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Endless complaints. |
Posted on 12/31/2004 2:21:30 PM PST by Caipirabob
What's wrong about this photo? Or if you're a true-born Southerner, what's right?
While scanning through some of the up and coming movies in 2005, I ran across this intriguing title; "CSA: Confederate States of America (2005)". It's an "alternate universe" take on what would the country be like had the South won the civil war.
Stars with bars:
Suffice to say anything from Hollywood on this topic is sure to to bring about all sorts of controversial ideas and discussions. I was surprised that they are approaching such subject matter, and I'm more than a little interested.
Some things are better left dead in the past:
For myself, I was more than pleased with the homage paid to General "Stonewall" Jackson in Turner's "Gods and Generals". Like him, I should have like to believe that the South would have been compelled to end slavery out of Christian dignity rather than continue to enslave their brothers of the freedom that belong equally to all men. Obviously it didn't happen that way.
Would I fight for a South that believed in Slavery today? I have to ask first, would I know any better back then? I don't know. I honestly don't know. My pride for my South and my heritage would have most likely doomed me as it did so many others. I won't skirt the issue, in all likelyhood, slavery may have been an afterthought. Had they been the staple of what I considered property, I possibly would have already been past the point of moral struggle on the point and preparing to kill Northern invaders.
Compelling story or KKK wet dream?:
So what do I feel about this? The photo above nearly brings me to tears, as I highly respect Abraham Lincoln. I don't care if they kick me out of the South. Imagine if GW was in prayer over what to do about a seperatist leftist California. That's how I imagine Lincoln. A great man. I wonder sometimes what my family would have been like today. How many more of us would there be? Would we have held onto the property and prosperity that sustained them before the war? Would I have double the amount of family in the area? How many would I have had to cook for last week for Christmas? Would I have needed to make more "Pate De Fois Gras"?
Well, dunno about that either. Depending on what the previous for this movie are like, I may or may not see it. If they portray it as the United Confederacy of the KKK I won't be attending.
This generation of our clan speaks some 5 languages in addition to English, those being of recent immigrants to this nation. All of them are good Americans. I believe the south would have succombed to the same forces that affected the North. Immigration, war, economics and other huma forces that have changed the map of the world since history began.
Whatever. At least in this alternate universe, it's safe for me to believe that we would have grown to be the benevolent and humane South that I know it is in my heart. I can believe that slavery would have died shortly before or after that lost victory. I can believe that Southern gentlemen would have served the world as the model for behavior. In my alternate universe, it's ok that Spock has a beard. It's my alternate universe after all, it can be what I want.
At any rate, I lived up North for many years. Wonderful people and difficult people. I will always sing their praises as a land full of beautiful Italian girls, maple syrup and Birch beer. My uncle ribbed us once before we left on how we were going up North to live "with all the Yankees". Afterwards I always refered to him as royalty. He is, really. He's "King of the Rednecks". I suppose I'm his court jester.
So what do you think of this movie?
My WAG of the moment is that Lincoln knew his best bet for starting a fight was to pick on the South Carolinians, so that's why he decided to use Sumter as the burning fuse to war.
But that opinion will have to await documentation and the arrival of more and better information.
All that said, Davis had to play for time and not provoke the North. He failed to do that. Fault his, for his part in it.
But you Lincoln partisans want Jeff Davis to eat Lincoln's crow, too -- which the Southerners won't let you get away with.
The first nation state were the Austrian Habsburgs 1781...modern slavery that is.
It had ebbed and flowed all over the planet for as long as recorded history. It was estimated that during the Roman (Holy or otherwise) Empire that half were in servitude....Europe in the middle ages too.
Slavery then more often died because of other reasons than emancipation.
More fun facts:
27 million slaves estimated today. In today's dollars...a good young adult african slave in New Orleans in 1820 cost 40,000 dollars. The same slave today in the Sudan is about 90 dollars. That is amazing.
The EP was a war time military order that only applied where military law (martial law) was in effect.
It's an open forum and you posted material that was obnoxious and inflamatory.
"The answer: the south" ..........LOLolROFTLOL (where do they come from? Is there something wrong with you? lolollllloooo
Nothing's wrong with citing facts, buddy. If I were able to take a random sample of free blacks living in the United States circa 1855 the probability is greater than 50% that the person I sampled would live in the south. In 1860 there were 476,000 free blacks living in the United States. 251,000 of them, or 53%, lived in the south. The state with the largest free black population was Maryland. Their second most likely state of residence was Virginia. Pennsylvania was third.
You seem to know soooooo much about how and which course of action 'Free Slaves' would have taken in the year 1855. From where does this mind boggling overview stem?
