Lee, Virginia, and the Union

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org ^ | March 27, 2019 | Fred H. Cox

[NKP_Vet]

The Hall of Fame recently dedicated at New York Uni­versity was conceived from the Ruhmes Halle in Bavaria. This structure on University Heights, on the Harlem river, in the borough of the Bronx, New York City, has, or is in­tended to have, a panel of bronze with other mementos for each of one hundred and fifty native-born Americans who have been deceased at least ten years, and who are of great character and fame in authorship, education, science, art, soldiery, statesmanship, philanthropy, or in any worthy un­dertaking. Fifty names were to have been chosen at once; but, on account of a slight change of plans, only twenty-nine have been chosen, and twenty-one more will be in 1902. The remaining one hundred names are to be chosen during the century, five at the end of each five years. The present judges of names to be honored are one hundred representa­tive American scholars in different callings. They are most­ly Northern men, although at least one judge represents each State.

[DiogenesLamp]

I suspect this is a key point pushed by many Lost Causers who are in fact Democrats here to make certain that Republicans can never again look attractive to African Americans.

No, it's just the simple truth. You can tell by all the "hate blacks" laws passed in the Northern states. Funny that the "land of Lincoln" had particular nasty laws to drive black people out of their state.

This is something else I have been fed all my life; The idea that northern people were against slavery because it was immoral. If you study it enough, it becomes clear that they weren't against slavery because it was immoral, they were against slavery because they saw it as a threat to their wage earning ability.

Slaves were "scabs", so far as the Northern states were concerned, and as they slowly became "Organized Labor" states, they hated slave "scabs" for the same reason they hated any other scabs.

Because they saw them as a threat to their own economic well being.

These states went on to become "Organized Labor" states, otherwise known as "UNION" states.

Which side of the political spectrum are all the Union members on?

[DiogenesLamp]

No. They have no bearing on why armies from Northern states invaded the Southern states. The only motivation in the Civil War that matters is the motivation that caused armies to march from the North to kill people in the South.

Do any of those quotes explain why people invaded the South? Then they are irrelevant.

Southern motives for leaving do not explain Northern motives for invading. The people who need to justify what they did are the ones who crossed state lines to kill other people who had done them no harm.

[DiogenesLamp]

You don’t look at all the evidence. For example you are in denial of the reason d’etre of the Confederacy.

I do not a f*** give about what is claimed to be the raison d'etre of the Confederacy, and I most especially do not give a f*** since I learned that the Union had no intentions about changing anything in the Southern states regarding their slavery.

You don't get it. You cannot have *ANY* moral high ground after the Corwin amendment. My study of history has revealed the North to be a bunch of liars who pretended to care about "Freedom" for slaves, 18 months after the f***ing war started!

It is clear that had the Southern states remained in the Union, the Union would have kept trundling along with legal slavery for another "four score and seven years", so spare me the protestations of innocence about the reasons why the North invaded, and spare me the claims of nobility about why the North invaded, because a study of history quickly reveals that lying about who did what and for what reason has been going on a long time regarding the Civil War.

Washington DC only wanted to reestablish control of the money flow from European trade, and they had every intention of keeping slavery going indefinitely.

Slavery was incidental to the reasons why the North invaded. The real reason was money and control.

[BroJoeK]

OiFVeteran: "And, as James Madison said in the letter I posted previously, since it was created by all the people it could only be done away with by all the people, not any subset of those people."

Right, disunion:

1. From necessity after "a long train of abuses and usurpations" as spelled out in their 1776 Declaration or,

2. by mutual consent to "form a more perfect union" as in 1788 with their new Constitution.

Neither condition existed in 1860.

[BroJoeK]

Dubba Ho-Tep: "Diogenes only sees money as the reason for things, but there are other reasons, and it's hard to claim that New York money interests are the reason men flocked to the flag of the United States to fight, unless he wants to claim our forebearers were a nation of mindless sheep."

