Posted on 01/06/2005 8:00:30 AM PST by cougar_mccxxi
I don't have all the books (just HOW FEW REMAIN and the first of the WWI books) but I think Turtledove is vague on the specifics of how Longstreet manages the emancipation.
Certainly it would not have been easy. It would have required a constitutional amendment. It would have faced massive opposition in a free CSA for a long time.
In GUNS OF THE SOUTH it's done by a bill beginning phased emancipation in 1875 which Robert E. Lee acknowledges probably doesn't pass constitutional muster.
Britain accorded the CSA only the very limited status of belligerent, which turned out to be worthless anyway to the CSA once the blockade was established. Other than that, I must concede Non-Seuitur's point that the Confederate state department had damn little to do during its existence.
That is, in part, because of the confusion in the terms "nation," "country," "state," and "nation-state." When Hindenburg spoke of the "German Nation" (Blud und Boten), he was talking about more than one country. One can speak of the "Cherokee nation" and not be talking about a political entity, but rather, a cultural one.
With that said, tribal treaties with the CSA are no more valid that confederate money.
John Brown committed Treason against Virginia by formenting REBELLION and slave uprisings....and was hanged like he deserved.
And he was a COLD-BLOODED MURDERER. Not a good example. And I think Robert E. Lee is one of MANY good men that gave their allegiance to their state first.
The founding fathers felt differently. Robert E. Lee swore the same oath, but felt that his first loyalty was to his home. That is simply a basic rule. You don't turn against your kith and kin....or maybe they DO up north!
To commit treason against a political entity then don't you first have to be a citizen of that entity? Brown didn't live in Virginia, he wasn't a citizen of Virginia, how can he commit treason against Virginia?
You misunderstand me, slavery WAS a part of the issue. Taking away the major source of labor for one entire half of the country, would be a catastrophe, so the South had a reason to be upset. However, it came down as a part of the larger issue of State's Rights....
bump
The OFFICIAL name, which it was given by Congress in 1877, was as follows "War Between the States"....so take your "rebellion" and........(well, you'll think of something I'm sure!)
Met AFTER Lincoln threw all the secessionists in JAIL.
Doesn't quite count, after the fact.
I am not saying slavery was the only issue. I am not saying that necessarily most southern men enlisted to fight for slavery, or at least not solely (One Virgina private to his Union captors: "I'm fightin' because you're down here."). I am saying that the break could not have happened without slavery. It was in the end the one issue that could not be compromised. And to the extent that economic causes were in play, they were mainly so because they were rooted in slavery, the foundation (as you concede) for the southrn economy.
I think in the hullabaloo to reestablish a real federalism, some folks get so worked up by the taint of states rights with the Confederacy or Jim Crow that they work too hard to try to establish that slavery really was not a major factor in thwe Civil War. And I just doen't see how any fair reading of history can support that idea.
You seem awful sure of yourself....I think the nation would have re-joined eventually, without the hatred and bad feelings that exist even to this day.
Well - some of them.
But how to explain that more Marylanders served in the Union Army than in the Confederate? Surely there weren't THAT many would-be Confederate soldiers sitting in Lincoln's prisoners?
Why did Lee find so little native support in each of his campaigns in western Maryland? (And yes, I know that was the most Unionist part of the state.)
Show me where Secession is forbidden? You won't find it either.....
Ther's no mention of it one way or the other.
WELL, Down south we BARBEQUE pigs....(Michael Moore) hehehe!
And believe me, there are far more State & local enemies of the Constitution than Federal.
As you are obviously a veteran, as myself, I will not respond further....I will simply say I choose to disagree.
I have to agree, my major assumption is that Slavery WAS legal, by law and Constitution, so that legally, the South was justified to fight when they percieved a threat to their major source of economic wealth. By today's standards, slavery was wrong. But to most, even in the South in 1861, it wasn't considered so.
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