Posted on 12/30/2023 12:56:39 PM PST by Starman417
Well, this week Republican Presidential candidate Nikki Haley said something that upset people who weren’t going to vote for her anyway. At a Town Hall setting someone asked her “What caused the American Civil War?” It’s not at all a question with great relevance 163 years later, but it is a modern litmus test for many people on the left, i.e. people who likely weren’t going to vote for her anyway.
History is amazing. Like all hindsight, it can be 20-20 in vision and clarity. Over the past 30 years, this is less and less the case. Led by late-night comics and pretend “news” history-when told in partiality and half-truth, is stranger than fiction. It’s entertaining. Political activists, politicians, media, and academia have all since found that telling half of history is a great way to manipulate people. Rather than be steered by what can be learned from studying all of history, they’ll tell us half a story that would lead to a conclusion that would support their activist causes. There is no better example of this, NONE, than the American Civil War.
Those who advocate for studying more “Black History” in school inevitably and emphatically declare that, unlike every war in all human history, the American Civil War was caused by one thing: slavery. Slavery was an aspect of the causes of the American Civil War, but the ultimate proof that it was NOT the cause, is to point out that even if there were no slavery, the war still would have happened.
Those who want to really learn about history-all of it-will study more than just “Black History.” One simply cannot learn with the intent of repeating mistakes, by studying a single facet. These people will remember the first time the United States almost fell to Civil War. In 1832 and 1833 there was an event in American history called, The Nullification Crisis. President Andrew Jackson was trying to balance the Federal budget. At the time, there was no income tax all income came from tariffs on goods. Led by states in the North, the tariffs were raised. This hurt southern agrarian-based economies. Not even 50 years old, people in the South wondered why they should be taxed to help get money to the North. They felt like their representation in Congress was zero. The issue got so hot that the Vice President resigned, and he went to South Carolina to lead the rebellion. There, the state was considering secession based on the idea that higher tariffs were unconstitutional/not for the general welfare, and just for the welfare of the Northern states. President Jackson prepared to personally lead troops into South Carolina and vowed to personally hang anyone who opposed him-including and specifically the former Vice President. The crisis ended when both sides agreed to raise tariffs temporarily, and then gradually lower them back down to about 20%.
Civil War over taxes was avoided.
In the following years, more and more states joined the Union. As they did, an agreement was made that for every state admitted that allowed slavery, another state could be admitted without slavery. The idea was that states where slavery existed would not be outnumbered in the House and Senate, and thus another tariff that would hurt slave/agrarian states would not happen. This worked until The Mexican War happened (1846-1848). After that war, the Federal government needed money again, and so politicians began examining ways to raise tariffs. In Kansas and Missouri, a micro Civil War erupted as wealthy people in the South tried to make both states slave states, and wealthy abolitionists in the North tried to make them both free states. If either group of powerful people had their way, then the balance of power in Congress would be tilted and increased tariffs would pass or fail.
The abolitionist movement in the North grew, but it never became a majority. Its leaders all had far more to gain from raising tariffs than they ever did from freeing slaves. Followers of the movement became increasingly radical. They threatened terrible violence in the South. John Brown, one of the popular followers (more celebrity than leader), went to Kansas and Missouri. There he led violent raids against people who wanted to make the states slave states. One night he and his family broke into some pro-slavery family homes, pulled people out in the middle of the night, and butchered them all. A few years later he and his family tried to seize control of the Federal armory at Harper’s Ferry Virginia (1859). A young Colonel Robert E Lee led a band of US Marines and put down the pathetic attempt to start a slave rebellion.
Slave rebellions were a serious fear in the South. Many believe that the fear of reprisals is what convinced slave owners to stand firm and demand that the US Constitution allow slavery back in 1789. In fact, the year after it was ratified (1792) all the slaves in Haiti rebelled, tortured, and killed everyone who was white or even 1/8 white. There had been several smaller attempts at slave rebellion in the South as well. Given the choice to keep slavery or to risk being butchered in retaliation, most powerful people in the South chose to keep slavery. John Brown’s raid shocked the people in the North, but in the South, it spread terror.
Immediately following John Brown’s raid, Abraham Lincoln and the new Republican Party began their push for the Presidency. In his highly distributed debate transcripts, Lincoln said the way to handle the debt from the Mexican War was to dismiss the Compromise of 1833 and raise tariffs as high as 45%. This upset people in the South, but in Charleston, Carolina it caused fury. Lincoln was an abolitionist celebrity at the time-though not one pledging violence like most of the abolitionists in 1860. Southern states refused to allow someone like Lincoln to become President so they removed him from the Presidential ballots in the South.
