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Don't spin the Civil War
Washington Post ^ | 12.27.10 | E.J. DIONNE jR.

Posted on 12/27/2010 10:31:54 AM PST by trumandogz

The Civil War is about to loom very large in the popular memory. We would do well to be candid about its causes and not allow the distortions of contemporary politics or long-standing myths to cloud our understanding of why the nation fell apart.

The coming year will mark the 150th anniversary of the onset of the conflict, which is usually dated to April 12, 1861, when Confederate batteries opened fire at 4:30 a.m. on federal troops occupying Fort Sumter. Union forces surrendered the next day, after 34 hours of shelling.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Heated Discussion
KEYWORDS: 150; anniversary; antiamerican; butthurtrebels; civil; civilwar; confederacy; dixie; imtougherthanyou; itsaboutslaverydummy; keyboardwarriors; kukluxklan; partyofsecession; partyofslavery; proslaveryfreepers; punkrrliberal; rebelfiction; secession; southcarolina; statesrights; treason; wannabethread; war; warnorthernaggressn; whitehoodscaucus; whitesupremacists; yankeerevisionism; yankspammingkeywords
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To: rockrr

Of course I was. Lee was a true gentleman, warrior, scholar and human being. And he took pride in being an American after the Civil War.


781 posted on 12/31/2010 8:45:39 PM PST by Thumper1960 (A modern so-called "Conservative" is a shadow of a wisp of a vertebrate human being.)
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To: Thumper1960

Negative. I don’t hate anyone because of their race. I tell that story to my students all the time. And as I said, you arent fit to even BREATH his name.


782 posted on 12/31/2010 8:46:09 PM PST by TexConfederate1861 (Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy.)
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To: Thumper1960

I wouldn’t bet on that.


783 posted on 12/31/2010 8:47:03 PM PST by TexConfederate1861 (Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy.)
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To: TexConfederate1861

You idea of tyranny is subjective observation.

In a nation at civil war, many aspects of daily life are abrogated. War has a tendency to do that to a society.

You’d think a “soldier” would know such things.


784 posted on 12/31/2010 8:47:42 PM PST by Thumper1960 (A modern so-called "Conservative" is a shadow of a wisp of a vertebrate human being.)
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To: Thumper1960

Until 1870....when he realized what the victors were doing.


785 posted on 12/31/2010 8:47:55 PM PST by TexConfederate1861 (Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy.)
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To: Thumper1960

Not a “Civil” anything...no excuse.


786 posted on 12/31/2010 8:48:57 PM PST by TexConfederate1861 (Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy.)
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To: TexConfederate1861
Negative. I don’t hate anyone because of their race. I tell that story to my students all the time. And as I said, you arent fit to even BREATH his name.

And yet, I did "breathe" his name.

I will do so again....and again...and again. Unless you send a JW Booth clone to shut me up. :-)

787 posted on 12/31/2010 8:49:31 PM PST by Thumper1960 (A modern so-called "Conservative" is a shadow of a wisp of a vertebrate human being.)
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To: Thumper1960

Naaaaa. You are not worth a pile of horse manure. I have better things to do. I am concerned with electing Sarah Palin, not debating with Marxist Log Cabin Republicans.


788 posted on 12/31/2010 8:51:58 PM PST by TexConfederate1861 (Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy.)
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To: Ditto
If you have an answer to what state right was being violated in 1860, say so.

I did. Self-determination, the right to own your own future. The fire-eaters saw the Superstate coming and didn't want to play. Can you blame them? Income taxes and Prohibition and foreign empires, the Great White Fleet, and all that good stuff? Oh, and 100 years of poverty for the South. That shouldn't have counted, though, right? Right? Moral arguments trump hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of plantation investments? A little unrealistic to ask Tidewater planters to take a swan dive off Niagara Falls, isn't it?

Slavery was never a practical issue for public consideration. It was always a wedge issue, a tool of the Black Republican faction. It was hate-politics, get-ready-to-fight politics, demonizing the Southerners in preparation for a great national split and civil war over issues that were NOT under discussion to the degree slavery was. But those were the real issues: tariffs and what we would call now "industrial policy" -- the old American System of Henry Clay, revisited by the Republicans at the instance of their patrons in business and industry.

Don't stoop to ad homin[em].

It isn't an ad hominem attack to assert that a political cabal is at work in the United States pushing an alien meme that has murdered >100 million people worldwide over the last 100 years, and that they have seized history and historiography, and that these themes are an integral part of their national electoral politics that has just installed a Marxist in the White House.

