US Civil War reading Recommendations?

Free Republic ^ | 11/23/2016 | Loud Mime

[rockrr]

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth..." Alexander H. Stephens March 21, 1861 Savannah, Georgia

You make it sound like the South was fighting for slavery.

So did Mr. Stephens.

[rockrr]

SIR: In obedience to your instructions I repaired to the seat of government of the State of Louisiana to confer with the Governor of that State and with the legislative department on the grave and important state of our political relations with the Federal Government, and the duty of the slave-holding States in the matter of their rights and honor, so menacingly involved in matters connected with the institution of African slavery. --Report from John Winston, Alabama's Secession Commissioner to Louisiana

So did John Winston.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "That Massachusetts and Virginia saw it as abusive while Ontario did not is EXACTLY my point.
"Usurpations" and "Abuse" are subjective, meaning it is up to the people who are suffering them to characterize them that way.
They are in the "eye of the beholder", just as I have been saying."

There was nothing "subjective" or "eye of the beholder" about the "abuses and usurpations" listed in the Declaration of Independence.
Those were facts, not feeeeeeelings.

Canadians had very different situations, for one thing by 1776 there were well under 100,000 European Canadians, the majority French, as opposed to over three million Americans.
And French Canadians had no democratic traditions, while British Canadians were dependent on the King's army to keep the peace with their defeated French countrymen.
So Canada's view of the world was much different from Americans.

Most importantly, there was no Canadian equivalent to the Massachusetts Charter of 1691`which made Massachusetts largely self governing, and which was revoked by Britain in 1774, one of British many "intolerable acts".

Finally, most or all of the long list of "abuses and usurpations" in the Declaration of Independence has no equivalents in Canadian history.
So, where Americans declared independence of "necessity", Canadians at that time had no such "necessity" and refused to secede "at pleasure".

Many years later Canadians did effectively secede, by Mutual Consent.

[rockrr]

"My own convictions as to negro slavery are strong. It has its evils and abuses...We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude...You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be." ~Davis

davis was good with it.

[rockrr]

This was the ground taken, gentlemen, not only by Mississippi, but by other slaveholding States, in view of the then threatened purpose, of a party founded upon the idea of unrelenting and eternal hostility to the institution of slavery, to take possession of the power of the Government and use it to our destruction. It cannot, therefore, be pretended that the Northern people did not have ample warning of the disastrous and fatal consequences that would follow the success of that party in the election, and impartial history will emblazon it to future generations, that it was their folly, their recklessness and their ambition, not ours, which shattered into pieces this great confederated Government, and destroyed this great temple of constitutional liberty which their ancestors and ours erected, in the hope that their descendants might together worship beneath its roof as long as time should last. -- Speech of Fulton Anderson to the Virginia Convention

Fulton Anderson knew which side of his bread was buttered

[rockrr]

What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. -- Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Convention

Henry Benning was a true believer

[rockrr]

Gentlemen, I see before me men who have observed all the records of human life, and many, perhaps, who have been chief actors in many of its gravest scenes, and I ask such men if in all their lore of human society they can offer an example like this? South Carolina has 300,000 whites, and 400,000 slaves. These 300,000 whites depend for their whole system of civilization on these 400,000 slaves. Twenty millions of people, with one of the strongest Governments on the face of the earth, decree the extermination of these 400,000 slaves, and then ask, is honor, is interest, is liberty, is right, is justice, is life, worth the struggle? Gentlemen, I have thus very rapidly endeavored to group before you the causes which have produced the action of the people of South Carolina. -- Speech of John Preston to the Virginia Convention

John Preston was in concurrence

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Still boils down to the "Usurpations and Abuses" were tolerable from a Canadian perspective.
BroJoeK is saying the founders had a right to leave because the abuses they suffered were intolerable.
The fact that the Canadians remained with the Crown demonstrate that "intolerable" is a matter of opinion, and in the US Colonists eyes they were, but in the British and Canadian eyes, they weren't.
My point stands."

No your point totally fails because the "long train of abuses and usurpations" listed in the Declaration of Independence were not suffered by Canadians, period.
It wasn't a matter of opinion or feeling, it was the fact they didn't experience those things.

Further, we should note the DOI lists over two dozen items, some more serious than others, but including such things as:

"He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people."

That alone creates the necessity for independence, nothing "at pleasure" about it.

[Reily]

I think I pretty much said this, but with less detail.

[rockrr]

But I trust I may not be intrusive if I refer for a moment to the circumstances which prompted South Carolina in the act of her own immediate secession, in which some have charged a want of courtesy and respect for her Southern sister States. She had not been disturbed by discord or conflict in the recent canvass for president or vice-president of the United States. She had waited for the result in the calm apprehension that the Black Republican party would succeed. She had, within a year, invited her sister Southern States to a conference with her on our mutual impending danger. Her legislature was called in extra session to cast her vote for president and vice-president, through electors, of the United States and before they adjourned the telegraphic wires conveyed the intelligence that Lincoln was elected by a sectional vote, whose platform was that of the Black Republican party and whose policy was to be the abolition of slavery upon this continent and the elevation of our own slaves to equality with ourselves and our children, and coupled with all this was the act that, from our friends in our sister Southern States, we were urged in the most earnest terms to secede at once, and prepared as we were, with not a dissenting voice in the State, South Carolina struck the blow and we are now satisfied that none have struck too soon, for when we are now threatened with the sword and the bayonet by a Democratic administration for the exercise of this high and inalienable right, what might we meet under the dominion of such a party and such a president as Lincoln and his minions. -- Speech of John McQueen, the Secession Commissioner from South Carolina to Texas

John McQueen drew a good bead on it.