Right.
In my experience nobody but a trained Marxist/Democrat thinks that way and yet DiogenesLamp posts here on a highly conservative site.
That's my, to use his term, "cognitive dissonance" -- how does he even think of himself as "conservative" when, in this regard at least, his brain is wired like a Leftist Democrat?

Years ago DiogenesLamp posted about admiring Teddy Roosevelt for his Trust Busting, and that's fine, everybody understands that big corporations can get out of control -- today we have Internet giants using their powers to influence political news & opinions, I "get" that.

But DiogenesLamp seems to go well beyond, in effect blaming "Northeastern power brokers" for everything he imagines is wrong with the United States today, most especially for "launching war" against poor, innocent, minding-his-own-business Jefferson Davis.

That part I don't "get".
As illustrated in my post #386 above, many Northerners were ready for war in January 1861 and it had nothing to do with "money flows from Europe", but rather with South Carolina Confederates firing on the Union civilian steamer Star of the West in Charleston Harbor.

[BroJoeK]

Bubba Ho-tep: "One wonders what Diogenes believes about the natural rights of people who live outside the USA, in countries that don’t have states....
For that matter, given his opinion about West Virginia, do they have a right of self-determination, or can they only exercise that right with Virginia?
So many questions."

I agree with your posts which suggest that to DiogenesLamp a "natural right" is whatever he says it should be, indeed, he calls that a "fact", and whatever contrary views you hold are just your "opinions", he says.

But the bigger issue there is one that many Lost Causers insist on, a core principle to them, namely that the Union only acted in the interests of "might makes right".
They tell us, over & over, the Union had no "higher motives", it was nothing to do with preserving the Union or defending the Constitution, much less, God forbid we should say anything about "slavery, slavery, slavery".
No, none of that, in Lost Causer minds it was all, and only, about power, money and subjugation of uppity white Southerners.

Again with the Marxist dialectics, and the biggest problem with all that is: nobody at the time said anything resembling it.
Instead they said just what we first learned in history class -- slaveholders declared secession to protect slavery, Northern states went to war to defend the Union and, in time, to free the slaves.

[BroJoeK]

wbarmy: "But I keep my oaths.”

Pelham: "Well Colonel Washington of the Virginia Regiment, British Provincial Militia, didn’t when he took up arms against the Crown.
So I suspect that Patriots didn’t give a damn."

It matter a lot that Brits first broke faith with their American colonists by imposing "Intolerable Acts" including "taxation without representation" and revoking the old Massachusetts Charter of self-government.
When the Brits tried to take away American militia weapons, then war was on.
So George Washington did not break faith with Britain until they broke faith with us.

RE Lee might make a similar argument, except that it was Confederates who first broke faith by declaring unilateral secession and by many acts of war against the United States, including but not just, Fort Sumter.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "I have found that there are thousands of history books, all trying to convince people that the South started the war, and that the war was about slavery."

Confederates did start Civil War, at Fort Sumter among other places, and it was "about" slavery.

DiogenesLamp: "You know what I never found in any history books?
That a war fleet was sent to Charleston with orders to use force and violence against the Confederates."

Just the opposite, Lincoln's orders were no first use of violence.

DiogenesLamp: "You know what else I never found in any history books?
That the South was producing the vast majority of the European trade, and the vast majority of all the taxes going into Washington DC."

Confederate cotton was ~50% of US exports, including specie.
All the rest of alleged "Southern products" were, in fact, produced in Union states, North, South & Border.
That's why, in 1861 when cotton was deleted from Union exports, the total fell only 35%.
That was not a "vast majority".

DiogenesLamp: "A view that promotes the exact same power structure that we are living with today, with the North East being the virtual center of the American universe."

As I read these numbers the four US regions rank as follows in GDP:

1. The South today produces 34% of US GDP
2. The West today produces 25% of US GDP
3. The Northeast produces 20% of US GDP
4. The Midwest produces 20% of US GDP

This doesn't suggest to me that the Northeast is the "virtual center of the American universe", or that it would be a problem if even true.

