The lady doth protest too much...
Posted on 01/10/2011 8:57:06 AM PST by cowboyway
Ditto that.
I should repeat something I've said privately on different occasions: from just what I've seen here, rustbucket reminds me of a Southern gentleman in the finest old tradition.
He is highly educated (mostly self-educated) and always polite.
His opinions are based on facts and reasons, so you will learn a lot in debating him.
And of course his opinions are fixed solid, so you will never change his mind.
But you will enjoy the experience, and appreciate the efforts rustbucket makes to present a good case.
So I say rustbucket is a credit to himself, to his Lost Cause and also to Free Republic.
For whatever it's worth, just my humble opinion... :-)
And if such compliments reduce rustbucket's stature amongst his own, well... sorry about that! ;-)
You don’t agree that raising the level of discourse is a worthy goal?
I’ll also add my name to the Rustbucket fan club. As you said, you won’t change his opinions, but he makes his arguments forcefully and presents evidence to support them. He comes up with evidence that I’ve never seen anywhere else, but I’ve never felt a shadow of doubt about his veracity when he, say, quotes some 1860 southern newspaper he says he owns. And while I’ve seen him get a little piqued from time to time, he’s a gentleman. It’s always a pleasure to engage with him.
This is my last post to you but it will prove all that I've previously posted about you:
Rustbucket (and others) has painstakenly and patiently rebutted every comment that you've posted and the following has been the summation of your bloated replies: "The Deep South seceded to protect the future of slavery against their perceived fears of what the Abolitionist Republicans might do in the future. That clearly is not a definition of "oppression" or "injury," but rather closely meets the criteria for unjustified secession "at pleasure". "---brojoke (FWIW, you have posted this summation multiple times.)
After all of his research and patient explanations, including the refutation of the above summation, that's the answer Rustbucket got and that's all that he or I or any pro-Southerner is going to get, i.e., your mind is closed.
Based on the above, my questions to you are:
1) Is there anything that any of us can say, produce, post, construct, etc, that will change your mind from the above brojoke summation?
2) Anticipating a NO answer to question #1, what's the point in spending time trying?
My father was the epidome of a Southern gentleman, and I only hope to live up to his standards.
I suspect his father before him was very much a Southern gentleman as well. I never knew my grandfather; he died when my father was a boy. I read my grandfather's obituary the other day. He had six regular pallbearers, all from the American Legion of which he was a member, and 61 honorary pallbearers. I'm named after him. He himself was named after his two Confederate grandfathers, so I bear their names too.
And of course his opinions are fixed solid, so you will never change his mind.
It's a flaw, I know, but it's a flaw I share with most of the people on these threads.
meant to send you a ping concerning the above post
You don't really believe that 'raising the discourse' is a rockrr goal, do you? I think that censorship is more what he and his comrades have in mind. Why do you think that they keep posting about 'the reputation of FR', implying that the Southron's are making conservatives look bad?
Flaw? It's not a flaw. It's one of the things that keeps this stuff going year after year. If we all agreed, what would we argue about?
That’s as good a place to start as any. What do you find objectionable to that post?
Sure, every new actual fact and reasoned argument changes my mind to some degree.
That's one reason engaging rustbucket is so challenging -- he's full of interesting data, and I don't have to worry so much that he's just making stuff up on me.
However, even rustbucket has not yet presented any serious data which could break my main arguments.
But who knows, maybe someone will someday?
So let me end with this: I don't doubt the truthfulness of every descendant of Southern soldiers who say their ancestors fought to defend the Confederacy against the d*amn Yankee invaders -- that for them it was a War of Northern Aggression against the Innocent South.
But when you look hard at the facts, it turns out that's not how war started.
It actually started as a war of Deep South Slave-Holders Aggression against the United States and it's Constitution.
That war was not their response to past Federal "oppression" or "usurpations", but instead was their way to protect slavery against perceived future threats represented by Abolitionist Republicans.
And over several threads I've presented data to support these conclusions -- will do so again if asked.
So, if anyone, even you cowboyway, has facts or logic to break those arguments, I'd be curious to see them.
I have two large books (each roughly 11 by 15 inches) that I recommend to anyone wanting a collection of WBTS newspapers from both sides: "Civil War Extra, A Newspaper History of the Civil War from Nat Turner to 1863, Volume I" and "Civil War Extra, A Newspaper History of the Civil War from 1863 to 1865, Volume II." Both are from the collection of newspapers of Eric C. Caren. The text in the full newspaper pages in the book is small but large enough to read.
Thanks for your trust in the excepts I publish from the old newspapers. If I made up some quote, someone would probably check it and then anything I quoted in the past would be instantly discredited. That's not what I'd want at all.
The old papers contain history that often didn't make it into the history books. Since they are newspapers, what they chose to publish no doubt reflected the opinions and news sources of the editors. Some of their published information may be wrong, but I've often been able to verify some obscure history in the newspapers in some other source.
My thanks to you and the others for the kind comments, and thanks to all who bring history to these threads.
