Charles Dickens Quotes
So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many many other evils ... the quarrel between North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel.
There were some Southern Apologists who during the Jim Crow era and even into modern times, argued that slavery and the desire to maintain that was a minor cause of the Civil War but succession came about over differences in philosophy of government. This document by Mississippi made it perfectly clear why they favored succession: Slavery and their desire to maintain that institution.
The political machine of New York City, unlike most others in the Northeast were supporters of the Southern position on slavery. They had strong economic relations with the Southern planters and wanted to keep the federal government far away from state and local affairs.
The American Civil War was followed by intellectuals throughout the world. Most were offended by the immorality of the slavery that the South was fighting to maintain, but admired the way they organized and fought for their principles.
He was a Southerner who was opposed to Slavery. He understood both North and South and feared the Civil War 20 years before the event. See also his letter {615642}.
In many respects, it is amazing that secession did not take place earlier.
Committee of the Congress. This was the prevailing Congressional and public view except for the South which had coalesced around an intellectual rationalization. See {618013}.
After the Presidential years of James Buchanan who protected the South from slavery reform and abolition as the North was gaining political power and the abolitionists were having a greater and greater effect on public opinion in the North. While Southerners did not believe Lincoln would emancipate the slaves, they realized that the majority of the growing nation was opposed to slavery, and more and more Northern states were passimg laws making any slave who sets foot in the State a free person. Slaves coud not only have more reason to run away, but slave owners would not be able to get their “property” back. Lincoln would not help the South as Buchanan did, and the Southerners realized that over time, slavery would no longer be feasible or profitable. Cobb, very experienced at Washington politics, realized the changes that would come and thought that they would be “certain and speedy.” The irony was that if the South had not seceded and simply dragged its feet legislatively, it would have taken two or three decades for slavery to end. However, by seceding and initially fighting so hard and well while poor Union generals were in command, Lincoln was forced to try more drastic measures and issued the Emancipation Proclamation after only a few years. The Civil War and seccession was not only a tactical and strategic error for the South, but rapidly brought about just what the Southerners were fighting to prevent.
Jackson makes the case against the South Carolina argument for nullification. In the related quote, he makes his threat which was very successful in ending the notion of “nullification”. The extensive quotation is given as it summarizes the entire issue that was one of the crises of early America.
Lincoln did like the song, but his having it played was a signal to all that revenge and hatred should end. It is not known if he really did get such an opinion from the Attorney General, but the response silenced those who really sought vengeance and retribution.
This was more than 15 years before South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union. The idea of secession existed long before Abraham Lincoln was elected to the Presidency.
The economic advantage of the North over the South in the Civil War is well known. Not so well-known is the huge technological advantage that the North had. This quotation gives an indication of the extreme difference. The North fought the war on all fronts including the technological one where no weapons and methodologies from the telegraph to the military railroad were critical. The South by contrast did not have the manpower to fight the war and keep industry and scientific technological development going also.
Fortunately he was wrong, but the threat of a breakup of the American Union intimidated most members of Congress to avoid anything that would offend a state or group of states. Thus slavery became more and more entrenched till it exploded into the Civil War. At the time the issues of contention included the fact that Louisiana was primarily Roman Catholic and ALL other states were majority Protestant. The territory functioned under French Law—the Napoleonic Code, while all the other states operated under the English Common Law (even today this is so), and there was concern with the French and Creole language and whether the Creoles would fit into American Culture.
1st Earl of Kingston. Foreign Minister at this time. This decision was a terrible blow to the South who had been trying desperately to obtain diplomatic recognition for the Confederacy from England and other world powers.
The Governor was a staunch Confederate supporter but his state legislature majority favored the Union. He was forced out of the governorship when the 1861 election gave the legislature a veto-proof pro Union majority.
It is often said that “elections have consequences”. The 1960 election was one that certainly had profound consequences. Lincoln was unwilling to force the Northern states to return fugitive slaves against the constitution, laws and will of the people of those states as Buchanan said he was (but had a hard time doing). Also Lincoln was unwilling to allow new territories to enter the union if they allowed slavery. In the end, most pro Slavery politicians realized that with the greater growth rate of the North, they Southern disproportionate power in the Congress was doomed as would be the institution of slavery itself. Crittendon a strong Unionist from a border state, understood the implication of Lincoln’s election for the Union.
This was before secession and “Confederacy” as Lincoln was using the term referred to the Confederacy or the original 13 states and the territories that joined the Union thereafter.
The early Union military leadership was so poor and timid that it was not clearly demonstrated that a Confederacy was not viable until later in the war, and the Southerners possessed an extraordinary capacity for ignoring reality and self-delusion, that it was not demonstrated until Grant’s major victories and Sherman’s March through Georgia and the Southern East Coast that an independent South was not going to be.
Charles John Huffam Dickens FRSA was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.
