Talk:Origins of the American Civil War

Talk:Origins of the American Civil War/Archive 1
Talk:Origins of the American Civil War/Archive 2 - ongoing discussion of splitting up the page into smaller articles

Talk:Origins of the American Civil War/Archive 3

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Article Reorganization

In reading further I am of the belief that this article is a logistical mess with many excesses, redundancies, and unchecked/unsourced assertions. Some more problems, in addition to NPOV, that could be addressed and revised:

1. Consolidate the topic of slavery into a coherent section. Right now slavery is the dominant theme of 5 or 6 out of the article's 9 sections, and many redundancies exist in each that are also found in others. This could be one of the main reasons the article is too long. From an organizational perspective, we should try to consolidate the material together into a coherent discussion of slavery and all its aspects under a common header - perhaps with several subheaders for things like "abolitionism" and the "free soil" movement and the "plantation system." It'll make the article easier to read and more effective on the whole

The plantation system determined the structure of Southern society, just as free labor determined the structure of Northern society. Expect the word slavery to come up many times when we’re dealing with this subject. 172 13:09, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It may have and to that extent should be discussed. But that was not the grievance of my complaint. Right now if I were to read the article while looking for a coherent, brief, and reasonably thorough analysis of slavery's role in the origins of the civil war (a reasonable assumption of what the average encyclopedia reader might be looking for) I could not do so with much ease. The reason is that the article is (1) too long, (2) too dispersed, (3) too redundant, and (4) disorganized. When not only the same recurring topic but also the same repeated and re-repeated assertions about that topic, often without specific sources, are spread out across five or six different categories there's an organization problem. That's why I suggested a comprehensive section on slavery under a single header with subheaders. Rangerdude 20:18, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

2. There are several glaring oversights throughout the article. For example:

The Corwin Amendment - the only prewar compromise attempt to make it out of Congress in 1861 - is entirely omitted.

"Negrophobia" - There's also little to no mention of the free soil movement's darker side - what Richard Hofstadter called the "negrophobia" panic in the north. Prejudicial fears about free blacks in many midwestern states prompted them to adopt systems of Black Codes and emigration prohibitions in the 1830's-60's that were designed to keep freed slaves from settling there and competing with white labor.

Something for another article.

The black codes/negrophobia subject, as a dimension of the slavery issue that led to the civil war, is no less an appropriate subject for this article than the plantation system or any other facet of 19th century slavery and discrimination that you've included. Most reputable historians (i.e. Hofstadter) discuss it at length right along side the free soil movement. No reason exists to exclude it here. Rangerdude 20:18, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Tariffs - I added a little material on this subject but it could be addressed in its own subsection. The tariff was probably the single most common U.S. economic policy issue from the War of 1812 to the Civil War. From 1820 the south was almost always against tariffs - and very vocally so at times such as the nullification crisis.

Already dealt with in this article. 172 13:09, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As I noted, the manner in which tariffs were "dealt" with was sporadic, largely unsourced, and often with an POV. The previous article dismisses the South Carolina Exposition - a central event of the nullification crisis - as a minor "grumble" or something like that and then portrays it as a slavery document rather than tariffs. That reeks of a POV to downplay a significant incident and it's also just plain incorrect history. Virtually no substantive material existed on the Morrill Tariff before I added it - and you deleted that. Also nothing was there on its origins in Taylor and Calhoun - a significant contribution that should be mentioned (you deleted my attempts to add this as well including links to them and specific references to their books on the subject). The tariff issue was extensive and long lived in the antebellum period and therefore merits a thorough discussion in its own right - not some selective, sporadic running POV commentary spread out over 3 or 4 different headers and written in language that diminishes, belittles, or incorrectly states its details.Rangerdude 20:18, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

3. Consolidate and reorganize the non-slavery issues as well. For example: do a section on economics, a section on "secession theory" and constitutional issues and so forth instead of spreading little bits of information about each across 4, 5, or 6 different headers. If anybody has Kenneth Stampp's book on the causes of the civil war this may be a good framework to base things from. Stampp basically puts together a list of all the different "causes" of the civil war and does a chapter on each containing 3 or 4 historical documents that display that issue.

4. There still needs to be a better history on the chain of secession itself. For example, what did South Carolina do to sway other states to follow them? (answer: they adopted a letter to all the other southern states outlining reasons they should secede too) Another issue: how did Fort Sumter impact southern states after the original seven left? What role did Lincoln's call for troops have in tennessee and Virginia etc. seceding? What about the border states like Missouri, Maryland, and Kentucky and the secession movements in each of them? This needs to be developed for it to be a true article on the "Origins of the American Civil War"

The relevant section states See Fort Sumter and American Civil War for coverage of events after South Carolina's secession from the Union. 172 13:09, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

NPOV problems remain

There seem to be many serious NPOV problems in certain parts of this article, particularly anti-southern biases.

1. While it is certainly proper to talk about slavery's role in the conflict, please attempt to do so from a neutral point of view. Using 20th century terms like "racist" (yes, we all know that most people in the 19th century - north included - were racists by our standards today, but the term is a modern one and is not neutral for a historical article) and pejoratives like "reactionary" as subject headers to attack the south is not appropriate from an NPOV perspective.

