RE: Robert E. Lee Day

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AquaticSub -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 7:25:10 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: subexploring quote: ORIGINAL: AquaticSub As you said, the problem was that people wanted to own slaves in new areas of the country, hence my opinion that is was the right to own slaves was the cause of the war. If a war were started by the right to own cars in new areas of the country, I'd call it an issue of rights not a war over cars. Which isn't to say that I approve of slavery, I'm glad it ended - just that the war wasn't about "Free the slaves!" as people like to believe. If you want to say that the war was about the right to own slaves, rather than freeing the already existing slaves, then that is true. But it still makes the war about slavery. The Civil War was fought over the future of slavery. Many people believed that if slavery was allowed to expand, then slavery would continue and possibly become legal throughout the entire nation (we would all be "slave states"). They also believed that if slavery was confined to the Old South, then it would eventually die out and the nation would become completely free. As usual, Lincoln is completely clear on this -- he was a very clear and direct thinker, who said what he meant and meant what he said. Here he is from the "House Divided" speech, two years before the war: " I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new -- North as well as South." I see where you are coming from, I just disagree. If we went into a war about say... the right to smoke pot because states wanted to decide themselves to legalize it or not as opposed to the federal government making the decision, I would see it is a war regarding the right of states to make their own laws. Lincoln did believe that it would become all one thing or all the other, but as I've already said: Slavery was not his top concern with the war. He wanted to the end the war, which he would do by freeing or not freeing - whatever happened to work. Turns out (and I thankful for this) that freeing was the way to go. Of course, if history were easy were easy to figure out there wouldn't be nearly as many books on the subject! [:)]

AquaticSub -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 7:26:29 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: kittinSol I'm curious: why invoke a Robert Lee day on Martin Luther King's day? I do believe because it's also Robert E. Lee's birthday.

thompsonx -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 7:29:58 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: subexploring And Lincoln was always anti-slavery. This is totally clear in the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and indeed in all his pre-war speeches. It was just that his method of getting rid of it was to contain it within the geographic boundaries where it was permitted under the Constitution. Then it would gradually die away. He (along with most other Americans) believed it was too radical and difficult to get rid of it in one go. He wanted a more moderate solution. As a lawyer, he also believed the legal right to slavery in its existing boundaries was "grandfathered" into the Constitution. People are confused over this in part because slavery is so hated today that no one can believe that Lincoln could compromise with the institution even while being anti-slavery. But this was the "mainstream" anti-slavery position in the 1850s. Also, there are some people out there who still aren't too happy that the South lost the Civil War, and would rather not admit that the war was about defending slavery. But as a matter of historical fact, it was. subexploring: Let me see if I understand this correctly. When our country was founded Jefferson and others failed to include non white people in the "All men are created equal" thingie because they "knew" that with time slavery would wither and die on the vine. From 1776 to 1861 is 85 years. In 1808 the U.S. outlawed the importation of slaves because everyone knew that slavery would wither and die on the vine. From 1808 to 1861 is 53 years. By 1861 there are almost 4 million slaves in the U.S. It is kinda difficult for anyone who can do arithmetic to conclude that slavery is going to die on the vine. So please help me out. I am curious as to which group of reasonably intelligent people actually thought that slavery would just wither and die on the vine? thompson

AquaticSub -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 7:32:35 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: thompsonx I am curious as to which group of reasonably intelligent people actually thought that slavery would just wither and die on the vine? thompson Every history book I ever read in and out of school stated that slavery in America was on the verge of dying out when the cotten gin was invented, which provided a new use for slaves. I've also read that the founding fathers actually considered ending the practice but it decided that they (sadly) couldn't accomplish it. Could be wrong of course but that's what I've always read.

