Posted on 11/03/2015 6:52:26 AM PST by don-o
You just have problems recognizing them.
...then the war wasn't started or fought over slavery.
Not from the Union side, no. From the Southern side slavery was the motivation for their secession and they chose war to further their aims. So from their standpoint the war was about slavery.
You need to make this clear to the other people who are arguing on your side. They seem to think the war was fought to abolish slavery.
They need no help from me. The majority already know more about the Civil War than I ever will.
It had that eventual consequence, but that was an after the fact justification, not a motivating principle in initiating the conflict.
But there again you're wrong. The South initiated the war and their cause was inextricably linked to slavery so it is fair to say that slavery was the reason for initiating the conflict.
People got their cookies back after the war was over.
Unless by "cookies" you mean slaves.
It's a circular argument -- or no argument at all. The conclusion is the same as the starting assumptions. To have a worth while argument, he would have to consider other possibilities: that Unionists didn't consider unilateral secession constitutional; that secession didn't mean that all federal property could be confiscated; that no president worth his salt could simply cave in to secessionist claims; that secessionists weren't simply passive observers, but were exploiting panic to tear away as much slave territory as they could; that concessions would simply produce new demands and new subversive acts, etc. etc. Otherwise, all you've got is somebody just repeating the same thing over and over again without engaging the real questions of the day.
It's funny that the article writer cites Phil Magness as some kind of voice of reason and moderation after all the baloney Phil has peddled down through the years. Phil's wrong. There's a whole lot of libertarian nonsense that he's ignored -- the Leander Spooner stuff that he peddled himself. Libertarians don't have to cross some line into blatant partisanship to be wrong, they're quite capable of coming up with their very own brand of stupidity.
Phil's also not quite honest. He's making himself out to be closer to some kind of sane center than he actually was. His criticisms of slavery and the Confederacy were pro forma or perfunctory or implied in his attacks on Lincoln and the Yankees, who were always his main enemies. Nobody's going to say -- or think -- that slavery was a good thing, but if somebody gets more agitated about tariffs than about slavery, they aren't exactly in some higher middle ground.
Not so. The 1800s was a seemingly never ending series of political pretzel logic compromises between the abolitionist North and the slaveholding south. This state goes in slave, this one free, this other one can vote on it. Slaves who escape to the north are free, no they aren't. Trying to keep the union together while satisfying both sides was leading to things like Bloody Kansas which illustrated the futility of this sort of patchwork compromise. Since you cite Lincoln, I will as well. In 1858, well before he was elected, he said:
"I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South."
So in 1858 Lincoln said the union would stand but that one side or the other would win out. Of course in light of the provocative nature of the issue and the decades of failed efforts to resolve it politically, this must have seemed pretty unlikely without some decisive event to force the issue to one side or the other. And the war turned out to be that decisive event.
Slavery was what created the wedge that created the war.
DegenerateLamp only wastes anyone’s time to the extent that they bother to respond to his foolishness. A hearty tip of the hat goes to DoodleDawg who not only put up with his BS but quite neatly sliced and diced him on this thread.
“People got their cookies back after the war was over.”
Really? We got the right to determine for ourselves how we want to be governed, without asking the Feds permission back?
When did that happen? I must have missed it.
Were Americans in 1880 really less free than they were in 1850? Was the country any less free? I don’t think so. We may have lost rights later on to the federal government or taxation and regulation or the closing down of the frontier, but the idea that Lincoln “made us all slaves” is false and silly.
Buchanan was a Constitutional scholar and should be recognized for his loyalty to the promise of life , liberty, and pursuit of happiness as compared with Lincoln’s need to send troops South to kill 680,000.
"There can be no question?" Nonsense.
If other facilities were peacefully evacuated -- and not all of them were (consider the two forts in Florida) -- why shouldn't some facilities be peacefully retained?
Of course, secessionists wouldn't attack if they got everything they wanted, but isn't the test for them what they would do if they didn't get everything they wanted?
In any case, the federals wanted to maintain the idea that the union was intact, and holding on to some federal property was a way to keep that idea alive.
So, no, holding on the the fort didn't in itself mean that there was some provocation afoot, unless you're convinced that resisting Confederate demands in any way at all was a provocation.
