Posted on 01/11/2014 11:16:07 AM PST by Davy Buck
However if one truly wants to make such a big deal out of what we call the armed conflict which occurred in America from 1861 to 1865 , and if its historical accuracy and honesty that one truly seeks, then I think Douglas Southall Freeman is, perhaps, the truest to historical accuracy in coining the proper term . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at oldvirginiablog.blogspot.com ...
Is that a direct quote from King George III or are you paraphrasing?
Reread the Declaration of Independence and tell me which part you find most unacceptable.
Secession is what a occurs when a weaker power desires to part ways. Peaceful dissolution is what occurs when the stronger power desires to part ways.
Had the North not turned to aggression, we would be two or more countries right now. Therefore, "War of Northern Aggression".
And what were their demands? Oh yea, peace. As in let's stop fighting, we'll leave you alone and you leave us alone.
Those are some real wild demands. I can see why an Agressive North wouldn't even talk to them.
West Virginia?
Being full of Southerners and NOT even states, that was a fair claim to be made. Ever read a divorce settlement?
Unilateral secession itself was a hostile act. Compound that with the theft of federal property and the assault on a federal fort and you have an act of war.
Double-down by declaring war as the south did on May 6, 1861 and there is no doubt who the aggressor was. That the United States responded doesn’t change that fact.
There is a difference between secession and rebellion. Had the south not turned to aggression, we wouldn’t have seen so much carnage. Therefore, “War of Southern Aggression”.
Yea, West Virginia is problematic, isn’t it? In the chaos of the insurrection they refused to go along with the hotheads and instead broke away from Virginia.
I don’t know if there was ever a constitutional challenge to the formation of West Virginia.
You contradict yourself. You said that the south “didn’t attempt to garrison Northern forts or claim areas outside of the Confederacy” but now you rationalize that it was somehow OK because there were southerners there (there were northerners there too) or that they weren’t states (California was a free state).
California wasn’t the property of the federal government. It was a free state free to choose.
Any overtures from the CSA were not to take California (or any other territory) as booty, but to allow the inhabitants the authority to choose for themselves.
Figured out the issue of West Virginia yet?
And that differs from the legitimacy of the CSA just how?
Yea, yea, what a load. Had the North not attacked the South, there would have been no war, period. Why? Because the South would have had everything it wanted.
Why are you having such an issue with the facts? The North attacked, finally defeated, and then occupied the South. Why? Because they felt compelled to force themselves on the South and Lord over them. That is as aggressive as you can get.
Yes, those leaving call it secession. Those trying to hold onto power call it rebellion. And that, in a nutshell, is the only difference.
You are starting to sound like Hitler justifying his attack against those aggressive Poles.
Hmmm, let's see. What do they call it when hostile foreign agents come into the boundaries of a legitimate nation and attempt to destabilize it?
Did you need a pat on the head and someone to tell you "good job"? I acknowledge that West Virginia is problematic to constitutionality of unilateral secession. The difference between that act and the pretend secession of the south was that no one protested West Virginia's secession.
Why are you having such an issue with the facts? The south provoked war with the union, attacked union possessions, and declared war against its neighbors. That is as aggressive as you can get.
No one with the possible exception of lost causers considers the the acts of the Revolutionaries “secession”. Their own words were revolt and rebellion.
I call Godwin’s Law.
You mean except for the state of Virginia right?
Up to now I've been posting via my Iphone, which has limited the depth of discussion. Let's see if I can't do better with a keyboard.
You might note that a large percentage of the population in the northern states were perfectly happy with the secession by the South, but I'll get to that in a second.
Secession in itself is not aggression, certainly not in the true meaning of the word. Obviously it was the triggering event to all else that followed, but then so too was the Declaration of Independence the triggering event for the American Revolution (secession) from the UK. King George III and Lincoln were both faced with a people who were declaring self-determination and they both had the option to accept that self-determination or try to repress it. They both chose the latter, with Lincoln obviously being more successful than King George III.
The underlying problem with the South's position was its own hypocrisy of claiming the supremacy of self-determination, while simultaneously being a slave state. I'd call it moral nullification.
Very few in the South wanted war, as they knew who and what they were up against. When peace was no longer an option, the Southern war strategy was to force the North to accept the status quo of a split nation, not to reunite the nation under Southern control.
