Posted on 06/08/2021 7:16:33 AM PDT by rebuildus
I’ve been watching documentary filmmaker Ken Burns’ classic series The Civil War , and I’m loving it! Since coming to the South, my interest in the horrific fight between Americans has increased dramatically.
I’ve also read Bill O’Reilly’s / Martin Dugard’s book Killing Lincoln, which I also enjoyed immensely.
Watching The Civil War, I heard Frederick Douglass quoted many times, which piqued my interest too, so now I’m also reading his autobiography! I definitely highly recommend this one. Too many have white-washed Slavery with an image of happy slaves joyfully singing spirituals. This is the other side, from the perspective of an ex-slave.
In times past, I may have watched The Civil War with a jaundiced eye, suspect that it originally aired on liberal PBS, or that Ken Burns is probably a liberal.
But I’m watching it with an open mind, and though I’m sure some people may tell me that it’s biased and is missing this or that key fact, I find it even-handed, and just as important–HUMANE.
In our mad desire to “win” in the political and cultural arena, I find a severe shortage of humanity among us (“right” and “left”). No, I will not equate the two, and pretend that humanity is equally lacking in the two sides. Many leftists are out of their minds with rage and destructive impulses. Yet, I see too little love on the right side of the spectrum as well.
That’s a problem.
As I watch The Civil War, I’m constantly struck by the good and bad on BOTH sides:
The North stood against the evil of Slavery (that’s a HUGE mark in their favor). Yet, life in northern cities could be de-humanizing, particularly in contrast with more natural and healthy rural living, which the South personified.
And the destruction of states’ rights, which Lincoln started, opened the door to today’s full-on ASSAULT against these rights. Yet nobody can rationally say that any state has the right to sanction the buying and selling of human beings against their will.
The South had a healthy distrust of the corrupting power of the federal government. Unfortunately for them, this distrust was so great that it impeded them from coming together sufficiently within their OWN government to maximize their chances for winning the war.
That so many Americans were essentially okay with a system that treated other Americans as PROPERTY is unsettling, to be frank. Of course, things have not changed all that much: the WHOLE country (North and South) permits the slaughter of unborn children in the womb. So are we any better than the slave-holders?
My point here, is that our hatred for our fellow man blinds us to the GOOD that resides within him. If the North and South COMBINED the good aspects of each, there never would have been a Civil War, and Reconstruction would have gone much better for all concerned, particularly the ex-slaves.
This principle is true of virtually EVERY division we have: black vs. white, right vs. left, rural vs. city, vegan vs. carnivore, “internal” vs. “external” martial arts, calisthenics vs. weight training, etc.
Tribes rule what was once the UNITED States of America, and this same phenomenon is playing out worldwide.
Rise of the “Tribal Chiefs”
Everywhere we see the rise of “tribal chiefs”–those who benefit via money and power from fomenting DIVISION amongst us. We see it all over the Internet–“influencers” who get clicks by insulting people who don’t agree with them.
You probably watch some of them. We all do.
Think about it–is this really productive? Does this place us in a more or less united position? Many of the people doing this call themselves “Christians.” Is this Christian?
Tribes are typically led by “chiefs” who are charismatic, have a way with words, are bold, and insatiable for attention. They cater to our worst instincts. It reminds me of one of my favorite old quotes…
"The palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise"--Thomas Paine
Tribalism is killing our unity, and thus killing our nation and the civilized world. We must overcome it or perish!
I believe healing starts when we recognize the part we are playing in this deadly game. This site will continue to promote the best in natural health, success, and freedom, and it will continue to point out those who are enemies of these, but it will not indulge in gratuitous insults to build our readership.
And I have no illusions–we will not ALL unite. Only those of goodwill, despite our differences. But I believe that will be enough to save our countries, or at least to safeguard those of us who trust God’s grace and the power of a people united.
Patrick Rooney is the Founder of OldSchoolUs.com. He communicates clearly and fearlessly during perilous times about natural health, success, and freedom. To reach Patrick, email him at info@oldschoolus.com.
You left out the part about the Southern states paying 73% of all the taxes paid to the Federal Government.
“You are ignoring how and where the Republican Party started; in small town Christian rural America (Wisconsin, Iowa, etc.). It was a reaction to the NE whigs who did nothing about the moral evil of slavery.”
You’re leaving out the influence of the ‘48ers, the expatriate German Revolutionaries who played a big role in the early Republican Party. One of their compatriots, Karl Marx, spent a decade writing for the Republican party newspaper, Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune.
There’s always a popular virtuous reason and a real reason. For the north popular virtuous was ending slavery; real was economics. For the South popular virtuous was states rights; real was preserving slavery.
The people who write history books would have us believe that the widespread Northern opposition to slavery is based on moral objections to the practice. The truth is that most Northerners did not give a crap about the suffering of black people. They opposed slavery mainly for two reasons. The first is they absolutely hated the idea that someone could get free labor when they had to sell their own labor to make money. In the regions that became the heavily labor Unionized North, slaves were seen as "scabs" who would take the food out of the mouths of white people who had to work for wages to earn a living.
The other primary reason for Northerners hating slavery was a general hatred of black people and a desire to keep them far away from white people. The Laws of Illinois and other states illustrate just how much Northern white people hated the black people, and how they had no concerns about black people being forced to work, but a great deal of concern about black people being near them or their families. In Illinois it was legal to grab undocumented black people and sell them into slavery down South.