MzMia -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 7:41:40 PM)
whispering to thompsonx, I see crazy people. If the Civil War had not been fought and won by the North, I would be sitting in Uncle Tom's cabin. The SOUTH would have NEVER ended slavery on their own. [sm=hair.gif] This has got to be one of the craziest conversations I have ever seen. Thank you so much thomsponx, I think I need a drink. Time to go play this again. YouTube - Stevie Wonder - Happy Birthday

AquaticSub -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 7:46:03 PM)
That's quite possible. We'll never know since the matter has already been decided. I'm sorry you feel the need to call people crazy.

thompsonx -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 7:47:35 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: AquaticSub quote: ORIGINAL: thompsonx I am curious as to which group of reasonably intelligent people actually thought that slavery would just wither and die on the vine? thompson Every history book I ever read in and out of school stated that slavery in America was on the verge of dying out when the cotten gin was invented, which provided a new use for slaves. I've also read that the founding fathers actually considered ending the practice but it decided that they (sadly) couldn't accomplish it. Could be wrong of course but that's what I've always read. AquaticSub: Please correct me if I am wrong but does'nt the cotton gin only pick cotton? It does not pick tobacco. It does not produce indigo. It does not do anything but pick cotton. Slaves freed from the task of picking cotton would then be free to work in the tobacco fields. To produce indigo and all the other myriad enterprises which they traditionally did. So I am unclear as to how the cotton gin would end slavery. Would not the slaves that no longer picked cotton be available for other tasks? It would seem to me that the cotton gin would on the contrary make slavery even more productive. It would seem to me that four million slaves is hardly something on the verge of going out of business. If slavery was a dying institution then why would the south seek to expand it into the new territories? thompson

AquaticSub -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 7:50:34 PM)
The cotten gin didn't end slavery, slavery was (according to everything I've ever studied) dying out when it was invented. The cotton gin provided a much more effective means of seperating cotton from the seeds, or some other plant bit. Because of this, people could plant more cotton and get a better profit. However, the cotton still had to be picked by hand so the demand for slaves grew as more cotton was planted that had to be picked.

GreedyTop -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 7:52:32 PM)
The cotton gin did not PICK cotton, it just processed it, unless I totally misread this article... lol Eli Whitney Cotton Gin

subexploring -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 8:02:16 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: MzMia Lets see the Civil War was not about keeping free labor/slavery? Sure it was about economics, and slavery was about economics.... Slavery was free labor, and that is all about ECONOMICS. Yes. Interesting that Lincoln believed that if slavery was allowed to extend, then slave laborers would compete with free workers, driving down wages and making it impossible for free (white) labor to earn a good living. Economics is at the core. But economics is also a moral issue. It's wrong for people not to be compensated for their labor. Lincoln one more time, from the Lincoln-Douglas debates a few years before the war: "there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence-the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas that he is not my equal in many respects, certainly not in color-perhaps not in intellectual and moral endowments; but in the right to eat the bread without the leave of any body else which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every other man." And later in the same debate -- "I suggest that the difference of opinion, reduced to its lowest terms, is no other than the difference between the men who think slavery a wrong and those who do not think it wrong. The Republican party think it wrong-we think it is a moral, a social and a political wrong. We think it as a wrong not confining itself merely to the persons or the States where it exists, but that it is a wrong in its tendency, to say the least, that extends itself to the existence of the whole nation." I'll stop now. Just a big Lincoln fan. As the first quotation shows, he would be considered racist by today's standards, but you judge people by the standards of their own time. And in his time he was a hero.

subexploring -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 8:12:16 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: thompsonx quote: ORIGINAL: subexploring But as a matter of historical fact, it was. subexploring: Let me see if I understand this correctly..... It is kinda difficult for anyone who can do arithmetic to conclude that slavery is going to die on the vine. So please help me out. I am curious as to which group of reasonably intelligent people actually thought that slavery would just wither and die on the vine? thompson Good question. You are right that slavery had not declined much since the Constitution, mainly thanks to the cotton gin which made slave labor much more profitable. However, the issue is not just economics but politics. Everyone knew that many more states were going to be added to the Union as the nation expanded. Each new state would get two Senators. If slavery was not allowed in these new states, then gradually the Senate would get a larger and larger free-state majority. Eventually there would be a large enough free majority that a constitutional amendment could be passed banning slavery. Beyond this, the culture of the nation would shift more and more toward defining slavery as a small, minority insitution -- a "peculiar institution", as discussion of the time had it. If slavery was kept limited than the economy of the nation as a whole would become less and less dependent on it. The proportion of national wealth created by slaves would decline. As new white immigrants came over from Europe, the proportion of the national population that were slaves or lived in slave states would decline as well. People still argue about whether Lincoln and the Republicans were right that slavery would have died out on its own if it was not allowed to expand. But certainly many people at the time believed it would have, both the Southern slaveowners and Northerners believed this. It may have been wishful thinking on the part of the Republicans, since they did believe slavery was wrong but wished to find a way of getting rid of it that did not involve immediate abolition. Every knew that immediate abolition meant war. But the war they were trying to avoid happened anyway, and so did abolition.

