Posted on 02/17/2003 5:53:30 PM PST by Truthsearcher
But if I may say so, that's a pretty innocuous gorwth of government power, relatively speaking. And one pretty arguably in the Constitution.
Especially given that without the transcontinental railroad, westward expansion would have significantly slowed and curtailed. Just as settlement of the Great akes would have been slowed or stymied without the Erie Canal, and southern settlement would have been stymied without federal intervention to displace the Cherokees and other Indian tribes.
In any case, the South's objection was not (save for a few bitter enders) to government promotion of a transcontinental railroad, as even you seem to recognize. What they hoped for was a southrn route, not a northern one - the main reason why then-Secretary of War Jefferson Davis marshalled through the Gadsden purchase in 1853.
As is so often the case, the argument over government largesse wasn't over curtailing it so much as to how to divvy it up.
Slavery was abolished in the British Empire under a ten year plan to allow owners of newly purchased slaves to get their money's worth. Slaves, however, often took to the hills to wait out the ten years.
Indentured servitude is one where the person sells himself into servitude for some set period; someone wanting their passage money to get to America, for instance.
Neither was the nation whose first President was the slave owner whose portrait is on the One Dollar bills in your wallet and whose birthday we are celebrating today.
Why is it that the only Americans who bear the historical brunt of Political Correctness regarding slavery are those who defended their Southern homes between 1861 and 1865?
George Washington and one of his 316 slaves.
There's your answer - because there's a bunch of Southerners on this board. What do you expect - for them to be self-loathing and celebrate General Grant's birthday???!
I don't think most of the indentured servants would tell a voluntary story.
Many were put into the system by the courts and anyone who could get paid for providing labor.
The victorious northern army raped, ravaged, and pillaged their way throughout the southlands.
I fail to understand northern attitudes of moral superiority, since it was mostly the yankees who thought it perfectly fine to commit genocide on red-men, since they were not truly human.
Before, during, and after the civil war, yankees continued to deny the humanity of native american indians.
It was not convenient to the cause of federalism, to recognise indigenous populations.It is not becoming now to rewrite history.
Slavery was not "invented" by the southern states of the USA.Even today, the northern states accept the slavery of illegal immigrants, because it is convenient, and financially advantagious for them to do so.
If and when the southern states try to seriously stop the importation of slave labor of illegal aliens,the northern states will again protest the loss of cheap labor,and refuse to pay the actual costs of food and supplies to their cities, once again.
Another civil war is brewing.The damn yankees will again be the instigators of it.
On 11-06-1860 Lincoln was elected president.
On December 20 1860, just a month later, South Carolina secedes.
Then on April 12, 1861 the first shot of the civil war was fired at Fort Sumter as the southern states were in rebellion against unfair taxation.
Then finally, on Sept 22, 1862 as as afterthought to further justify his war against the south, Lincoln made the Emancipation Proclamation nearly two years after South Carolina had seceded and over a year and half after the war between the states had begun.
Now you can begin to search for the truth.
I have never seen a post that denied that slavery existed in the South. If there is such a post, point us all to it.
The problem is that the southern bashers point fingers toward the South while ignoring that slavery existed in the northern states as well and STILL defend that their invasion of the South was to "end slavery."
How true. My dirt-poor farmer great-grandfather, his brothers, and cousins fought for the Confederacy, not because they owned slaves (they did not), but because they were Virginians, and their State, their home, had been invaded.
Imagine Utah being attacked by Colorado. For whatever reason. Would not the citizens of Utah defend their state?
Well, in the case of the family of U.S. Grant, Mrs. Grant's slave "Black Julia" was needed to look after their son, Jesse Grant, when they visited Union Headquarters and the General and the Mrs. needed uninterrupted time for "marital relations".
As someone born, raised, and who has lived most of his life in the capital of the Confederacy, someone who can trace his family tree back to Civil War heroes and Civil War deserters, I will be the first to say that the Old South was not a perfect place. It had very good traits to a degree: it's independence, nobility, and hospitality (as well as its generals...who were unequalled in US history). It also contained the massive evil of slavery, and many men supported it for their own selfish reasons.
As for the Northern States, they also had many good attributes. And they also were perfectly willing to exploit men for their own profit. The few who did reject slavery (and it was a small number... read about it sometime) were able to do so because it did not affect their bottom line. They had other ways to exploit workers for their own gain. And Lincoln's destruction of the Constitution, and the subsequent expansion of the Federal government, has been a great evil indeed.
So, as I see it, those who argue for the South on FR minimize the issue of slavery so as to oppose the very real evil done to our Constitution, whereas the Northern arguers do the opposite. Obviously the folks who supported your side way back when couldn't have been just as bad as their enemies... could they?
Frankly, I think the whole thing is a waste of time. No one can gain a single scintilla of moral authority by siding with anyone in a conflict long gone, though many would like to do so. If you believe that somehow you are a better person because you romanticize the South, or the North (you listening, WhiskeyPapa?), then you are far too pitiful to be worth arguing with. It is as idiotic as arguing who was more rightfully the king of England in 1066AD: William of Normandy or Harold of England.
We are measured by the challenges we face TODAY, not by our positions on those long gone. Your stance on the upcoming War with Iraq says far more about your character than a hundred passionate defenses of Dixie or Lincoln. In fact, I think the desire to re-argue the past is a sign of a person who cannot face the present... or future. And they deserve our pity...
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.