Posted on 07/26/2021 4:33:01 PM PDT by ammodotcom
Of course you could.
What happened in 1863 is not germane to why the North invaded the South.
But it is germaine to your wild claims about how much of the U.S. economy was dependent on the South and how much of the tariff revenue the South accounted for. Both of which are unmasked as the BS that they are by what happened once the South rebelled.
Nope. The nonsense you claim isn't there. I checked.
All without secret orders from Abraham Lincoln.
“Federal government helped destroy Southern shipping and ship building.”
What legislation did the Congress of the United States pass that impacted Southern shipbuilding.
Southern shipbuilding failed to keep up with the changes in ship construction that started in the 1840s. They could still build small and medium sized vessels out of wood with sails. The rest of the shipbuilding industry was converting to iron framed, iron plated and steam driven ships. the ship builders in the South did not have the technology to make the change and were reluctant to make the financial investments necessary to convert their yards for wood hull/sail powered ships to ships built with iron hulls and steam propulsion. The Federal Government had little to do with this set of circumstance.
He is talking about the relationship between the British Monarchy and the Colonies. And he calls it a “union”. That is so he can make his bad analogies comparing the American Revolutionary War to the American Civil War. It just means he is getting tired and is relapsing. When he mentions his magic kingdom, called the “British Union” then it is really time for him to take his nighttime meds.
The last forty or fifty years weren't typical of the last century or two. Recent years saw the growth of a secular progressive ideology on the East and West Coasts. These secular progressives were more hostile to traditional religious, patriotic, moral and familial values than earlier liberals or progressives. They weren't very many or very popular at first, even in those regions and in the Democratic Party. That explains McGovern's landslide loss. But as the secular progressives grew more numerous and more powerful, Evangelicals became more conservative and the South joined the Mountain and Plains states as a Republican stronghold. As that happened the Democrats consolidated their hold on the Northeast and the Pacific Coast. Some voters became true believers and others just didn't feel at home with the Republicans.
This isn't a situation that people would have recognized in 1880 or 1940. Slaveowners liked to say that Northerners were all heretics and unbelievers, and so did some Southerners in later years, but the average Northerner knew his neighbors and knew they weren't pagans or atheists, and if he didn't agree with all of them about religion, they had many other things in common. Midwesterners out on the Plains may not have had much in common with New Yorkers, but they had no more in common with Virginia or Mississippi planters. What you are missing is that the United States -- that is to say the Northern States -- had a common culture for a century after the Civil War and had more in common with each other than they did with the Southern states. That only began to change about fifty years ago when the mainstream culture began to collapse, and things are still in flux now.
Political coalitions within a country don't form the basis for a new country. It's said that the Democratic Party got started when Jefferson's Virginia planters hooked up with Aaron Burr's New York political machine. They both hated the Federalists, but there wasn't much basis for nation building between the two. And if you were a Great Plains farmer who resented being the tail of the Eastern dog would you really want to turn yourself into the tail of the Southern dog? Your whole theory seems to be that Southerners had reason to resent the big city New York merchants and capitalists. If New Orleans transformed itself into the great commercial capital, wouldn't far away farmers resent its power? Why would they want to submit to its power when they could form their own country? Once the one united nation broke up, there was no reason to trade one set of faraway rulers for another.
Those states would have flipped, and it would have left the Great Lakes/New York self interest zone which still controls our politics today.
You don't really live in today's America, do you? There's a metropolitan culture in New York City or Los Angeles or San Francisco or Chicago, but it's also in Atlanta, Houston, Charlotte and other big metropolitan areas. There are elites and there are non-elites, but I don't see guys in Staten Island or Upstate New York or Downstate Illinois or Ohio wielding great power. Probably bankers and moguls in Charlotte or Atlanta or Dallas have more say than they do in how things are done. Some Southern states now have at least as much clout in Washington as the Great Lakes states and their cities are more in tune with Washington's policies than Rust Belt towns.
As i've pointed out, there were only a dozen slaves in the entire New Mexico territory by the 1850s, and at that time no one was putting up any opposition to it.