thompsonx -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 8:19:37 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: GreedyTop The cotton gin did not PICK cotton, it just processed it, unless I totally misread this article... lol Eli Whitney Cotton Gin GreedyTop: So if the cotton gin only processes cotton they would still need slaves to pick it. Thus the slaves that would normally be processing the cotton would now be available to do other task. So I still don't see how it is that slavery might just die out. Still no one has offered me any insight as to what other states rights the south went to war for. Or is it that the North attacked the South and the South was just defending itself? thompson

subexploring -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 8:31:16 PM)
I wonder if people are confusing Lincoln's pre-war position -- that slavery would eventually die out if it was not allowed to expand -- with the position of modern-day apologists for the Confederacy, that if Lincoln had not been elected then slavery would have somehow died out in its own. It's subtle, but the two are very different. The key is that if slavery had not been allowed to expand, there eventually would have been a huge national majority of free states, the slave states would have become a small and weak minority, and the Constitution could have been amended. This is why the South before the Civil War insisted not just that they retain the "states right" to slavery -- which Lincoln was OK with -- but that slavery be expanded to new territories as well. The Republicans were not OK with that. At the end of the day, I think the war was about slavery, not states rights. You can look at earlier states rights crises (like the Nullification Crisis under Jackson) and no one was going to war over that. The issues just weren't big enough. I'd argue that the real death knell for states rights were the New Deal court decisions on the interstate commerce clause, not the Civil War.

thompsonx -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 8:36:08 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: subexploring quote: ORIGINAL: thompsonx quote: ORIGINAL: subexploring But as a matter of historical fact, it was. subexploring: Let me see if I understand this correctly..... It is kinda difficult for anyone who can do arithmetic to conclude that slavery is going to die on the vine. So please help me out. I am curious as to which group of reasonably intelligent people actually thought that slavery would just wither and die on the vine? thompson Good question. You are right that slavery had not declined much since the Constitution, mainly thanks to the cotton gin which made slave labor much more profitable. Not much declined is somewhat of an understatement don't you think. In a country where the importation of slavs was illegal the slave population was almost 4 million. However, the issue is not just economics but politics. The only difference I see between economics and politics is how much money you need to buy a politician. Everyone knew that many more states were going to be added to the Union as the nation expanded. Each new state would get two Senators. If slavery was not allowed in these new states, then gradually the Senate would get a larger and larger free-state majority. Eventually there would be a large enough free majority that a constitutional amendment could be passed banning slavery. Didn't the Missouri compromise and the compromise of 1850 pretty much establish the protocol of slave state free state upon admission. If I remember correctly the Texas constitution allowed it to divide itself into four parts so as to keep the senatoral ballance should the one for one rule be bypassed. Again if slavery had not died out in 85 years. Rather it had multiplied in the face of the restriction on the importation of new slaves. Beyond this, the culture of the nation would shift more and more toward defining slavery as a small, minority insitution -- a "peculiar institution", as discussion of the time had it. If slavery was kept limited than the economy of the nation as a whole would become less and less dependent on it. The proportion of national wealth created by slaves would decline. As new white immigrants came over from Europe, the proportion of the national population that were slaves or lived in slave states would decline as well. This does not seem to have happened in the 85 years since the Declaration of Independence. In fact just the opposite was happening. People still argue about whether Lincoln and the Republicans were right that slavery would have died out on its own if it was not allowed to expand. But certainly many people at the time believed it would have, both the Southern slaveowners and Northerners believed this. It keeps getting bigger and bigger and the general concensus is that it is gonna die on the vine any minute....that does not sound all that logical to me. It may have been wishful thinking on the part of the Republicans, since they did believe slavery was wrong but wished to find a way of getting rid of it that did not involve immediate abolition. Kinda like Jefferson and the boys in the beginning. Every knew that immediate abolition meant war. But the war they were trying to avoid happened anyway, and so did abolition. I thought the war came first and then abolition?

