The REAL cause of the Civil War.

Vanity | 1957 | Ayn Rand

[DiogenesLamp]

For some time I have wondered how to explain the cause of the Civil War in simple terms that are easy to understand. I now see that Ayn Rand did it years ago. Laws passed by a Northern controlled Congress routed all the money produced by the South into Northern "elite" pockets.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "My problem is that all our lives we have been led to believe that opposition to slavery was only for moral reasons and this has always been a deliberate attempt to misinform the public.
I myself didn't realize it was incorrect until a few years ago when I learned the reality in the North was very different from what we had been taught."

Sorry, but I can't answer for the schools you attended.
I was never taught Northerners opposed slavery only for moral reasons, but that is where opposition began -- in churches, the "Third Awakening" iirc.
I was also taught Northern workers opposed slavery for obvious economic reasons, and I learned our political divide over slavery lead, eventually, to Civil War.
There's nothing in that narrative I find false today, so I question entirely your feelings of betrayal & anger.
I just don't believe the source is what you here claim.

DiogenesLamp: "The hated black people.
They hated the idea of black people living among them.
They also hated the idea that black people might take a job away from them.
They weren't moral at all.
They were just as nasty and vicious as we have all been led to believe the Southerners were."

And all that is exactly what I'm talking about, I don't believe a word of your explanation.
I think it's pure Democrat projection -- you look at your own feelings and then project them onto people you never met, know nothing about, have no understanding of who they were or what they felt, but in your mind they must, must be evil because otherwise, who can you blame for your own feelings?!
And it's certifiable lunacy, so if you can't straighten your own mind out, you really should get professional help for it, FRiend.

Nobody here believes all Southerners were "nasty and vicious," that's ludicrous, but some were, and most defended slavery right up to the bitter end.
In 1860, in Northern states like Pennsylvania, New York & New Jersey there lived hundreds of thousands of freed blacks, who nobody pretends lived in a racist-free paradise, but relatively speaking, none ever returned to slavery and "Southern hospitality" voluntarily, so far as I know.

DiogenesLamp: "My problem is people trying to feed me bullsh*t. Usually when someone is covering up the truth, it's not because they have your best interest at heart."

Sure, but slavery was not b*llsh*t, it was the real thing, about as close to a living hell as we can imagine, and Confederates fought long & hard to defend it.
Confederates don't get a free-pass for that, but you are NOT to blame for their misdeeds, FRiend.
Nor do you need to defend them by making ludicrous accusations against Northerners you never met and know nothing about, except that they were abolitionists.

DiogenesLamp: "Fifth Amendment: 'No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces'..."

During the US Civil War Congress defined "due process" relating to rebels' slaves (Contraband of War) in such laws as the 1861 & later Confiscation Acts.

DiogenesLamp: "The assertion that the citizens of the state were "unlawful" citizens is asinine.
At this time, the States defined who were their citizens, not the Federal government."

In 1865 many, many Southerners had officially declared themselves non-citizens and had waged a long, bloody war to prove just how non-citizen they were.
Non-citizens don't get to vote, nor did criminals.
That left a large group of newly enfranchised citizens who were more than delighted to ratify the 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments.

There was no coercion, or intimidation, bribery or blackmail required, at that time.
However... less than 10 years later, all those previous non-citizens again became citizens and then there was plenty of coercion, intimidation, blackmail & terrorism applied to those previous voters for most of the next 100 years!

FRiend, I'm sooooooo sorry if the truth hurts your snowflake feeeeeeeeeeelings! It shouldn't.

DiogenesLamp: "But if you believe in depriving people of their rights is correct and proper, then I don't see where we can reach an agreement on this topic."

FRiend, if you fantasize that non-citizens should have the same rights as fully franchised citizens, then you truly did have a sick, warped "woke" education.
What are you even doing on Free Republic?

DiogenesLamp: "I will point out that I made mention of the same issue on "Instapundit", and Law Professor Glenn Reynolds responded to my comment saying that Law school Academics find the ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments "problematic" because there was no authority to strip citizens of the right to vote."

But they weren't citizens!! They had declared themselves to be non-citizens and fought long & hard to prove their non-citizenships.
As with any criminals, they were then forced to endure a period of probation before being readmitted to the company of civilized human beings.