THIS is a lesson today as blue states are doing the same thing to President Trump in an era when people are openly talking about Civil War. People who only study “Black History” and convince themselves that the Civil War was just about slavery, will never learn this important lesson for today and next year.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
Is it ok if I dexterously leap to the conclusion that the “Robber Barons” of the Gilded Age were actually the Southern Slavocrats of the antebellum South? Is that how you do your historical revisionism?
Re: 38 - my guess is that fear of separation of families further, the ruthlessness and high degree of control needed to subjugate slaves were contributing factors. There is some interesting research based on period records that asks the question of why there were not more slave revolts.
Of course, if slaves could escape, the Underground Railroad provided a means to escape bondage. But it was a difficult journey.
All my ignoring of the common claim that slavery is the total and sole cause of the worst disaster this nation ever suffered, shows my ability to resist propaganda and think for myself.
The Asch conformity experiments of the 1980s revealed that 80% of the population will believe something if they think the rest of the group believes it.
Far too many of us just accept what the herd says without question. We have forgotten, or some perhaps never learned, how to think for ourselves.
This "herd mentality" gave us Nazism and all it's atrocities. It's given us the Russian Revolution. More recently it's given us the COVID fascism.
Too many Americans nowadays simply accept what they are told as truth, even when they uncover evidence that what they have been told isn't accurate.
We are a brainwashed country, and many of us simply want to stay that way.
The Corwin Amendment proves the North did not really care about slavery. The fact that the South didn't take that offered deal says the South did not really care about it either.
You see, the Corwin amendment is one of those things that punches a hole in the idea that the Civil War was fought over slavery. Why would the anti-slavery side just offer permanent slavery to the entire nation if they were so anti-slavery?
Doesn't make sense. At least it doesn't make sense if you try to make it jive with what is claimed. It implies there is some other reason why the North invaded the South, and it is the examination of that other reason that leads to enlightenment about what happened and why.
May I suggest that you broaden your reading?
The only traitor to the original constitution was Lincoln.
No it did not. That is false. Treason is defined in the constitution as "making war on them" (ie the states). The only one who did that is Lincoln.
Of course if Jackson had had such a policy, nobody would have surrendered. Instead they would have waged guerilla war for generations. Given the immense spaces, the mountains and swamps and other terrain well suited to it, the federal government never would have been able to quell it - and it would have been extremely nasty.
That’s what you fail to take into account - the other side can fight back and be very nasty too if you push too hard.
Slave rebellions were a serious fear in the South. Many believe that the fear of reprisals is what convinced slave owners to stand firm and demand that the US Constitution allow slavery back in 1789. In fact, the year after it was ratified (1792) all the slaves in Haiti rebelled, tortured, and killed everyone who was white or even 1/8 white. There had been several smaller attempts at slave rebellion in the South as well. Given the choice to keep slavery or to risk being butchered in retaliation, most powerful people in the South chose to keep slavery. John Brown’s raid shocked the people in the North, but in the South, it spread terror.
Read the paragraph above. It explicitly states that the South insisted on maintaining slavery as a choice between keeping slaves or risking being butchered in retaliation and that the South insisted that the new Constitution allow slavery because of fear of rebellion. How else should this paragraph be interpreted other than as an argument that the South maintained slavery mainly because of fear of reprisals. This is demonstrably false. If the South wanted to, they could have sold their slaves to owners of sugar plantations in the Carribean or just sent them back to Africa. They did not do so because they weren’t keeping slaves because they feared reprisal, but because their economy and social structure relied on slavery.
Obviously your mind has the necessary dexterity required to make that leap of misunderstanding.
Lincoln advocated abolition in the same way modern Liberals advocate LBGTQ+ and concern for "Black Lives Matters". Not because they believe it, but because it is politically necessary for them to say so in order advance their careers.
Obviously your mind has the necessary dexterity required to make that leap of misunderstanding. Question for you: would you be in favor of the removal of the Lincoln Memorial and of taking the penny out of circulation?
Only 4 states issued declarations of causes. Only one of those 4 listed slavery alone. Oddly you don't seem to want to discuss the other causes mentioned nor do you want to discuss the fact that the Upper South seceded ONLY after Lincoln ordered them to provide troops to attack other states.
The Confederate Constitution where they prevented any state from abolishing slavery also showed their priorities (so much for states rights). “No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed. “
The Confederate Constitution of course did no such thing.