thompsonx -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 8:40:59 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: subexploring I wonder if people are confusing Lincoln's pre-war position -- that slavery would eventually die out if it was not allowed to expand -- with the position of modern-day apologists for the Confederacy, that if Lincoln had not been elected then slavery would have somehow died out in its own. It's subtle, but the two are very different. The key is that if slavery had not been allowed to expand, there eventually would have been a huge national majority of free states, the slave states would have become a small and weak minority, and the Constitution could have been amended. This is why the South before the Civil War insisted not just that they retain the "states right" to slavery -- which Lincoln was OK with -- but that slavery be expanded to new territories as well. The Republicans were not OK with that. At the end of the day, I think the war was about slavery, not states rights. You can look at earlier states rights crises (like the Nullification Crisis under Jackson) and no one was going to war over that. The issues just weren't big enough. I'd argue that the real death knell for states rights were the New Deal court decisions on the interstate commerce clause, not the Civil War. subexploring: Well so far the only state right that anyone has given me for the war was the right to own slaves. Does this mean that "states rights" in this context is just a euphimism for slavery? If that is so then we are back to the position that the war was fought over slavery. thompson

subexploring -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 8:49:56 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: thompsonx quote: ORIGINAL: subexploring Everyone knew that many more states were going to be added to the Union as the nation expanded. Each new state would get two Senators. If slavery was not allowed in these new states, then gradually the Senate would get a larger and larger free-state majority. Eventually there would be a large enough free majority that a constitutional amendment could be passed banning slavery. Didn't the Missouri compromise and the compromise of 1850 pretty much establish the protocol of slave state free state upon admission. If I remember correctly the Texas constitution allowed it to divide itself into four parts so as to keep the senatoral ballance should the one for one rule be bypassed. Bang. Now you've got the issue. Lincoln and the Republicans wanted to overturn the Missouri compromise and the compromise of 1850. (Also the Dred Scott decision, BTW). They also wanted the ability to control new territories so that slaveholders could not enter with their slaves. This would have weakened the power of pro-slavery voters in new territories and prevented situations like the Texas constitution you mention. All of this would have allowed free states to get a Senate majority. This was well understood at the time.

Phin -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 8:57:34 PM)
I have told you, and given a direct reference to the document that slavery was used as a way to try to end the war, not as a reason to start it. The north was the first to attack, and they even forced maryland to stay in the union so that DC would not be surrounded by confederate states. It was a coincidence that all of the states that sucseded where slave states. there were slave states that DID NOT SUCSEDE