In the mean time, the real Southern citizens "took care of business" -- 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments.

Sorry, snowflake, if the truth hurts, but you do need to get over that.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Well, like the Democrats, you won't bow to reality, but will instead define everything in such a manner that it can be forced to fit what you wish to believe."

Sorry FRiend, but the Civil War officially ended when President Johnson said it ended, whether that date conforms with your pro-Confederate arguments or not.

August 20, 1866.

"This final date, August 20, 1866, was adopted as the legal end of the Civil War by United States courts, departments, and agencies, as well as Congress.[2]
An 1867 act of Congress extended soldiers' wartime rates of pay "for three years from and after the close of the rebellion, as announced by the President of the United States by proclamation, bearing date the twentieth day of August, eighteen hundred and sixty-six."[76]
The Supreme Court also cited August 20, 1866 as the war's official end in Anderson v. United States.[77]"

[BroJoeK]

BJK: "Collecting Federal tariff revenues had nothing to do with Lincoln's actions regarding Fort Sumter, despite what pro-Confederate propagandists claimed then, and now."

DiogenesLamp: "Lincoln's own statement on the matter has been posted upthread. It contradicts your claim."

Those alleged quotes are pro-Confederate propaganda, nothing more. They are not confirmed by any public or private conversations reported by less hostile sources.

[Albion Wilde]

You"re going far afield from the point of this thread now, delighting in the sound of your own voice, and doing the very thing you accuse me of doing ("what is this idea that that 160 years ago and now are the same?") such as the idea that farmers with large families to help work the farm and livestock settled down with a controversial popular novel like Uncle Tom's Cabin in the evening by the fireside. The only book in most American homes for more than the first two centuries since the Mayflower landed was the Bible. Which, by the way, was interpreted in one verse or another to support both sides of the slavery issue, and was quoted by both sides.

The point of showing parallels is not, and is never, to declare that the past and the present are "the same." But a series of events are often eerily similar in ways that truly bear examination when a simliar threat is looming.

Over and out.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Couldn't get any ships.
Wasn't allowed to use Foreign ships and had to go through the Northeastern monopoly where they priced the carrying fees just beneath the cost of all the fines and penalties he would pay from trying to use foreign ships or crew."

Nonsense! Something like 80% of US cotton shipped directly from Southern ports like New Orleans, Mobile, & Galveston to European customers in Britain, France & elsewhere, much of it on non-US ships!

Didn't "x" already point this out elsewhere?

DiogenesLamp: "It was a great little racket for the North, and it was enforced by the Federal government. "

Nooooooo! Federal law only required use of American owned ships for intercoastal traffic.
So, if, for example, a South Carolina cotton grower wanted to ship his products from Charleston to New York, then that by law must be in an American owned ship.
But, if he wanted to ship directly to a customer in, say, Manchester, England, England, across the Atlantic Sea, then he could use whichever ship he wanted.

That was the law, all your pro-Confederate propaganda notwithstanding.

[Albion Wilde]

Judging people, even your own self, by who their ancestors were is akin to racism, and un-American. Our founders gave up those pretensions to bloodline glory in 1776.

There are freepers with some CW ancestors on both sides—some who fought for the north and others for the south. They have every right to examine the history of the conflict without prejudice, and debate its lingering impacts logically and factually.

It cuts no ice here on the Forum when you use a blood libel against others or call them names like “Reb” or “Confederate” to puff up your misplaced pride. You are not your vaunted ancestor. If you must take pride, take it in how you have served the Lord with your own life. Such as your demonstrable humility.

[x]

You"re going far afield from the point of this thread now, delighting in the sound of your own voice

I take that to mean that I took the trouble to intelligently and carefully answer your rambling comments as best as I could and you don't know how to respond to what I said.

The only book in most American homes for more than the first two centuries since the Mayflower landed was the Bible.

In under one year, 300,000 copies of Uncle Tom's Cabin were sold in the United States. That in a country of 23,000,000 people (20,000,000 free people). It was second only to the Bible in the 19th century. If a novel sells that many copies today, it's a runaway success, and that's in a country and that's in a country about 14 times bigger.