The Presence in the White House is proof that the cabal exists -- the man would otherwise be pushing a broom in New York, not sitting in the Oval Office plotting against the Internet.

And it is not ad hom to point out that South-baiting is his party's stock in trade, to alienate Battleground States' voters from the conservatives in the South, by waving bloody shirts and B-movie scarecrow stereotypes in voters' faces, anything to peel them off the conservative cause.

The South is the great unswallowable lump that has retarded the triumph of socialism and NWO-ism since the 1930's, and an enemy of the South is a friend of Marx and the NWO.

Pretty simple argument, and not ad hom argle-bargle.

789 posted on 12/31/2010 8:53:56 PM PST by lentulusgracchus (Concealed carry is a pro-life position.)
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To: TexConfederate1861

What are you referring to that did Lee did in 1870? Besides pass away that is.


790 posted on 12/31/2010 8:55:08 PM PST by rockrr ("I said that I was scared of you!" - pokie the pretend cowboy)
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To: TexConfederate1861

So, you’re going to try to tarnish Palin like you’re tarnishing FR?

You are a devious little tyrd, ain’t ya.


791 posted on 12/31/2010 8:55:36 PM PST by Thumper1960 (A modern so-called "Conservative" is a shadow of a wisp of a vertebrate human being.)
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To: TexConfederate1861
Did Lincoln not say that he would not allow slavery to expand? Yes, he did.

Absolutely Correct. It was his only campaign promise. It was the only reason the Republican party existed. And he had total constitutional authority to do so dating to the Northwest Ordinance and the First Congress which expanded upon that prohibition of slavery in the territories.

The territories were creatures of the National Government, not the states. The states had no 'rights' over the territories.

By definition, that is not a violation of States Rights. Congress had a say in what happened in the territories, The states did not.

And then ask yourself, why did the slave states, especially the states that had very high slave populations care what happened in the territories so much that they were willing to go to war? Answer that, and you will understand why secession happened and why the war happened.

792 posted on 12/31/2010 8:55:40 PM PST by Ditto (Nov 2, 2010 -- Partial cleaning accomplished. More trash to remove in 2012)
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To: lentulusgracchus

So speaketh the legitimate Voice of the South.

/sarc


793 posted on 12/31/2010 8:57:07 PM PST by Thumper1960 (A modern so-called "Conservative" is a shadow of a wisp of a vertebrate human being.)
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To: Thumper1960
Your sarcasm in lieu of answer is like costly incense. Thanks.
794 posted on 12/31/2010 9:04:45 PM PST by lentulusgracchus (Concealed carry is a pro-life position.)
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To: lentulusgracchus; Ditto

My my my, but you must be parched from all that writing ;-)

I won’t bother with that non-responsive answer you gave to Ditto’s reasonable question because I’m frankly fascinated with the second part of your complaint.

You say: “It isn’t an ad hominem attack to assert that a political cabal is at work in the United States pushing an alien meme that has murdered >100 million people worldwide over the last 100 years, and that they have seized history and historiography, and that these themes are an integral part of their national electoral politics that has just installed a Marxist in the White House.”

I would agree (if that were the case, which it is not).

You continue:

“The Presence in the White House is proof that the cabal exists — the man would otherwise be pushing a broom in New York, not sitting in the Oval Office plotting against the Internet.”

That I can agree with 100%

But then you tip over into lala land with this:

“And it is not ad hom to point out that South-baiting is his party’s stock in trade, to alienate Battleground States’ voters from the conservatives in the South, by waving bloody shirts and B-movie scarecrow stereotypes in voters’ faces, anything to peel them off the conservative cause.”

I guess that’s your way of intimating that someone here is doing the work of....? Øbongo? Karl Marx? Groucho Marx?

Again, if you think one of us is an agent of Øbongo’s or the dhimmicrat party, alert the mods and make your case. I suspect you’ve dipped into the sherry a little early and have let the festivities get the better of you.

Perhaps you should try again tomorrow?


795 posted on 12/31/2010 9:06:07 PM PST by rockrr ("I said that I was scared of you!" - pokie the pretend cowboy)
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To: lentulusgracchus
The fire-eaters saw the Superstate coming and didn't want to play.

And that is historical nonsense. You are projecting backwards. The same time that Calhoun was pushing nullification and secession doctrine he was also pushing internal improvements -- i.e. Federal spending for roads and harbor improvements. Superstate was not in their imaginations. It was in no ones imagination until 40+ years after the Civil War with Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson and the damned 'Progressives'.