Emperor1956 -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 9:02:51 PM)
FR: The amount of ignorance in this thread is astounding. Not by all who posted, but by the OP and those who follow as apologists and glamorists for R.E.Lee. This note is long, but the issues raised in the glamorizing of Lee and by extension, the Confederacy are serious, and deserve serious rebuttal. Lee was no saint. He surely was not the ideal Southern aristocrat or gentleman. Lee did NOT free his slaves at the start of the Civil War; indeed as I outline below, he put his newly acquired slaves to work to pay off family debts until 1863, well into the war. He was a brilliant military mind. There is no evidence of him having been especially chivalrous, gentlemanly (except that he was born to privilege) or -- laughably "Domly". What the OP and others have done is adopted a view of the Confederacy as noble, romantic and "gentlemanly" -- This is in fact so common a view that it is referred to by Civil War scholars as the "Lost Cause" theory. The Lost Cause theory is insidious; it is mostly false, supported by no historical fact, and often proponents of the Lost Cause then justify modern acts of racism (flying the Confederate Flag, denying the adoption of MLK day as a state holiday, etc.) by invoking the great old "Lost Cause". Of course, the biggest proponent in popular culture of the "lost cause" theory is Gone with the Wind. And the OP's statements and most of the others in this thread are just as much fiction as that great novel. Lee's experience with slavery serves as example of what he was (a smart, loyal, dutiful man shaped by his upbringing and his times) and what he wasn't (a saint or a paragon). Facts: Lee was a wealthy suburban professional soldier, and as such had a small holding of household (i.e. higher grade and well-educated) slaves. Prior to 1857, he owned probably no more than six slaves at any time. He had an income from plantation lands, but did not actively oversee operations. After his second marriage, he moved into one of the stately homes on his father-in-law's small plantation in Arlington, Virginia (the property that later became and still is Arlington National Cemetary). However upon the death of his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, in October 1857, Lee (as executor of the will) came into control of 196 slaves on the Arlington plantation. Lee could have freed all of these slaves immediately (the Parke Custis will provided for the slaves to be emancipated "in such a manner as to my executors may seem most expedient and proper", providing a maximum of five years for the legal and logistical details of manumission), Lee found himself in need of funds to pay his father-in-law's debts and repair the properties he had inherited. Therefore, Lee decided to make money during the five years allowed him control of the slaves by working them on the Arlington plantation and hiring them out to neighboring plantations. Lee, with no experience as a large-scale slave owner and no desire to become one, tried to hire an overseer to handle the plantation in his absence, writing to his cousin, "I wish to get an energetic honest farmer, who while he will be considerate & kind to the negroes, will be firm & make them do their duty." But Lee failed to hire anyone, and he had to take a two-year leave of absence from the army in order to run the plantation himself. He found the experience frustrating and difficult; some of the slaves were unhappy and demanded their freedom, largely because Parke Custis had promised many of them that they were to be made free as soon as Custis died. In May 1858, Lee was required to discipline several of the disgruntled slaves who had run away. This incident and Lee's treatment of slaves who ran away in a subsequent incident led to his demonization by the Abolitionist movement. Remember that the country was heading towards Civil War, and Lee was already noted as a significant Southern politician. The first "runaway slave" incident was as follows: As Lee wrote to his son Rooney, "I have had some trouble with some of the people. Reuben, Parks & Edward, in the beginning of the previous week, rebelled against my authority--refused to obey my orders, & said they were as free as I was, etc., etc.--I succeeded in capturing them & lodging them in jail. They resisted till overpowered & called upon the other people to rescue them." Less than two months after the slaves were sent to jail, Lee decided to remove these six slaves from Arlington and sent them -- under lock and key as slaves were then transported -- to William Overton, a notorious Richmond, Virginia slave trader. Lee instructed Overton to keep the slaves in jail until he could find "good & responsible" slaveholders to work them until the end of the five year period. In 1859, three other Arlington slaves—Wesley Norris, his sister Mary, and a cousin of theirs—fled for the North, but were captured a few miles from the Pennsylvania border and forced to return to Arlington. On June 24, 1859, the New York Daily Tribune, which had adopted a strident Abolitionist rhetoric, published two anonymous letters which claimed to have heard that Lee had the Norrises whipped and went so far as to claim that Lee himself had whipped the woman when a local police officer refused to. Lee wrote to his son Custis that "The N. Y. Tribune has attacked me for my treatment of your grandfather's slaves, but I shall not reply. He has left me an unpleasant legacy." Did Lee encourage the whipping of these slaves, and even take a hand in it? Biographers of Lee have differed over the credibility of the Tribune letters. A leading "pro-South" and "Lost Cause" proponent, Douglas S. Freeman, in his masterful four-volume 1934 biography of Lee, described the letters to the Tribune as "Lee's first experience with the extravagance of irresponsible antislavery agitators" and asserted that "There is no evidence, direct or indirect, that Lee ever had them or any other Negroes flogged. The usage at Arlington and elsewhere in Virginia among people of Lee's station forbade such a thing." The apologists would love this view. Of course, it probably sugar coats the real story. Michael Fellman, in The Making of Robert E. Lee (2000) (which I have used as the source material for most of this note), found the claims that Lee had personally whipped Mary Norris "extremely unlikely," but he also found it very likely that Lee had the slaves whipped: Fellman says "corporal punishment (for which Lee substituted the euphemism 'firmness') was an intrinsic and necessary part of slave discipline. Although it was supposed to be applied only in a calm and rational manner, overtly physical domination of slaves, unchecked by law, was always brutal and potentially savage." One of the slaves, Wesley Norris, discussed the incident after the war, in an 1866 interview. Norris stated that after he ad the other two had been captured, and forced to return to Arlington, Lee told them that "he would teach us a lesson we would not soon forget." According to Norris, Lee then had the three of them tied to posts and whipped by the county constable, with fifty lashes for the men and twenty for Mary Norris (he made no claim that Lee had personally whipped Mary Norris). Norris claimed that Lee then had the overseer rub their lacerated backs with brine, a detail that will gratify many of you still reading with me. Wesley Norris gained his freedom in January 1863 by slipping through the Confederate lines near Richmond to Union-controlled territory. Lee freed all the other Custis slaves after the end of the five year period by filing the freedom document on the last business day of 1862, well into the War, as I said above. E.