Now let's look at what did and did not light the fires of war in the North. There existed a small, yet strident percentage of the population in the North, going back to at least the 1830s, who wanted a war of domination over the South to end the evils of slavery; however, a war to end slavery wasn't a very popular notion. It was believed in the South, and rightfully so, that this faction was bent on forcing an end to slavery via excluding expansion westward of slavery (making the Old South an isolated minority that could be voted out of existence). That faction had a strong ally in northern industrialists who were pushing tariff laws that were detrimental to the South.
Southerners were stupid to secede when they did, and how they did. They did it on the presumption that the election of Lincoln was a de facto power move against them. But a peace time Lincoln wouldn't have had the power to act on his motivations in the way the South feared, and the Northern population certainly did not support a war to free the slaves. So the South provided the opportunity for those wanting war in the North to get their way.
Having said that, the abolitionists in the North both welcomed and feared Southern secession. On one hand it offered the catalyst to the war they desired, but on the other hand they feared that the Northern population would accept secession, leaving slavery in place.
You point to Southern provocations leading up to successions, but your provocation is another man's warning. There were clear indications that a coalition of commonality in the south was increasingly unhappy with their minority status. Why? Because they saw an increasingly powerful federal government that was soon going to have the ability to force them to comply. We might like that power in regard to slavery, but not many of us are enjoying all of its other manifestations.
Both the South and the North justified the war, once it started, under false pretenses to get the bulk of their respective populations to get behind it.
The South trumpeted the moral high ground of state's rights and self-determination, but rather hushed up the issue of slavery as the underlying issue that they were exercising those rights over.
The North rather invented the notion of an unbreakable union, which isn't Constitutionally mandated. It fired nationalism in a population that had already embraced a concept of continental manifest destiny. This was needed, because abolitionists had failed to get any considerable traction over the previous 30 years.
So that brings us back to the South making bad decisions. They ascribed the motivation of the abolitionists to the vast majority of Northerners, thus they presumed that an attack was coming. They started raising an army and fortifying their borders. They failed to nurture the more general feelings that existed through most of the North.
Lincoln was faced with a problem after secession, i.e. There wasn't a war. Everyone had gone to their corner, but no one was shooting. Having a deeper understanding of the populations general sentiment, Lincoln knew that he couldn't get popular backing for a war of conquest over the South. He needed something more, and the harbor forts located in the South gave him that opportunity. He ordered his forces to hold them with the hope that they would be attacked. Both sides were waiting for the other to fire the first shot.
Lincoln set in process an ultimatum for the South, which the South stupidly jumped on. He would resupply the forts and defy the South to do anything about it. The South would have been wise to find ways to peacefully stop that military build up, such as floating barricades across the mouth of the harbor, but they instead saw the gauntlet that was tossed down as an insult to their honor, which had to be immediately answered. Sumter was fired on.
So Lincoln got what he wanted, which was something he could trumpet as a Southern attack. An immediate call for 70,000 volunteers went out, to march and Richmond and crush the rebellion.
So who started the war and who wanted the war? Abolitionists were about the only ones who really wanted a war. Yes, once the fever and propaganda kicked up, everyone was gleefully talking about kicking the other sides collective butts, but those feelings were not initially there.
When I say "War of Northern Aggression" you immediately presume that I mean that the South was lilly clean and morally justified, and in that you are incorrect. I like the term because it best describes the 30 years leading up to war and the underlying motivation for not having a peaceful secession.
You might be happier if I modified it to "War of Northern Aggression Against Slavery", which is also true and even more descriptive of the decision makers, although the reality was that most of the North didn't fight to end slavery, but to protect the Union, which was not a justifiable moral position.
The incorporation of slavery into the new United States was a fundamental moral paradox that led to war, and that war created a mindset that fostered an ever growing federal power. In short, the solution to one problem created another. The war was ostensibly fought by the North to protect the integrity of the United States, but one of the far reaching outcomes was to destroy the union as it had been conceived in 1787.
If that is all a bit much, wait until I tell you about why we shouldn't have been involved in WWI. The concept of "preserving the union" was an odd war cry.
I've always considered Godwin's assertion to be nonsense.
In the NAZIs and Hitler we have one of the greatest teaching events of all time. The number of useful analogies, life lessons, and historical warnings that can be taken from that series of events is immense.
Godwin's assertion is based on the premise that no other event or decision can be compared in any way to NAZIs/Hitler, so there is nothing to learn from such comparisons. The truth is that the motivations and actions weren't all that unique, just clarifying by their extreme nature. With over 40 million people killed, less than 100 years ago, I would hope that we could at least be open to learning something from it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.