Watching It so You Don't Have to - Civil War #1

[debrand]

I had read that part in bold, too. However, Potter specifically stated that Lincoln promised the seceding states that if they came back, they would get an constitutional amendment to protect their slavery. That was the part that was totally new to me. I did a quick Google search, but the only place I could find with info on this was the website for the Confederate Heritage Fund. Admittedly, I didn't do the world's most thorough research here. confederateheritage.org/Lincoln-Endorses-Permanent-Slavery-Amendment.html

I would be curious to know the true story on this, though.

Can you ask him for a source for this information? You can tell him that you'd like to read more about it

[GenerationCedarchip]

I actually got 1 answer!!

I asked where I could find more info on the idea that Lincoln told the seceding states that they could come back and there would be a constitutional amendment protecting their slavery. I was told that this was called the Corwin Amendment, and that I could find more info about it widely online as well as in many biographies of Lincoln and general histories of secession and the Civil War.

With that I did a little of my own googling, and once we weed out the Confederate heritage sites and the Reconstructionists, I came up with this as a starting point:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corwin_Amendment (wikipedia on the Corwin amendment)

http://www.lib.niu.edu/2006/ih060934.html (article from Northern Illinois U. about Lincoln and the amendment)

http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2013/02/18/ ... ard-albert (article from Boston's NPR blog)

http://philmagness.com/?page_id=398 (blog of a historian at GMU)

Not breaking links because I don't think any of these will mind.

[FeministShrew]

Being in the south, all my life I've heard "States' Rights! States' Rights!" as the cause of the war. Bullshit. The main right southerners were concerned with was the right to keep their slaves.

My oldest did a book report for AP US History on a book compiling writings, letters & speeches by southerners before, during & after the war. Yeah, it was about slavery.

[kitkat]

Its true that the majority of white Southerners didn't own slaves, but that doesn't mean that slave owning was something that happened to other people. Part of the way you get such a low number is to count every single white person in the South, even though the majority of any kind of property was owned by adult men. If you look at the percentage of slave owning households, the number is much, much higher. Its also higher if you take into account the number of people who might lease a slave for a period of time, or who might buy a slave in a period of relative prosperity and then sell the slave a few years later. Finally, you have to consider the degree to which the ability to own slaves, and the associating of slave owning with adulthood and prosperity shaped people's attitudes, even if they were never likely to be able to afford slaves.

[debrand]

Its true that the majority of white Southerners didn't own slaves, but that doesn't mean that slave owning was something that happened to other people. Part of the way you get such a low number is to count every single white person in the South, even though the majority of any kind of property was owned by adult men. If you look at the percentage of slave owning households, the number is much, much higher. Its also higher if you take into account the number of people who might lease a slave for a period of time, or who might buy a slave in a period of relative prosperity and then sell the slave a few years later. Finally, you have to consider the degree to which the ability to own slaves, and the associating of slave owning with adulthood and prosperity shaped people's attitudes, even if they were never likely to be able to afford slaves.

I imagine that it is like some people now who probably won't ever be wealthy but they still won't tax the rich at a higher rate because of the slight chance that they will become rich.

[formergothardite]

For anyone who tries to claim that slavery was not THE issue, they should read the words of the Confederate vice president:

"Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition."

Oh yes, the cornerstone of the Confederacy was that black people are not equal to white people and are naturally slaves.