[Smilin' Dave]

Wow, you sound really upset about slavery. I haven't even thought that way about the civil war since grade school. Oh, I remember now. It was when I first started reading history books that I realized that the matter was more complex than that.

You can lose the condescension
1. Saying that slavery didn't play a major role (quite possibly the biggest role) in the coming of the Civil War is nonsense. All those complex things? A lot of them can be tied back to slavery and its knock on effects.
2. If you were at all familiar with Scamp (the OP incidentally is a repost from HiFo, and might even have been posted on other non-existent forums prior), you would know that his primary interest in the Confederacy really does seem to be that it kept African-Americans in slavery. Scamp, the funny guy that he is, has warnings on both HiFo and PoFo for racism.

[Scamp]

2. If you were at all familiar with Scamp (the OP incidentally is a repost from HiFo, and might even have been posted on other non-existent forums prior), you would know that his primary interest in the Confederacy really does seem to be that it kept African-Americans in slavery. Scamp, the funny guy that he is, has warnings on both HiFo and PoFo for racism.

If anyone is familiar with my posts, they would know that Smilin' Dave stalks my posts and continuously makes himself look stupid with spelling errors and moronic posts like the above.

Smilin' Dave wrote: "his primary interest in the Confederacy really does seem to be that it kept African-Americans in slavery."

The fact remains that the Union/North kept slavery longer than the Confederacy, and still had slavery after the Confederate slaves were free.

But you cant fix stupid.

[Suska]

That Lincoln's actions with regard to the nature of the union are automatically referred to as a slavery matter, while protectionism and how it favored industry over agriculture and (economically) attacked the entire south is treated as irrelevant, is to me a disgrace of intelligent seeming words.

[dgun]

Wow, you sound really upset about slavery. I haven't even thought that way about the civil war since grade school. Oh, I remember now. It was when I first started reading history books that I realized that the matter was more complex than that.

No it's not.

Not sure where you went to school, but where I went to school they spent 12 years minimizing slavery as a cause of the Civil War.

It seemed like bullshit to me then and when I grew up and started reading I learned that in fact the Civil War was about slavery.

It was the Elephant in the room during the various sessions of the Continental Congress, where the attitude of many in New England had already turned against slavery. It was a huge issue during the constitutional convention. The Missouri Compromise postponed the issue for a while. It came up again when Texas was to be admitted to the Union. And with further western expansion it was a snowball of shit rolling down hill.

Look at what the secessionist said before the war. Look what they said after the war.

Before the war it was all about defending their peculiar institution and way of life (plantation/slave economy). After the war, it was NEVER about slavery, oh no, it was about defending home and hearth, it was about tariffs, it was noble principles and gallant service in a great lost cause…

Please.

[Suska]

Point is "about the civil war" is a way of deflecting the question of "about the union"

Please indeed.

[dgun]

There are two groups who like to spin the civil war to be about something other than slavery:

1) One is neo-confederate types. They bore me to tears, to be honest. I get sick of hearing their shit.

2) Those who prefer a weak central government and are looking for someone to blame. The problem for them is the moral dilemma of slavery. So the way around that is to minimize slavery as a cause of the civil war. And then comes the Lincoln bashing. And the declarations of the 14th amendment as illegitimate. And threats to secede because we don’t like the current President, and on and on.

[dgun]

Point is "about the civil war" is a way of deflecting the question of "about the union"

Please indeed.

The federalists won that argument about 80 years before the civil war.

[Suska]

... Oh I thought you had a point
nvm

[Scamp]

Lincoln started his war by calling for 75,000 troops to invade the South to preserve the Union. Many Union states still had slavery.

Later after over a hundred thousand Union soldiers were dead, and the North was losing interest in preserving the Union, they had to come up with something more compelling to die for so they changed the reason for fighting to "freeing the slaves".

[Scamp]

That Lincoln's actions with regard to the nature of the union are automatically referred to as a slavery matter, while protectionism and how it favored industry over agriculture and (economically) attacked the entire south is treated as irrelevant, is to me a disgrace of intelligent seeming words.

