Among the Big Lies our Lost Causers advance this is one of the biggest -- Confederates "only wanted to be free". For starters they wanted to take with them at least 15 of 33 states and two or three of seven US territories (1860 boundaries). They would have taken a lot more than that. Once the New York based coalition couldn't control the economics of trade with Europe, first the border states would move to the stronger economic horse, and then the midwest would move there too.
With a successful independence, the South would have found numerous other states coming into their sphere of influence due to the economic advantages of doing so. The only people who would have been hurt were the wealthy Northern manufacturers, shippers and so forth. The very people backing Lincoln and his efforts to stop direct Southern trade with Europe.
If left alone, the Nation would have come to look like this relatively quickly.
This was the natural destiny for those states outside of the influence of New York power. This is what would have happened eventually because of economic and social resonance once the New York powers were held back.
New York is still feeding streams of lies into our national consciousness. They are fighting back against their eventual loss of power to the normal people of America.
DiogenesLamp post #629:
"Once the New York based coalition couldn't control the economics of trade with Europe, first the border states would move to the stronger economic horse, and then the midwest would move there too.
With a successful independence, the South would have found numerous other states coming into their sphere of influence due to the economic advantages of doing so.
The only people who would have been hurt were the wealthy Northern manufacturers, shippers and so forth.
The very people backing Lincoln and his efforts to stop direct Southern trade with Europe.
If left alone, the Nation would have come to look like this relatively quickly." Much of what DiogenesLamp posts on these threads is pure fantasy of his own concocting, but in this case at least, his fantasies do reflect an underlying reality: Confederate extreme economic and political aggressiveness.
In DiogenesLamp's fantasies, "the South" doesn't just want to be "left alone", but instead was aggressively out working to destroy the Union, and therefore represented, legitimately, an existential threat to it.
Economic threat? Yes, according to DiogenesLamp.
Political threat? Absolutely, some Lost Causers tell us the act of secession alone destroyed the Constitution, and therefore the Union, so only a "tyrant" could hold it together.
What about military threat? Here posters like central_va tell us that, yes, Confederates did want to hurt damn-yankees in a passive-aggressive sort of way, but they were never a serious military threat to the Union itself.
But if we see with DiogenesLamp the Confederacy aggressing the Union economically & politically, then eventually "minor incursions" like Gettysburg in 1863 become long-term occupation and territorial aggrandizement.
In short, Confederates represented an existential economic, political and military threat to the United States, so that when Confederates formally declared war, on May 6, 1861, the Union had no real choice except to destroy the Confederate military and also the economic system (slavery) on which it was based.
DiogenesLamp: "New York is still feeding streams of lies into our national consciousness.
They are fighting back against their eventual loss of power to the normal people of America."
And here DiogenesLamp returns to his usual la-la fantasyland.
In fact, the New York metropolitan area, at 20 million people, is only 6% of US population, producing about 8% of US GDP.
Even the entire Northeast Acela corridor, at 52 million, is only 17% of US population producing 20% of US GDP and is exceeded in size and population by the Great Lakes megalopolis (Upstate NY to Wisconsin), with 56 million people and 20% of US GDP.
US Megalopolis regions, #1 Great Lakes, #2 Northeast Acela, #3 Southern California, #4 Piedmont Atlantic, #5 Texas Triangle, #6 Florida, #7 Northern California, #8 Gulf Coast...:
