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.

[central_va]

Lincoln refused to meet with a Southern peace delegation before Ft. Sumter. He definitely was not willing to make a deal. He wanted war.

He confirmed that in his second inaugural address.

[DiogenesLamp]

Some of WarIsHellAintItYall’s posts read suspiciously like Pea Ridge’s or HistorianDorisKearnsGoodwad’s.

Pretty sure Pea Ridge doesn't feel the need to post under a different name. He seems quite the serious honorable type. I am not familiar with the other alias you cite.

He or she may have done some research, but I wouldn’t take the claims of personal knowledge and ancestral connections seriously.

Fog of war. One thing i've learned is that there is a lot of misdirection going on out there, so you should not simply accept something someone says. It may be wrong and it may be a deliberate lie.

But to my mind, the statements had the ring of truth about them.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "The Confederacy was fighting a war of survival, the North was fighting a war of subjugation. I give defenders a lot more leeway morally than I do attackers."

Except, of course, it was Confederates who first attacked, and not just at Fort Sumter, but all over Union States & territories -- from New Mexico & Oklahoma to Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia & Maryland -- for the Civil war's first 12 months more engagements were fought in the Union than in Confederate States, and more Confederate soldiers died in the Union than in "their own country."

So, the war ended in the South, but it started mainly in the Union.

DiogenesLamp: "This nation drafted men for war, even when our own survival as a nation was not under threat."

Our survival as a nation was under greater threat, arguably, than in any war before or since. The tolls of dead & wounded alone should be a clue.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp quoting: "If elections are conducted outside of the law, the people have not conferred their consent on the government.
Such elections are unlawful, and their results are illegitimate.”
— Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley, writing for the Wisconsin Supreme Court..."

If people declare themselves to be non-citizens and then fight the bloodiest war in our history just to prove how non-citizens they are, they cannot expect to be immediately re-enfranchised once they put down their weapons and stop killing their fellow citizens.

In the meantime, those previously unjustly subjugated, now newly enfranchised, who vote to ratify certain amendments codifying their newly won freedoms -- they can justly enjoy their moment of victory.

That's what happened.

[DiogenesLamp]

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.

What was the probability that a force... having been assembled since December of 1860, which had already fired on one supply/reinforcement ship, and having dragged up dozens of cannons to aim at the fort and the channel, and having even going so far as to build a floating cannon battery and fire boats to illuminate the enemy in the dark, and who.s President had already said they would fight...

... was gonna resist?

You keep trying to weasel clause your way out of this. Everyone. Everyone. Every man on those ships, every officer that administrated them, every man in Lincoln's cabinet and Lincoln himself knew they would be "resisted."

The very act of sending warships is an acknowledgement in the belief that they would be "resisted."

*NOT* being resisted was as likely as winning the lottery at that point in history. Even Major Anderson in the fort acknowledged that "resisted" is exactly what was going to happen.

Are you proposing the notion that Lincoln was so stupid that he thought they wouldn't be resisted?

You are clutching at this tiny little straw of "if resisted" to ignore the larger fact that Lincoln issued orders that could only be interpreted by the Confederates as an act of war.

[DiogenesLamp]

Appreciate the input. Interesting to read the perspective of a Northerner. Not being sarcastic. Good debate.

You will very quickly be less interested in his perspective. BroJoeK is the sort of fellow, if you ask him what time it is, he tries to tell you how to build a clock.

He will flood you with irrelevant data.

[BroJoeK]

"The New England Hartford Convention -- threatened secession under Pres. Monroe, leading Monroe to move troops to invade New England, if necessary."

Sorry my bad. As"x" pointed out, it was President "Father of the Constitution" Madison, not Monroe.

[DiogenesLamp]

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

Well then I guess I will just have to try harder to beat that.

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

The reason I don't care about the actual battles and such is because there was no possible way to win that war fighting a population 4 to 5 times your size with such primitive weapons.

Numbers were always going to carry it in the end. The only battleground upon which they could have won, and the only point I regard as relevant to modern times, is the right to independence.

And on that ground, the North was very much in the wrong, and could not have won that battle in a fair debate.

The North was hypocritical even. Massachusetts and Connecticut agitated to leave the Union in 1812. Apparently those states couldn't remember that from 50 years earlier.

[DiogenesLamp]

One of my great grandfathers served in the 119th Illinois Voluntary Infantry,

I notice quite a lot of people feel the need to justify what their ancestors did. Nobody wants to believe their ancestors did bad evil things. The mind rejects such ideas.

I have no ancestors in this fight. I don't feel the need to justify what any of my people did, because my people were not here in 1861.

[BroJoeK]

Lazamataz: "*KNEW* this thread was gonna blow up when I saw the title!"

A lot of genuine passion gets converted to words on these threads. I think... that's a good thing, I know it's a lot of fun!

