"Slavery and States' Rights" was a speech given by former Confederate States Army general Joseph Wheeler on July 31, 1894. The speech deals with the American Civil War and is considered to be a "Lost Cause" view of the war's causation. It is generally understood to argue that the United States (the Union) was to blame for the war, and downplays slavery as a cause.
The Richmond, Virginia Dispatch stated, "The House of Representatives being in Committee of the Whole, on appropriations and expenditures, and having under consideration the bill to remove the charge of desertion standing against Patrick Kelleher, late private, Company C, Thirty-eighth Illinois Volunteers, Mr. Wheeler, of Alabama, as a member of the Committee on Military Affairs, made a speech."
In his speech, Wheeler argued that the northern states, before the Civil War, had failed to comply with the terms of the United States Constitution. In particular, he argued that slaves were property and that Northern states had infringed on the constitutional property rights of the enslavers. He also argued that not only had the northern states encouraged secession but that, in the past, they had sought secession. Thus, secession was a right of the Confederacy. As an aside, Wheeler insinuated that the northern states were themselves to blame for slavery.
Wheeler explained (paraphrased), "I refute allegations that the responsibility of the war rested altogether upon the southern people. Many States of the North enacted laws making it a criminal offence for any official to comply with his oath of office." Wheeler argued that the failure of northern states to comply with the fugitive slave laws violated the Constitution. (See: nullification)
Wheeler quoted Daniel Webster in his speech, "How absurd it is to suppose that when different parties enter into a compact for certain purposes either can disregard any one provision, and expect, nevertheless, the other to observe the rest!"
He also noted from the Constitution, "No person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
He quoted Webster further, "If the Northern States refuse, willfully and deliberately, to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provides no remedy, the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact."
Wheeler continues, "Then followed the election of Abraham Lincoln...The South was of necessity alarmed. They were seized with the fear that the extreme leaders of the Republican party would not stop at any excess and would deprive them of their property." (e.g., enslaved people)
Wheeler quoted Webster, "Look at the proceedings of the anti-slavery conventions in Ohio, Massachusetts, and at Syracuse, in the State of New York. They pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to violate the Constitution; they pledge their sacred honor to commit treason!"
Wheeler also argued that northerners were to blame for slavery. He said, "When the people of the South settled on the shores of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, they had no intention of encouraging or even tolerating the institution of slavery. The thrifty New England seamen, solely with the view of profit, urged slavery upon all the Colonies".
Wheeler continues, "Oglethorpe and his colonists were possibly the most determined in resisting the importation, sale and use of African slaves; and for twenty years they were successful in the enforcement of the law which prohibited the landing of slaves in Georgia."
Wheeler added, "The evil of this traffic soon became apparent to the people of the South, and when the Constitution was framed in 1787, the South demanded that the fundamental law of our land should inhibit this traffic of importing human beings from Africa. The South was resisted by the New England slave-traders."
One might construe that Wheeler was arguing that northern capitalists first "tricked" southerners into enslaving people. Then, once enslavers had heavily invested in this property, the northern states waged what Wheeler called "a war upon the institution of slavery."
Wheeler argued that the right of the Confederacy to secede from the United States was a historically proven right.
Wheeler quoted Horace Greeley, "If the Declaration of Independence justifies the secession from the British Empire of three million colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of five millions of southerns from the Federal Union in 1861."
He also mentioned the Shay Rebellion in Massachusetts, the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania, the Dorr Rebellion in Rhode Island, and the Hartford Convention in Connecticut.
Wheeler added, "For more than half a century the South had been taught by their northern brethren that when the people of a State found that it was not to their advantage to remain in the Union it was not only their privilege but their duty to peacefully withdraw from it."
Wheeler then quoted from John Quincy Adams, "If the day should ever come when the affections of the people of these States shall be alienated from each other...far better will it be for the people of the disunited States to part in friendship from each other than to be held together by constraint."
Wheeler notes, "Mr. Adams and the people of New England generally regarded these views as the correct interpretation of the original compact which bound the people together."
Wheeler adds (reading from the Congressional Globe, volume XI, page 977), "Three years later, on January 24, 1842, Mr. Adams presented the petition of sundry citizens of Haverhill, in the State of Massachusetts, praying that Congress will immediately adopt measures favorably to dissolve the union of these States."
Wheeler continues, "On page 980, Adams spoke, 'I hold that it is no perjury, that it is no high-treason, but the exercise of a sacred right to offer such a petition.'"
Wheeler goes on, "Mr. Gilmer, page 983, introduced the following resolution: Resolved, That in presenting to the consideration of this House a petition for the dissolution of the Union, the member from Massachusetts (Mr. Adams) has justly incurred the censure of this House."
Wheeler went on to argue that the failure of the House to pass Gilmer's resolution was a clear demonstration that the house agreed with Adams's statements.
Wheeler also read from the Acts and resolutions passed by the Legislature of Massachusetts in the year 1844", page 319, "2. Resolved, That the project of the annexation of Texas, unless arrested on the threshold, may drive these States into a dissolution of the Union."
