote like everyone else, and were a significant voter block in the North.
Immigrants from all over the world volunteered in droves to fight for the Union. The Hungarians especially.The Draft Riots in New York were an aberation, and proved that racism was not confined to the South.
The South made no bones about the desire to annex Tennessee and Kentucky by hook or by crook, and the result was that aside from Virginia more battles were fought in Tennessee than anywhere else.
West Virginia was able to break away from Virginia, but the Confederacy could not allow East Tennessee to do the same because like most regions that did not depend on slavery for the economy East Tennessee had a secure manufacturing base, abundant coal and other natural resources, and a fairly well educated and skilled work force.
The Confederate states soon found that you can't eat cotton, and with 95% of the cotton crops rotting in the fields or on the docks they could not even buy shoes for most of their infantry. Gettysburg was in large part the result of a Confederate raid into the North in order to steal shoes from factories.
The Lost Cause mantras and "the South had the Right Idea" conviently ignore just how stupid the Confederate leadership was to base their future logistics on the assumption that they could steal enough weapons and supplies from the North to wage a full scale war.
 
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As for the atrocities..note that the North had their share as well.ELMIRA comes to mind.How about Sherman's march through Georgia?Burning of Atlanta..& ALL farms & homes found along his march?
And for those whos view of history is filtered through Hollywood Sherman's March to the sea is very familar, but the looting and burning by Confederate troops in Tennessee is not so photogenic.
To reveal the true depths of Confedrate treachery would kill the glamour of "the Lost Cause", and remind the Democrats that theirs is a party born of the institution of slavery and fed by voter fraud and terrorism.
 
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As R.E.Lee said: I find the institution of slavery to be particularly abhorrent.But I cannot raise my sword against my native Virginia."
Robert E Lee was a relative of my mom, through marriage of an ancestor to Light Horse Harry Lee.
Lee had some experiance when it came to slavery, having been a slave owner and having sold off slave children in his younger days. I don't doubt his conscience worked on him later on.
 
 
While northern ship owners had dealt in the slave trade the atlantic slave trade was outlawed long before the civil war. By 1820 transporting slaves was listed by Congress as an act of piracy and could carry a death sentence.The USN combined with the Royal Navy to interdict slave traffic for decades before the Civil War.
Those northerners who dealt in African slaves were a very tiny fraction of the population, and not a very large percent of slavers overall.
The last shipment of Slaves to South Carolina on a northern owned ship was in 1858. The captain of that ship had barely avoided prison when he took it to a Northern port to be outfitted, he then took the ship to South Carolina to be outfitted as a slave ship.
 
When the Confederacy decided that secession meant they could nationalise northern owned businesses and refuse to repay loans from Northern owned banks and also stiff creditors and businesses I certainly hope they stiffed any northern slave merchants as well.
 
Holding up Northern criminals who broke the laws of the United States for profit gleaned from selling slaves to Southern slave merchants hardly reflects on the North as a whole. 
 
Had there been no market for slaves in the South there would have been no transatlantic slave trade.
So the Southern appetite for slaves fed criminal organizations in the North, just as the U S appetite for drugs feeds the criminal cartels in Mexico.
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