The United States Census Bureau, which kept data on the states of residence by demographic group. They still do it today. Ever heard of them? Or were you too busy making snide, obnoxious, and uneducated comments to fill out your census form last time
Since obviously being the self proclaimed expert of slavery in America
Excuse me oh obnoxious one who likes to shoot his mouth off, but exactly where did I ever "proclaim" myself an "expert" on slavery? The answer, of course, is I did nothing of the sort but rather cited a simple easily verified statistical fact from the U.S. Census bureau that you did not like and preferred not to believe because it clashed with your ignorant preconceptions that paint the south as a backwards segregated wasteland and the north as a city on the hill of peace, tolerance, and racial enlightenment. The simple fact is that most free blacks stayed in the south or went to other southern states because many northern states - particularly those on the Ohio River - wouldn't take them at all.
naturally you have always been in favour abolition of this evil
Have I ever stated that slavery was anything other than evil, sinful, and wrong? The answer is no.
Your expertise on the subject of slavery in American implies you have an abundance of African American scholars as friends which rigorously tutored you on all aspects of this in depth subject material, is this correct as well?
First off, I'm still waiting for you to show me where I somehow "proclaimed" myself an "expert" on slavery or whatever it is you think I'm an expert in. When you are done with that task, perhaps you can then show me why it requires "rigorous tutoring" from "African American scholars" to be able to read published and widely available data from the U.S. census bureau and widely available statute books of state laws in the 1860's. And after you have completed that task, perhaps you can answer me why you think it matters if a person is trained by "African Americans" or not to become an expert on slavery seeing as no living African American can attest to the personal experience of slavery today - our society being 140 years removed from slavery - meaning the availability of historical knowledge on that institution is not racially exclusive.
a retread...maybe Mortin Sult....though he seems a hair more lucid.
What free black population they had? Hate to break it to ya, Non-Seq, but 53% of all free blacks in the United States as of 1860 lived in the south. Maryland had the most of any one state and Virginia - the state that you insist was oh-so-discriminatory before the war based upon a constitution they adopted in December of 1861 - had the second highest of any state.
Note the operative phrase there: "before the Civil War." That is your stumbling point, Restorer, as United States was indeed a very low tax society for a period of just over a decade prior to the war. This was due to the tax cuts of 1846 and 1857. That was great and all, but it was also soon to go by the wayside.
In 1860 Republicans in the House of Representatives proposed and passed one of the largest tax hikes in American history - their bill doubled or tripled the tax rate on virtually all dutiable items and raised the average rate from only 17% to over 40% in one broad stroke. The Senate recessed without voting on it until after the election, so along comes Abe Lincoln and the Republican Party Platform of 1860. Their campaign pledge to the north: vote for us and we'll push the tax hike through the senate and give you the spoils of increased expenditures and protection. It passed in February of 1861 at the height of the secession crisis, only days after Lincoln publicly pledged to make it the top legislative priority of his first term if it hadn't passed by inauguration day. Over the next three years the rate continued to climb to over 50% on average.
In summary, the United States from roughly 1846 to 1860 was one of the lowest tax, pro free-trade societies in the world. In 1860 and 61 it completely reversed course through one single bill and became one of the biggest protectionists in the world.
BTW, much of the federal government's income came from land sales, not taxes.
That is false. Estimates for 1859 place the amount of government income paid by taxes on dutiable imports at over 90%. What little came from land sales was rapidly reducing and would be nonexistant in a few years due to the Homestead Act. The same Republicans who were pushing for a tax hike also pushed for the Homestead Act to hand out free land parcels (it was the original welfare program of the United States). The issue came up for debate in 1860 and almost all of the southerners opposed it in favor of a bill to expand government land sales and used them to finance the government instead of taxes. As you well know, the Republicans then campaigned on the promise of free homestead handouts, won, pushed them through congress, and completely anihilated the use of land sale revenues as a means of financing the government.
I concur. We've had a lot of these lately. Don't know if you saw it but a few days ago banned neo-nazi Lincolnista #3fan came back as "cvn76." We discovered him and he got the zot. Must be something in the water (or should I say ice) up north right now.
Not one cent of it. The bill passed the House in 1860 before anybody even knew Lincoln was going to be a candidate for president, much less the election. It passed the Senate in February of 1861 just before his inauguration (Lincoln had pledged a few days earlier to push for it as his top priority in Congress if the bill wasn't passed by inauguration day) at which time the war was still several months ahead on the horizon and most of the country was still banking on a compromise plan coming through Congress to end the crisis like they did in 1850.
Not that they knew in 1860 that it would wind up costing that much.
Indeed. Nor did they even know Lincoln was going to be elected or that there there was going to be a war in 1860 when the bill was introduced. The Republicans pushed it because they wanted a tax hike. They wanted a tax hike to give protection to northern industrialists and to finance pork projects in the northern states. There was nothing more to it than that plain, unpleasant, and inescapable truth.
If they had, might have dampened war enthusiasm.
You would be mistaken. Wars are often costly in terms of money, but those costs are also eventually paid to somebody making that somebody rich. Caesar famously recognized this paradox: the more you conquer, the larger tax base you have to collect from. The larger your tax base is, the more money you have to pay soldiers to do more conquering.
I also suspect non-military internal improvements got pushed to the back of the line for a few years.
