Durindal said:
The key here is "after the Union occupied New Orleans"...some of them did join the Union army. How many Irish switched sides?
The Confederacy didn’t refuse to arm or provide uniforms to the Irish. They didn’t force the Louisiana Irish regiments to disband.
And the Union didn’t force those black Louisiana regiments to reform and fight for it.
Durindal said:
Both true, yet the South still refused, despite the fact that their [perceived] right to own slaves would be protected.
The Crittenden Compromise died in committee. The Corwin Amendment was never ratified.
So why do you keep insisting the South refused something that was never offered? (At least you aren’t repeating your incorrect claim that Lincoln offered it.)
Durindal said:
This is also in line with the percentage of African-Americans in those states, so it would make sense that the numbers would be greater. I'm not sure exactly what your point here is, but I'm assuming that what your trying to get at is that the more slaves a state has the more likely it was to join the Confederacy, so I'll address this along with your final point.
What would make you think I’m taking about raw numbers of slaves when I’m specifically mentioning the
percentage of
slave owning families?
And as is obvious from the 1860 census data, the first batch of slaveholding states to secede were those with the highest the
percentage of
slave owning families. The slaveholding states with the lowest the
percentage of
slave owning families did not secede at all.
The obvious answer is that the slaveholding states that stayed in the Union had less of a stake in slavery.
Durindal said:
But you see this was not the limit of black service to the Confederacy, although the government didn't officially allow blacks to serve until 1865, thousands had nevertheless been fighting for some time. I've already posted a few quotes on this, but here's another.
"For more than two years, Negroes have been extensively employed in belligerent operations by the Confederacy. They have been embodied and drilled as rebel soldiers and had paraded with white troops at a time when this would not have been tolerated in the armies of the Union."
-Horace Greeley
None of your three sources is from a member of the Confederate government nor its military. Only Steiner is an eyewitness, and his claim is backed by no statements from any member of either army nor any of the civilians who saw the army.
Nor does any of this back the 60,000 figure you claim. If we accept Steiner’s unconfirmed report, that would mean a figure of roughly 12,000 for the entire Confederacy.
And none of the people you quote are claiming that black troops mean the Confederacy did not secede because of slavery.
…we ask you to consider that Slavery is everywhere the inciting cause and sustaining base of treason: the most slaveholding sections of Maryland and Delaware being this day, though under the Union flag, in full sympathy with the Rebellion, while the Free-Labor portions of Tennessee and of Texas, though writhing under the bloody heel of Treason, are unconquerably loyal to the Union.
-Horace Greeley
… knowing well what an abomination Slavery is, and how emphatically it is the core and essence of this atrocious Rebellion….
-Horace Greeley
… the Rebellion, if crushed out tomorrow, would be renewed within a year if Slavery were left in full vigor.
-Horace Greeley
A war undertaken and brazenly carried on for the perpetual enslavement of colored men, calls logically and loudly for colored men to help suppress it.
-Frederick Douglass
The South was fighting to take slavery out of the Union….
-Frederick Douglass
Durindal said:
You mean there might have been some people in the Union that opposed abolition.
And some in the Confederacy that supported it.
But just like Patrick Cleburne, who you quote, they weren’t the political leaders of the south. And those political leaders made it very, very clear that it was about slavery for them.
Durindal said:
Was marriage a legal institution in 1861? I believe so, and I believe that would make his wife's slaves his slaves. As far as the date, well I'll go ahead and take Julia's word for it, but I believe that there are some who dispute that claim.
There were clear legal differences between what the law called paraphernalia and property gained during coverture. For example, George Washington freed his slaves in his will, did not and legally could not free his wife’s slaves.
Durindal said:
If it was about slavery then why were two of the last three states to ratify it, Union states?
You did note those were Union
slave states?
Durindal said:
the single most important issue to the South was the idea that Southern men should decide what was best for the South and not "damn Yankee" politicians.
I’m sure that Patrick Cleburne believed that. It’s equally obvious that the men who buried his proposal to enlist the slaves, his career, and eventually Cleburne himself did not.
But tell me, was the Gag Rule the Yankees deciding what was best for the South, or the other way round? How about the Dred Scott decision? Or the Gadsden Purchase? Or the Fugitive Slave Laws? Or the Kansas-Nebraska Act? Or the Sumner caning? Or the Border Ruffians? Or the Lecompton Constitution? Or the Ostend Manifesto?