thompsonx -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 9:15:27 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: subexploring quote: ORIGINAL: thompsonx quote: ORIGINAL: subexploring Everyone knew that many more states were going to be added to the Union as the nation expanded. Each new state would get two Senators. If slavery was not allowed in these new states, then gradually the Senate would get a larger and larger free-state majority. Eventually there would be a large enough free majority that a constitutional amendment could be passed banning slavery. Didn't the Missouri compromise and the compromise of 1850 pretty much establish the protocol of slave state free state upon admission. If I remember correctly the Texas constitution allowed it to divide itself into four parts so as to keep the senatoral ballance should the one for one rule be bypassed. Bang. Now you've got the issue. Lincoln and the Republicans wanted to overturn the Missouri compromise and the compromise of 1850. (Also the Dred Scott decision, BTW). How does one unadmit a state? The Missouri compromise was about the admission of Main and Alabama and the drawing of a line across the Louisana purchase dividing it into slave and free teritory. The Dread Scott decission was a SCOTUS decision under the Taney court and not something that congress could acutally change. They also wanted the ability to control new territories so that slaveholders could not enter with their slaves. This would have weakened the power of pro-slavery voters in new territories and prevented situations like the Texas constitution you mention. How so? All of this would have allowed free states to get a Senate majority. This was well understood at the time. You have lost me here. A simple senate majority does not do the trick.

Archer -> RE: Robert E. Lee Day (1/21/2008 9:18:44 PM)
Lets not forget that the economic reason the north had for wanting slavery stopped was far less than egalitarian in nature. Southern states wanted to be free to trade their raw materials to europe (who had ended their slavery issues already but saw little problem with buying the raw materials that had been produced that way. Northern states wanted the raw materials so they could produce their goods to sell to europe post processing, and since the Southern states had less political power, the Northern states made sure the law made it unprofitable for the south to sell to europe directly, by placing export tarrifs on materials that were produced in the Southern states. They were not worried nearly as much with the idea of slavery as they were with the idea of making sure the South didn't send their raw materials overseas until the north had had it's chance to profit from them. Where there folks who had actual moral objections to slavery certainly but lets not make the general population out to be more egalitarian than it was in either North or South. Want the other "State's Rights" issue it was in the area of freedom to trade raw materials produced in a state to a foreign market that was more profitable than the Domestic northern states markets. The question as many records of the time by Southern Senators was, " Do we as the State of SC NC GA etc have the right to trade our goods to whatever market is the most profitable or do the Northern states have the right to by force of law tell the Southern states that they must sell their produce for less to a northern market or pay an export tarrif that makes the foreign trade even more unprofitable than trading them to the Northern states?"

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