And as I've pointed out, those were African-American slaves. Native Americans had been enslaved under the Mexicans, the Spanish, and the pre-Columbian Indian civilizations. Probably there were still some Indians who were essentially enslaved even under US rule. The region wasn't inhospitable to slavery and probably would have adapted to African-American slavery if the Confederates had taken over.
There would have been no great migration of slaves into the western territories. Those areas cannot support large scale slave farming, and slaves were too valuable in the cotton growing regions to waste on the western territories.
Where slavery was legal and slaveowners controlled the government, uses would be found for slaves. I believe the Confederate Constitution protected the right of slaveowners to take their slaves everywhere. That was reason enough for the Plains States not to want to join the Confederacy.
You missed my point though. You've said Northerners hated Blacks and didn't want to live among them and have to compete with them. If true, that's all the more reason why they'd want a national border between themselves and the South.
I think he harps on the transcontinental railroad, so maybe we’ll hear about Union Pacific next.
I wouldn't take Southern complaints about shipping and shipbuilding at face value. There were Southern shipping companies, as well as companies with offices in the South, the North, the Border States, Britain and Europe that it would be hard to characterize as entirely of one region. Southerners complained that US laws closed US coastal shipping to foreign shipping companies. If those laws were repealed, it might have benefitted planters, but would have done little or nothing to encourage native Southern shipping and shipbuilding.
From the other thread:
“You have been presented evidence that what you have been taught is a lie.”
No, I haven’t.
You have, you just refuse to admit it. You *WILL NOT* admit it, but that is a decision of will, not of intellect.
It is no more valid than saying “The Smith's divorce was not about physical abuse, because Mr. Smith promised to quit beating his wife.” If Mrs. Smith does not trust her husband, and does not believe he will actually stop the violence, then she will go through with the divorce despite assurances that the violence will end.
The Fire Eaters of the South did not trust the Northern politicians, particularly Lincoln. They did not believe that the abolitionist movement would end. They feared efforts to enact state by state prohibitions outside of any federal amendment. Finally, they wanted to expand slavery and the Kansas–Nebraska Act worked against that goal.
You have proved nothing.
I think rather that DL’s main argument is that the proposed Corwin Amendment proves the North was not anti-slavery. I have witnessed the evolution of his thoughts about the proposed Amendment. Firstly he came onto one of these threads proclaiming that Lincoln (by the proposed amendment) intended to make Slavery “express and irrevocable”! He was then shown that Lincoln meant that he saw no reason that the amendment shouldn’t be made express and irrevocable (not Slavery). Then he came up with (with zero proof) and pushed the idea on a thread here that Lincoln was involved in the writing of the amendment! Lincoln, upon bringing up the matter of the Corwin Amendment in his 1st inaugural, stated “which I have not seen”. But DL doesn’t, couldn’t believe Honest Abe’s own words. Instead he has to make them into pretend things that are more palatable to himself.
Everyone knows that Lincoln had already said to Greeley that if he could preserve the Union half slave, all slave or no slaves, he would do it. His primary objective was to preserve the Union! So there was nothing new in the proposed Amendment. Although DL seems to think there is.
Of course the “proposed” Corwin Amendment was only ever ratified by 5 States, two of which later rescinded their ratifications. One as recently as 2014. Buchanan actually signed it even though his signature wasn’t a requirement. So, not only is the “proposed” Amendment academic, it is a moot point. Despite DL handwringing it to death.
I have always and will always state the obvious history. The Southern states seceded to preserve the institution of slavery from the perceived threat, real or otherwise, of Northern abolitionists. The Northern states refused to recognize the right of secession, and fought to preserve the union. Over time this took on the added tenor of a crusade to end slavery.
All the rest is just chatter.
The other problem with making the Corwin amendment the linchpin of your position is that it totally ignores the decades long strife between free and slave states, and the fear of abolition that manifested itself in Southern politics prior to 1860.
