Originally posted by seacapt Funny that without using the word "tariff" the bulk of the first paragraph in the document you posted deals with federal policies that were designed to economically favor or in some cases subsidize the industries of the Northern States at great expense to the South during the 10 years prior to secession.
Those who refuse to acknowledge protectionist and trade policies as events leading up to secession are the ones who are revising written history.
I'm by no means saying that slavery wasn't a major factor in the causes of the war but it was by no means the only one.
The North needed Southern produce and wanted it cheap. They then wanted to hold a monopoly on manufactured items..
If you want to go back generations as a point of discussion , my earliest American ancestors were indentured servants in the Massachusets Bay Collony. Funny how nobody wants to talk about the "White Slaves Of The North" who worked those factories , mines and mills in the Union States.
There were, for sure, some other reasons why the South was uneasy with the policies of the Federal Government, but any fair reading of that lengthy declaration leaves the conclusion that slavery was the
main and decisive reason for seceding. It is the constant refrain that ties the entire document together.
Here are the first two sentences of the first lengthy paragraph from Georgia:
Quote: The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic
The discussion of how much the North depends upon government subsidies was to explain why the North did not try to abolish slavery earlier. It could not risk that the federal government be overthrown.
Quote: The opposition to slavery was then, as now, general in those States and the Constitution was made with direct reference to that fact. But a distinct abolition party was not formed in the United States for more than half a century after the Government went into operation. The main reason was that the North, even if united, could not control both branches of the Legislature during any portion of that time. Therefore such an organization must have resulted either in utter failure or in the total overthrow of the Government. The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the the South not at all.
The GA declaration now proceeds to describe how much benefit the North receives from the government that would be at risk if there had been overt abolition. After the sentences in the first paragraph on the North's dependence on the Federal Government, the Declaration proceeds back to a direct discussion of the central topic of slavery for 10 paragraphs or so.
I'm not sure what you mean by white slavery of the north at the time of the civil war, unless it is the conditions of factories. These did not change in a meaningful way until laws passed under FDR. Slavery and indentured servitude were ills common to the ancestors of all the settlers in America. It would seem that the South was doing less to move past that heritage by preserving the overt ownership of humans.