To claim that all references to racism should be removed from the article is patently absurd.

The only absurdity here is to selectively apply this 20th century terminology to a 19th century subject so that it maligns one side while neglecting the other. It would be perfectly proper if you wish to note that 19th century people held racial views that are considered bigotted today, but the 20th century concept of "racism" was not understood or even recognized by most people in centuries past. There are other ways of accurately describing the unenlightened racial beliefs of the past than simply shouting the canard "he's a racist."Rangerdude 20:58, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This would leave us with no way to address how white people came to believe that Africans should be kept in bondage.

That is not true. Reference it in terms of the equality issue and the fact that many whites in the 19th century believed in racial inferiority of the slaves - an NPOV way of stating it that nevertheless conveys the problematic nature of their racial views. Rangerdude 20:58, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That's why the relationship between slavery and racism has inspired a rich tradition in scholarly literature, generating a number of different interpretations. For the leading work on this subject see Oscar and Mary Hanlin "Origins of the Southern Labor System," William and Mary Quarterly; Winthrop Jordan, White over Black (1968); David Brion Davis The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (1966); Peter Wood Black Majority (1974); Edmund Morgan American Slavery, American Freedom (1975). 172 12:49, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have no doubt that many have written on the subject. That does not mean, however, that all those authors embrace or use biased and modern POV language to convey it. If they are from scholarly publications, most likely they use NPOV terminology.

2. Unsourced gratuitous information, such as the allegation about poor southerners supposedly eating mud, is another no-no. If you want to include something like that in an article that's designed to provide basic overviews please justify its inclusion and source it.

Uh, this is a well-known, established fact. I find it hard to believe that most people don't learn this from their high school history teachers... Note the footnote that I'd added. 172 12:49, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You have yet to demonstrate that it is established, or provide a reason why its inclusion is important to the article. Your 6 footnotes are very minor improvements but even they are problematic. Anybody can pull out a random out of print civil war book and claim that on page 137 it talks about people eating mud. But problems still remain about whether the context is being properly represented (for example - did they eat mud on an average day of any given year or did they eat mud in the winter of 1864 when a war had ravaged the countryside or in a year of bad crops), whether the author's claim is accurately repeated, whether the author himself reputably and accurately conveyed it. A better way to source things like that passage, then, is to quote the author and name him in the text or, if possible, find original source material instead of secondary or third hand accounts.Rangerdude 20:58, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

3. Speculation is another no-no and up until that last version that 172 keeps reverting to, there's way too much of it going on - speculation about southern motives, speculation about southern psychological conditions, you name it and it's there. If you want to talk about psychological issues, SOURCE IT AND SPECIFY IT. Link to an article on the Fire Eaters or something - but don't just assert it out of the blue and don't use it as a broad brush to paint the entire south.

I did source it and specify it. But you reverted me three times. 172 12:49, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Your attempts to add sources seem to have been caught up in the server problems last night and I apologize if I removed them, however you also inserted several of them in place of valid material additions I had made. On your sources themselves - it's a step in the right direction but a very small one for the reasons I stated above and others. Some of the things you source are not facts but paragraphs with a heavy POV. Saying "Joe Smith was an extremist reactionary and agitator" is a POV assertion. But so is saying "Joe Smith was an extremist reactionary and agitator" followed by a footnote to author Bob Jones who supposedly expressed that POV on page 267 of a book he published in 1943 but that you nevertheless do not quote or contextualize. The NPOV way of stating it would be "Critics such as historian Bob Jones have described Joe Smith as a reactionary and in his own day Senator Seward accused him of being a fire-eater." That way the reader knows exactly where the POV is coming from and who made it. I used Seward in this example because he did indeed call some people fireeaters, but the knowledge that it was Seward calling them that and not a more neutral voice also provides context to the POV as Seward himself wasn't exactly far from a radical on the other end of the spectrum. In other words, you need to source your material, reduce POV statements in general, and where you feel they are justified for inclusion, specifically attribute them in the text with quotes or easily verified references if possible so that readers know where the POV is coming from.Rangerdude 20:58, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

4. On the slavery issue - if you wish to discuss it at length, great! It's something that needs discussed and can't be ignored. BUT that does not give you the right to remove, edit out, screen, or censor additions from others that introduce issues like tariff legislation (a common policy sore spot for southerners).

The article already provides a generous range of contexts. Some sections indeed focus on slavery and free labor. Others deal with the role of political agitation in all sections in the coming of the war in the context of an era in which traditional restraints were being eroded in the face of the rapid expansion of democracy. Others focus on the South's economic dependence and tariffs (especially the section dealing with the panic of 1857).

