Posted on 08/16/2017 1:08:55 PM PDT by PeaRidge
"History, by apprising [citizens] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views." ---Thomas Jefferson
From the time of the middle of the 19th Century, the deep Southern States’ governments and the Southern people have been depicted as being totally preoccupied with the survival of slavery, while Northern people were to become the defenders of universal freedom.
Those reading many of the dominant post-era authors of the history of this period are often led to the absolute conclusion that the controversies which arose between the states, and the war in which they culminated, were caused largely by efforts on the one side to extend and perpetuate human slavery, and on the other side to resist it and establish human liberty.
Generations of Southern people and many historians would vigorously disagree with these views. Based on records of the time, that construct is substantially devoid of important historical facts, and fails to include the issues, which produced the secession, and those that caused President Lincoln to send Federal troops to the harbors in Charleston and Pensacola to initiate war.
This is a great disservice to generations of Americans who have not been urged to study the records of the period produced by authors writing at the actual time of the events. However, having been consistently presented in modern schoolbook, film, and television media accounts of the American Civil War, these notions have now spread to become the commonly accepted thesis of that era in US history.
The prevailing views of the practice of slavery in the US have been fashioned by authors and historians primarily from the accounts of first and second-hand observers of the slave South. Since such observers lacked the hard data needed to determine the scope and nature of this relationship, they could only convey their impressions. Unfortunately, these impressions are far from uniform, and incorrectly stereotype the people of the time.
With the acceptance of the media driven concept of slavery, it has then become logical to argue that it was necessary for the US government to wage a four-year war to abolish slavery in the United and Confederate States, one that ravaged half of the country and destroyed a generation of American men.
At the beginning of the history of the country, the founding fathers were opponents to empire, a policy that Lincoln and the incoming Republican Party’s platform turned on its head less than 150 years later. In 1860 Southern economic interests understood the effects of these policies and decided to leave the union.
The war was clearly tied to slavery, but in the sense that Republican tariffs would have squeezed the profitability out of the slave-based cotton plantation economy to the benefit of Northern industry, especially Union textiles and iron manufacturing.
Lincoln claimed the war was to "save" the Union, but this was only true in a geographic sense. The country ceased being a Union, as it was originally conceived, of separate and sovereign states, and sovereign people bound together by common interests and a Constitutional republican form of government.
Instead, America became an "amalgam" of states dominated by a powerful and centralized federal government. Although the war freed four million slaves into poverty, it did not bring about a new birth of freedom, as Lincoln later claimed in the Gettysburg Address.
As the thirteen colonies, did when they seceded from Britain, the South sought separation to attain peace and security, not warfare among the people. The Confederacy had no intent to occupy or attack the Union states.
Violence was brought to the soil of the South by the only human being of the time that had the power to do so, Abraham Lincoln.
It is happening all over again.
The slave economy would have collapsed under the reality of the Industrial Revolution. Those slave owners out of habit and custom would have found themselves out of business with hundreds of slaves they could no longer feed.
I’m not so sure about that. Cotton was hand picked until well into the 20th century. In fact slavery might have died earlier if not for the industrial revolution in the form of the cotton gin.
One of the South’s critical mistakes was believing that Britan would be forced to side with them by their need for cotton to keep the mills running. Instead the Brits invested in cotton production in India and Egypt. By the time the war was over cotton was no longer king.
Because Proclamation 95 (Executve Order) was issued under the president’s authority to suppress rebellion (war powers), it necessarily excluded areas that were not in rebellion – it applied to more than 3 million of the 4 million slaves at the time. Lincoln issued the Proclamation under his authority as “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy” under Article II, section 2 of the Constitution. Lincoln claimed the martial power to free persons held as slaves in those states that were in rebellion “as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion”.
Emancipation was a military tactic of rebellion suppression which caused chaos in the slaveholding states and eventually 179,000 freed slaves enlisted in the Union Army and Navy (10% of the total force).
I found this article that describes exactly my thoughts about the effect of the Industrial Revolution on slavery. Here is the link:
https://lawaspect.com/effects-industrial-revolution-slavery/
Believe me - there are a bunch of us who get it ;'}
In a nutshell, "The Business of America is Business." It is the belief that the FedGov should facilitate the growth of business and industry in whatever manner they are able.
It grew into something more malignant.
but the typical conflicts between interest groups were peanuts compared to the conflict over slavery.
So far as the public was aware, but do not think the not so public discussions between businessmen about their economic situation would not reach the ears of their agents in Washington who could do something about it.
