The War Is Over - So Why The Bitterness?

"The fact that it is acceptable to put a Confederate flag on a car *bumper and to portray Confederates as brave and gallant defenders of states’ rights rather than as traitors and defenders of slavery is a testament to 150 years of history written by the losers." - Ohio State Professer Steven Conn in a recent piece at History News Network (No, I'll not difnigy his bitterness by providing a link)

phi11yguy19 said: Slavery was an institution forced on the southern colonies by the northern ones.

Then K-Stater said: Then why didn't the Southern states just end it, as the Northern states did? What was stopping them?

Tater, you know as well as I do that the Northern states didn't end it for humanitarian reasons. They sold the slaves South instead of freeing them.

phi11guy19 said: The North was NEVER trying to free blacks. The free soil laws were to stop blacks from entering the new states AT ALL by outlawing slavery and reserve the land for whites (Lincoln's words). To say the war was over slavery is bunk.

Then rockrr said: Then why did the southern fire-eaters claim it over and over again in their Ordinances of Secession?

rockrr, you really need to read more. Secession convention material is available. So are the Declarations of Causes.

Then why didn't the Southern states just end it, as the Northern states did? What was stopping them?

Northern states had slavery alive and well right past the war (remember, Emancipation didn't free a single Northern slave). The overwhelming majority of slave traders AND owners were Northerners, but moved the slaves to the South because there was no money to made in Northern climate agriculture. The overwhelming number of Southerners were NOT slave owners, nor had any interest in the institution. The North didn't "end" it until AFTER the Civil War, while passing Amendments without legal representation from the states who "never seceded", and without regard to the future welfare of those they "freed".

Does that help answer your question, ye who should know all this already if you read the congressional records included in Durand's book as you said you did. Or our words straight out of Northerner's mouths on the record exempt from the discussion out of inconvenience to your train of thought?

phi11yguy19 said: The last four states to secede (over 1/3 of the secession) AGREED with abolitionists on the issue of slavery yet seceded when Lincoln shot on SC.

x said: Neither the abolitionists nor the governments of those states nor a majority of the people there would make such a claim.

x, you know that if the Southern states had truly wanted to keep their slaves all they had to do was stay in the Union. You remember, the Corwin Amendment.

sure, AC, Chapter 7 note 51 - Lincoln's address to Congress on July 4, 1861:

"Our States have neither more nor less power than that reserved to them in the Union by the Constitution, no one of them ever having been a State out of the Union.... Having never been States, either in substance or in name, outside the Union, whence this magical omnipotence of "State rights," asserting a claim of power to lawfully destroy the Union itself? Much is said about the "sovereignty" of the States, but the word even is not in the National Constitution, nor, as is believed, in any of the State constitutions.... The States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status. If they break from this, they can do so only against law and by revolution. The Union, and not themselves separately, procured their independence and their liberty. By conquest or purchase the Union gave each of them whatever of independence and liberty it has. The Union is older than the States, and, in fact, it created them as States." [emphasis in original].

Seeing how each state had to RATIFY the constitution to accept it (several years after it went into effect), it's amazing to hear him say that none were States before the Constitution or that they didn't obtain independence separately (contrary to their treaty with Britain).

Then why did the southern fire-eaters claim it over and over again in their Ordinances of Secession?

Because it was one of many issues pressed upon them right from his inauguration speech where he contradicted many things he promised while campaigning? Funny, but I recall their ordinances having quite a few more words and issues than "slavery" and not just fire-eating tunnel-vision.

Or because I'm an ignorant illiterate Southern apologist redneck from Philadelphia.

Probably the latter.

In 1861 there were 15 slave states.

Correct!

7 seceded shortly after Lincoln contradicted years of campaign promises to leave the South alone by saying "all or nothing" during his inauguration speech.

4 seceded immediately after he declared war from D.C. against them via an attack on SC.

4 remained happily NORTHERN throughout that "war to end slavery".

For once, the facts perfectly agree with your statement.

You may be thinking of something in -- or not in -- the Constitution, because it doesn't look like you're right about the Declaration.

Like I said, original draft of the Declaration, both in the Jefferson Papers, or AC Ch. 25, supporting doc 1:

"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people for whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injuries."

Too much typing to refute your other points here, but it's out there. Ex., many states amended their constitutions after the Haitian slaves slaughtered thousands of French under Napolean, caused in part by inflamatory literature (a tactic tried by Northerners, esp. the Union League which is only a few miles from my home!)

Tater, you know as well as I do that the Northern states didn't end it for humanitarian reasons. They sold the slaves South instead of freeing them.

We're talking about the claim that the North forced slavery on the South. If it was involuntarily forced down their throats then why didn't the South say 'enough' and end it? They had that right. Why didn't they?

Northern states had slavery alive and well right past the war (remember, Emancipation didn't free a single Northern slave). The overwhelming majority of slave traders AND owners were Northerners, but moved the slaves to the South because there was no money to made in Northern climate agriculture. The overwhelming number of Southerners were NOT slave owners, nor had any interest in the institution. The North didn't "end" it until AFTER the Civil War, while passing Amendments without legal representation from the states who "never seceded", and without regard to the future welfare of those they "freed".