The actual truth about Northern opposition to slavery is very ugly, and people always try to cover up the real truth by pointing at the collection of Abolitionists of that era, but the abolitionists represented a teeny tiny component of the population at that time. Most people hated slavery because of labor competition and a general hatred of having black people around them.
Also, slavery wasn't going to spread into the territories to any significant degree. Cotton could not be grown in the territories except in New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California, but only if irrigation systems which didn't exist in 1860 were used.
Cotton could not have been grown in the territories until the next century. There was no real threat of slavery expanding into the territories. It was economically unfeasible.
“It was the Democratic party’s thug branch then, just like Antifa is now.”
You mean like Colorado’s Republican Governor Clarence Morley? The Klan member?
And Indiana’s Republican Governor Edward Jackson? Also a Klan member?
A Constitutional law. You may not be aware of this, but Article IV, section 2 of the US Constitution *REQUIRED* escaped slaves to be returned to their masters. It specifically says no state law can interfere with a slave held by the laws of another state.
Now if you consider this *REQUIREMENT* to be a violation of "states rights", you should take it up with the States that voted to agree with this stipulation in the US Constitution.
That would be all of them.
You need to give this a little more thought.
That is revisionist history. The Confederates became aware that Lincoln had launched a war fleet attack against them, and neutralized the fort before all the fleet could arrive to attack them.
They offered Anderson a truce, but he refused, vowing to fire on them with the cannons of the fort if Lincolns attack fleet engaged them in combat. Beauregard was left with no choice but to prevent getting shot in the back by the Troops in Sumter.
I have to disagree. In any state you will have no armies just a version of tribal warfare. In blood red Alabama you would have vicious attacks in the big cities and even small towns in both directions.
Is that you? Or some blogger? If you're talking about Civil War general Nathan Bedford Forrest it's unlikely that he used those words. You had to have "all politics are local," attributed to Tip O'Neill, become a catch phrase first.
But remember, it was the south that started it! They fired on Fort Sumter. Up until that time, which was about a year after the secession, there was no war. Don’t blame President Lincoln, he didn’t start it.
That is pretty much standard for PBS documentaries. I suspect one reason why you don't have shows like The World at War any more is that most of the people who participated are already dead. Another is that you can only retell the bare facts of history so many times. The talking heads give you an opportunity to do something new, and also put things in perspective. Sometimes Burns overdoes it and lets the commentators off the leash, but The Civil War and Baseball worked for me.
That statement is just a regurgitation of the same crap history we have all been taught for all our lives. The South didn't have to worry about "preserving slavery". All that was required to preserve slavery was to remain in the Union and keep things operating just as they were.
Indeed, Lincoln and the Northern states went out of their way to guarantee continued slavery for any state that wanted it by passing the Corwin Amendment through congress. Five Northern states voted for it, and William Seward assured everyone that New York would support it too.
So the facts don't support the claim that the South's real reason was to "preserve slavery." You won't see the real truth about what happened until you look at the economics of the period.
New York and Washington DC had rigged the laws in America in such a way that the South was paying for 73% of all the taxes paid into the Federal treasury.
Furthermore, the value of 60% of all the slave produced goods exported to Europe ended up in the pockets of New Yorkers and Washington DC officials. The South would have seen an instant 60% increase in their revenue just getting out from under the laws imposed by Washington DC.
But the greater threat to the Northern power barons was the South's intent to import European products at low tariffs and sell them all along the Mississippi watershed and the long porous border with the Northern states.
This would have decimated the Northern manufacturers, and moved the center of economic power away from New York and into various Southern cities.
The war wasn't about Union, and it wasn't about slavery. It was about powerful men in the North losing their existing money streams and a shift in economic power away from them.
But they made certain to get people to believe it was about moral stuff.
File under "Oft-Repeated Lies"
Seems well enough thought out to me. Certainly makes a lot more sense than claiming that a Nation which voted for the Corwin Amendment suddenly realized slavery was wrong about a month later.
I guess you are unaware about Lincoln's war fleet which he sent to subdue them. Did you ever wonder why they fired on Ft. Sumter? It's because that War fleet was coming, and they knew it was going to attack them.
They offered Anderson a truce, but he vowed that if they engaged Lincoln's war fleet in combat, he would fire on them with all the cannons of the fort.
To prevent themselves from getting shot in the back while they were facing the attack from Lincoln's war fleet, they decided they had to neutralize the fort before the rest of the ships arrived.
The "Harriet Lane" was sighted in the channel the very morning of the attack. They knew the rest of the fleet would soon be there and would then be initiating it's attack against them.
Lincoln started it by launching that belligerent War fleet against them. Had he not done that, Sumter would have been evacuated peacefully and with no one firing a shot.
You don't want to believe it because you don't like what it means.
The Corwin Amendment wasn't ratified. It was a last ditch effort to save the Union, something you obviously don't care about. It wasn't popular with Republicans, and it wasn't enough to appease the South, who knew that laws Republicans could pass and Lincoln's use of the patronage power could weaken support for slavery in the country.
Slaveowners were used to having things their own way, and even such harmless-sounding things like allowing abolitionist materials through the mail and appointing Republican judges and marshals and postmasters in the South could ultimately weaken the grip of slavery in the country.
But you know all that. You just don't want to admit it or think it through.
Interesting that honest Abe never mentioned his Marxist roots. Do you think he and the Christian Churches were closet Marxists? That their anti slavery platform was a ruse to bring in European Socialism?
He was probably too busy slaying vampires...
/s
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