If one had to choose between the oppression of the slavers and the usual cronyism of business and politics, it wasn't a hard choice, especially since slavers and secessionists had their own forms of cronyism.
That may very well be, but it is not their form of cronyism that is causing problems for us today, it is the existing form of "Deep State"/Corporate cronyism that is undermining our Republic.
Not so much. There were plenty of subsidies to Southerners as well.
Not that I have read. What were they subsidizing in the South?
How much could subsidies to fishermen really amount to, anyway? And how could mines, factories, and consumers be tied together in the days before trucking if not by railroads?
I didn't say all the railroads were bad, but like the phoney Solar Energy company "Solyndra", a lot of railroads were built in the North that didn't serve anyone's economic interest. They were in fact money transfer schemes to people who got contracts to build unnecessary railroads that ended up not being economically viable.
Jeez, consider the technology of the time. River barges then weren't much anything compared to what they've since become.They were smaller and probably slower. There weren't large container ships in the ports. And when most of the grain was destined for big cities back east, railroads were by far the more convenient choice.
In a free country, shouldn't the economic choices of how to ship something be left up to the people who wanted to ship something? Forcing them to use the overpriced railroads smacks of government collusion to funnel money into the coffers of certain well connected groups.
The problem for the farmers, if I'm not mistaken, was that there wasn't much traffic or competition on the short, out of the way lines, so rates were higher on them, than over longer distances where there were competing lines. For farmers who lived far from navigable rivers, that would still have been a problem, even if they didn't use the railways for the whole way.
I have read that they were forced to use the railroads even when river barges were available and satisfactory. I read this recently, and I also recall reading this decades ago when I was learning about this period in history.
I don't have any current links to a source on this, so I'm not going to insist that it's true until I can find some more confirmation for it, but I recall that it is true, and it certainly appears to me to be a form of government collusion to benefit the well connected.
More of a reaction than having their army fielded on the opposite side of the battle lines?
There definitely would have been another European war.
That's very likely a safe bet.
Maybe no Holocaust, but the Germans would be very brutal and the French quite savage.
Again, worse than what they were already doing?
The Russian Communists (whom the Germans helped put in power)
Yes they did, and that was likely going to happen in either timeline.
and the Japanese would be waiting for the next European war and the opportunity to pick up territory. Things could have been very bloody indeed.
I still don't see it being as bloody as what actually happened. What happened was just about as bad as I think it could have gotten. I certainly can't see a way it could have been worse.
But if you don't agree with me, your quarrel is more with Woodrow Wilson, who actually made the decision to intervene than with people upstream who had nothing to do with Wilson's choice.
Yes, i'm aware that Wilson did this, but my point is that if he got elected in an alternate timeline, there is a very good chance that with only half or less of the Country he had in 1917, he would have been far less able to intervene in that European war. And therefore it likely wouldn't have occurred, or it would have been less of a factor in convincing the Germans to surrender.
This is what I keep telling people. The FedGov became far more onerous and controlling of the people as a consequence of the power it acquired in the Civil War.
Think about that. What "free stuff" is driving the actors? Who is doing the promising? Universal wage? In return for what? The subtlest form of slavery is being indebted. Dance with the Devil and he picks the tune.
Bribes to the poor are "Vote Farming." We still have plantations, they just grow "voters" now.
Governments are no better than the people who seek to govern. We're seeing some trying to hang on to power.
I think the reason the New York Liberal Media is going so screechy and hyperventilating about Trump is because for the first time since the Civil War, they see that their control of the government has gotten a little out of their grasp, and they both hate it and are frightened that he may permanently remove their influence over the direction the nation is going.
The media are doing everything they possibly can to promote propaganda that undermines Trump's legitimacy or likeability in the eyes of the voters.
I have come to realize the media very likely represents the policy positions of the people who own them, and those people have their money streams connected to the government six ways to Sunday. Liberal spending policies are promoted by the media precisely because it benefits the people who hold their leash.
At least this is what I have been thinking for about the last two years.
So did Tennessee, part of Virginia, and part of Louisiana.
Lincoln solved this problem by debt. I guess in the 1780s, this was a less viable option, but George III probably could have made it happen had he been as vicious as Lincoln.
The Industrial Revolution was over by the time of the Civil War. Most historians mark its beginning around 1760 and its end no later than 1840.
You "know" wrongly. I don't hate America, I just recognize that it was founded on a principle that everyone has a right to independence from what they view as an oppressive government. How can we not live up to what we proclaimed we believed when the founders created this nation?
