Posted on 05/12/2015 3:00:03 PM PDT by NKP_Vet
We Sons of Confederate Veterans are charged with preserving the good name of the Confederate soldier. The world, for the most part, has acknowledged what Gen. R. E. Lee described in his farewell address as the “valour and devotion” and “unsurpassed courage and fortitude” of the Confederate soldier. The Stephen D. Lee Institute program is dedicated to that part of our duty that charges us not only to honour the Confederate soldier but “to vindicate the cause for which he fought.” We are here to make the case not only for the Confederate soldier but for his cause. It is useless to proclaim the courage, skill, and sacrifice of the Confederate soldier while permitting him to be guilty of a bad cause.
Although their cause was lost it was a good cause and still has a lot to teach the world today.
In this age of Political Correctness there has never been a greater need and greater opportunity to refresh our understanding of what happened in America in the years 1861–1865 and start defending our Southern forebears as strongly as they ought to be defended. There is plenty of true history available to us. It is our job to make it known.
All the institutions of American society, including nearly all Southern institutions and leaders, are now doing their best to separate the Confederacy off from the rest of American history and push it into one dark little corner labeled “ Slavery and Treason.” Being taught at every level of the educational system is the official party line that everything good that we or anyone believe about our Confederate ancestors is a myth, and by myth they mean a pack of lies that Southerners thought up to excuse their evil deeds and defeat.
(Excerpt) Read more at abbevilleinstitute.org ...
That is quite possible.
BTW, most German and Japanese soldiers fought because their nations were under attack.
That doesn’t make their cause a righteous one.
If it allowed imports, even from one country only, then how can you say it prohibited them? And is there anyone who really thinks that clause would have been enforced? Really?
To put the expenditures of the federal government in some perspective 1860 vs. today.
1860: $60M. Population: 31M, slave and free. $1.94/person.
2014: $3000B. Population: 320M. $9,375/person.
A dollar is worth a lot less than it was then, but still...
Median family income was around $600 in 1860. Federal expenditure .33% of income.
Today it’s $52,000. Federal expenditure 18% of income.
Apples to apples we’re taxed at 54x the rate our ancestors were in 1860. Which is why I think it’s really, really silly to claim the South (or any other part of the country) was overtaxed in 1860.
We might have a new one soon enough.
“The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.”
There are two reasons they would have enforced this clause, or at least as well as the USA did prewar.
Upper South and Border states sold slaves to the Deep South. They had a strong financial incentive to prevent additional imports, which would drive down costs.
Slaves had to come across the Atlantic, which is very wet. The Royal Navy ruled wherever it was very wet. They took a dim view of slaving and it could not operate, at least on any scale, without their tacit permission. The US Navy would also have had something to say about it. As would the French and others to a lesser degree.
Not too long after 1860 the coast kingdoms of Africa started being conquered by European nations, which also cut off the supply of slaves.
There is a linkage - Baltimore is where it all started (you’ll have to flesh it out a bit)
Importation became a moot point when it was recognized that perpetuation rates of blacks had become self-sustaining. I think the only times it was an issue was when someone wanted to transport slaves that they didn’t have paperwork on.
Nah. Illegal importation of slaves continued right up to the war. Because it was wildly profitable. Extent is debated.
Slaves could be purchased in Africa for goods worth $20 to $30 and sold in USA for $500 to $1000 and up. By the time of the war, running such ships was classified as piracy and carried the death penalty.
Numerous smugglers got caught by the Navy, but were generally turned loose by southern juries.
Finally hanged one of the SOBs in NYC in 1862.
...their nations were under attack.
While this may be true;
EVERY nation's soldiers fight because it's rulers tell them to.
Think of the West were slavery was STILL going on years after the Civil War.
Only the Mexicans and the Indians were involved.
Yeah, I did know that about the slaves, most went to the Carribean nations and South America.
You wonder why they don’t make more of a stink about it down there. Gues not enough whites there to blame and make a race baiting industry worthwhile.
Course they’ve had their own dictator and communist issues down there, so it’s not like they’re any better than the weirdos up here.
The Civil War was about slavery. The North went to war to preserve the Union and won. The South went to war to preserve slavery and lost everything.
British West Indies eample - not America
Two guys executed - wasn’t their slave - a point I brought up
I am not saying it was something that was frequently done. People were not going to kill off workers they paid for, for nothing, for minor things, and maybe not for major things. But what I am saying is that many probably died from punishments that either went too far, or died later on from secondary causes from a punishment, and they died. And the owner wasn’t held responsible. They could execute slaves for a number of reasons, and so could the CSA. They could also permanently disable them - ie hobbling. No worries there.
From the moment the South got the idea to go to war they were doomed to lose.
Do you really think there would have never been a war?
Of course there would have been. It would have been at a different time, probably earlier if the North started it, probably later if the South did.
Let me build on your thought. Northern states (Southern too) wanted a Constitution and a nation to go with it for security and economies of scale. They could build prosperity; wealth. In a word, money.
And if it required embracing slavery to make money, northern states said sure, write it into the Constitution. Some northerners, of course, went on record as “condemning slavery in the strongest possible terms” but it the end, they voted slavery into the Constitution and took the money.
Later, when slavery was mostly important to the South's economy, the north got righteous. And the fighting started.
In my response I was responding to your previous post stating “There were 15 slave states. In order to pass a constitutional amendment in the face of their united opposition there would have had to be 46 states voting in favor. Do the math.”
My use of the word “never” was an over-reach. As Shane famously said: Never’s a long time.”
Actually, there were four examples of white men executed for murder of black slaves given in the cite.
One was from Jamaica, three from colonial Virginia.
I have read of this occurring in the USA, but don’t have a link right now.
I think there SHOULD HAVE never been a war. But that does not answer your question. Many Southerners were arrogant and vulnerable to being chevied into a fight they likely could not win. Think of the scene from “Gone With The Wind” where the young hot-head asks indignantly “What difference does a cannon make to a gentleman.” Southern agrarians - even some of the better leaders - had no idea what it meant to go to war against an industrial nation. Southerners had no idea how clever Lincoln was or how vicious the Lincoln/Sherman/Grant meat-grinder would become. From the northern perspective, there was just too much political and economic power at stake to pass up the opportunity to go to war and take the South out of the national equation for a hundred years.
Wrong. Actually the motivation to volunteer to fight a war is not top down. The soldiers look at the govt as simply supplying the ammo and the beans, they wanted to fight that war.
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