They did to some degree, though the west coast was largely removed from the war and kept right on building. It might also interest you to know that the tax hikes that started in 1860 were all retained and even slightly expanded upon after the war was over and well into the 1880's. In a sense, the lowest taxation point in United States history (exempting the years right after the founding) was from 1857 to 1860 and we have yet to return to its rates or anything even remotely close.
Many of the major promoters of "internal improvements" were southerners and slaveholders. Henry Clay built his entire career on promoting them.
That is true of the Kentucky Whigs like Clay, but Clay left more of a political legacy in Lincoln than any southerner to endure him. Like Clay, Lincoln was an old internal improvements & taxes Whig from the 1840's. The Whig Party died off in the 1850's and its few remaining southern adherents - most of them Kentuckians - changed their views and became Democrats and Constitutional Unionists or they were out of office or dead by the early 1860's. By the time the tariff and internal improvements votes came up in 1859, 60, and 61 it was strictly a regional issue. The south voted almost unanimously against them (on the tariff bill there were only 2 or 3 southern congressmen who bucked this trend) and the north voted almost unanimously for them (only a dozen or so northern congressmen bucked this trend as well - all of them rural Democrats).
I've never seen a figure, but I wouldn't be surprised if an amount disproportionate to population was spent on such improvements in southern states.
You would be incorrect. The Red River's navigation system wasn't stabilized beyond a brief annual rainy season when the river could be sailed on past Shreveport until after the war (Gen. Banks learned this the hard way in 1864 when he tried to sail up it to invade Texas). The Mississippi had some work done on it, but recall that rivers are most navigable as they get closer to the ocean. The problem parts emerge further inland, and when going further inland on the Mississippi also means going further north on a river that stretches from Minnesota to Louisiana. Now, the Ohio River that feeds into the Mississippi was the subject of several major navigation projects particularly around Pittsburgh, but that would make it a northern project.
As to railroads, the southern ones as a rule were built with more private capital than the northern ones. Their main purpose was shipping export freights crops such as cotton to the ports, so exporters and shippers gladly footed the bill to build them where they needed them. In the north the industrialists went to Uncle Sam with their hands out and railroad companies were created for no other purpose than to build railroads and take advantage of the handouts being offered to build them.
Quoth the Non-Sequitur, "Squack! Tu quoque! Tu quoque!"
How about sticking up for this flag for a change?
Just across "the Ohio River" for escaping slaves of the South is not exactly far enough away from vicious slave traders.
"..no living African American can attest to the personal experience of slavery today in our society..."
How about neo-slavery, that did indeed exist through enforced segregation in every southern state, until forcibly ended in the mid-1960's.
Are you sorry segregation ended?
No obsession in particular. It's simply one of many matters of historical interest to me and, just like you, I'm commenting on it here.
Just across "the Ohio River" for escaping slaves of the South is not exactly far enough away from vicious slave traders.
Far enough or not, you again miss/neglect the purpose of my comment, namely that the states along the Ohio river (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois) tended to have the worst anti-immigration laws for blacks.
How about neo-slavery, that did indeed exist through enforced segregation in every southern state, until forcibly ended in the mid-1960's.
Now you are simply inventing terminology. Slavery was slavery and segregation was segregation, but the two were never each other. Ask Booker T. Washington if you do not comprehend the difference.
Are you sorry segregation ended?
Seeing as I never espoused it or participated in it, why would I be?
And speaking of sorries are you sorry for your previous obnoxious, verbally abusive, and ignorant comments spread throughout the earlier regions of this thread?
Excuse me, but exactly when did LG not "stick up" for the American flag?
Also, may I ask why you insist he "stick up" for a gay-looking cheap trashy Vegas bar sparkly sequin version of it instead of the plain old regular version?
Hope you've been holding down the fort - work has been a nightmare.
Actually, the the first governmental unit to reject slavery was .... Georgia! In January 1735, the state Trustees passed "An Act for ren'ring the Colony of Georgia more Defensible by prohibiting the Importation and Use of Black Slaves or Negros into the same", which was approved by the Privy Council 3 Apr 1735. The act prohibited the importation and use of slaves after 24 Jun 1735, refusing to permit 'such a horrid crime.' James Oglethorpe wrote in 1734, '[s]lavery, the misfortune, if not the dishonor of other plantations, is absolutely proscribed [forbidden]. Let avarice defend it as it will, there is an honest reluctance in humanity against buying and selling, and regarding those of our own species as our wealth and possessions.'
good snag.
You remind me of Abbot & Costello's old landlord (Sid Fields). No matter what the boys would say or do, this schlub would counter it.
Landlord: "What's so good about it?"
Lou: "Well, for one thing I'm having birthday party."
Landlord: "And I'm not invited, right?"
Lou: "Of course you are Mr. Fields."
Landlord: "Mmmm, I can come to your party, but not eat!?
Lou: "Sure you can eat."
Landlord: Ha! So you want to to get fat and have everyone in this building laugh, and say Sidney Fields is an over stuffed slob, eh?"
Beantown moral arrogance and arraunt -- and intellectual rot.
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