This ^

It makes people feel better blaming slavery on the South, while they ignore the fact that the North had slavery for 200 years.

Many Northern students, even to this day, are totally ignorant about Northern involvement in slavery.

[The Immortal Goon]

I know you ignore the South attacking federal troops, you ignore the fact they didn't even try to leave constitutionally, and whatever else. But why do you ignore the primary sources I posted in which southerners are saying that you're wrong?

South Carolina was the first to leave, explicitly because the northern states weren't forced to have slaves. The VP of the Confeseracy called white supremacy and the slavery of blacks as the cornerstone of the new nation.

[dgun]

Lincoln started his war by calling for 75,000 troops to invade the South to preserve the Union. Many Union states still had slavery.

Later after over a hundred thousand Union soldiers were dead, and the North was losing interest in preserving the Union, they had to come up with something more compelling to die for so they changed the reason for fighting to "freeing the slaves".

For the abolitionists, the war was always about slavery.

For Lincoln, it was at first about preserving the Union. Lincoln was willing to postpone the issue of slavery once more, like had been done over and over in American history, for the sake of preserving the union. That doesn't mean that Lincoln did not have strong feelings about slavery.

Lincoln first drafted the emancipation proclamation in 1862. It wasn't announced until Jan 1863. Basically, IMO, when Lincoln figured out that the war was not going to end soon, he decided to go after slavery.

Lincoln developed reasoning that gave him the Constitutional authority for the emancipation proclamation, a fact you ignore. You mention over and over that the "North" had slaves, yet you seem to fail to grasp the reason the Emancipation proclamation did not apply to non-rebelling states.

And as a review, by 1800 slavery was almost over in New England. By 1821, with the exception of Delaware, unless you also consider Maryland "north".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Sl ... 9-1861.gif

Furthermore, in regard to another misleading statement you've made:

the 13th amendment was adopted on December 6, 1865. Which means at the latest slavery was over in all states only 7 months after the end of the civil war, and this long only because of the ratification process.

But in 1864, before the end of the Civil War, Maryland ended slavery. Again, I guess "Maryland" is a northern state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... of_slavery

The only other state you could be on about would be Delaware.

By the 1860 census on the verge of the Civil War, 91.7 percent of the black population, or nearly 20,000 people, were free

[Suska]

For the abolitionists, the war was always about slavery.

I got this far, then I stopped reading. You and TIG both seem to be totally incapable of discussing the nature of the union, so I guess I'll leave you to rant at strawmen.

[Scamp]

And as a review, by 1800 slavery was almost over in New England. By 1821, with the exception of Delaware, unless you also consider Maryland "north".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Sl ... 9-1861.gif

Furthermore, in regard to another misleading statement you've made:

the 13th amendment was adopted on December 6, 1865. Which means at the latest slavery was over in all states only 7 months after the end of the civil war, and this long only because of the ratification process.

I would certainly call New Jersey a Northern state. But you and wikipedia are wrong. Look it up, New Jersey still has slavery until well after the war was over. Furthermore, NJ rejected the 13th Amendment to free the slaves on March 16, 1865. New Jersey didn't have many slaves, but they sure wanted to keep them.

[The Immortal Goon]

You and TIG both seem to be totally incapable of discussing the nature of the union, so I guess I'll leave you to rant at strawmen.

How did I get involved in this sentence when you've been ignoring everything I've written since the beginning of this thread?

Nobody said the Union was wonderful.

But Lincoln wasn't some tyrant because he wasn't going to ban slavery and the South decided to attack Federal troops without even trying to legally leave the Union.

Lincoln was acting under the mandate that every single president since Washington has acted upon:

The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.

But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole.

The North, in an unrestrained intercourse with the South, protected by the equal laws of a common government, finds in the productions of the latter great additional resources of maritime and commercial enterprise and precious materials of manufacturing industry. The South, in the same intercourse, benefiting by the agency of the North, sees its agriculture grow and its commerce expand. Turning partly into its own channels the seamen of the North, it finds its particular navigation invigorated; and, while it contributes, in different ways, to nourish and increase the general mass of the national navigation, it looks forward to the protection of a maritime strength, to which itself is unequally adapted...