A decade before G.E. Haynsworth fired the first shots of the Civil War, Southrons met in Nashville to consider secession. What was their reason for consideration of severing ties? It wasn’t tariffs, or New York shipping firms.
Let’s see what the members of the convention itself wrote in their official declaration.
“We, the delegates assembled from a portion of the states of this confederacy, make this exposition of the causes which have brought us together, and of the rights which the states we represent are entitled to under the compact of Union.
We have amongst us two races, marked by such distinctions of color and physical and moral qualities as for ever forbid their living together on terms of social and political equality.
The black race have been slaves from the earliest settlement of our country, and our relations of master and slave have grown up from that time. A change in those relations must end in convulsion, and the entire ruin of one or of both races.”
President Polk, himself from Tennessee, was angry that Southerners were undermining his efforts to reach a peaceful solution to the question of slavery at the time. He recalled in his diary what he had told his cabinet. “I stated that I put my face alike against southern agitators and northern fanatics and should do everything in my power to allay excitement by adjusting the question of slavery in preserving the Union.”
Alexander H. Stevens of Georgia wrote, “I find a feeling among the southern members for a dissolution of the Union-if the anti-slavery measures should be pressed to extremity…”
The Richmond Enquirer opined “The two great political parties of the country have ceased to exist in the Southern States as far as the present issue of slavery is concerned. United they will prepare, consult, combine, for prompt and decisive action.”
The Columbia Telegram wrote “…form a Southern Confederacy, in possession by force of most of all the territories suitable for slavery, which would include all south of the northern latitude of Missouri.”
https://www.americanantiquarian.org/proceedings/44806651.pdf
There are many more quotes I could provide but the intent was clear. In the minds of the Southern power structure the abolitionist movement was threatening the institution of slavery, and a growing desire to break away was afoot. The Wilmont Proviso had drawn particular ire and though it went nowhere it triggered a reaction. In the end the Fire Eaters were blocked at the convention by more moderate factions. There was no rebellion. That had to wait ten years, but in that decade tensions simmered until the election of Abraham Lincoln proved too much for the defenders of slavery to bear.
Slavery is a fig leaf. What they wanted was total economic control, and that's what they got.
Had the Southern states been of no economic value, and no economic threat, they would have let them go without a fight.
I have touched on this point many times before, and I'm thinking you either missed it, or didn't grasp it, or perhaps just refused to accept it.
There is more than one thing going on with the slavery issue regarding the strife between free and slave states.
The primary reason "free" states hated slavery is because they regarded slavery as competition for their exchange of labor for payment. The areas of the nation that are right now the hotbeds of Unionization, in those days would have regarded slaves as "scabs" who would take the bread out of their own mouths.
Yes, people have a deep and abiding hatred for the possibility of free labor undermining their wages and income.
The second main reason "free" states hated slavery, is because they hated black people. They regarded them as inferior and an abomination to normal society, and they wanted a society with no black people in it. Slavery brings black people into their society, and they did not want them. This is easily seen by looking at the northern "black codes" which were actually quite horrific in their unconcern about human rights.
The third reason why "free states" hated slavery was hatred of wealthy "elite" who owned the slaves, and therefore lived in luxury and did not have to work for a living. This same socialist style hatred of the wealthy is still geographically apparent in the same areas of the country that vote Democrat nowadays, and the same areas that voted Republican in the 1860s. Again, Geography and Demographics show the same pattern over time. Unionized (labor unions) areas of the country tend to vote for protectionism, strong government, government subsidies, and high taxes. They are the party of big government. Today they are Democrats. In 1860, they were Republicans.
The forth, and least significant reason for why "free" states opposed slavery was on the basis of being morally wrong. Only a tiny minority of people, mostly kooks in places like Massachusetts (which is still full of kooks today) cared about the morality of slavery. These people were seen as a minority of lunatics and mostly ignored, but this view of abolitionists changed over time when it became necessary to justify all the bloodshed caused by invading the South.