The final part of Wheeler's speech treated the Northern press's sentiments. He argued that the North had indicated the South was free to secede.
From the New York Tribune of November 9, 1860, "If the cotton States shall become satisfied that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets."
From the Tribune, of November 16, "If the fifteen slave States, or even the eight cotton States alone, shall quietly, decisively say to the rest: 'We prefer to be henceforth separated from you,' we shall insist that they be permitted to go in peace. Whenever the people of the cotton States shall have definitely and decisively made up their minds to separate from the rest of us, we shall urge that the proper steps be taken to give full effect to their decision."
And from the Tribune of November 19, "Whenever the slave States or the cotton States only shall unitedly and coolly say to the rest, "We want to get out of the Union", we shall urge that their request be acceded to."
From the New York Herald of November 26, "Coercion, in any event, is out of the question. A union held together by the bayonet would be nothing better than a military despotism."
From the Herald of November 24, "We have no desire to prevent secession by coercion."
From the New York Daily Tribune of November 30, "We insist that they cannot be prevented, and that the attempt must not be made. If you choose to leave the Union, leave it. If you are better by yourselves, go."
From the New York Times of December 3, Wheeler quoted Horace Greeley: "If seven or eight contiguous States shall present themselves authentically at Washington, saying: 'We hate the Federal Union; we have withdrawn from it; we will give you the choice between acquiescing in our secession and arranging amicably all incidental questions on the one hand, and attempting to subdue us on the other', we could not stand up for coercion, for subjugation, for we do not think it would be just."
Greeley was an abolitionist, and Wheeler continued, "We hold the right of self-government even when invoked in behalf of those who deny it to others. Any attempt to compel them by force would be contrary to the fundamental ideas on which human liberty is based. If the slave States, the cotton States, or the gulf States choose to form an independent nation, they have a clear, moral right to do so."
Wheeler then read from the Commercial (an Ohio newspaper), "We are not in favor of retaking the property of the United States now in possession of the seceders."
Wheeler quoted from General Winfield Scott, "Wayward sisters, part in peace."
Wheeler stated, "In obedience to all this advice, the Southern States did secede, and almost immediately the vast Federal armies were raised."
Wheeler ended his speech by describing the magnitude of casualties killed in the war. [1]
The Emancipation Proclamation, officially Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War. The Proclamation had the effect of changing the legal status of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the secessionist Confederate states from enslaved to free. As soon as slaves escaped the control of their enslavers, either by fleeing to Union lines or through the advance of federal troops, they were permanently free. In addition, the Proclamation allowed for former slaves to "be received into the armed service of the United States". The Emancipation Proclamation played a significant part in the end of slavery in the United States.
In American political discourse, states' rights are political powers held for the state governments rather than the federal government according to the United States Constitution, reflecting especially the enumerated powers of Congress and the Tenth Amendment. The enumerated powers that are listed in the Constitution include exclusive federal powers, as well as concurrent powers that are shared with the states, and all of those powers are contrasted with the reserved powers—also called states' rights—that only the states possess.
Historians who address the origins of the American Civil War agree that the preservation of the institution of slavery was the principal aim of the 11 Southern states that declared their secession from the United States and united to form the Confederate States of America. However, while historians in the 21st century agree on the centrality of the conflict over slavery—it was not just "a cause" of the war but "the cause" according to Civil War historian Chris Mackowski—they disagree sharply on which aspects of this conflict were most important, and on the North’s reasons for refusing to allow the Southern states to secede. Proponents of the pseudo-historical Lost Cause ideology have denied that slavery was the principal cause of the secession, a view that has been disproven by the overwhelming historical evidence against it, notably the seceding states' own secession documents.
In the context of the American Civil War (1861–65), the border states were slave states that did not secede from the Union. They were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, and after 1863, the new state of West Virginia. To their north they bordered free states of the Union, and all but Delaware bordered slave states of the Confederacy to their south.
Abraham Lincoln's position on slavery in the United States is one of the most discussed aspects of his life. Lincoln frequently expressed his moral opposition to slavery in public and private. "I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," he stated. "I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel." However, the question of what to do about it and how to end it, given that it was so firmly embedded in the nation's constitutional framework and in the economy of much of the country, was complex and politically challenging. In addition, there was the unanswered question, which Lincoln had to deal with, of what would become of the four million slaves if liberated: how they would earn a living in a society that had almost always rejected them or looked down on their very presence.
James Murray Mason was an American lawyer, politician, and Confederate statesman. He served as senator from Virginia, having previously represented Frederick County, Virginia, in the Virginia House of Delegates.
The Cornerstone Speech, also known as the Cornerstone Address, was an oration given by Alexander H. Stephens, acting Vice President of the Confederate States of America, at the Athenaeum in Savannah, Georgia, on March 21, 1861.