While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same governments, which their own rival ships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.

These considerations speak a persuasive language to every reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the Union as a primary object of patriotic desire. Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal. We are authorized to hope that a proper organization of the whole with the auxiliary agency of governments for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment. It is well worth a fair and full experiment. With such powerful and obvious motives to union, affecting all parts of our country, while experience shall not have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism of those who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken its bands.

In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection...

To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliance, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that for the efficient management of your common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

The South, as has been shown with primary documents from the lips of the participants, wanted a strong federal government that would force everyone to accept slavery and wanted a new world movement based upon slavery.

Their actions in completely overreacting to the idea of someone that might not love slavery being in office (despite his opposition to emancipation right away) does not mean that Lincoln was a tyrant or that the North didn't pay shit wages to factory workers or anything else.

To try and gloss over the slavery and subjugation of human beings, to gloss over the fact the South attacked first without trying to take any legal means and then asking to re-examine, "the real" reasons the war happened is absurd.

If you're not going to address me or any points I've brought up since the beginning of the thread, don't accuse me of not being willing to engage.

[Suska]

For my part the issue is not slavery and that just brushes aside the real issue of balance of federal and state powers and the voluntary nature of the union. I have said as much.

Their actions in completely overreacting to the idea of someone that might not love slavery

As I understand it it was abolitionists who completely overreacted first creating an intolerable struggle for everyone, including the North.

[The Immortal Goon]

For my part the issue is not slavery and that just brushes aside the real issue of balance of federal and state powers and the voluntary nature of the union. I have said as much.

Which is why I would like to know how you can reconcile secession documents, like that of South Carolina, which call for a stronger federal authority to force Northern states into compliance of accepting slavery?

Why give the Confederate authority a federal position in which, "the [Federal] Congress may, by general laws, prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings [of individual states] shall be proved, and the effect thereof"?

Why have Stephens, the VP, stand up and say it has nothing to do with Federal authority and everything to do with slavery?

As I understand it it was abolitionists who completely overreacted first creating an intolerable struggle for everyone, including the North.

I honestly don't follow. Bleeding Kansas? Oregon debates?

[Suska]

Which is why I would like to know how you can reconcile secession documents, like that of South Carolina, which call for a stronger federal authority to force Northern states into compliance of accepting slavery?

I'm sure there was opinion in both directions, but I'm not trying to place blame. That Washington speech is very interesting, however as I understand it Lincoln pretty unilaterally decided he would not stand for secession. The Civil War being about slavery is a tribute to pop culture and pop history - because using force to maintain the union is an extraordinary thing, a highly objectionable thing, in my opinion.

[Smilin' Dave]

If anyone is familiar with my posts, they would know that Smilin' Dave stalks my posts and continuously makes himself look stupid with spelling errors and moronic posts like the above.

Scamp posts on a forum with a population of less that 50 active users that I moderate, and claims that I stalk him when I reply to his posts. Apparently he dislikes it so much he came to another forum I moderate, to post the same crap all over again.

Scamp can't actually win arguments with me, so he goes on about spelling mistakes or constructs strawmen. I would rather have the odd spelling mistake than post idiotic racist things and be punished for them. Based on your track record, I guess you would disagree.

while protectionism and how it favored industry over agriculture and (economically) attacked the entire south is treated as irrelevant, is to me a disgrace of intelligent seeming words.

You don't think the plantation economy of the South was heavily invested in slavery and its expansion? Perhaps you think the cotton harvested itself?

For those interested in my intelligent words: All About Slavery Part I and Part II on HiFo

[Rich]

For my part the issue is not slavery and that just brushes aside the real issue of balance of federal and state powers and the voluntary nature of the union. I have said as much.

The Union was totally voluntary for all the White southerners, they could fuck off to Mexico, Australis, Timbucktoo or where ever they wanted, when ever they wanted. It was the Black slaves who were the only people who were forced to remain part of the union.