You sound as if you have somehow convinced yourself that Abraham Lincoln has damaged or wrecked your life in some way. I am convinced that we who live now are responsible for our current political, legal and economic environment. He was not responsible for any laws that we are unable to reverse. He's been dead for more than 150 years. When will it be appropriate for us to accept responsibility for the way in which we live now?
I suspect that there may be some other reasons for your unhappiness.
That's your straw man argument. The war was not fought to end slavery. But it was fought because of slavery.
If you don't understand the difference, that shows you also do not understand American history.
As to the "five" Union slave states in your version, I can easily name four, MD, MO, KY & DE, (two of which ended slavery during the course of the war.) But the fifth Union slave state, outside your Lost Cause version of history, escapes me and no internet search will divulge it's name. Was it West Jibbip or South Vermont?
As a bonus question... did Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation make slavery illegal anywhere?
buchanan was a feckless boob and second only to the treasonous davis and taney for hastening the war that cost 650,000 American lives.
He was a very special guy. President Jackson used to call him Miss Nancy because of his relationship with William Rufus King ("Aunt Fancy"), a Senator from Alabama who also served as one of our Vice-Presidents.
“You sound as if you have somehow convinced yourself that Abraham Lincoln has damaged or wrecked your life in some way.”
Yeah, I tend to think that way about people that destroy a constitutional republic that respects our god-given rights and leaves us with a central government-dominated state that seems to view usurping our rights as its main goal. There’s nothing you’ll ever say that will convince me not to take offense at that.
The rest of your post is just silliness. As the founders said, we had a republic, if we could keep it. We couldn’t, thanks in large part to Lincoln. We cannot simply wish that genie back in the bottle. We only won our republic through bloodshed, so thinking that we will be able to legislate ourselves one back once it is lost is just wishful thinking.
“Of course, secessionists wouldn’t attack if they got everything they wanted, but isn’t the test for them what they would do if they didn’t get everything they wanted?”
What “test”? You’re talking as if you think baiting another nation into war isn’t in itself an act of war. I really can’t comprehend the type of mental gymnastics it takes to believe you can “test” your neighbors to see if they will fight back when you station an army within their borders, then blame them if they do.
“So, no, holding on the the fort didn’t in itself mean that there was some provocation afoot, unless you’re convinced that resisting Confederate demands in any way at all was a provocation.”
Of course it’s a provocation. Every single country on the face of the earth views another nation stationing troops within its claimed borders without permission as a provocation. That’s such a basic rule nobody even thought to write it down, because they never suspected folks like you would need it explained to them.
“Were Americans in 1880 really less free than they were in 1850? Was the country any less free?”
Absolutely. In 1850, we still had a government that operated based on consent of the governed, which is one of the most essential elements of liberty. You can’t pretend we still had that in 1880, once half the nation were being forced to “consent” at the barrel of a gun.
All the subsequent usurpations by the federal government that you would rather focus on wouldn’t have been possible unless a man like Lincoln had asserted the supremacy of the federal government with the kind of brute force that he did. He broke the American spirit of resistance to unconstitutional overreach, forever drawing a line that most of the citizenry will not cross when opposing the government, because now we all know that to cross that line means the government will try to kill us.
Well, I am certain of one thing. I have met very few Americans who feel as victimized as you seem to feel - victimized by our history, victimized by a dead person.
Please understand, I am not questioning that you feel as you claim. You do sound crippled. Obviously, something is genuinely wrong and I have no doubt that this Lincoln thing really is a big deal to you.
I just find most Americans to be proud of our history, both before and after the Civil War. Obviously, we have made some mistakes, but I love this country. A few decades ago, we saved the world from the Nazis and a few decades later, we saved the world from the Soviets. We are special and I think that ending slavery was one of the important developments that helped to make us so special.
Man you have some serious butthurt going on. How do you bear to continue?
Buchanan was Constitutional scholar enough to know that the Southern acts of secession were illegal, as he said in his 1860 message to Congress. And had he been president when the South started the war we have no reason to believe that he wouldn't have fought back as well.
Off topic but the America haters are over on a Glenn Beck thread race baiting and wondering where the “south haters” are.
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