The propaganda organs of the North started portraying their motivation as a "moral crusade", because this has more power to sway the public than either a retaliation invasion, or an invasion to "preserve the Union." Everyone loves to get on a moral high horse and condemn other people when the "elite" crowd does it. We see this bandwagon effect over and over again throughout history. Global warming, Covid19 Transgender crap, Black Lives Matter, and so forth.
The "elite" declare a moral crusade, and the bulk of the stupid people simply follow along with it because they want to be thought "sophisticated" and of a like mind with the "elite."
But let us not fool ourselves into thinking this was their previous motivation. Their previous motivation was mostly self interest followed by intense racial hatred.
The abolitionists of the 1850s were about as popular as Animal rights activists are nowadays. They were a relatively small fringe minority.
Oh, I left out one more thing, and I believe it is the chief driver of all the organized strife between the free and slave states. That is *Control of Congress*.
The Northeast had gotten itself in the position of causing money streams from the South to flow through it's pockets, and they did this by some natural advantage in geography, but also through the usage of congressional power to pass laws favorable to their financial interests, and this is leaving out the subsidy laws they passed to favor railroad building, canals, and shipping/fishing subsidies.
Control of Congress determined if these money streams would continue as before, or get redirected back to the South.
The "Free Soil" party, which was one of the primary proponents in these free/slave fights, was headquartered in New York. I now believe it was an astro-turf sock puppet intending to disguise the motivation of New York interests in keeping the laws exactly as they were by preventing the Southern states from ever reaching a threshold of control in congress where they could overturn or change any of these laws that benefited the New York area.
Civil War history looks very different for me from what it once did. Once I started seeing the possibilities for corruption and ulterior motives, they became more and more obvious to me.
Perhaps all these things are just a coincidence and I am over-exaggerating their influence and impact, but they are mighty strange coincidences, because they always coincide with keeping the New York/Washington DC power base (same bastards still f***ing with us today) in control of power.
"Slavery" is just a smoke screen to hide their real intent, which was the continuation of power in their hands.
That post was perhaps your finest, and possibly the most verbose, avoidance of the issue at hand. It’s not Northern motivations for opposing slavery that are in question, but rather Southern motivation for secession, which as my quotes show, was clearly the preservation of slavery.
You’re a gem Dim, you truly are.
As the Northern motivations were the real cause of the strife, and the real cause of the war, they are the motivations which need to be justified.
They invaded other people running up a death count of 750,000 people to subjugate them to the will of Washington DC.
Are you blind to the deep state running a fake election to get Trump out? Are you blind to the lies being spread by the deep state right now? Are you ignorant of January 6 "trespassers" being held in solitary confinement for six months for relatively trivial charges, while the entire media system is trying to call them "insurrectionist?"
The primary force of evil we face in this country today, right now, is the corrupt "elite" Washington DC influence cartel and it's money laundering allies and associates.
The current political fight is about POWER. It's not about "voter suppression" or "mask mandates" or "illegal immigrants".
Are you blind?
And I'm not going to let you wiggle out. This is the first time you've defected to “Northern motivations were the real cause of the strife” and you're can't change horses in midstream. The Confederacy tried to leave the Union. The reason was to preserve slavery. The motivations of the abolitionists don't matter.
“The areas of the nation that are right now the hotbeds of Unionization, in those days would have regarded slaves as “scabs” who would take the bread out of their own mouths.”
Hmmmm….
“Planters often hired out their slaves as carpenters and other tradesmen. European shipwrights taught slave apprentices, who became skilled shipwrights themselves and trained other slaves. White artisans, however, complained that slave artisans were too prevalent in South Carolina, depressing wages and making jobs scarce. In 1744, Andrew Ruck petitioned the Carolina Commons House of Assembly for relief from the large number of slaves “employed in mending, repairing, and caulking ships. . .and working at the Shipwright’s Trade.” In 1751, the Assembly placed a tax on imported slaves, and one-fifth of the revenue was used as a bounty to encourage shipwrights to move to South Carolina.”
https://www.scseagrant.org/rise-and-fall-and-rise-south-carolinas-maritime-history/
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