Posted on 05/06/2009 10:35:26 AM PDT by cowboyway
One of the greatest misconceptions of American history is that the Civil War was fought over slavery. Those who subscribe to this belief see President Abraham Lincoln as the benevolent leader who made unimaginable sacrifices in human blood to wipe out America’s greatest sin. While the human sacrifice is indisputable and the sin was monumental, the war’s purpose was not to free blacks from the shackles of bondage. Rather, the Civil War was fought with one purpose in mind: To preserve the Union at all costs. And, to put it in Lincoln’s terms, with no ifs, ands, or buts. You’d better agree with the president, or else.
(Excerpt) Read more at tenthamendmentcenter.com ...
This is new tac, "it was about money". First it was about slavery, now it was about money. How much does it cost to get out of this abysmal Union? Hell you can have all your Federal stuff back, but in the case of Southern Independence, the Butcher wouldn't even parlay. He wanted the war, not the South.
No new tactic!
To the south everything was about money, slavery was big business and the products harvested by slaves were the economic engine of the south.
To try to suggest anything else is ludicrous, so please do show us all how little you really know about how the south was run.
The fact that you can equate what happened in 1861 to the Japanese of the mid-20th century is very revealing.
The reason why I waste my time debating neo-Yankees is to try and gain some perspective on the mindset of the 19th century Yankee through the lens of their contemporaries. It is always been impossible for me to truly understand the motives of the 19th century Yankee; I really am on a quest to understand.
It is important to me because I think the USA is doomed as the Constitution has been turned into a sick parody of itself at this point. It is flawed and a socialist collective government is being formed right in front of our eyes, and the ‘ole Constitution hasn't changed in about 70 years. Tom, George, James and Ben didn’t create the Constitution so that I would end up feeling like a sailor on a sinking ship being told to go down with the ship or else. If alive today they would acknowledge the faults of their once venerable document.
So Yankees kill for money. Check. Next.
Confederates killed for love of money check next
Union privates were paid $13 per month until after the final raise of 20 June '64, when they got $16. In the infantry and artillery, officer was as follows at the start of the war: colonels, $212; lieutenant colonels, $181; majors, $169; captains, $115.50; first lieutenants, $105.50; and second lieutenants, $105.50. Other line and staff officers drew an average of about $15 per month more. Pay for one, two, and three star generals was $315, $457, and $758, respectively.
The Confederate pay structure was modeled after that of the US Army. Privates continued to be paid at the prewar rate of $11 per month until June '64, when the pay of all enlisted men was raised $7 per month. Confederate officer's pay was a few dollars lower than that of the their Union counterparts. A Southern B.G for example, drew $301 instead of $315 per month; Confederate colonels of the infantry received $195, and those of artillery, engineers, and cavalry go $210. While the inflation of Confederate Money reduced the actual value of a Southerner's military pay, this was somewhat counterbalanced by the fact that promotion policies in the South were more liberal.
As for the pay of noncommissioned officers, when Southern privates were making $11 per month, corporals were making $13, "buck" sergeants $17, first sergeants $20, and engineer sergeants were drawing $34. About the same ratio existed in the Northern army between the pay of privates and noncommissioned officers.
Soldiers were supposed to be paid every two months in the field, but they were fortunate if they got their pay at four-month intervals (in the Union Army) and authentic instances are recorded where they went six and eight months. Payment in the Confederate Army was even slower and less regular.
Source: "The Civil War Dictionary" by Mark M. Boatner
One should bear in mind the prime directive to government from the Tenth Article of the Bill of Rights:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the great declaration: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpation's, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”
As Patrick Henry argued at the Virginia convention which ultimately resulted in the ratification of the Bill of Rights: “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.”
They got paid in worthless brownbacks or if they were lucky, seized greenbacks.
Just another attempt by you to somehow justify a failed rebellion.
“The civil war was about states rights” but not about civil rights for the enslaved....
“The civil war was about tariffs” but not about the products produced by slaves
The civil war was about sovereignty” but not about slavery.
If I were to argue for the south the first thing I would do would be to be brutally honest.
