[chargingmarmot]

I'm not sure what you're arguing, but I don't think its true that the claim "we want to secede because of injustices against us" was retroactive.

see: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...

"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, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union."

I think there's a tendency for discussions about the south's position in the civil war to end up with slavery poisoning the well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well

[flir]

That's the first sentence.

Second sentence:

"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."

Third sentence:

"...and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property..." (my emphasis)

C'mon.

[eesmith]

To complete the sentence you incompletely quoted: "but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right."

What are those "frequent violations of the Constitution"?

> In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.

> The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "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."

> This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

> The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.

> The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.

It's all about the injustice that they are not able to keep slaves like they want to.

[catgary]

The injustices being, primarily, that they were no longer allowed to engage in chattel slavery.

[qwytw]

> that they were no longer

That they might no longer be allowed to engage in chattel slavery at some indeterminate point in the future. Outright abolition was still a fringe policy at the beginning of the war.

[eesmith]

My reading of South Carolina's "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union" says they believed otherwise.

They seemed to regard abolition as no longer a fringe policy but one which, in the North, was effectively mainstream, and were certain that after Lincoln's inauguration the North would wage a war to exterminate slavery.

> For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms [emphasis in the original] of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. ...

> On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

The Texans seemed to have similar viewpoints that the abolition of slavery was not a fringe policy, and would be carried out during the next administration:

> By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments. ...

> And, finally, by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slave-holding States, they have elected as president and vice-president of the whole confederacy two men whose chief claims to such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the slave-holding States.

(I trust that "within the next administration" isn't what you mean by "indeterminate".)

[qwytw]

Yes, you're definitely right about what they said, I'm not sure they really believed it ,though.

In the north and even in the Republican party itself immediate abolition without compensation was still certainly a 'fringe' view. However the new administration was pretty explicit about not allowing new slave states to join in the future while simultaneously allowing accept new free states.

Slave states would've been outvoted in Congress, which would've probably led to eventual abolition. However it would've been a slow and gradual process with possible compensation and much closer to a 'death by a thousand cuts' (anything else would've just triggered a secession and most northern politicians certainly preferred allowing the Southern states to maintain slavery for the foreseable future).

So I certainly doubt most reasonable people in the South expected that slavery would be abolished 'within the next administration,' but they still must have seen the writing on the wall and judged that they'll never be in a stronger position than they were at that time. When they actually decided to secede, it made sense to use the strongest/most outlandish language possible in their propaganda (since of course, there were still probably some people who might have believed it)

[eesmith]

Are you really arguing that they didn't believe the position they presented in their declarations of succession?

> immediate abolition without compensation

Whoa there. Please do not shift your argument.

Earlier you wrote "indeterminate point" not "immediate abolition" and you wrote "outright abolition", not a specific type of abolition.

My reading of the declarations was they thought would be during the Lincoln administration, not "immediate" upon his inauguration, but also not "indeterminate".

> So I certainly doubt most reasonable people in the South

Do you have supporting evidence for your belief? I mean, these people elected the leaders of the state, so why do you think "most" people disagreed?

[qwytw]

>Are you really arguing that they didn't believe the position they presented in their declarations of succession?

Depends on how do you define 'believe'. Politicians back then (just like now) certainly often said things they didn't believe in when doing so was politically advantageous.

I certainly believe that they thought that the new administration was probably the biggest threat to slavery in the last 50 years or so and its actions were likely to lead to eventual abolition. Does not change the fact that immediate abolition was politically infeasible (which is something Lincoln himself reiterated during his inaugural address and I have to reiterate that while opposed to slavery Lincoln himself was not an abolitionist and did not run on abolitionist ticket).

> Whoa there. Please do not shift your argument.

Am I? Sorry, my comment might not have been clear, I certainly did not want to imply that abolition was likely at any point during the Lincoln administration (at least before the next election).

> Do you have supporting evidence for your belief? I mean, these people elected the leaders of the state, so why do you think "most" people disagreed?

I'll have to shift my argument in this case and say "most rational people".

Also if we look at all of the quotes you posted:

- slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

- that the South shall be excluded from the common territory

- war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States (unless you believe they mean a literal war)

- and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the slave-holding States.

none of these seem to imply that their authors believed that abolition was imminent (in the next 4 years or so):

> Do you have supporting evidence for your belief

Anyone who vaguely understood the political situation in 1860 would have know that (peaceful) abolition during the next 4 years was unfeasible.

> so why do you think "most" people disagreed?

Disagreed with what exactly?

[dragonwriter]

Because never in the history of humanity has a political faction used a knowingly distorted narrative about a group they oppose to justify their own actions.

Documents like that are a much better guide to the normative beliefs to which the authors wish to appeal than the factual beliefs they hold.

[bandyaboot]

What Texas deemed “odious unconstitutional restrictions”.

[bandyaboot]

It wasn’t necessarily retroactive, but it was always pretense.

edit: see Texas’ declaration of secession for what it looked like when they weren’t shy about saying the quiet part out loud.

[chargingmarmot]

This one is called a circumstantial ad hominem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem#Circumstantial

[bandyaboot]

Not exactly sure what you’re getting at. Use your words.