DiogenesLamp: "They didn't go to war.
Lincoln went to war, and they defended their territory. "

On May 6, 1861 Confederates formally declared war on the United States -- before any Union army "invaded" a single Confederate state and before a single Confederate soldier was killed in action by any Union army.
During the war's first 12 months, more battles were fought and more Confederate troops were killed in Union states & territories than Confederate.

By war's end Confederates had invaded Union states & territories of Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma & New Mexico.

DiogenesLamp: "And then you find out these other states still had slavery after the Southern states were destroyed? WTF?"

The original constitution protected slavery in states loyal to it, not so much in regions in rebellion.

DiogenesLamp: "There was a lot of money at stake if the South went and stayed independent, and the people getting that money in the North would very much want to stop it.
Motive.
Motive for all the lying.
Motive for the destruction.
Motive for the existing power structure that we are fighting today."

But there's no evidence -- none, zero, nada evidence -- that anybody at the time, North or South, saw things the way DiogenesLamp frames them.
Instead, Confederates saw slavery threatened and complained about rising tariffs while Unionists saw rebellion and the opportunity to defeat it by abolishing slavery.

DiogenesLamp: "Perhaps I have been taught wrong, and have been viewing the wrong side as being evil all this time?
Perhaps it was the Northern states, led by corrupt and deceitful men, motivated by greed who were in fact the evil players in this tragedy?
This is what the evidence I have been seeing has been showing me, and slavery is incidental to the whole thing."

The numbers suggest about three million men served on both sides in the Civil War.
There's no evidence to suggest that even three of those men (one in a million) were motivated by the factors DiogenesLamp claims.

[BroJoeK]

quoting BJK: "They disenfranchised themselves!"

DiogenesLamp: "Lie.
They were forceably disenfranchised by the power block in Washington DC who didn't like the way they would vote."

Now that's an absolute lie.
Confederates disenfranchised themselves in 1861 by declaring themselves seceded and part of a different country!
There's no ifs, ands or buts about it, they declared themselves out.

After the war was over, the Union simply required each one to declare himself back in the union -- a "pretty please", if you will.

In the mean time, while Confederates were mulling it over in their minds, the Union enfranchised former slaves and that's how the 13th, 14th & 15th got ratified.

But it only lasted a few years, then Republicans (shame on us) allowed you Democrats to take over again and effectively nullify the 13th, 14th & 15th for nearly 100 years.

But it all began with Confederates disenfranchising themselves in 1861, your claim otherwise is simply another Lost Causer Big Lie.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "I didn’t read your post because it is too long, and at a glance it looks like your usual spiel."

Nonsense, you refuse to read my post #386 because it totally destroys two of the Big Lies you keep repeating here.

[BroJoeK]

HandyDandy on Lincoln: " I think that over the course of the War his opinion of blacks grew."

Among other reasons because nearly 200,000 African Americans (half former slaves) enlisted in Union Colored Regiments, served honorably and died disproportionately.
Many years before, George Washington had first promised slaves freedom for military service, during the Revolutionary War.
Lincoln made it happen.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "It didn't matter to the New Yorkers and Washingtonians who were getting that money, so pardon me if I think the pretense that anyone gave a sh*t about them is just theater."

Of course, you're still talking about Democrats, North & South, who ruled NY & DC from 1801 until secession in 1861.

Republicans were different people entirely.
We did care about slavery and slaves, sure, partly for economic self interest, but also because of what we were taught about in church.
Church... you remember church don't you?
You should go sometime, because even after all these years it is still very good for your soul, FRiend.

DiogenesLamp: "Yeah, I noticed they were willing to extend slavery permanently when they thought they could keep collecting the money, so their defenders can bugger off with their lamentations about the slaves. "

You're still talking about Democrats who supported Corwin 100%.
The majority of Republicans opposed it.

DiogenesLamp: "Pushing the Corwin amendment just to keep the status quo tells me everything I need to know about the Northern leadership's concern for slaves."

The original Constitution protected slavery in the South, but Democrat slavers still said they felt threatened.
So Northern & Southern Democrats devised plans to reassure them, one of which a minority of Republicans thought was mere eyewash and so didn't object.