The Slave Power, or Slavocracy, referred to the perceived political power held by American slaveowners in the federal government of the United States during the Antebellum period. Antislavery campaigners charged that this small group of wealthy slaveholders had seized political control of their states and were trying to take over the federal government illegitimately to expand and protect slavery. The claim was later used by the Republican Party that formed in 1854–55 to oppose the expansion of slavery.
The South Carolina Declaration of Secession, formally known as the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, was a proclamation issued on December 24, 1860, by the government of South Carolina to explain its reasons for seceding from the United States. It followed the brief Ordinance of Secession that had been issued on December 20. The declaration is a product of a convention organized by the state's government in the month following the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. president, where it was drafted in a committee headed by Christopher Memminger.
Alabama was central to the Civil War, with the secession convention at Montgomery, the birthplace of the Confederacy, inviting other slaveholding states to form a southern republic, during January–March 1861, and to develop new state constitutions. The 1861 Alabaman constitution granted citizenship to current U.S. residents, but prohibited import duties (tariffs) on foreign goods, limited a standing military, and as a final issue, opposed emancipation by any nation, but urged protection of African-American slaves with trials by jury, and reserved the power to regulate or prohibit the African slave trade. The secession convention invited all slaveholding states to secede, but only 7 Cotton States of the Lower South formed the Confederacy with Alabama, while the majority of slave states were in the Union. Congress had voted to protect the institution of slavery by passing the Corwin Amendment on March 4, 1861, but it was never ratified.
South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union in December 1860, and was one of the founding member states of the Confederacy in February 1861. The bombardment of the beleaguered U.S. garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861, is generally recognized as the first military engagement of the war. The retaking of Charleston in February 1865, and raising the flag again at Fort Sumter, was used for the Union symbol of victory.
Louisiana was a dominant population center in the southwest of the Confederate States of America, controlling the wealthy trade center of New Orleans, and contributing the French Creole and Cajun populations to the demographic composition of a predominantly Anglo-American country. In the antebellum period, Louisiana was a slave state, where enslaved African Americans had comprised the majority of the population during the eighteenth-century French and Spanish dominations. By the time the United States acquired the territory (1803) and Louisiana became a state (1812), the institution of slavery was entrenched. By 1860, 47% of the state's population were enslaved, though the state also had one of the largest free black populations in the United States. Much of the white population, particularly in the cities, supported slavery, while pockets of support for the U.S. and its government existed in the more rural areas.
Slavery was practiced in Massachusetts bay by Native Americans before European settlement, and continued until its abolition in the 1700s. Although slavery in the United States is typically associated with the Caribbean and the Antebellum American South, enslaved people existed to a lesser extent in New England: historians estimate that between 1755 and 1764, the Massachusetts enslaved population was approximately 2.2 percent of the total population; the slave population was generally concentrated in the industrial and coastal towns. Unlike in the American South, enslaved people in Massachusetts had legal rights, including the ability to file legal suits in court.
The Fugitive Slave Clause in the United States Constitution, also known as either the Slave Clause or the Fugitives From Labor Clause, is Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3, which requires a "Person held to Service or Labour" who flees to another state to be returned to his or her master in the state from which that person escaped. The enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery except as a punishment for criminal acts, has made the clause mostly irrelevant.
Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address was delivered on Monday, March 4, 1861, as part of his taking of the oath of office for his first term as the sixteenth president of the United States. The speech, delivered at the United States Capitol, was primarily addressed to the people of the South and was intended to succinctly state Lincoln's intended policies and desires toward that section, where seven states had seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America.
In the context of the United States, secession primarily refers to the voluntary withdrawal of one or more states from the Union that constitutes the United States; but may loosely refer to leaving a state or territory to form a separate territory or new state, or to the severing of an area from a city or county within a state. Advocates for secession are called disunionists by their contemporaries in various historical documents.
Like most contemporaries, John Quincy Adams's views on slavery evolved over time. He never joined the movement called "abolitionist" by historians—the one led by William Lloyd Garrison—because it demanded the immediate abolition of slavery and insisted it was a sin to enslave people. Further, abolitionism meant disunion and Adams was a staunch champion of American nationalism and union.
The Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 was called in the state capital of Richmond to determine whether Virginia would secede from the United States, govern the state during a state of emergency, and write a new Constitution for Virginia, which was subsequently voted down in a referendum under the Confederate Government.
Slavery as a positive good in the United States was the prevailing view of Southern politicians and intellectuals just before the American Civil War, as opposed to seeing it as a crime against humanity or a necessary evil. They defended the legal enslavement of people for their labor as a benevolent, paternalistic institution with social and economic benefits, an important bulwark of civilization, and a divine institution similar or superior to the free labor in the North.
In the District of Columbia, the slave trade was legal from its creation until it was outlawed as part of the Compromise of 1850. That restrictions on slavery in the District were probably coming was a major factor in the retrocession of the Virginia part of the District back to Virginia in 1847. Thus the large slave-trading businesses in Alexandria, such as Franklin & Armfield, could continue their operations in Virginia, where slavery was more secure.
