Ask a Democrat: Are we back in 1861?

American Thinker ^ | 19 Mar, 2017 | Rusty Sturgis

[MtnClimber]

By 1860, there had been at least a decade of unrest among the silent majority – mostly farmers, Christians, and family people living outside the major urban areas. They were angry with the political establishment and wanted serious changes in the federal government. But they mostly sat silent because they had no political leader who accurately expressed their frustration with the system.

Then an outsider emerged who captured all of the common folks' attention, who promised to change Washington and how it worked and make America a more just country. Nobody gave this outsider a chance to win the presidency! He didn't know anything, they said. All of the established media predicted he would lose big against his well known, established, and well financed opponent.

Well, a funny thing happened. That outsider in 1860 won! And in 1861, all of the established politicians, the power brokers, and their followers decided to secede from the Union and start a civil war.

[rockrr]

I sincerely doubt it - in either case.

[Pelham]

the new normal

[HandyDandy]

You are what Frederick Douglass referred to as a "Garrisonian".

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-constitution-of-the-united-states-is-it-pro-slavery-or-anti-slavery/

[Travis McGee]

Indeed it will.

[jeffersondem]

“You are what Frederick Douglass referred to as a “Garrisonian”. “

You have misunderstood; and imagined more.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "The disaster at Appomattox ensured the federal government would inexorably grow."

LS: "The “disaster” at Appomattox showed that you cannot own slaves and profess freedom. CSA Constitution was all about slavery..."

Many of our Lost Causers blame "Ape" Lincoln and his Black Republicans for the unlimited growth we've seen in Federal Government since the Progressive and New Deal era.
But the historical facts are quite different.
Federal government remained, except during times of war, essentially unchanged in overall size from 1792 through the end of President Wilson's first term in 1916:

Federal government spending as percent of US GDP:

1. 1792 = 2.3% President Washington, Federalist
2. 1800 = 2.3% President Adams, Federalist
3. 1858 = 2.2% President Buchanan, Democrat
4. 1888 = 2.3% President Cleveland, Democrat
5. 1903 = 2.3% President Teddy Roosevelt, Republican
6. 1916 = 2.1% President Wilson, Democrat

Of course, spending went up & down according to economic and war-time conditions, but arguably the Federal government was still relatively the same size in 1916 as it had been in 1792 under President Washington.
Even after the First World War, when Federal spending rose as it had in the late 1860s into the 4% region, the reason then, as before, was to pay down the national debt.
That growth did not represent a massive new usurpation of citizen rights.

So it really wasn't until Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal that we saw a qualitative & quantitative change in Federal government size, scope & powers, when Federal spending doubled & doubled again before WWII, then continued doubling throughout the war until it consumed nearly 50% of US GDP in 1945.

Since the Second World War Federal spending has only occasionally dipped below 20% of GDP and in recent years rose into the mid-20s%, along with deficits which doubled national debt to over 100% of GDP.

Sorry if that doesn't comport with our Lost Causers' mythology, but facts, as they say, are stubborn things.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "My degree is in psycho-ceramics.
That’s the study of cracked pots.
I find your comments very interesting."

Cracked pots?
Naw, that's a typo, I saw your courses syllabi.
They said you were studying crack and pot, for their medicinal and, ahem, recreational uses.

And there were health warnings on those syllabi, saying such study might lead to permanent brain damage, which does seem to be what happened in your case.

;-)

[BroJoeK]

LS on Van Buren: " He as much as anyone not only brought on the Civil War but saddled us with a two-party system based on spoils/patronage/money but also ensured (because of that) that government would inexorably grow. "

Thanks for the history lesson, much appreciated.
Jeffersondem and other pro-Confederates wish us to believe that Lincoln and Republicans are responsible for what really began & continues as a Democrat imperative for ever bigger, more controlling government.

[BroJoeK]

Jeffersondem: "I have been very outspoken in denouncing slavers on this site. Recently I took on the notorious slaver Elihu Yale. "

Oh, sure, you're fearless, a real tiger when it comes to condemning Brits from the 1600s, when slavery was lawful everywhere.
But somehow you have nothing to say about slavers in, say, 1860, decades after both Brits and US Northerners had outlawed the practice.

Why is that?

[LS]

Very good. Many years ago I had a grad student do a paper on this, as well as per capita spending by government, rise/change in government employees minus military prrsonnel. Steady increase in both, but rising after Van Buren. The point was, NO president since TJ until Harding significantly cut spending.