Again, my complaint here is disorganization, redundancy, and errors in your content. Consolidate it down where its redundant and allow errors to be corrected where they are present. I already specified a couple (i.e. your portrayal of the SC exposition, the WIlmot proviso etc.). I also began attempting to correct and clean up your section on Thomas Prentice Kettell - you didn't even have his name properly linked - but you immediately deleted everything I was doing within moments of my edits! The simple fact is there were errors there. I don't know if you've read Kettell's book or not. There is one modern scholarly edition of it with an academic essay on its introduction that is probably about the most comprehensive look at the impact of Kettell's work out there. It documents very plainly that he intended the book as an argument for unity. It also has a timeline of how partisans in the north and south seized onto it to boost their cause or condemned it for saying something they did not like about their side. I was in the process of editing your section based on that essay when you began undoing everything I had added and reverting to your own POV terminology such as "agitator"Rangerdude 20:58, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Others deal with overall decline of the South's influence in the federal government on questions of tariffs, banking policy, public land, and of subsidies to railroads. However, tariffs will never receive as much coverage as slavery.

I never asked that they receive as much cover as slavery or anything else. Rather I simply asked that they be fairly distinguished in the article and discussed in some reasonable, coherent depth rather than occassional, sporadic, biased, historically incomplete and inaccurate, and often spiteful jibes tossed in across five or six different sections.Rangerdude 20:58, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

BTW, the tariff may be a sore spot for Southerners, but that is no reason to load this article up with irrelevant content on tariffs. The idea that the tariff played such an important role in the origins of the American Civil War (from the Charles Beard school) has been discredited. 172 18:51, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Nobody ever tried to load up the article with "irrelevant content" on tariffs. All I'm asking for is a fair and coherent discussion of it. I made some minor additions toward that end such as mentioning Taylor's role and the specific tariff acts and even that was apparently offensive to you. I'll also challenge your claim that the Beard idea has been "discredited." Some scholars have disagreed with it and challenged it and I'm sure you can name a few of them. Others have defended and expanded it though and I could name them. The issue is presently unresolved as with most historical theories. To claim that the debate is closed out of convenience to your own preferred position smacks of arrogance and censorship Rangerdude 20:58, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

5. Please get your facts straight. The South Carolina Exposition and Protest was an anti-tariff document written against the Tariff of Abominations, not some pro-slavery manifesto as the article previously suggested. The Wilmot Proviso was an anti-slavery proposal for the Mexico territories, not an "example of strong Southern influence" in foreign policy.

The article does not call the South Carolina Exposition and Protest a pro-slavery manifesto. I also think that you are confusing some of the text concerning the Wilmot Proviso, the failure of which in the Senate, where the South's representation was disproportionately given the share of the U.S. population for which it had accounted, was indeed an example of the influence of the Southern slaveholding interests. 172 12:53, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks - Rangerdude 1.8.04

This article is not written from the point of view of those who participated in the conflict, from the point of view of it being a moral conflict in which either side was clearly to blame. It is based on the prevailing literature of a diverse range of traditions on this subject, established by scholars like Nevins, Randall, Donald, Foner, Genovese, Holt, and McPherson. But if you feel that some passages are 'anti-Southern,' point them out to me and I will add further references to the article. Thank you. 172 08:41, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

NOTE ON PENDING DISPUTES WITH PROBLEM EDITOR

I have filed a request for Wikipedia community discussion and mediation on this article due to abusive editing practices by user "172," refusal of the same user to participate in requests on the discussion page for POV dispute resolutions, and most recently, personal attacks on me by the same user.

SUMMARY OF PROBLEMS:

1. User "172" is currently in violation of the 3-time reversion rule for a 24 hour period. He is reverting material additions, edits, and corrections to this article by me. User "172" refuses to discuss our differences on this subject despite several polite requests by me to do so and my suggestions for an agreeable resolution (see below).

2. User "172" is continuously reinserting his own POV terminology in conflict of the NPOV guidelines. I have replaced several POV wordings of his with neutral terminology only to see it reverted. User "172" also refuses to discuss this subject despite several polite requests.

3. User "172" continuously removes the POV dispute header from the article despite the fact that a dispute is still pending and is detailed on the discussion forum without any response from him (see below).

4. User "172" is using the edit summary box to make personal attacks on me. His latest reversion of my NPOV edits calls me a neo-confederate without basis and with intended pejorative connotations.

Thanks for your help - Rangerdude 1.8.05

(1) I am not in violation of the 3RR. I have made three attempts to restore a newer version of the text including the relevant footnotes. Going above three edits violates the rule. (2) I posted notes on the article talk page, your user talk page, and the talk page of another user before you'd written the above comments. Perhaps you did not get them due to the server problems. Earlier I stated on this talk page that I'd provide sources for any of the claims made in the article. It is not the case that I refuse to engage in a discussion. (3) When I added the footnotes, I removed the POV heading because it substantiated all of the text that you had removed. In my last reversion I allowed it to stand. It is not the case that I am continuously removing the heading. (4) As I stated on another page, there is a difference between criticizing edits and attacking a user. The former is an essential part of the peer editing process. It is even alluded to in the disclaimer that appears every time a user edits a page on Wikipedia. If one cannot stand to have his work criticized, he should find something else to do other than edit Wikipedia. I did not call an individual a 'neo-Confederates.' But when thoroughly footnoted content engaged in well regarded scholarship is replaced by content rewriting history to conform to the views of Thomas Kettell, I will not hesitate to characterize the work as 'pro-slavery neo-Confederate mumbo jumbo' on the talk pages. 172 12:25, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)