In the New York Times, the North is still fighting the war against the South

American Thinker ^ | 12/29/2020 | Andrea Widburg

[rockrr]

All I am saying is that there were two sides to the story in 1861 and history only tells one side of that story.

You keep saying that as though it's meaningful or accurate when in fact it falls short in either category. Sure, historians have chronicled the events of the War Between The States but the pro-confederate perspective has been given every bit as much (or more) voice as the pro-union narrative. There are literally hundreds of books on the subject and they represent every point of view. dilorenzo is a hack but the mere fact that he can publish his twaddle unimpeded is a solid refutation of your premise.

[BroJoeK]

icclearly: "My Friend, you don’t need to worry about my soul.
It is in perfectly good hands."

I'm sure that's true.

icclearly: "Look, we happen to agree on many things (Trump, our country) but certainly not everything.
By the way, my country seems to be leaving me and not the other way around."

We agree on many things!
We disagree on whatever propaganda you learned from DiLorenzo & other Lost Cause liars.

As for who's leaving whom -- I'd say our country has often been on the knife's edge of survival, it was never a sure thing, our victories were important, but never really permanent and new threats against us, both foreign & domestic, rise up as quick as old threats fade away.
These days are nothing new in that respect.

So the question is, which side are we on?
Do we love & defend our country as best we can, at the risk of, sometimes, everything?
If so, we're Republicans.
Or, do we nurture, harbor & let fester wounds, insults, injustices -- real or imagined -- from the past that cause us to want to "transform" (read: destroy) the America we inherited into something else entirely, a "socialist paradise" (read: Marxist living hell)?
If so, then we're Democrats.

icclearly: "I grew up in the deep south. "

I have siblings, cousins & other such relations scattered all over the South, from Florida to Texas and up to Virginia & Maryland.
All are wonderful people (my humble opinion), some agree with you politically, others (sadly) are flaming liberals.
Regardless, they are my flesh & blood and I don't think less of them for where they live, period.

icclearly: "I served my country (voluntarily) and would go again for the right cause (”right” is the active word), although I’m not sure I would be worth anything, now (physically anyway) :-).
I still am a pretty good shot, though."

I also served, as have many in my family going back to George Washington's time at Valley Forge.
A great-grandfather fresh off the boat from Europe, still speaking very little English, served in the 119th Illinois Voluntary Infantry (Quincy), all over the western theater, beginning at Vicksburg, ending at Fort Blakely, near Mobile.

We are neither summer soldiers nor sunshine patriots, and do not shrink from the service of our country -- for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, until death do us part.
We don't have a "transactional relationship" with the United States, rather we are the people who made it possible in the first place and continue to sustain it today.

We are not here to pick at historical scabs and constantly reopen old wounds, but rather, as much as possible, to clean them, salve & bandage them in hopes they'll someday heal.

That's what it means to be a Republican.
Now, Thomas Jefferson called himself a small-r "republican" too, but his Federalist opponents tacked on the prefix "Democratic" because Jefferson supported the Democrats in the French Revolution (think guillotines), and also expanding voter rolls to include not just property owners but also nearly all men "free white & 21".
And Jefferson's party was happy to embrace the term "Democratic", soon dropping the "republican" part altogether -- they were "Democratics" also eventually known as "the Democracy".

"Democratics" began as anti-Federalists, opposed to ratifying the new 1787 Constitution, they preferred the old Articles of Confederation.
After ratification they took up the cry of "strict construction" against the alleged "monarchists" Federalists.
So "strict construction" lasted until Jefferson's party first came to power, in 1801, after which Democrats did everything "loose construction" they'd blocked Federalists from doing, and much more....

Jefferson himself invented "nullification", thus codifying the Democrats' transactional relationship with the United States -- "nullification" meaning: we will obey US laws we like, otherwise forget it.
Today, Democrats still practice nullification in their "sanctuary cities" among other places.

Nullification is just one step removed from secession, though even Jefferson opposed the earliest New England rumblings about secession...

[Pelham]

Case in point. The hit dog howls.

[BroJoeK]

"Case in point. The hit dog howls."

And just who ALWAYS hits first?
On this thread I'd refer you to posts #14, #15 & #22.

Typical of Democrats, our Lost Causers blame Republicans for things they themselves are guilty of.

[Pelham]

You should stop digging. You’ll make your behavior obvious to those who aren’t already aware of what you do.

[BroJoeK]

You should stop digging. You’ll make your behavior obvious to those who aren’t already aware of what you do.

[Pelham]

Nice copy & paste job. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery according to Oscar Wilde.