[bert]

——NO president since TJ until Harding significantly cut spending-—

I understand the point. Shouldn’t the attention be on the congress? As in no congress cut spending?

[BroJoeK]

LS: "The “disaster” at Appomattox showed that you cannot own slaves and profess freedom. “

Pelham: Didn’t George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and a host of others do exactly that? "

Wardaddy:" You know you see what really matters to these folks don’t you. A need to fee morally l superior "

Naw, it's not "moral superiority", it's a simple desire to keep the historical record accurate against a seemingly endless supply of Lost Cause mythologizers.

As for what, exactly, Appomattox showed, more precisely it's the following:

a domestic or foreign military power which first provokes, then starts, formally declares and wages war against the United States in Union states while suppressing and excluding African Americans from their fighting forces will be fought to utter defeat and unconditional surrender by US forces which include those very same excluded African Americans.

[BroJoeK]

LS: "I had a grad student do a paper on this, "

Some of the numbers are readily available with a bit of googling, so years ago I copied them into a spreadsheet that I reference whenever the subject comes up.
Includes data on GDP, federal revenues, spending, debt, military etc.
I also have a spreadsheet on congresses & administrations by political party which shows that Southerners, anti-federalists/Democrats, especially Southern Democrats ruled in Washington D.C. almost continuously from its beginning until after the election of 1860.

[LS]

Yes, absolutely.

But, if you read my “Seven Events that Made America America,” you’ll see why the system Van Buren put in place in 1824 to create a new political party (Democrats) to prevent slavery from being acted upon GAVE US a growing government based on the “spoils system” that is almost impossible to reduce, because winning elections is based on giving away jobs.

[little jeremiah]

LS, I am planning on buying some of your history books; which would be the best one to get first (limited $) and most introductory.

But my main question is this:

I'd like your view (if you'd like to present it) on how to undo this:

government based on the “spoils system” that is almost impossible to reduce, because winning elections is based on giving away jobs.

[Pelham]

"Naw, it's not "moral superiority", it's a simple desire to keep the historical record accurate against a seemingly endless supply of Lost Cause mythologizers." to resurrect Union Bloody Shirt Triumphalism, the secular religion of nation worship and national division that was once thankfully buried by Civil War veterans themselves. But like the current fascination with the undead it is inexplicably walking among us.

[jeffersondem]

“But somehow you have nothing to say about slavers in, say, 1860, decades after both Brits and US Northerners had outlawed the practice.”

Then I criticize President Lincoln for admitting a slave state to the union while he and the north were sending men to their deaths to, we are now told, “free the slaves.”

I never understood why he and northern politicians did that unless it was some sort of insincere political shenanigan.

[BroJoeK]

Jeffersondem: " Then I criticize President Lincoln for admitting a slave state to the union while he and the north were sending men to their deaths to, we are now told, “free the slaves.” "

In 1861 the Civil War was about first defeating the military power which started, declared & waged war against the United States, only secondarily about abolition.
Further, in most states which abolished slavery before 1860, the process was gradual and that is what Lincoln insisted on from West Virginia.
West Virginians agreed and abolished slavery in 1864.

But I'm guessing you already know all that and therefore your words here are just so much smoke blown to hide your total acceptance of slavery in Confederate States, right?

[jeffersondem]

“But I'm guessing you already know all that and therefore your words here are just so much smoke blown to hide your total acceptance of slavery in Confederate States, right?”

The old “slavery was a Southern problem” argument.

Let's review. Of the original nine northern states, nine of them were slave states.

When the King of England messed with slavery, all nine northern states voted to cite the King's interference as a cause of the revolution.

All nine of the northern states voted to adopt a U.S. constitution that recognized and protected slavery.

Northern states made a ton of money off of slavery: capturing and buying slaves, transporting slaves, selling slaves, working slaves, trafficking in cotton produced with slave labor, and taxing profits made from slave produced cotton.

But - and this is the hope spot in the storyline - the north had a plan to gradually free the slaves over a period of 230 years. Yeah, I'd say that was kind of gradual.

You are proud of all this?

[ought-six]

Think about it: Lincoln championed a large and supreme federal government, where the states were subservient to the fed (as today’s Dems hold); JFK was a staunch anti-communist, and today’s Dem Party is at least socialist and in many respects is communist.