[rockrr]

History affords no example of a people who changed their government for more just or substantial reasons. Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity. -- Address of George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention

There's George Williamson response for you.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "The point here is that you cannot impugn the legitimacy of Southern states gaining Independence without damaging the legitimacy of the original thirteen colonies gaining independence.
Whatever applies to the Southern states, must also apply to the original colonies four score and seven years" earlier."

Total nonsense.
First of all, even Thomas Jefferson understood that slavery was morally wrong, and blamed it on the Brits.
And most Founders believed that slavery must eventually be abolished.

By stark contrast, 1861 secessionists' Reasons for Secession documents spelled out in no uncertain terms that protecting slavery was their primary objective in declaring disunion.

Second, and more important, where 1776 Founders declared Independence of necessity, 1861 Fire Eaters declared their secession strictly "at pleasure", making their entire enterprise illegitimate from the beginning.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "That comment didn't address secession."

That comment was not an argument, just an insult.
Every argument you've posted reflects just what I said.

But I see now that, like our typical snow-flake Southern Belle, you wish more to cast aspersions that make serious points.

Have fun!

[jeffersondem]

“Every post of yours on this thread reflects your firm Democrat belief that your feeeeeeeeelings trump facts, and if you or anyone else feeeeeel like declaring secession, well, that’s all that matters, right? “

It seems you are moving the goal posts. Now you say: Every ARGUMENT (emphasis added) you’ve posted reflects just what I said.

Yes, it is a small matter. But why not get it right?

You remind me of the person who couldn’t tell the truth under oath and ended up debating what “is” is.

[BroJoeK]

PeaRidge: "Due to financial consequences, the ship building industry in Charleston sized downward in the early 1800s and eventually concentrated only on river traders, such as the SS Planter, essentially a small barge."

Your term "financial consequences" is vague enough to mean virtually anything, but it cannot conceal the fact that Southerners remained fully capable of building, owning and operating their own shipping, if they wanted to.
Nor is there any evidence that "financial consequences" originated in Washington, DC, as a result of some nefarious anti-Southern conspiracy.

The fact remains that Southerners dominated Washington, DC, almost continuously from 1788 through 1860 and so could have, at any time, corrected any legal issues affecting Southern owned shipping.

That said, it appears to me that your post here, PeaRidge, generally supports my arguments on this.

[BroJoeK]

HandyDandy on DiogenesLamp: "None of what fellow Americans hold to be self-evident is evident to him.
His is caught in a prison of his own device."

Something odd in DiogenesLamp's background or education, can't tell what it is, but does seem very, well, un-American.

[DoodleDawg]

My point stands. What constitutes intolerable conditions is completely in the eye of the beholders. It is up to those who are suffering the abuse to decide if it is tolerable or not.

"The characteristic distinction between free Governments and Governments not free is, that the former are founded on compact, not between the Government and those for whom it acts, but between the parties creating the Government. Each of those being equal, neither can have more rights to say that the compact has been violated and dissolved, than every other has to deny the fact, and to insist on the execution of the bargains." - James Madison

[BroJoeK]

Nice work!

[BroJoeK]

Thanks!

[DiogenesLamp]

Not necessarily. Slavery was a centerpiece -- the cornerstone -- of the CSA, but not of the American revolutionaries of 1776.

That is not a rebuttal to the principle that a people have a right to independence. Perhaps it wasn't a centerpiece of 1776 because nobody was making a major butt-hurt issue about it at the time.

Of course the British were offering Freedom to any slave that would join them in the fight against the Colonists. Does this make the British side the more moral of the two?

Things were more ambiguous in the 1770s.

Less ambiguous. Slavery was accepted in all the colonies at that time. Everyone knew exactly where the nation stood on this issue, and there was no confusion about the legality of slavery. It wasn't a centerpiece of the conflict precisely because it was not a bone of contention amidst any of the involved parties.

African-Americans were fighting in the patriot Army.

And the British Army. The ones in the British army were already free, but many in the American army went back to being slaves after the war ended. Oh yes, some brave and courageous men were manumitted, but not all.

Pennsylvania committed itself to the abolition of slavery in 1780

But didn't actually do it until 1840. There were still 64 slaves listed in Pennsylvania until then.

Massachusetts in 1783 (based on the 1780 state constitution).

Based on Liberal misinterpretation of the newly adopted State Constitution, you know, the way Liberal activist Judges always deliberately misinterpret laws they don't like. Having judges impose it on the rest of the state hardly constitutes a conscious decision on the part of the people.

It wasn't clear to everyone in the Revolutionary era that independence would mean the continuation of slavery.

It was very clear. In fact it was so clear, the Founders enacted a clause in the constitution that directly deals with it.

Article IV, Section II.
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

I am presenting you with the UGLY parts of History. You may not like them, but they are accurate.