The South. Any state enslaves its people, but a system of government that permits secession (or at least under which secession prevails) will eventually fade away. A pro-secession “government” is effectively a private business.
Isn’t the question a bit absurd ? How can a slave-holding state be regarded as secesionist ? The South wanted to be free to enslave people - they were not nice guys. And neither were the northeners.
LMAO. Please cite the high school history textbook that supports this assertion. Good scholarly practice, you know.
All right, I’ll grant you the Revolutionary War, the liberating effects of which were promptly rolled back by the Constitutional Convention.
That is a very good point and probably a correct one. But a slave-owning Southerner of the time would nevertheless be internally consistent in his logic if he regarded his slaves as incapable of rational self-rule. Understand, I’m not defending the practice but there is some context to consider.
Easily. They seceded. They were, in point of fact, secessionist.
Not true. Slavery wasn’t even an issue until the war was nearly over. The South seceded from the Union for the same reasons that the American colonies seceded from the British Empire. The American colonies owned slaves, too, and Britain was in the process of abolition. Does that mean that the American secession was unjust?
Also, federal law protected slavery. You should read the writings of Spooner and other pro-secession abolitionists. They understood that it would be easier to overcome slavery if the governments represented smaller territories. Political decentralization is the best way to resolve political issues peacefully.
And a South that did not recognize the rights of slaves still would have treated free blacks better than the North ever did (read the Confederate and State constitutions for reference), and certainly better than they were treated in the preserved Union.
Finally, a victory for secession would not likely have resulted in America becoming the bulwark of statism that it is today. Many of the southerners were just as wary of the Confederate government as they were of the Federal government, and rightly so. If the South had won, I “predict” a counterhistory in which States seceded peacefully or with little trouble from the Confederacy, smaller territories from the states, and the eventual dissolution of statism in the South.
Not exactly true. As the person above said, Lincoln started the war “To Perserve the Union”. Lincoln himself was a racist and personally did not care if there was slavery or not. It was not until late in the war that Lincoln wanted to free the slaves because he saw it as an opportunity to destroy the southern economy and create instability in the confederate states.
Actually, most people dont understand that most southerners did not own slaves. It was the wealthy upper class that owned hundreds and hundreds of them. The average southern family did not own slaves, and the ones that did usually owned just one as a house maid.
And with the prohibition against importing new slaves, the institution was on its way out from the beginning. And integration of former slaves and their descendants would have been accomplished without the horrible and counter-productive civil rights laws that do nothing but perpetuate conflict.
Oh, and need we mention the inability of the US to intervene in WWI? We could write a book…
I really, really like this.
Except that it assumes that the USA retains the greatest number of population and economic strength, when there is absolutely no reason to assume that would be the case.
To ami gi, have you seen this set of videos?
Sadly, I read a lot of libertarians jumping the gun and calling anyone who questions the civil war & the motivation to keep the Union together as a confederate sympathizer, without really realizing the implications of a different outcome in the war concerning the eternal fight against Statism.
As for counter history, I recently got a book in my e-mail that was quite similar to what’s been discussed (in terms of the civil war having a different outcome):
The Disunited States of America is an alternate history novel by Harry Turtledove. It is a part of the Crosstime Traffic series, and takes place in an alternate world where the U.S. was never able to agree on a constitution and has long since evolved with each state as a separate country. The states trade with each other, engage in diplomacy, and even go to war with each other. The story concerns two outsiders caught up in a war between Ohio and Virginia: a young girl from California visiting relatives with her grandmother, and a boy from our world’s Crosstime Traffic trading firm.
I have a legit .pdf copy (via tor.com) if anyone wants it :D.
Sorry,
I still don’t think that the position of the southern oligarchy, wich was a slave-holding oligarchy, is worth defending. Of course I’m not saying that the North had any ‘right’ to do what they did. But to imply that the southern states were some sort anarcho-capitalist asociations wich allowed secesion(to the individual level??) is, in my opinion, far-fetched.
I’m not saying that the northern governments were any good, but I do say that the southern governments were probably just as a bad.
That’s a straw man. I never said that the south was an anarchist society. I said that the preservation of secessionism would have been likely to result in the dissolution of the state.
Of course they were, but smaller governments are better than large ones, and secession is better than non-secession. And I’d like to refer to the numerous, previous statements to the effect that slavery was already on its way out. The fact that the South was unsuccessful in its secession delayed their industrialization by decades - something that would have contributed to the end of slavery just as it had in Europe.
When the southerners were asked to support the American Revolution, they said, “Sure!!—as long as you let as keep our slaves.”
When they were asked to ratify the Constitution, they said, “Yeah, just as long as we don’t have to give up slavery.”
If you asked them to abolish government and support market anarchy, they would have said, “We’ll take it—but we’re never giving up slavery.”
Well, I exagerated your position a bit =] But my objection is still valid, I think. It seems reasonable to believe that southern governments - polticians were interested in secesion as long as they thought it benefited them. I can’t imaginge how politicians who truly believed in secesion would at the same time own slaves.
I too was a libertarian except on foreign policy, you will change your mind because it is inconsistent with the principles of property rights.
There was Paine who did not own slaves, and probably others too.
Of course the Confederate politicians would not have supported further secession. But it is not the Confederate politicians who would have been doing the secession.
The state governments were not completely in cahoots with the Davis administration. Some of them saw it as an emergency measure. And there was talk among the ranks of ignoring the central government. Without tariffs to fund the government, one of two things would have happened. Either the CSA taxes the hell out of the States, who would not have long suffered that. Or - the CSA remains a politically weak body, which would have been unable to oppose further separation anyway.
State secession from the CSA would have happened eventually. When it did, what stops the counties, towns, and households from taking Lysander Spooner seriously? And what would a government so decentralized do about a future Rothbardian movement? They couldn’t suppress it even if they particularly wanted to.
I think that we’d be talking about a Hoppean secession process as history rather than as theory.
No, Its not. “The South” is not an entity capable wanting anything. Some southerners defended slavery, others did not. The Civil War was not fought over the issue of slavery, it was fought over the issue of secession. The difference attitudes toward slavery is coincidental, and not very relevant.
The Civil War was a dispute where two factions fought over secession, the south was clearly more in favor of it than was the North. The South may not have been perfect, but the Union was clearly criminal aggressors to invade it.
I’m sure the bureaucrats in Washington view you as “incapable of rational self-rule”, but that “context” is utterly irrelevant and merits no consideration. They do not have the right to use force to compel you to submit, regardless of how irrational they perceive you to be, and the same concept applies here.