In the 1860 election, the platforms for all three parties (Northern Democrats, Southern Democrats and Republicans) all called for Federal support for a trans continental railroad. There was no disagreement on it.

Aside from the war, look at what Lincoln and those early Republicans did on domestic policy. The Homestead Act gave Federal property away to citizens who were willing to live on and work the land. It opened the west to settlement. The Land Grand College Act gave away Federal land to the states which they could sell to the highest bidder and use the proceeds to open state colleges. The Federal government was shedding power, not trying to concentrate it.

Those people weren't thinking about some mega government. They really did the opposite.

The fire-eaters only had one concer, The expansion of slavery. That was their only issue.

796 posted on 12/31/2010 9:23:15 PM PST by Ditto (Nov 2, 2010 -- Partial cleaning accomplished. More trash to remove in 2012)
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To: Ditto
[Me]The fire-eaters saw the Superstate coming and didn't want to play.

[You] And that is historical nonsense. You are projecting backwards.

Robert Toombs wasn't:

No wonder they cry aloud for the glorious Union; they have the same reason for praising it, that craftsmen of Ephesus had for shouting, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," whom all Asia and the world worshipped. By it they got their wealth; by it they levy tribute on honest labor. It is true that this policy has been largely sustained by the South; it is true that the present tariff was sustained by an almost unanimous vote of the South; but it was a reduction - a reduction necessary from the plethora of the revenue; but the policy of the North soon made it inadequate to meet the public expenditure, by an enormous and profligate increase of the public expenditure; and at the last session of Congress they brought in and passed through the House the most atrocious tariff bill that ever was enacted, raising the present duties from twenty to two hundred and fifty per cent above the existing rates of duty. That bill now lies on the table of the Senate. It was a master stroke of abolition policy; it united cupidity to fanaticism, and thereby made a combination which has swept the country. [Emphasis supplied.]

The emphasized wording shows that Toombs was establishing a "patterns-and-practices" complaint against Northern politicians who were catering for the Interests in imposing tariffs, and then spending the proceeds as fast as possible.

This is exactly what House Speaker Joe Cannon did with the "Billion-Dollar Congress", in order to justify the continued collection of the Tariff, 30 years later, when revenues were in surplus and in "danger" of wiping out the public debt -- and with it, Congress's power to lay taxes to retire same.

Call it a "huff-and-puff" technique: "Huff" enormous tariff revenues, then "puff" them out on projects favored by the Interests, the projects never having to stand on merit, but deriving their "justification" from the need to keep the Tariff!

As I said, Toombs and the rest saw how the Yankee bagatelle would play out, and they, acting for their States, seeing the permanent Republican incumbency coming, resigned the game and walked out.

797 posted on 12/31/2010 10:00:08 PM PST by lentulusgracchus (Concealed carry is a pro-life position.)
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To: Ditto
The fire-eaters only had one concer, The expansion of slavery. That was their only issue.

Disagree trenchantly. Lincoln and the Yankee papers are on the record with their tender regard for tax and business revenues from the South.

798 posted on 12/31/2010 10:02:26 PM PST by lentulusgracchus (Concealed carry is a pro-life position.)
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To: Ditto
.....Federal support for a trans continental railroad. There was no disagreement on it.

Well, there was a little ..... like, where the terminus should be. That's why Stephen Douglas and Jefferson Davis made Senate cloakroom medicine that resulted in Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act with its doctrine of "popular sovereignty". Jeff Davis got "popular sovereignty" and the Little Giant got the railroad terminus in Omaha, due west of, and conveniently due west of, Chicago.

Now, if Davis got screwed on the "popular sovereignty" issue and Kansas came into the Union as a free State like California ..... how long do you think the South would have supported the Union Pacific road?

Douglas: "Tell you what. I'll give you popular sovereignty, and you give me the big railroad -- and the money to build it."

Davis: "Okay, deal, done."

Douglas: "Oh, sorry, Illinois Free Soilers and Abe Lincoln said 'screw you.' No popular sovereignty after all. Sorry."

Davis: <Leaves>

799 posted on 12/31/2010 10:10:51 PM PST by lentulusgracchus (Concealed carry is a pro-life position.)
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To: Ditto
The Federal government was shedding power, not trying to concentrate it.

You'll never convince anyone of that who's read the Fourteenth Amendment.

800 posted on 12/31/2010 10:14:55 PM PST by lentulusgracchus (Concealed carry is a pro-life position.)
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