[BroJoeK]

BJK: "But if you wish to invoke our Founders imprimatur, then you will need to go by their definitions, and they regarded the British declaration of war on Americans as a "necessary" cause for revolution.

DiogenesLamp: "Like this one? "He has incited domestic insurrections amongst us..." (Meaning slave rebellions.)"

Noooo... by "declaration of war" I was referring to documents like this, and this.

DiogenesLamp: "There was no "mutual consent" with the British, and it astonishes me that you continue trying to hang on to that silly argument when it clearly is not related to anything the founders did.
They decided unilaterally that they wanted out of the British Union and so they just left."

Again, you refuse to listen to simple reason.
The fact is, our Founders believed in, and practiced, "secession" under two, but only two, conditions:

1. From necessity as in 1776, or
2. By mutual consent as in 1788

Neither condition remotely existed in 1860, and so our Founders would have opposed declaring secession at pleasure.

DiogenesLamp: "And as I have pointed out to you numerous times, the Canadians, under the exact same rule as Massachusetts, did not see the colonies reasons for leaving as "necessity.""

Nooo... the Canadians' situation was vastly different, beginning with numerous "Intolerable Acts" which did not apply to Canada.
In 1775 there were a series of "Restraining Acts" which punished New England for Canadians' benefit!

Most important, Britain's 1775 Declaration of War against Americans did NOT apply to Canada.
And, of course, Brits did not attack Canadians as they did Americans at Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, etc.

English speakers in Canada well understood that they depended on the British Army to protect them against their French-speaking neighbors and against their English-speaking American neighbors.

So there was no similarity between the American & Canadian esperiences.

[Bull Snipe]

They were not going to attack anyone, unless the Confederates forcibly resisted the resupply mission. No resistance, no use of naval force. That was the orders issued to the ships.

[jeffersondem]

“And throwing off the chains of a degenerate monarchy and ocean away is no where near undertaking a violent secession to rend a nation in two and keep a race of people in bondage for the purpose of using them a s slave labor.”

Those are interesting comments. Let’s set aside, for a moment, your clamorous objection to “violent” secession and, by inference, your support or ambivalence for peaceful secession.

What I would like from you is a clarification of the question: are slave states disqualified from seeking independence under the theory of consent of the governed by dissolving the political bands connecting them to another ?

[jmacusa]

“Blood libel’’? Do even know t you’re talking about?

Reb is the term I use to describe you Confederate sympathizers.

Rebs are what your ancestors and Rebs is how I will always refer to you “Confederates in the attic.

It’s a far cry from some Lost Causers who have called me thing s like “Lincoln boot licker’’.

Toughen up Reb.

Get used to it.

[Degaston]

>> Virginia, the most important state in the Confederacy, said they seceded because raising troops to make war upon former states was tyranny.

Let’s see what Virginia said:

https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/virginia-ordinance-of-secession-april-17-1861/

“... the Federal Government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slaveholding States ...”

[jmacusa]

“I never study battles or military engagements because they do not speak to the principles involved’’.

That is, without a doubt The Stupidest thing you have EVER posted.

“War is politics by other means’’ said Clauswitz and politics do not win wars.

Battles are what win wars. Truth is the first casualty in war and politics are the second.

[jmacusa]

I try to be patient with you because you have asperger’s Syndrome, as does my grandson.

My ancestor was a highly educated man, not a soldier but The Chief medical Steward in the Surgeon Generals office in DC during the CW..

Once again because you really are dumb even without the Aspergers.

The jingoistic clamor of the Southern Fire Eaters sought to keep Blacks in bondage and fought a war to do.

Not Lincoln but Jefferson Davis was the enslaver

[jmacusa]

If the South had won the war would it have freed the slaves?

[BroJoeK]

Highlighter: "My Great Grandfather was enlisted in the 29th Alabama Infantry."

One of my great grandfathers served in the 119th Illinois Voluntary Infantry, fought his last battle at Fort Blakely, near Mobile. Wounded, wound got infected, almost died in New Orleans hospital. It's said that after the war he walked home from New Orleans to Quincy, Illinois, to save the cost of riverboat transport.
If that seems like a long walk, he had already force-marched several times that far, with a pack & weapon, during the war.