We're not talking about the Northern states. We're talking about the Southern states. The states you claim were forced to accept slavery and, apparently, forced to continue it against their will. Why were they forced to do that? If slavery was so repulsive to them then why not just end it by an act of their state legislature and be done with it, thus freeing themselves of its yoke and telling those vile Yankees to go pound sand? Why didn't the Southern states do that? Instead of sitting back and watching the number of slaves they were forced to own grow into the millions? Do you or Durand have an explanation?

Does that help answer your question, ye who should know all this already if you read the congressional records included in Durand's book as you said you did.

You haven't even addressed the question. Let me repeat it for you - if, as you say, the North forced slavery on the South then why didn't the South just end it? Since according to you and Durand they didn't want it to begin with? That's the question. What's your answer?

Seeing how each state had to RATIFY the constitution to accept it (several years after it went into effect), it's amazing to hear him say that none were States before the Constitution or that they didn't obtain independence separately (contrary to their treaty with Britain).

So...you're claiming that Mississippi and Louisiana and Alabama and Tennessee and Arkansas and Florida and Texas were all states before they were admitted to the Union?

...(a tactic tried by Northerners, esp. the Union League which is only a few miles from my home!)

phi11guy19 - You are the first person I've seen mention the Union League. I see posts on the KKK quite frequently, but you're the only one I've seen mention the League. The Klan is indefensible, but the League was no better.

The parts of US history which are highlighted and the parts which are suppressed never cease to amaze me. US history should be presented just like it happened.

The war waged by Confederate democrats was absolutely meant to enshrine a right to enslave and disregard the rights to representation by ALL United States citizens equally.

For the Confederate democrats and still today the Progressive democrats the concept that the Constitution could mean whatever it is that they want it to say persists. There was never any natural right to unilateral secession nor is their a right to privacy as defined by democrats or a right to suppress religious expression or to murder, etc,,,,,,,,

All of these twisted views of our Constitution persist due to democrats. The Confederacy started most of the democrat parties perverted views on liberty and our Constitution.

Seperation of Church and State was started by Progreesive democrats aligned with Confederate demorats and their love of the KKK. Republicans had invited balck Americans to religious ceremonines at the Capitol and Confederate democrats started boy-cotting the ceremonies and complaining.

Abortion, the unholy allliance with populism and Unions, the attack on the Constitution and the attack on Traditional Values ALL started with the Confederate democrats and then was championed later by the Southern Progressive democrats.

The Confederate democrats were enemies of our Constitution then and so are the Progressive democrats today.

Nothing has changed.

If slavery was so repulsive to them then why not just end it by an act of their state legislature and be done with it, thus freeing themselves of its yoke and telling those vile Yankees to go pound sand?

1. Those who were for it or with the ancestral fortunes invested in it would vote their lives away.

2. Similarly, those who were indifferent knew voting it away would cripple their economy and families since it was engrained at that point (to little to no fault of their own).

3. Those who opposed it often reluctantly maintained it (Jefferson, Lee, etc.) because they had no answer for the question "And then what?" with regards to the newly freed slaves (which the North DEFINITELY didn't answer).

Slaves didn't live the movie Roots from infancy to old age (although surely there were heinous exceptions, I don't recall hearing of mass graves of thousands like you hear even in more modern times like WW2, Cambodia, or last week's Ivory Coast findings). Many were essentially "family" with their masters, helping raise and school children, attending church, etc. and all were provided for cradle-to-grave. No one agrees with any of it now, but there's a reason it was termed the "peculiar institution".

Also, most Southerners understood first-hand that throwing them out to the wolves would be cruel, and they'd be turned into unskilled paupers and political pawns, but that was the North's answer. They flipped the notion of citizenship on it's head and gained a huge "permanent" voting base, and installed "Northern" governments in the South during Reconstruction...all Constitutionally of course. Then and now, people learn and test their way into citizenship, suffrage, etc. and many have been denied for lack of assimilation, yet in one fell swoop 4 million passed the test requirements without answering a single question about the society and responsibilities they were about to assume.

Do you need me to give you page numbers and references for you to ignore again or is that enough for now?

My response was to your post #95: Then why didn't the Southern states just end it, as the Northern states did? What was stopping them?

I correctly pointed out that the Northern states didn't end the practice for humanitarian reasons.

Now Tater, you're gonna end up tripping over another question you asked PA if ya ain't careful here. You know, the one about,"... how long would it take before the Southern states didn't feel the need to rebel to defend their peculiar institution in the face of a law to end it?

You know as well as I do that the Northern states which ended slavery phased it out over a period of years and sold their slaves to the South. Was the South supposed to sell them back to the North after, oh, say, a 10-20 year phase like those Northern states used?

You also know that if the Southern states were so determined to keep their slaves, all they had to do was remain in the Union.

It is so amusing to see Lost Causers argue to defend their side’s position on continuing slavery for economic and social reasons as a so-called state right.

It is no different today. Progressive democrats make distorted economic arguments for continuing their bigoted policies that segregate groups of the population in to different segments for them to control and manage.

The Progressive democrats of today are the successors of the Confederate democrats of old.

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