The British military simply wasn’t big enough to occupy the entirety of the colonies AND fight Washington in the north AND try to control the South AND deal with Spain and France on the continent.
If you mean they had to "chose", I will point out that they could have done so, and they could have chosen against us.
As Lincoln said: "One war at a time."
At least he could not have done so without a major impressment, which would have gone over like a fart in church.
Which is what Lincoln did, and it didn't go over very well. Worst riots in history, in fact. So tell me, is it reasonable to enslave men if you are sending them to fight someone who has never done them any wrong?
Two questions if you please. One, who was forcing them to use the railroad? And two, if they were forbidden to use river barges then why would there have been any river barges to begin with? It doesn't make much sense to have something available (and satisfactory) if there was no demand for it.
Probably not, but over time it would likely have come within the economic and social influence of the South.
I don't think slavery was going to survive very far into the 20th century anyway, and so by the time Iowa might have joined the Confederacy, there is a likelihood that slavery would be greatly waning at that point.
There is also a good probability that the Confederacy would eventually re-unite with the USA at some point in the future anyway.
I think a clearer understanding of the forces at play in historical events is it's own reward.
The word "Rebellion" is itself a political propaganda tactic. The seceding states held votes, the "Brexit" vote won, and so they calmly proceeded to separate their states from the control of Washington DC.
Lincoln kept calling them a "Rebellion" because it allowed him enormous powers that would not have been possible otherwise. He didn't have to ask congress for a declaration of war, for example.
In fact, he pulled his stunt in April precisely to prevent congress from stopping him, which they would have done had they still been in session when he started prepping those warships for launch.
for the record, I believe the Confederacy was perfectly entitled to secede from the Union if that was its idiotic desire...
That is exactly my position. It may have been foolish, but stupidity is not an adequate reason to deny people their rights.
.just as it were perfectly entitled to its ultimate reward for shelling a fort of the entity from which it had seceded...
You keep leaving out the provocation that caused them to do this; The fact that they knew Lincoln had sent warships with orders to attack them. They fully believed that within a day or so they would be bombarded by cannon fire (285 ship borne canon) from those Naval Warships, and that a landing force was going to try to overrun their position.
They believed this because that's what the ship's orders said. What they didn't realize is that Lincoln had done a clever thing. The ships were instructed to await for the arrival of the "Powhatan", which was one of there most powerful ships. It initially had the same orders as did the other ships, and it launched last.
Just before it launched, Captain David Porter showed up with new secret orders from Lincoln personally, took command of the ship, disguised it so as to make it unrecognizable, sailed it deep into the Atlantic to avoid any possible contact with the other ships of the fleet, and then sailed it to Pensacola.
The other ships at the rendezvous were never going to attack, despite what their orders said, because they were also told to wait for the Powhatan, which they believed would be arriving shortly after they did.
The Confederates knew of the public orders which clearly said the ships were going to attack them. They did not know about Lincoln's secret orders carried by Captain David Porter (quickly promoted to Admiral afterwards) which would keep the assembling ships from attacking them.
This is exactly what Lincoln intended. It was Machiavellian genius.
Yes, the party affiliations have changed around the 1970-1980s.
To keep things straight, just look at the voting patterns of Big Cities versus Rural areas. Don't pay attention to the names, pay attention to the Demographics involved.
In 1860, the Republicans were the party of Big City Liberals and Corporate Industrialists. Today the Democrats are the party of Big City Liberals and Corporate Industrialists.
The battle lines are still between the Urban Hamiltonians and the agrarian Jeffersonians.
That’s because you don’t know history. Technically the South didn’t rebel...it simply exited. It exited based on the belief that they had the right to do so...exactly as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. The rightness of both wars for independence were equal.
Technically they did. Rebellion is defined by Merriam-Webster as "open, armed, and usually unsuccessful defiance of or resistance to an established government" or "an instance of such defiance or resistance". That accurately describes the Southern actions.
It exited based on the belief that they had the right to do so...exactly as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. The rightness of both wars for independence were equal.
We can argue whether a rebellion against tyranny is as righteous as a rebellion to defend slavery, but at the end of the day they were both rebellions. And rebellion, while often morally justified, is never legal. And the Founding Fathers, at least, never pretended it was.
So tell me, is it reasonable to enslave men if you are sending them to fight someone who has never done them any wrong?
My dad felt so in 1966, but he still went to basic training.
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