I'll close for now with a picture of some American heroes:
Posted on 05/19/2015 10:33:26 PM PDT by iowamark
Even while the Civil War raged, slaves in Cuba could be heard singing, “Avanza, Lincoln, avanza! Tu eres nuestra esperanza!” (Onward, Lincoln, Onward! You are our hope!) – as if they knew, even before the soldiers fighting the war far to the North and long before most politicians understood, that the war in America would change their lives, and the world.
The secession crisis of 1860-1861 threatened to be a major setback to the world antislavery movement, and it imperiled the whole experiment in democracy. If slavery was allowed to exist, and if the world’s leading democracy could fall apart over the issue, what hope did freedom have? European powers wasted no time in taking advantage of the debacle. France and Britain immediately each sent fleets of warships with the official purpose of observing the imminent war in America. In Paris, A New York Times correspondent who went by the byline “Malakoff” thought that the French and British observers “may be intended as a sort of escort of honor for the funeral of the Great Republic.”
...the French forced Benito Juárez, the republican leader, to flee the capital and eventually installed the Austrian archduke Maximilian as emperor of Mexico.
European conservatives welcomed the dismemberment of the “once United States” and the bursting of the “republican bubble” that, beginning with the French Revolution, had inspired revolution and unrest in Europe. Republicanism had been in retreat in Europe since the failed revolutions of 1848, and some predicted that all the wayward American republics would eventually find their way back to some form of monarchy, or seek protection under European imperial rule. When Lincoln, in the darkest days of the war, referred to America as the “last best hope of earth,” he was hardly boasting...
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com ...
The South cannot regain its freedom chained to the rest of the USA. You are a good example of what the problem is.
I'll close for now with a picture of some American heroes:
or McClellan and Beauregard
Today, the US leads the war on Islamic terror.
Come again?
You mean, an every growing out of control Fedzilla where control of this entire nation is centralized in one tiny place called Washington DC? Where we might as well not even have States at all because we certainly don’t have many states rights left, do we? Just vote against gay marriage for your state and see what happens.
Yeah, that turned out well.
"Blacks fought for South but for states' rights, not slavery" by Walter Williams
Walter Williams: Accounts about black rebel troops draw fire
WWI and WWII fought here, for instance, as well as in Europe.
In Harry Turtledove's "Southern Victory" series of alternative-history novels, the South wins its independence in the 1860's and then fights a series of wars with the North. These include the World Wars, in which the South is aligned with Britain and the North with Germany.
Williams wrote that in 1969. Amazing.
I thank God it failed.
Yup. Tried to read them. I like the stuff HT writes about, but he’s just not a very good writer, and I usually give up.
One of the things I find most bizarre about the CSA apologists is that they assume that if the CSA had won, all would have gone on just as it did in reality, only without the bad parts.
A far more likely result would have been ongoing conflict over trade, borders, territories, fugitive slaves, subversion, etc. This would force both countries to arm in self-defense and the South, which had resented paying excessive taxes (in their minds) to the USA, would quickly have been paying MUCH higher taxes to the CSA.
The CSA would also have found a way to subsidize “infant industries” necessary for war, despite the prohibition on protective tariffs. No country can afford to leave its armaments vulnerable to blockade in the event of war.
One of the things they harp on is that the South would have been a free trade country. Which is, BTW, odd, since most of them are in favor of protection for US industries today. If the CSA didn’t have import tariffs, how would it have financed its government, much less a military?
No. I would say that distinction belongs to the states in the Plains and Rocky Mountains. Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah have all been consistent conservative states for the past hundred years or so with a strong religious base. My own state of Missouri is trending towards that direction while your state of Virginia is heading the opposite way.
Well worth reading if you can find the articles.
I understand your feelings as well. Take comfort in this:
Psalm 2
1 Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying,
3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.
4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.
5 Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.
6 Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.
7 I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.
8 Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.
9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.
10 Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.
11 Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.
Right now I have to take I-81 down to Virginia to get my fix of scattered and smothered hash browns and grits. And that ain't right.
And it's amazing that with all those bazillion black soldiers fighting for the Confederacy that after the war the Southern states chose to thank that service by implementing a set of laws known as the Black Codes that returned every Southern black to as close a condition of slavery as was possible. Even those who had been free for generations. Why was that? Did you blame the black soldiers for the loss or something?
Should also have noted that to survive in a long-term standoff with the USA, the CSA would have been forced to become more centralized. Decentralized nations fall apart when contesting with centralized ones. See: Poland.
There are historians who ascribe much of the credit for the collapse of the CSA to its resistance to centralization. See: NC and GA, among others.
I’m not a fan of centralized governments. The only thing they are good at is waging and winning wars. But they are good at that, which means those who resist them must centralize in self-defense.
Just as I’m not a fan of war, but a pacifist people better get warlike real quick if they live adjacent to a militaristic one. See: Moriori.
Well watch the evening news tonight, see how Fedzilla is out of control and we’re fast coming under the rule of a dictatorship, and watch all the feral youths running amok burning down our inner cities.
And be thankful.
BTW, have you ever heard of indentured servants? Seems that was pretty popular in the North (another form of legal slavery except it was inflicted on Irish immigrants.)
Those Black Codes were enacted before Reconstruction and were, in fact, one of the reasons the Radical Republicans used for implementing it. So if you're looking for others to blame you'll have to try again.
BTW, have you ever heard of indentured servants? Seems that was pretty popular in the North (another form of legal slavery except it was inflicted on Irish immigrants.)
Except that indentures had a limited time frame while slavery was forever. Indentured servants were not considered property. Indentured servants could not be sold, or have their childern and spouses sold. Indentured servants had rights under the Constitution. But you're right. Other than that they were exactly like slaves. </sarcasm>
That's priceless! The lil general scolding others on judging historic figures by contemporary standards.....and then indulging in it in the very next sentence!
Well played general!
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