Man Born in 1846 Talks About the 1860s and Fighting in the Civil War

“And you obviously didn't realize a “Perpetual Union” meant anything in Law.”

Let's put it this way, I am disillusioned by the failed 1502 treaty of perpetual peace.

And the failed 1697 treaty of perpetual peace.

And the failed 1763 treaty of perpetual peace.

And the failed 1830 treaty of perpetual peace and friendship between the United States and the Mingoes, Chiefs, Captains and Warriors of the Choctaw Nation, aka Dancing Rabbit Creek Treaty.

Now, concerning the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, it existed between 1781 and 1789. In other words the failed Perpetual Union lasted just eight years.

Then the states ripped apart the “Perpetual Union” and created another union without the pretentious use of the word “perpetual.”

And that was as much an abomination as it was anywhere else in the country. But New Jersey did not secede.

I am not sure the point you are constantly trying to make.

That is very apparent by your first sentence. You say your ancestor fought "slavery", yet the only difference between South Carolina having slavery and New Jersey having slavery is that South Carolina wanted *OUT* of the US, and New Jersey didn't.

So your ancestor wasn't fighting against slavery, he was fighting against the right to Independence.

He was fighting against self determination and in favor of subjugation... which is in itself a form of slavery.

My ancestor went where they told him to go. It’s amusing that you think the average soldier had any part of that decision.

You keep trying to make a “macro” argument, and try to apply that to individuals.

You can think what you want about the civil war. It honestly doesn’t matter. What matters is that the institutions that were being used to enslave other humans was stopped.

I should never have entered into this discussion. Your mind is locked and they key long thrown away. You seem to want to defend practices that should have been illegal, and were abhorrent. I just want to rejoice that it was stopped and the South was destroyed.

My ancestor went where they told him to go. It’s amusing that you think the average soldier had any part of that decision.

Well this is exactly correct. He went where he was told, which means he was fighting where and whom he was told to fight by the decision makers in DC... who clearly were not fighting to stop slavery when the war began.

You can think what you want about the civil war. It honestly doesn’t matter. What matters is that the institutions that were being used to enslave other humans was stopped.

I now believe that is just propaganda, and that there was no intention to stop these institutions when the war began. The evidence that the USA had every intention of continuing slavery is overwhelming.

You said in the other thread that it was about "money money money" and I absolutely agree that this is the dominant motivation in the vast majority of circumstances, and I likewise argue it was the dominant motivation behind Lincoln's decision to initiate the civil war.

As I have pointed out many times, the South produced the vast majority of the export trade for the United States. (72% of the total trade value.) As the Federal government relied on tariffs to finance itself, the South was contributing nearly 3 times the money as the North, even though the North was 4 times their size.

So we have one clear cut example of how "money money money" was on the line if a war didn't happen.

I should never have entered into this discussion. Your mind is locked and they key long thrown away.

My mind is not locked. For most of my life I believed as do most people; that the war was about slavery, the good guys won, and the bad guys lost.

But my mind was persuaded differently when I had a chance encounter with economic evidence that calls into question the official claims regarding why the war was fought.

So I changed my mind. As John Maynard Keynes told a critic;

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do sir?"

From my perspective, it appears to be your mind that is locked, as are many others. I initially found it uncomfortable to look at a man, (Lincoln) whom I had always been taught to see as a great hero, as anything else, but I am not going to deny evidence just because I don't like where it leads.

You seem to want to defend practices that should have been illegal, and were abhorrent.

You keep making that accusation. I am no more defending slavery because I see the Confederates as having a valid right to secede, than you are if you believe the 13 colonies had a right to secede.

Just because the 13 colonies were all slave states does not mean their independence was only about the issue of slavery. Most people see the issues as separate in the Revolutionary war, and so they should also be separate in the Civil War.

I just want to rejoice that it was stopped and the South was destroyed.

We can all rejoice that slavery is gone, but I think it is immoral to wish suffering on people just because they wanted independence from a more powerful bully nation.

Ukraine is being destroyed right now, and I do not doubt there are many Russians rejoicing in the fact of their destruction. They don't deserve it, and neither did the people in the Southern states.

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