". . . delegates from the Deep South met in Montgomery, Alabama, on February 4 [1861] to establish the Confederate States of America. The convention acted as a provisional government while at the same time drafting a permanent constitution. . . . Voted down were proposals to reopen the Atlantic slave trade . . . and to prohibit the admission of free states to the new Confederacy. . . .
"The resulting constitution was surprisingly similar to that of the United States. Most of the differences merely spelled out traditional southern interpretations of the federal charter. . . . . it was clear from the actions of the Montgomery convention that the goal of the new converts to secessionism was not to establish a slaveholders' reactionary utopia. What they really wanted was to recreate the Union as it had been before the rise of the new Republican Party, and they opted for secession only when it seemed clear that separation was the only way to achieve their aim. The decision to allow free states to join the Confederacy reflected a hope that much of the old Union could be reconstituted under southern direction." (Robert A. Divine, T. H. Bren, George Fredrickson, and R. Hal Williams, America Past and Present, Fifth Edition, New York: Longman, 1998, pp. 444-445, emphasis added)
Both the 1787 and CSA Constitutions have an Article 1.9 which prohibits the General government to legislate bills of attainder and ex post facto laws. Both have an Article 1.10 which denies the States the power to pass such laws. In both Constitutions Article 1.9 applies only to the General government and Article 1.10 applies only to the States.
While the CSA 1.9 prohibits the General government legislating against slavery, CSA Article 1.10 does not mention slavery in any regard. It’s entirely committed to ex post facto and other non-slavery related issues, e.g., excessive bail, entering treaties, laying duties on tonnage and so forth.
So proponents claiming CSA Article 1.9 stops the States from becoming Free States is incorrect. It is solely a prohibition against the General government. If the CSA Founders meant to stop the States from becoming Free States, they would have had to provide that prohibition in Article 1.10.
The Confederacy’s addition to 1.9 denying power to the General government to disestablish the institution of slavery was done so the prohibition would be explicit. Slavery was already implicitly outside the General government’s power when the CSA Founders abolished ‘dual sovereignty’. Slavery, as with any State creation, resided in the sovereignty of their respective peoples.
I'll put it more succinctly for you. The Confederate Constitution was no different from the US Constitution on the issue of slavery except that it banned the importation of slaves from outside immediately instead of having a 20 year grandfather clause like the US Constitution.
and you better believe the result would have been guerilla war lasting for generations until the Yankees agreed to leave. Guerilla war that would have made Northern Ireland look like a picnic by comparison.
Secede
The civil war
Was a waste of time
Read what Frederick Douglass wrote
Blacks had less rights than cattle
Under liberals they’ve only gotten worse
Mindless slaves to a tryannical evil govt - party
Abolitionists couldn't win an election anywhere. They couldn't even get more than single digit percentages of the vote. They were a fringe minority even in the North until at least halfway through the war. I don't buy the claim that Southerners were genuinely worried about abolition. If they were, Lincoln and the Northern Congressional delegation went to great lengths to assure them that they were not at all interested in pushing abolitionism. Quite the contrary they offered slavery effectively forever by express constitutional amendment and strengthened fugitive slave laws.
The Southern states didn't have to insist on the US Constitution allowing slavery. At the time the constitution was written All 13 colonies allowed slavery. Slavery died out in the Northern states very slowly mostly because they couldn't grow the labor intensive but highly profitable cash crops slavery was well suited for, and because industrialization was not suited to slavery.
Those steps would have been taken after the southernmost states had already decided to leave the union, and they weren’t going to change anyone’s mind there, but they may have influenced the Border States and (for a time) the Upper South to remain with the union.
Mindless tool - slaves
To a tyrannical evil govt - party
If it was really all about slavery, why wouldn’t slavery explicitly protected effectively forever in the US constitution have drawn the states of the Deep South back in? That was their big concern right? Lincoln and the Northern dominated Congress handed it to them on a silver platter. The Upper South did not secede until Lincoln chose to attack sovereign states to force them back in and ordered them to provide troops to help do so.
The Corwin Amendment didn’t provide any provision for expansion of Slavery. The Confederacy was doubling down on Slavery and without the North. They had turned their backs on the North. They were moving on without the North. According to Alexander Stevens, in the Cornerstone Speech, things were moving along quite nicely. But they certainly hadn’t given up on expansion of their peculiar institution. They had big plans that included California, Mexico, Central America, South America and Cuba. They were planning to become a world power founded on Slavery. Had France or England sided with them, Honest Abe would have had to release the hand tied behind his back.
Yes, it did. See Freeper ls’s book.
Mabey. Or mabey hecwould have crushed it fast.
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