[DiogenesLamp]

Very good point. Countries winning wars or staying together or winning independence can have economic consequences, but that doesn't mean that economic reasons were always the main cause of wars. German domination of the world would have changed things for everyone. America's defeat of Germany and Japan made us the world's top country, but that doesn't mean we went to war to become the world's top country.

Would be a good point except for the fact that the money situation was well recognized before the war. It was not an unintended consequence of a war, it was, as I have long argued, the very reason for the war.

We cannot be expected to believe that the Northern population had always been enamored of the idea that "the Union must be preserved!" As I pointed out earlier in the thread, Massachusetts and Connecticut had threatened secession themselves back in 1812. The evidence indicates the Northern people were just fine with the South leaving and had no concerns about it at all until the businessmen among them started looking at the money issue.

[BroJoeK]

GrandTorino: "Many southerners will tell you it is only half-time."

HA!! Not on Free Republic, here we're just getting into the first quarter! ;-)

Score: still zero-zero. Ball on 50 yard line. Big pileup, no telling who's got it now!

[DiogenesLamp]

Interesting, if accurate, about Uncle Tom's Cabin. I'm sure it captivated the masses with its fundamental truths, just like the story of George Floyd did in our times,

Interesting comparison. The story of George Floyd is all lies. Uncle Tom's cabin is fiction, but it worked as propaganda in the same manner as the Saint George story did.

[DiogenesLamp]

Exactly right. In Lincoln's mind Corwin changed nothing that wasn't already understood about the U.S. Constitution -- slavery could still be abolished by States whenever they wanted to.

This is an argument that "permanent slavery" was already in the US Constitution, which is an argument that several people on my side of the topic have pointed out for years.

So how do you legally go from "States have a right to slavery" to "States have no right to slavery"?

Call everyone who disagrees with you an "insurrectionist!" ?

Deny their right to vote? Appoint puppets to run their government and who will vote what Washington DC wants instead of what the real, actual people who are actual citizens of their state want?

I guess modern Washington DC still remembers the methodology that Lincoln showed them.

[DiogenesLamp]

Lincoln threw the first punch. The confederates simply got in the first hit.

[DiogenesLamp]

Except, of course, it was Confederates who first attacked,

Stopped reading right there.

Warships sound familiar?

[DiogenesLamp]

If people declare themselves to be non-citizens and then fight the bloodiest war in our history just to prove how non-citizens they are, they cannot expect to be immediately re-enfranchised once they put down their weapons and stop killing their fellow citizens.

Black men between the ages of 14-45 commit about 40% of the total violent crime in this nation.

Must we conclude that all black people are criminals and have committed crimes because some did?

So you have a collection of people. Do you judge them *ALL* guilty of crime, and suspend *ALL* their rights? Or do you weigh each one individually in what we call "due process"?

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "The packet shipping system which was ran by New York, would move from port to port acquiring enough cargo which they would then deliver to an ocean crossing vessel."

No, the truth is, you don't know who owned those packets because there were hundreds of them, of all sizes & capacities, many locally manufactured to take smaller loads shorter distances, down river.
The idea that all or even most were owned or "ran" by "New York" is simply not supported by any objective evidence.

And if we were truly honest, we'd admit that "New York" could be anyone, including family members of wealthy Southern planters, sent there for schooling, stayed to "learn the business".
And we know that Southerners did own ocean-going ships because some were famously caught with cargos of slaves in the years just before the Civil war.

DiogenesLamp: "Through New Orleans mostly. New Orleans was the primary shipping hub for all cotton produced anywhere near the Mississippi river, which was a vast area."

It's true that New Orleans was the largest Southern port, by far. But it was far from the only one to ship cotton directly to European customers. Mobile & Galveston on the Gulf Coast, Savannah & Charleston could all ship directly, as the need arose.

[BroJoeK]

Albion Wilde: "My question is, what’s in it for you to feel so superior to people whose land was invaded and despoiled, and who were subjected to what amounts to an occupation for the next century? Is is the liberal moral preening over your captive audience of sophomores?"

Sorry, but if you think this is all about somebody trying to "feel superior" then you are simply projecting your own mindset onto other FReepers. Nobody is here to "feel superior", we are here to correct... ahem... "misinformation" that is so easily posted in large volumes.
And we do defend against those who love to exaggerate "the North's" moral failings while minimizing their own.

And yes, it's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it because the world is just full of very confused puppies.

You might even be one.

[jmacusa]

‘’Borrowed from a long dead relative’’.

Are you serious?

Really? How stupid are you?.

Everyone of you Rebs here go on about your ‘’long dead relatives’’ who served in what ever Confederate division.

I live in today world. Tell your Confederate buddies it’s the 21 st. century.

And I voted for Biden?

Jesus Christ is that the best you got?