The South seceded to preserve slavery as an economic institution.
If you cannot defend that,then you have lost the debate without uttering a single word, and anything you say to avoid admitting that truth is disingenuous.
Lying to one self is a form of madness.
No, by this analogy I'm acknowledging that those who choose to start wars, be they sovereign nations or rebellious parts of a single country, have nobody to blame but themselves if those wars don't turn out quite like they had planned.
Lincoln invaded sovereign nation, how nice. A sovereign nation that posed no military threat...
Even it the South had been a sovereign nation, it was a sovereign nation that chose to start a war with another sovereign nation. And having decided on war, they alone were responsible for keeping that war out of their territory. They failed. Miserably.
Ft Sumter give me a break. A nation that tried to negotiated with the US but was rebuffed.
And then chose war to get their way. Turns out to be a mighty bad decision on their part. You gained Sumter and lost your chance for independence. Hope it was worth it.
Oh, and delivering ultimatums does not constitute 'negotiating'.
They "didn't do it right" so f em, they are going down.
If by 'not doing it right' means losing their war, then yeah. They did go down. Big time.
He was more that 10 points more popular than his nearest opponent. And it's no spin to say for a fact that even had Lincoln had only 1 opponent and if he'd still gotten only 39% of the vote then he'd still have been president.
You can hardly call just over 50% of the popular vote a resounding mandate.
But you can certainly say that getting 90% of the electoral votes was.
And what, exactly, does it reveal?
The reason why I waste my time debating neo-Yankees is to try and gain some perspective on the mindset of the 19th century Yankee through the lens of their contemporaries. It is always been impossible for me to truly understand the motives of the 19th century Yankee; I really am on a quest to understand.
ROTFLMAO!!!
That was your rebellion that Lincoln was putting down? Three days in July 1863? A fraction of a percent of the total of his first term? That's all you got?
The riots were the largest civil insurrection in American history apart from the Civil War itself.
I bit of hyperbole, don't you think? In terms of body count, maybe. In terms of length and amount of damage done, the riots in the 20th century were much worse.
hyperbole
Some Yankees would rather voluntarily splay themselves upon the alter of state, even a collective one, and take one in the hind area in the name of the Constitution rather than leave the church. Thus sanctified, they will then hunt down the heretics who left the church drag them back to the church and chain them upon the alter so as to receive their ‘gift’ of state also.
/hyperbole
In other words you've learned about as little about Yankees as you have about the War of Southern Rebellion.
I've learned what the difference is between a whore of the state and real thinking citizen.
There were a lot of questions to which my selected answer added “common throughout the US including the southeast” and “common in the US” comments, but I don’t recall any answers that commented “Wow, you must be some kind of nor’easter, LOL!”
I don’t know whether to chalk any of this up to my childhood experiences or the inestimable influence of Jeff Foxworthy...
So basically you’re saying that the Constitution violates itself by one one hand saying that people have the right to self determination, but on the other hand allowing insurrections to be suppressed. Is that right?
If you have then you're hiding it well.
And clearly Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power to call up the militia "to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions." So suppressing rebellion certainly isn't an abuse of the powers granted Congress.
The war was basically fought over political power or the right of some to impose their will on others. That is what the Missouri Compromise was about, proportioning representation in Congress and consequently the number of electors in the Electoral College.
The buildup to the war involved several issues. Representation, although supposedly settled was not a satisfactory settlement to many; slavery, an emotional issue drummed up and ignited by northern activists such as Harriet Beecher Stowe but not of much interest to most other than for the previously mentioned representation issue; and economic, the heavy tariff imposed by the Congressional majority from northern industrial states on imported machinery,imported mostly by southern states, which competed with the northern industrial base.
Each of those areas can be vastly expanded but that was basically it in a nutshell - political power.
The kicker is that barely sixty years earlier the states agreed to join the union only on the caveat that were such a situation to arise that each collectively or individually could withdraw from the new union, The United States of America. Lincoln’s desire to protect and maintain said union was in direct contradiction to the agreement made.
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