[dgun]

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.

I wasn't responding to you.

[dgun]

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.

And that's comparable to the slave economy in the south?

[dgun]

however as I understand it Lincoln pretty unilaterally decided he would not stand for secession.

false.

Opinions varied among his political allies on this topic.

The Civil War being about slavery is a tribute to pop culture and pop history

Again, not so.

It is the minimizing of slavery as a cause of the civil war that is "pop history". It was the efforts of Southerners after the war to spread the lost cause propaganda that created that whole view of the civil war.

because using force to maintain the union is an extraordinary thing, a highly objectionable thing, in my opinion.

You don't like the nature of the union today, and worked backwards from there to form your opinions on Lincoln's actions and the Civil War.

[Suska]

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?

I don't think the slave economy had a future regardless, I think that was understood.

I think that you have to have a elementary school book report mentality to think that freeing the slaves was the significant action of the civil war.

I think the likes of Scamp, representing Southern resentment, earned their grudge, and Lincoln is the proper focus.

The intensity of abolitionism was a problem for everyone. America was built on WHITE slavery by and large, and the original colonies had no feeling that slavery was particularly immoral. English "entrepreneurship" is what made it feasible to build a BLACK slavery economy in the south and the south was an international trading nation, whereas the north was a young protectionist industrial one. Neither had a better legal right to decide the fate of the other, but Lincoln's victory and his avowed protectionism decided it decisively in the north's favor. This would have been an ongoing political struggle between them had terrorism not inflamed the situation.

The union as involuntary is the position of empire. The modern federalism and the progressive - counter-traditional sentiment and policy in our federal government today owes its potential to Lincoln's act of war. The real issue is federal over state power, and powers given to the executive office. The real discussion we should be having is about the effects of using force to keep the country together, about the domain of states, about us still having bitter differences and now using force rather more routinely without negotiation. About a broken political process and total lack of capacity to retreat from the union. Everything American people disagree about now, however petty, is a potential new civil war, because it cannot be a fair or voluntary negotiation.



....

And dgun, how one Earth did you get to over 7000 posts without someone telling you not to double triple and quadruple post..?

[dgun]

And dgun, how one Earth did you get to over 7000 posts without someone telling you not to double triple and quadruple post..?

You're right I shouldn't do that. So that’s one thing you’re right about in this thread.

I don't think the slave economy had a future regardless, I think that was understood.

Another myth created by southern apologists and ex-confederates after the war.

There are variations of this myth, but they're all built around lies concerning the profitability of the plantation system leading up to the civil war.

If southerners didn’t believe there was a future in a slave economy, then why were they so upset about attempts to stop the spread of slavery into the west? And why did they continue to buy and sell slaves?

Maybe you meant something else.

[The Immortal Goon]

And, again, why does the VP of the Confederacy and the scession documents take specific pains to say the opposite, that slavery is the reason they're fighting?

[Suska]

You're like children who can't grasp not having money around an ice cream truck.
"Can I?"
"No."
"But can I?"
"No."
"...can I?"
"I said no! What part of no is problematic for you?"

[dgun]

You don't like the nature of the union today, and worked backwards from there to form your opinions on Lincoln's actions and the Civil War.

[Suska]

You're ignoring what I say in favor of mysterious voices in your head that demand your hatred of stereotypical vampire zombie southerners.

Oh Rhett, I jus hayt bein stuck in this union but honestly divaws is jus impossible what with your PSYCHOTIC DEATH THREATS.

[dgun]

You're ignoring what I say in favor of mysterious voices in your head that demand your hatred of stereotypical vampire zombie southerners.

Lived in Alabama all my life.

[Suska]

So you're a self-hating stereotypical vampire zombie southerners. So what?

[dgun]

So you're a self-hating stereotypical vampire zombie southerners. So what?

Don't hate Southerners at all. Why would I?

Oh, I hate neo-confederate horseshit. Of course.

Me in Kindergarten:

Teacher: "Y'all the civil whoar was about states’ rights. Not about slavery"

Lil dgun: "Hmmm, that sounds like bullshit"

[Suska]

God I really have to spell it out for you don't I.

"what the civil war was about" IS A WAY OF NOT ADDRESSING THE REAL ISSUE, the question is only a serious question in the context of an elementary school book report accompanied by a large crayon drawing.

[Scamp]

Lived in Alabama all my life.

So tell us how you would feel if you didn't have slaves, but an army came and burned down your house, and your barn, and your fields, and killed your farm animals, and poisoned your well, and raped your women, and stole everything they could carry away and destroyed the rest?

Be honest.

[dgun]

God I really have to spell it out for you don't I.

"what the civil war was about" IS A WAY OF NOT ADDRESSING THE REAL ISSUE, the question is only a serious question in the context of an elementary school book report accompanied by a large crayon drawing.

So you've said. Several times.

This thread is about:

Lincoln's Crimes and Violations of the Constitution

Which can't be discussed without discussing the causes of the Civil War.

Congress has always had authority to admit states to the union. What if the former colonies which ratified the constitution did in fact have the authority to leave it by a simple declaration? What about Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee (if in fact Tennessee ever “seceded”)? I suppose you could make a case for Texas, too. But the rest never existed in any independent form. There is a constitutional method of admitting states to the union. By virtue of the supremacy clause states admitted to the union can’t undo their own statehood, because they don’t have the authority to undo acts of Congress.

And what if they could? They would have gone back to being territories of the US?

No, you see the original colonies from the south that loved the wealth of their slaves more than ‘Merica, didn’t have a well established protocol or process to withdraw from the union. So they used the the “natural law” or “natural rights” protocol previously used by Jefferson, Adams, Washington, etc, (do you want to hear about Paul Revere’s ride too since all of this is already intellectually beneath you?) with one fatal error. They lost the fucking war.