My great grandfather's family was fresh off the boat from Europe, and it's said that his younger brother joined the Confederate cavalry, though we can't prove it. G.G. had two encounters with Nathan Bedford Forrest, and likely admired the Confederate cavalry man's dash & courage. Younger brother might have picked up on that...

[BroJoeK]

Albion White: "The only book in most American homes for more than the first two centuries since the Mayflower landed was the Bible.
Which, by the way, was interpreted in one verse or another to support both sides of the slavery issue, and was quoted by both sides."

First, on Uncle Toms Cabin, it sold hundreds of thousands of copies in the U.S. alone, millions worldwide, was in the 1850s second in popularity only to the Bible.
Of course, Uncle Toms Cabin was effectively outlawed in the South, where it was condemned as unrealistic, and where Southern authors wrote their own versions.
So, I don't think we can overestimate the book's influence on Northern attitudes towards slavery.

Second, it's true that both sides quoted the Bible to defend their positions.
However, a true understanding of the Bible shows it to be violently OPPOSED to slavery for God's people, meaning Jews & Christians.
That is one reason why some slaveholders resisted teaching slaves to read, learn the Bible and become baptized.
There is just no Biblical authority for holding God's people in permanent bondage.

This also reveals just how radical young Stonewall Jackson was in teaching slaves to read & write from the Bible.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "What I would like from you is a clarification of the question: are slave states disqualified from seeking independence under the theory of consent of the governed by dissolving the political bands connecting them to another?"

Hmmmm... That's an interesting question.

But the question preceding it must be: do you accept our Founders' views on this matter as valid?
If you do, then we can go straight to the question of what our Founders believed about it.
But if you don't, then we are faced with the daunting task of trying to pin down what it is you do believe!

So, for sake of argument, let's suppose you do think our Founders' views are still valid -- what were they?

Our Founders believed that what we might call "secession" was morally, legally justified under two, but only two, conditions:

1. From necessity, as they experienced in 1776, when, for examples, the Brits had already a year earlier formally declared war on Americans and waged several major battles against us. Our Founders believed that under such oppression & injuries they had no choice except to declare independence.

2. By mutual consent as our Founders achieved in, for example, their 1788 "secession" from the old Articles of Confederation and ratification of their new Constitution.

Now, it happened that under British laws in 1776, slavery was lawful in all 13 American colonies, and yet our Founders declared independence in the name of "All men are created equal," so how could that even work?
The answer they adopted was to begin gradually abolishing slavery with the Northern-most States, like Massachusetts, then gradually work southward, through Pennsylvania, New York & New Jersey.

And at the time, every Founder, including Southerners, at least gave lip service to abolitionism, and even supported abolition wherever possible -- notably in the then Northwest Territories and in international imports of slaves.
Southerners like Thomas Jefferson even proposed Federally funded compensated emancipation & Recolonization of freed slaves.

So that was the deal at the time, and it held up until roughly the 1830s, when proposed abolition in Virginia failed, largely due to a recent slave revolt and Virginians' fears over what harm large numbers of freed slaves might do.

Anyway, that was our Founders' answer to jeffersondem's astute question, and I, for one, am not at all sure how to improve on them.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "...Everything built with slave money should be taken away from them. The vast wealthy Northeastern places like Boston, Cambridge, New York, New Jersey and so forth should all be given to black people as atonement for the blood money that was used to build those places."

And thus we see the levels of depravity that long-term addiction to the Lost Cause will bring to a vulnerable human mind. This should be a cautionary tale for anyone contemplating a career in Lost Cause Defense.

Of course our most elite Universities themselves have fallen into intellectual depravities almost beyond comprehension, but one can still hope that less drastic measures will prove adequate to correct their course.

[BroJoeK]

Albion Wilde: "Typical verbally abusive northern snob.
You have derided everyone to whom you have replied on this thread, revealing your insecurity about what you claim is gospel."

Sir, you are a typically verbally abusive Southern snob.
You have derided everyone to whom you have replied on this thread, revealing your insecurity about what you claim is gospel.

I think you could contribute something of value if you spent less time admonishing those you disagree with, and more effort researching facts which could support your own opinions.

Of course, that would require something from you which possibly you don't have?