Federalists in 1787 and Republicans in 1861 put Union first, abolition second.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "This is why I don’t bother with you.
I post lots of facts, and you can’t see a one.
At some point a guy just doesn’t bother with people who cannot see reality."

But you post no facts -- none, zero, nada facts -- only your own opinions which you then claim are "facts".

So I'll ask you -- what "fact" have you ever posted to support even a single one of your wilder opinions?
Name one.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Yes, you repeat that every time the topic comes up, but you ignore the fact that none of them commanded the entrance to one of their important harbors."

You ignore the fact that those many British forts & trading posts supported hostile Indians in their war against American settlers and army, leading to the single greatest US Army defeat, ever, called St. Clair's Defeat, in 1791.

There's no possibility that Major Anderson'a few troops in Fort Sumter could do anywhere near the military or economic damage those British forts did.

DiogenesLamp: "More evidence the British were more reasonable than the government in Washington DC. Lincoln would not allow any government officials to meet with Confederate representatives in any official capacity..."

But first of all: Confederate emissaries did meet, unofficially through intermediaries, and Confederates had only one message: surrender Fort Sumter.
So some Union officials told them what they wanted to hear.
Others, like President Buchanan announced publicly Fort Sumter would not be surrendered without a fight.

Second, the Brits were far from "reasonable" in the years before 1776 -- Ben Franklin spent 15 years in London trying to negotiate better terms for Americans -- got nothing.

Sadly, Confederates lacked either of Franklin's patience or brilliance.

DiogenesLamp: "The Confederates tried negotiating before the war even started, so they were that much further ahead of the Washington administration."

Confederate emissaries spent a few weeks in totally half-hearted & insincere posturing, never once talked to the people constitutionally assigned to deal with their issues -- Congress.

[DiogenesLamp]

And, as James Madison said in the letter I posted previously, since it was created by all the people it could only be done away with by all the people, not any subset of those people.

Just as the United Kingdom required the assent of the rest of the Union. Right?

Wrong. Clearly wrong. Wrong on so many levels.

[DiogenesLamp]

Too long. Skip.

[DiogenesLamp]

Noise. Skip.

[DiogenesLamp]

Too long. Skip.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "First of all, it is a right. Rights are granted by God, and the permission of men is not required to assert a right. Rights are not granted by men."

Sure, and your Marxist pal, Bernie Sanders, tells us now that "medicare for all" is also a "right", but no Founder ever said that either.
So you & Bernie can claim whatever "rights" you wish, after all, as Democrats, that's sort of your job isn't it?
Forever devising new "rights" to task our Founders' constitution with?

DiogenesLamp: "Second of all, the declaration does indeed say that when a government no longer has "consent of the governed", the people have a right to cast it off and create a new one that better suits them. "

Of course that's not what it says, and you well know it.
It's just repeating the Big Lie you're here to sell.

In fact our Founders defined a very precise situation of necessity caused by "a long train of abuses and usurpations" showing "a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism", then "it is their right, it is their duty..."

There was nothing "at pleasure" or "at will" about the Declaration of Independence.

DiogenesLamp: "It does say this should not be done for light and transient reasons, but "should" is a suggestion, not a command."

Irrelevant because first, that statement does not define the conditions of necessity which drive the Declaration.
And second, you have "translated" their "should not" to mean "should", which is a total misreading of Founders' intentions.

[DiogenesLamp]

Confederates disenfranchised themselves in 1861 by declaring themselves seceded and part of a different country!

If the official policy of the United States government was that they did indeed become a separate foreign country, then you have a point. As you very well know the official policy of the United States government was that they were never a sovereign nation, and always remained states of the Union, then your point becomes nothing more than an attempt to fudge the truth.

US Law applies to US States. Foreign Country law does *NOT* apply to US States. As no Foreign Country existed, US law applied to the seceded states.

And Abraham Lincoln deliberately disenfranchised them because he knew very well that he did not and would not have the "consent of the governed."