The South pretty much knew there would be a war if they seceded. Most in the North believed the same thing. Both sides misjudged the length of such a war and it was an atrocity. And there were those in the North that said “let them leave”. Probably would have been better all around, except for the millions in chains.

So tell us how you would feel if you didn't have slaves, but an army came and burned down your house, and your barn, and your fields, and killed your farm animals, and poisoned your well, and raped your women, and stole everything they could carry away and destroyed the rest?

Be honest.

That's what I fucking get for supporting the establishment and allowing myself to be taken in by a bunch of bullshit.

The same people run the south today. And the same populace grovels to them and defers to them and allows themselves to be run over by them.

But hey, Roll Tide.

[Suska]

the causes of the Civil War

Involve millions of people, and all the factors of life.

1)The Civil war was not entirely caused by slavery

2)The freeing of slaves was not its only effect

3)The reduction of the discussion to an insistence that it was or was not caused by slavery is a sterling demonstration of oversimplification used to express bias, to provoke and abuse

4)My position, as it has been from the start, is that there is a fair case to be made by the south, quite apart from the issue of slavery, involving Lincoln's violent opposition to secession

5)The results of the Civil War are relevant today, Lincoln's precedent still stands. Southern rebelliousness and resentment is not baseless, but stands on an objection Americans interested in politics really ought to familiarize themselves with

[Smilin' Dave]

I don't think the slave economy had a future regardless, I think that was understood.

This is an evasion on the point. The war and succession wasn't started over the future, it was fought over events that had been unfolding in the recent past and then contemporary events.

It's also a bit misleading. The limited future of the plantation economy had a lot to do with things like the inability to expand slavery to new territories and the inability of slave holders to import new slaves. Both of these things had been targetted by southerners and champions of succession. I mean if slavery had no future, what do you think Bleeding Kansas was being fought over? Do you think the 'border ruffians' sat down and decided that the best thing for their supposedly dying institution was to expand it into a new state?

I think that you have to have a elementary school book report mentality to think that freeing the slaves was the significant action of the civil war.

1. For your strawman to be true, the Union would have had to have started the war, which they didn't. Fort Sumter. End discussion.
2. The war can be about slavery without it being a fight about the institution of slavery specifically. The knock on effects of the slave economy was a massive factor in the gulf that was emerging between north and south. Denying that is ridiculous.
3. Many in the South were fighting over the institution of slavery, as TIG keeps pointing out, leaders of the Confederate states were quite keen during succession to point out the pivotal role of maintaining slavery.

The intensity of abolitionism was a problem for everyone.

Nonsense, it had proven far less divisive in the north. The extent and nature of slavery in certain regions certainly changed the problem.

the south was an international trading nation

Misleading. They traded primarily in cotton, which is an agricultural product grown on plantations. And predominantly it was picked by slaves.

You're like children who can't grasp not having money around an ice cream truck.

You are like a child who can't argue and instead covers his ears and shouts or results to insults.

1)The Civil war was not entirely caused by slavery

Of course not, but saying it was not the most significant factor is rubbish. Nothing you have suggested has as an alternative hasn't tied back to the southern practice of slavery.

2)The freeing of slaves was not its only effect

No shit sherlock.

3)The reduction of the discussion to an insistence that it was or was not caused by slavery is a sterling demonstration of oversimplification used to express bias, to provoke and abuse

Maybe you should have thought about that when you posted here with a chip on your shoulder and an undeserved sense of arrogance. Now you get a taste of your own medicine and you don't like it any more.

4)My position, as it has been from the start, is that there is a fair case to be made by the south, quite apart from the issue of slavery, involving Lincoln's violent opposition to secession

Succession was legitimate because it was subsequently opposed by strict means? It is pretty convoluted to justify an act based on what followed.

[Rich]

Beware the Marxist Nazi alliance, with their hordes of supporters who although not out right Nazis and communist sympathise with either the Nazis or the Commies. In America the Nazis tend to be small government Nazis as opposed to the big government Nazis of twentieth century Germany.

The Marxists have spread the lie that slavery was not profitable when the British empire abolished it. This is a wicked and shameless lie. Slavery was more profitable than it had ever been at any time in history when it was abolished. It has suited the Nazi sympathisers to repeat this Marxist drivel. The Confederates couldn't give a fuck about state's rights. Did they oppose Scott Dredd or the fugitive slave act. The Confederate were right about one thing though, they acted very much within the spirit of the founders.

The American founders were worthless ass-holes, and no this isn't me judging them by the stands of 2012. People at the time recognised what hypocritical bollocks they were talking with their all men are created equal waffle. The funny thing is the northern American Republican radicals like Sam Adams were just like the leftie American haters of today. Their hatred of Britain and the Hanoverian monarchy blinded them to everything else. They allied with the Southern slaver terrorists and the absolutist French monarchy. They praised the Muhammadans and then ended up spending 20% of government revenues paying off the Barbary pirates. As our modern day lefties love any murderous despot who so much as says boo to the Americans.

[Potemkin]

The American founders were worthless ass-holes, and no this isn't me judging them by the stands of 2012. People at the time recognised what hypocritical bollocks they were talking with their all men are created equal waffle. The funny thing is the northern American Reppublican radicals like Sam Adams were just like the leftie American haters of today. Their hatred of Britain and the Hanoverian monarchy blinded them to everything else. They allied with the Southern slaver terrorists and the absolutist French monarchy. They praised the Muhammadans and then ended up spending 20% of government revenues paying off the Barbary pirates. As our modern day lefties love any murderous despot who so much as says boo to the Americans.

Shhh! You're not supposed to say things like that, Rich. The Founding Fathers were god-like beings who were all-knowing and all-wise and could do no wrong. Believing otherwise is just un-American!