The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions. Plato
This is what they do...our ancestors knew it as..agitation. Slavery was only the excuse..and they milked it in order to slaughter hundreds of thousands men, women and children.
They boast of it on these threads.
I see that you make no efforts to convince anyone of either "the rights of the question" or the validity "of your own assertions".
Plato would not approve.
bushpilot1: "This is what they do...our ancestors knew it as..agitation.
Slavery was only the excuse..and they milked it in order to slaughter hundreds of thousands men, women and children."
Slavery was not just the excuse, it was the reason Deep South slave-holders first declared their secession, then provoked war, then declared war and then waged war in every Union state and territory adjacent to the Confederacy, plus "second tier" Union states like Pennsylvania, Kansas and even as far as California and the territory of New Mexico.
bushpilot1: "They boast of it on these threads."
I see a lot of boasting going on here, but not much of it from defenders of the Union.
The next line, by the way, is:
"And the difference between him and me at the present moment is only this--that whereas he seeks to convince his hearers that what he says is true, I am rather seeking to convince myself; to convince my hearers is a secondary matter with me."
So keep trying. Maybe you'll eventually convince yourself.
The lady doth protest too much...
That's true. But that's not to say that slaves didn't escape from the Deep South to the North. Here's a map by the National Park Service showing the underground railroad routes: Link. Most escaping slaves didn't use the underground railroad, but it did extend to the deep South.
I once read a book about a slave who was badly abused by various owners. He escaped from near New Orleans to Illinois and then Indiana on his third attempt.
What this all means is that Deep South complaints about Fugitive Slave Laws in the North were bogus to the max. I'll say it again: they were just an excuse, not the real reason.
You've said this many times in your posts. Are you trying to convince yourself? You and I have different takes on whether Northern states thumbing their noses at the South and the Constitution for many years on the return of fugitive slaves was sufficient for the South to secede. This is like the girl who promised to be faithful but wasn't. Why stay with such a girl? Because she cheated only a time or two? I don’t know about you, but that would exceed my threshold for "necessary to my happiness."
The South had stayed in the Union until sectional government that was inimical to their interests took power. I've cited Republican endorsement of the Helper Book's threats to eliminate slavery. Why should the South stay any longer in a Union that promised to ruin the Southern economy? They could no longer stop the punitive Morrill Tariff. If they kept waiting, the number of free states would get high enough to pass an amendment eliminating slavery. Why wait to secede until they would be even more outnumbered by the Northern population?
You mentioned in post 411: For sake of argument, I'll presume you are correctly reporting that only a thousand fugitive slaves were living in Chicago circa 1860.
I was being conservative. I think there were far more. I got the figure of a thousand from my newspaper quote in post 346 above that said "It is estimated that over one thousand fugitives have arrived in this city since last Fall, most of whom have left since the recent arrest of five by the United States Marshal." There already was a thriving fugitive slave community in Chicago, which was a sanctuary city where the fugitive slave law was not enforced until April, 1861. Those "over one thousand fugitives" had come to Chicago in a three and a half month period. At a slave price of $1,000, that's a million dollars worth of slaves escaping to one Northern city in three and a half months.
Also from your 411: Furthermore, if Deep South slave-holding states like South Carolina or Georgia were truly, truly concerned about the "major problem" of runaway slaves, don't you suppose that they might first attempt to resolve it through state subsidies for interstate bounty hunters?
How about Northern states living up to their word? Or is it that Northern states can ignore the Constitution when it suits them but claim that the Constitution requires that states can’t secede or need approval to do so when the Constitution says no such thing? Oh, I forgot. We’re dealing with the North here. Sorry.
What good would your solution of state subsidies do in states like Massachusetts where juries would probably not find the escaped slave was an escaped slave and where the attempt to bring a slave back cost more than the slave was worth?
Besides the Supreme Court had already ruled in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1843) about the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution that:
The clause manifestly contemplates the existence of a positive, unqualified right on the part of the owner of the slave, which no state law or regulation can in any way qualify, regulate, control or restrain. The slave is not to be discharged from service or labor, in consequence of any state law or regulation. Now certainly, without indulging in any nicety of criticism upon words, it may be fairly said, that any state law or state regulation which interrupts, limits, delays, or postpones the right of the owner of the slave to the immediate possession of the slave, and the immediate command of his service and labor, operates, pro tanto, a discharge of the slave therefrom.
But I forget again. The North doesn't have to obey Supreme Court decisions it doesn't like.
BTW, I have argued on these threads that slavery was the main cause or occasion of the South seceding. I certainly interpreted that from some of the Southern papers before secession began. Slavery wasn't the only reason, of course. As I pointed out above, the Texas secession document addressed sectional aggrandizement by the North: "They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance." Georgia talked about aggrandizement as well.
I have also argued that the North instigated the war and fought it for economic reasons. The North faced a serious balance of payments problem without the exports of Southern cotton. Northern port business fell off greatly once the Morrill Tariff took effect. Lincoln is reputed to have asked, "What about my revenue?" or words to that effect.
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