Posted on 11/03/2015 6:52:26 AM PST by don-o
The Civil War is, as Shelby Foote noted, at the crossroads of our being. Looked at one way, it marked the end of a long struggle against slavery and the beginning of a long one for civil rights and racial equality. Looked at another, it marked the end of limited government and the beginning of the encroaching, ever-present Leviathan that exists today. These memories can be both in sync and in conflict. After all, it was the deployment of strong government in the form of a dominant army and the passage of federal amendments that played a large role in the freeing of American slaves. And yet, as the government's mechanisms for intruding into the lives of the American people increased from the 1860s on, racial discrimination and segregation remained entrenched - moral suasion had at least as much to do with a broad acceptance of racial equality as big government did.
(Excerpt) Read more at theimaginativeconservative.org ...
It is misleading people. The purpose of the Civil War was not to free the slaves. It was to stop renegade states from becoming an independent nation.
Lincoln was the first President to openly ignore the Constitution while in office with his denial of Habeus Corpus. It had to start somewhere and I guess Lincoln was the man.
The southern states were prosperous and the north was hording the tax revenue from that prosperity. Taxation but little representation.
Whereas Jefferson only proclaimed that all men were created equal, Lincoln ensured it was so by enshrining that fact on the battlefield.
Again, this is a bait and switch. Lincoln did not commit troops to the battlefield to end slavery. Lincoln committed troops to the battlefield to end the cause of Independence for Southern States. Up until at least August 22 of 1862, Lincoln was willing to keep slavery if the Southern States would stop fighting Dominance from Washington D.C.
Nearly a year and a half after the war had begun, Lincoln was still not fighting to end slavery, he was fighting to end Independence.
"Ending slavery" got added on as justification for the bloodshed long after the fact.
Pea Ridge and others have posted articles giving me much greater insight into the causes and conflicts occurring during the buildup to the Civil War.
He points out that New York businessmen of the time were horrified at the low Tariffs the seceded Southern ports were allowing for goods. They thought it would utterly wreck their businesses in New York.
Sometimes in politics as in life things are not said when everyone knows those things are there. Lincoln always wanted to eliminate slavery as everyone should also have wanted.
We know exactly what Lincoln said about the matter as he wrote his opinion in his letter to Horace Greely.
The point that is trying to be made is that the war was started NOR engaged for the purpose of freeing slaves. Period.
The Federal government we are now slaves to was birthed by “the war of northern agression”. So the war was in one way about slavery.
The skin colors seem to have been swapped, but still labor is stolen by force to support the undeserving.
In terms of an historical timeline, this may or may not be the case; I'm not sure I want to get into that debate. Nevertheless, the history of American wars, most if not all of the time, often includes discerning a moral justification that existed before the war, while in the midst of fighting the war.
For example, we began fighting the British in 1775, and it wasn't because we wanted to be independent, or because we wanted to establish a Lockean tripartite government; the independence idea grew out of the war, though it had been percolating before the war, and the form of government, and the negative rights that were to limit the government, grew out of the victory, though they also had been percolating before and during the war.
By the same token, we entered WWII because the Japanese attacked us, and our first reaction was simply to get back at Japan; it isn't until later, in the middle of the war, that we began thinking in terms, not simply of forcing Japan to surrender, but in exporting American ideals to Japan, though such ideals had been percolating beforehand--cf. Captain Cassidy's speech in the 1943 movie Destination Tokyo, about how the war's purpose was putting Japanese children on roller skates instead of letting them be taught to die for the Emperor.
We find similar during-the-fact percolations of moral justification in the Mexican-American and Spanish-American wars: in the latter, for example, bringing American ideals to Cuba and the Philippines (with moderate success in the Philippines, less so in Cuba).
It may be something in the American psyche that desires a moral justification, because, liberal claptrap to the contrary, we are not warmongerers, we are not imperialists, and if we have to fight a war, we want it to mean something more than, "We can kill more of you than you can kill of us."
Obama stated often that marriage was to be one man marrying one woman. Did anyone believe this? Lincoln may have made statements about justification for war, but can anyone believe that he wanted slavery to continue?
Ha! A twist on one my canards. I like saying, if the WBTS was about freedom, why did Lincoln and the northern states deny southern states their freedom?
Surely you’re not questioning “Honest Abe”!!!
:-)
I so like the comparison of 20th century Japan to the 19th CSA. /sarc
Thanks D. I’m no expert...
Well I can see where this one is heading.
We had this discussion in Homer's thread, and at that time I said that I wasn't suggesting that the CSA was like Imperial Japan, but rather that the response of the Union, in turning the Civil War into a morally-justified war against slavery, was like the American response in turning WWII in the Pacific into a morally-justified war for the sake of bringing liberty to the Japanese people.
The Confederates are marching again.
If the moral justification was to end slavery, they could have started with the five Union slave states. Their supply lines would have been much shorter... but for some strange reason the Union tolerated those Slave states in their Union until very near the end of the war.
It seems they were only concerned with independent states, not slave states. Of course, after you've killed several hundred thousand people in an effort to force control back on some renegade states, you have to offer whatever explanation for your actions that you can, and "Freeing Slaves" sounds a whole lot better than "Subjugating Independence."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.