History is Written by the Victors

Some time ago, I participated in a discussion on Hacker News about the American Civil War and people were extremely ugly to me, shockingly so: Linky. 

Among other things I was told that the reason for secession was entirely about slavery and I was told it was the Southern states being ridiculously aggressive. A search for where the battles of the American Civil War took place gets me this reply:

The battles of the American Civil War were fought across various locations in the United States, primarily in the following states:

Virginia: Noted for many major battles, including Gettysburg and Shiloh.

Mississippi: Key battles like the Battle of Shiloh occurred here.

Tennessee: Significant battles such as the Battle of Shiloh took place.

Missouri: Included battles like the Battle of Pea Ridge.

Georgia: The Battle of Chickamauga was fought here.

North Carolina: The Battle of Reynolds' Station was a notable engagement.

South Carolina: The Battle of Fort Sumter was a significant early battle.

In total, the Civil War involved over 10,000 armed confrontations across more than 10 states and territories, including naval engagements. 

Most of those states are Southern states:

Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia

So basically the South decided to leave The Union and they were invaded. But The South is The Bad Guy and the North is an innocent victim and also some high-minded paragon of virtue wanting only one thing: to improve human rights for all of humanity. 

I've not previously read the secession documents, so I looked them up online. Below are some outtakes (possibly not entirely in order).

The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the South not at all. 

The Constitution declares that persons charged with crimes in one State and fleeing to another shall be delivered up on the demand of the executive authority of the State from which they may flee, to be tried in the jurisdiction where the crime was committed. It would appear difficult to employ language freer from ambiguity, yet for above twenty years the non-slave-holding States generally have wholly refused to deliver up to us persons charged with crimes affecting slave property. 

These efforts have in one instance led to the actual invasion of one of the slave-holding States, and those of the murderers and incendiaries who escaped public justice by flight have found fraternal protection among our Northern confederates.

Because by their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union;

It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.

South Carolina

Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union 

The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, 

Thus were established the two great principles asserted by the Colonies, namely: the right of a State to govern itself; and the right of a people to abolish a Government when it becomes destructive of the ends for which it was instituted. And concurrent with the establishment of these principles, was the fact, that each Colony became and was recognized by the mother Country a FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATE.

This piece is interesting to me:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. 

I've thought that myself, that Blacks were a better labor source for agricultural work in the subtropical South. I've never dared say so because I was born and raised in The South and it seems like any statement other than "I love eating shit and being your bitch and will enthusiastically agree with any ugly thing you say about where I grew up." has people leaping to ridiculous conclusions about me feeling guilty and wanting to justify my slave owning ancestors blah blah blah. 

If you are too fucking lazy to read the very first link in this piece: My ancestors were not Southern slave owners. (My mother was a German immigrant and my father was born and raised in Indiana.)

My ex-husband tells me his ancestors were Southern slave owners. Traylor is an unusual name that is anglicized French and most Traylors are blood relatives. In the US, they mostly lived historically in Alabama and Georgia, but mostly Alabama. 

The only Traylors that are my blood relatives are my sons. I was born and raised in The South but most Southerners don't claim me as one of them. No one even thinks I have a Southern accent until you get to something like Utah.

So some history/social psychology/whatever 101:

1. Most wars are fought over material scarcity. The secession documents suggest The South was materially better off than The North, so the unstated subtext of the long rant by Georgia about how much Federal funding was being paid to Northern states is "Those are transfer payments from The South to The North."

2. The anti-slavery movement was undermining states rights, independence and sovereignty for slave states. Whether you agree with slavery or not, other states were already taking substantial hostile action towards slave states well before the Civil War which is the reason they got fed up and seceded.

3. Something most Americans alive today seem to fail to understand is that the States are called States because they are Nation States. These days, people seem to imagine it's another level of governmental organization similar to County and the USA is "a country" and the Federal government is the only national government here.

Historically, they were independent nations who formed an alliance to help provide for the common defense. 

That was the primary purpose of the original political organization for the United States of America and that organization was changed in short order because it had a history of failing to adequately provide for the common defense because the Federal government had no teeth for extracting money to pay for its responsibilities.

So the Federal government was strengthened and over time we've largely forgotten that it's 50 countries in a trench coat. The USA is more like The European Union than like, say, the country of France.

Something I have seen very little mention of is that most taxes in the slave states were paid for by slave owners based on the number of slaves they owned. So ending slavery defacto gutted the funding of the governments of all slave-owning states. 

They would have been well aware that's where this was going though it doesn't seem to have been explicitly mentioned in the secession documents (granted I haven't read every word).

A lot of immigrants to the Americas in the early days got here via a seven-year contract of indentured servitude. Cash money has only been widely reliably available for around 300 years.

To this day, signing up for military service in the US boils down to "The government owns your ass for X number of years." We know that well enough to crack jokes about soldiers being "Property of Uncle Sam."

The part where it says It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better. strongly mirrors criticisms I have repeatedly made about people today pretending to care about the poor or the homeless whose solutions consistently boil down to "Let's take away the shitty solutions they currently have, thereby leaving them with no solutions." rather than providing better alternatives. 

Slavery has existed a long time and significantly predates the existence of the US. In some ways, it was particularly ugly in the US for two reasons:

1. American slaves were a different skin color from their owners, marking them for life in a manner they couldn't escape. (This meant that simply being Black and in the US could get you enslaved and it was difficult to escape the situation.)

2. There was very little provision for leaving the institution of slavery, unlike in other countries historically. 

But it wasn't the worst thing ever. Some island nation in the Caribbean treated its slaves so harshly that average life expectancy for an imported slave after getting off the boat was three years.

I am not surprised that slavery is talked about a lot in the secession documents but I really am in no position to adequately research exactly how it got to that point. I do know that indentured servitude -- promising seven years of your labor in exchange for someone else paying your passage to the New World -- was common and while it was a form of loan payment in a world where cash money was scarce, most people today would roughly lump it in with slavery.

Most likely, in the early days there wasn't a clear, bright line between slave states and free states. And population density was lower, they didn't have TV, radio, internet etc.

It didn't initially cause significant friction as far as I know. And to this day, quite a lot of American women essentially sell themselves into servitude and call it marriage and rather than decry that practice, people act like one is nuts if you try to point it out.

The slave states were being bled financially while having their sovereignty and economy undermined by people pretending this was about "human rights" and it probably wasn't in most cases.

Just like far too many homeless services today don't really respect homeless people and aren't really trying to solve the systematic issues causing homelessness and, instead, are helping to keep it alive so they can play hero and expect homeless people to make them feel like good people for throwing them a few crumbs occasionally. 

I'm not pro slavery. But I do understand why the Southern states called it The War of Northern Aggression.