You know I’ve never seen you address Karl Marx’s association with the GOP and his enthusiasm for waging war against American citizens, something that his own later acolytes perfected. The radicalism that was part of the original Republican party gets ignored by those who imagine it to be God’s chosen party since day one.

[rxh4n1]

Yes. You are right. It was aimed at the slave states that remained in the Union.

[Svartalfiar]

Sorry, but you totally misunderstand.
There is no "war between the states", never really was. There is now and always was a war of Democrats against the United States.

Maybe you don't really understand. It wasn't the Democrat party that seceded in the 60s. It was full States that did so. It was several States of two separate nations that fought. That's a really dumb way of trying to rework the history of the war.

[BroJoeK]

Pelham: "You know I’ve never seen you address Karl Marx’s association with the GOP and his enthusiasm for waging war against American citizens..."

And I've never seen you address Thomas Jefferson's enthusiasm for the Democratic terrorists who guillotined their political opponents in the French Revolution.
That's how Jefferson, the small-r republican, came to lead the "Democratic" party -- so called by his Federalist opponents but the name then happily adopted by his fellow "Democratics".

So, since Jefferson supported guillotiners, does that make Pelham in favor of guillotining political opponents?

Now, on Karl Marx -- he had no "association" with the GOP, in 1864 Marx wrote a letter to Lincoln congratulating him on being reelected.

"The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes.
They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world."

Lincoln did not reply, the American ambassador in Britain diplomatically thanked Marx for his kind words.

Now the key thing to notice here is that Marx never even visited the United States and had no clue what Americans thought of as "middle class" or "working class".
Almost every American thinks of themselves as "hard working" and young Lincoln's family was never -- in Marx's European terms -- even "middle class".
They were average land-owning "upper class" by Marx's standards.

Americans' equivalent of the European "working class" were Big City immigrants and, then as now, they voted Democrat, did not support Lincoln's election and had no particular problems with slavery... unless they felt their own jobs threatened by slaves, which, in cities like New York, they never did.

Republicans, then as now, were the party of rural farmers (like young Lincoln's family), small towns, suburban, small businesses, skilled workers, professionals, conservative values, constitutionalists -- in Marx's terms, the "middle classes".
And just as today some immigrant groups (i.e., from Communist Cuba or Venezuela) become staunch Republicans, in 1860 there were also a few immigrant farmers who opposed slavery and voted Republican.

By the way, I notice where in the 1840s Karl Marx had applied to move to the Texas Hill country, also known as the "German belt".
In 1860 Texans voted solidly for Democrat Breckenridge, but in just a few Hill Country counties, the majority went for John Bell's Constitutional Union party -- those were the old Southern Whigs.
In August 1862 a Hill Country group tried to escape Confederate conscription but were chased, caught & massacred near the Nueces River.

So we can only imagine, had Karl Marx himself been amongst those Hill Country Germans, where he would have stood on such issues as abolition, secession and service in the Confederate army.
And if you suppose it's a given that Marx would have sided with his fellow "German Belt" immigrants, then remember, they were highly religious farmers and would not necessarily have cottoned to Marx's... ah, big-city atheism.

[BroJoeK]

Svartalfiar: "Maybe you don't really understand.
It wasn't the Democrat party that seceded in the 60s."

Rubbish, 1860 Fire Eaters were all Southern Democrats, tolerated if not actively supported by their Doughfaced Northern Democrat allies.
CSA's leadership were almost all Democrats -- even old Whigs like VP Alexander Stephens became a Democrat in 1861.
The CSA was a single-party government, Democrats.

Svartalfiar"It was full States that did so.
It was several States of two separate nations that fought. "

Except that in most Confederate states huge regions (i.e., western Virginia) voted against secession and refused to serve the CSA.
In every such state many sent their young men to serve the Union Army.
So, it was not "states" which seceded, it was not a "nation" which declared war and fought against the United States, it was Democrats, pure & simple.

Svartalfiar: "That's a really dumb way of trying to rework the history of the war."

There's nothing to "rework" because facts are facts: in the 1860s Democrats did what Democrats by their nature do -- declared secession & war on the United States.
It didn't work out so well for them then, so now they're trying it again, this time with different tactics & agenda, but with the same ultimate goal: to destroy the Constitution of the United States, replacing it with their own "woke" priorities.

[jmacusa]

When I see The Stars And Bars being flown that tells me who is still fighting The Civil War.

