Replies

Clearly Johnny Reb was not as confident that slavery would always be legal.

Do you know what "circular reasoning is"? Here is your version.

"Johnny Reb went to war to protect slavery."

When it is pointed out to you that not only did slavery need no "protection" but all the main players were offering them even greater protection for it, you respond:

"Johnny Reb didn't believe it."

You are still stuck on that brainwashed position of the only reason for the war was slavery, and you reject any other explanation than the one you have been taught all your life.

You advance your premise of "it is only about slavery", and then when evidence is shown to you that it really wasn't about slavery, you dismiss it because you must insist the war was only about slavery.

Your mind goes round and round in a circle with one part justifying the next part which justifies the previous part.

The war was not about slavery. It was about economics and hatred for the other side.

It isn't circular reasoning. I can read what secesh wrote. Or are you saying they were lying?

As usual, you present false arguments that the South had no fears regarding the end of slavery because there was no specific move to outlaw it in 1861, completely dismissing the concept that political realities change over time.

As I recall, the 18th amendment outlawed the production, distribution, and sale of alcohol. Thirteen years later another amendment reversed that. That was after the Civil War, but it isn't hard to understand that nothing in politics is ever permanent. The slave owning class in the South simply didn't trust Northerners, and particularly hated the Republicans. Just like the Democrats do today.

The Republicans controlled Congress for the first time in 1861. Lincoln position was clear:

“Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again. The dangerous ground—that into which some of our friends have a hankering to run—is Pop. Sov. (i.e., popular sovereignty). Have none of it. Stand firm. The tug has to come, & better now, than any time hereafter.”

Of course it was about economics and hatred for the other side. Slavery was the building block of the Southern economy. The fire eaters hated what they perceived as a threat to their more genteel and superior way of life. It wasn't just about slavery in the South. Slavery had to grow, or die. That's why there was bloodshed in American territories like Kansas and Missouri. That's why nutty Southerners tried to invade areas of Mexico and other parts of Latin America to establish new slave territories.

And yes, the Southerns didn't trust Northern offers of compromise on the issue of slavery.

“The argument is exhausted. All hope of relief in the Union, through the agency of committees, Congressional legislation, or constitutional amendments, is extinguished, and we trust the South will not be deceived by appearances or the pretence of new guarantees. The Republicans are resolute in the purpose to grant nothing that will or ought to satisfy the South… the honor, safety, and independence of the Southern people are to be found only in a Southern Confederacy… the sole and primary aim of each slaveholding State ought to be its speedy and absolute separation from an unnatural and hostile Union.”

Manifesto of a group of Southern Democrats delivered to Congress just before paving the Union, led by Senators Louis T. Wigfall of Texas and James L. Pugh of Alabama

Notice it read slaveholding states, not specie holding or tariff opposing states.

“The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions-African slavery as it exists among us-the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.“

Alexander Stephens, Vice President CSA, 1861

Damn dirty liar! Scurrilous jackanape! Feeble tool of the tyrant Lincoln! I do declare sir that had DimLamp been afoot in those heady days of our noble cause, this scalawag would have been brought to heel forthwith!

“ … A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.”

That's from the secession document proclaimed by the State of South Carolina. Seems they weren't as convinced of the permanent legality of slavery when debating the issue in 1860 as you are posting from your computer in 2021.

Perhaps it's you who engage in circular reasoning. You always begin with what you wish to end up with. No matter how many facts prove the contrary to be true, you cling to the lost cause like a flat earther shutting his eyes when shown a photo of our planet from space.