The South lost the war, but every American lost the 10th amendment after it was all said and done. That was pretty much the trade off.
i agree...economics and power was the motivation.
a nice writeup on it http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/civilwar.html
the adams book he mentions was eye opening for me.
I’m an American. Not a “Northerner’’ or a “Yankee’’. I’m an American. What are you?
True enough.
Of course, the South started the war as a pre-emptive strike against what it saw as a future existential threat to $3B worth of property, somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of the value of all property in the South, including land, houses, etc.
What would we do today if someone threatened that kind of economic disruption to us? For purposes of comparison, the recent economic downturn resulted in a loss of property value of around 10%.
The power issue over which the war was fought was slaveowners' ultimate power over their "property." Slavery is at its root and core the ultimate antithesis of American values.
That this ultimate power was held by individuals rather than by the state as such is irrelevant. State power was, of course, required and used to ensure that the slaveowners retained this power.
Humans were never meant to have such power over other humans. The vast majority of us are incapable of exercising it wisely and fairly, and none of us has the moral right to do so. The moral principle by which we oppose expansion of federal power is exactly the same one that makes slavery repugnant to any real American.
The man who defines his own right to freedom in terms of denying that same freedom to others has no right to the proud name of American.
As a Southerner, you have to fight half the people here on FR over CW stuff.
I was born in MO, which was one of the Confederate states, or at least the Confederacy said it was. The state fought its own internal civil war, as well as a border war with KS during the larger war. I have ancestors who fought for the South, and others who fought for the Union.
Liberals would love nothing more than to tar all conservatives with support for the Confederacy and all its racist baggage. Racism was endemic in the whole country at the time, to be sure, but only the Confederacy proclaimed it to be its Cornerstone.
As long as Jim Rob allows, I will respond on such threads in such a way that no honest person reading the thread will be able to come away saying that all conservatives are Confed sympathizers.
As Grant said, Confederates fought with enormous bravery and honor. Unfortunately, the cause for which they fought was one of the worst in history.