[Svartalfiar]

Rubbish, 1860 Fire Eaters were all Southern Democrats, tolerated if not actively supported by their Doughfaced Northern Democrat allies. CSA's leadership were almost all Democrats -- even old Whigs like VP Alexander Stephens became a Democrat in 1861. The CSA was a single-party government, Democrats.

One old Whig becoming a Democrat does not mean they all did; in fact, most Whigs turned into the Republicans. The first Confederate provisional Congress was close to half-n-half Whigs and Dems. CSA didn't have a two-party setup like the Union did, they turned mostly into two factions - pro-government and anti-government.

So, it was not "states" which seceded, it was not a "nation" which declared war and fought against the United States, it was Democrats, pure & simple.

And yet 45% of the Northern States voted for McClellan in 1864. Nearly half the north was Democrat, yet they didn't secede. There were just as many Northerners who voted Democrat as there was total voting-eligible population in the entire South!

[BroJoeK]

Svartalfiar: "One old Whig becoming a Democrat does not mean they all did; in fact, most Whigs turned into the Republicans."

No, only the Northern Whigs.
The Whig party was founded in 1833 from old Federalists opposed to Jacksonian Democrats.
It was a national party and won two national elections, 1840 (Harrison) and 1848 (Taylor) both with Southern slaveholder candidates.
But by 1856 Whigs had split apart, North vs. South, over slavery.
Northern Whigs joined with Free Soil Democrats to become Republicans while many Southern Whigs became American Party (Know-Nothings) and then John Bell's Constitutional Unionists.

Even in 1860 Southern Whigs voting as John Bell's Constitutional Unionists carried Virginia, Kentucky & Tennessee and refused to vote for secession over just the election of Lincoln's Black Republicans.
Even in 1861 after Fort Sumter, when the issue changed to which side to take in a war against slavery, even then many of the old Southern Whigs refused to join the Democrats' war on the United States.

In April 1861 John Bell himself switched to the Confederate side, but many of his previous supporters did not.
Especially in western Virginia, eastern Tennessee, Kentucky, western North Carolina & northern Alabama they remained loyal Unionists and sent their young men to serve the Union Army.

As for former Whigs who served the CSA congress, they were the original Uni-party, careerists who became Democrats during and after the Civil War.
Why do you think it was called "the Solid South"?
It was the solid Democrat South.

Svartalfiar: "And yet 45% of the Northern States voted for McClellan in 1864.
Nearly half the north was Democrat, yet they didn't secede.
There were just as many Northerners who voted Democrat as there was total voting-eligible population in the entire South!"

And except for Grant & Sherman's battlefield victories, Lincoln himself believed McClellan would have won in 1864, and that would give Confederates the political victory their armies could not.
Northern Democrats would have come to the aid of their Southern Democrat allies, helping them destroy the United States of America.

Democrats at war against the United States -- always have been, likely always will be, and this time they seem closer than ever to success.
Consider this: why fight battles with armies when all they really have to do is steal enough votes to destroy our Constitutional government, while Republicans stand by, helpless and hapless?

[Pelham]

“There is no “war between the states”, never really was”

This is how you know that you are dealing with cultists who think that history divides cleanly between Republicans and Democrats and nothing else matters. Unionist and Warhawk Democrats don’t fit into the mythology and the cult pretends that they didn’t exist.

It’s like a Manichean religion that existed around 1860 with the kooks who celebrated John Brown as a new, improved Christ and who looked forward to a coming slaughter of the infidels who lived below the Mason-Dixon Line. Very popular with the Transcendentalists up in Boston. Oliver W Holmes Jr had some scathing comments about their role years later. The Hollywood Left of their day.

This mindset is having a current revival and geniuses like Glenn Beck are pushing it.

[Svartalfiar]

This is how you know that you are dealing with cultists who think that history divides cleanly between Republicans and Democrats and nothing else matters. Unionist and Warhawk Democrats don’t fit into the mythology and the cult pretends that they didn’t exist.

True. I'm not even gonna bother asking him about time-period comparisons, as the different positions of Dems and Repubs have changed over the years - an old Dem likely had nearly the same political positions as most in the GOP today. That doesn't even get into the whole D/R flip from the 1800s, but even looking at Reagan- or JFK-era Dems. They'd fit more with Repubs today than the Democrats!

[Pelham]

Your observations are true.

But the Cult lives in a comic book world where names determine destiny and so such changes are impossible. For them, groups that use the same name are identical regardless of era or circumstance.

It’s as if the word itself imposes an unchanging set of values on whatever wears it. A kook version of “nominalism” I suppose.

[Pelham]

Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune was the largest circulation NYC daily of that era. It was essentially the official paper of the Whigs and the Republican party.