You mean: when looked at through your biases. You simply exclude and throw away all the non-materialistic reasons why Northerners would fight.
There is a reason why people on your side always try to make slavery the issue instead of what was the real issue, it's because the people you champion don't look so good when looked at from the perspective of the war being about Who was going to control and spend the money.
That wasn't what the war was about. I don't know who you think I "champion," but taking the motives of those who fought for the union into account, those who fought don't look so bad. They brought down an oppressive system, whether they originally intended to do so or not.
So far as I'm concerned, the New York Plutocrats profiting from Slavery were just as bad as the Southern Aristocrats who actually worked them. The only difference is that the New York Plutocrats turned out to be much more dangerous, and have continued running things to this very day, though there power has been shaken up lately.
Circulation of elites. Look it up. The Vanderbilts and Astors aren't running things anymore. And the people who are running things don't look at the world the way Commodore Cornelius or fur trader John Jacob did.
New York wasn't destroyed and economic activity wasn't completely dispersed, but the world has changed and is changing. This undying resentment you have against New York is something you'll have to work through somehow.
Happy Birthday to Abraham Lincoln.
I’ve always loved that line of his - “So long as I have been here [White House], I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man’s bosom.’’ There is no doubt that Lincoln was the least egotistical and most humble of all our presidents.
And I’ll never forget the words of the late Richard Hofstadter:
“The great prose of the presidential years came from a soul that had been humbled. Lincoln’s utter lack of personal malice during these years, his humane detachment, his tragic sense of life, have no parallel in political history.” Just so!
Personally, I think it a travesty that his birthday is not a national holiday. Instead we have that insipid ‘President’s Day.’
Richard Hofstadter has a great chapter on Lincoln in his The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It. It is well worth a look. It shows Lincoln to be an adept practical politician. Make no mistake, a very great man here. And to think he only had about a year of formal education.
A characteristic of Lincoln, especially after his first two years in office was in the words of Edwin Black (quoted in Ronald White’s The Eloquent President) his vanishing ego. By that he meant Lincoln’s reluctance to use personal pronouns. Commenting on the Gettysburg Address White wrote: “The address is full of first-person references, but every one is plural. Ten times Lincoln uses the plural we and three times us. . . . In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln says nothing of himself. At a first hearing or reading, we are aware of what is being said and not of who is saying it. Yet at a second or third hearing or reading, Lincoln’s character, the ethos or credibility, which is the first principle of Aristotle’s rhetoric, is everywhere present. His very reticence to speak about himself - how different from modern politicians - is what makes his voice by the end of the address so decisive.” Get that, not a single personal pronoun in The Gettysburg Address! The Second Inaugural consisted of 701 words, 501 of which are one syllable. The Bible and theological language were used throughout. God is mentioned 14 times. The Bible is quoted 4 times and prayer is invoked 3 times. And yet, Lincoln used personal pronouns only twice as in “I trust” and “myself.” There were several uses of plural pronouns. White suggests it’s in poor taste to use the first person singular. Note that “how different from modern politicians” above! Our last three presidents have no compunction about using that first person singular. In just one speech Obama used a personal pronoun, “I,” “Me,” “Mine,” 199 times, or every 12 seconds. What a contrast. Obama was by far the vainest and most narcissistic president in our history. How far we’ve fallen.
Because human history is replete with examples of wars fought for acquisition, and few (if any) examples of wars fought for noble reasons.
When you think you are being presented with a war fought for noble reasons, you are being fooled.
Nobody was fighting to free the slaves when they invaded the South. Nobody was fighting because they desperately needed that pile of rocks in the entrance to Charleston's Harbor. The North was fighting because Lincoln, after initiating a deliberate confrontation, ordered them to do so.
That wasn't what the war was about. I don't know who you think I "champion," but taking the motives of those who fought for the union into account, those who fought don't look so bad.
They tolerated slavery for "four score and seven years" (actually they tolerated it longer in the Union) but suddenly they need to invade other people's lands and murder people because it was suddenly the right thing to do?
What did these people ever do to them to deserve being attacked?
They brought down an oppressive system, whether they originally intended to do so or not.
They did not originally intend to do this, so they should get no credit for doing it for just and moral reasons. They did it as a afterthought in an attempt to justify the EVIL thing that they did.
Attempting to justify doing an evil thing because of a good thing that resulted from it in the future, is sophistry and deception. It is logical nonsense.
Circulation of elites. Look it up. The Vanderbilts and Astors aren't running things anymore. And the people who are running things don't look at the world the way Commodore Cornelius or fur trader John Jacob did.
Yet New York still controls the News, the Finances, and has undue influence on the Nation and the World. Virtually everyone in charge at various government organizations such as the State Department is a graduate of an "Ivy League" (meaning under the ideological influence of people in the North East) University.
The Same region and the same sort of Plutocrats are running things today. That their specific families and their specific Fads of the day have changed does not detract from the fact that these are essential the modern equivalents of the Vanderbilts and the Astors.
And they more or less run the Government in Washington DC.