Posted on 03/02/2020 3:07:25 AM PST by Bull Snipe
The Commandant of the Marine Corp, General David Berger, has ordered "the removal of fall Confederate-related paraphernalia from Marine Corp installations.
Story at Source URL
(Excerpt) Read more at military.com ...
The South produced prodigious quantities of cotton. Three quarters of which were shipped to Europe. About 20-25% of the Southern cotton crop went to New England textile manufacturers.
While cotton was a valuable commodity, you cannot shoot it at anyone or eat it. That may have been one of the reasons why the Confederacy lost the war.
According to the 1860 US census, 5.73% of the total free population in the 12 seceding states owned slaves.....conversely, 94.37% did not own any slaves.
Again, this is according to the 1860 US Census.
Sorry I am not buying your numbers.
Not my numbers. The come from the 1860 census.
Not only Virginia but also New York (the other big state and the leading state of the other main region at the time) as well as Rhode Island.
You are correct that nobody was tried for treason. There is a reason for this.
“If you bring these [Confederate] leaders to trial it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution secession is not rebellion. Lincoln wanted Davis to escape, and he was right. His capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one.” Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, July 1867 (Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3, p. 765)
“If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not a rebellion. His [Jefferson Davis] capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason.” [as quoted by Herman S. Frey, in Jefferson Davis, Frey Enterprises, 1977, pp. 69-72]
“no mention of their objections to the centralization of power.”
What did President Buchanan do to centralize power in the United States Government that upset the seven seceding states so much?
Total US population in 1860 - 31 million
total slave owners - 385,000
so less than 2% of Americans owned slaves
( based on 1860’s census data)
Several places base figures on households vs number of slaves. A household in the 1860’s could easily be 8-12 people based on the extended family. This is where the higher percentages come from. counting households against slaves. bad statistical analysis.
Approximately 75% of all exports by value came from the Southern States. The North made a lot of money servicing that export trade (Shipping, Insurance, Banking, etc). A lot of money was raised by the federal tariff...indeed the vast majority of federal revenues came from the tariff as there was no federal income tax yet. The vast majority of that money was spent on corporate subsidies and infrastructure projects in the North.
Then there is the the cotton that went to Northern mills for the textile industry. The North was dependent on the South economically and would lose a lot of money if the Southern states left - a point practically every major newspaper made over and over again when urging Lincoln to go to war to prevent them from leaving.
You know well that centralizing power was a key aim of Lincoln and of Northern industrialists and “thought leaders” at the time. They had a bigger population so they realized they could “use the federal government as an engine of Northern aggrandizement” as Jefferson Davis said.
Its very similar to now when the Leftists want to abolish the electoral college. They have more people crammed into their Northeast/Left Coast enclaves so of course they want to infringe even more on the rights of the states and make everything centralized and determined by majority vote.
Notice how you claim to be a conservative yet oddly keep siding with Leftists?
Funny what tangents these threads take sometimes.
The PC Revisionists dishonestly try to claim that X percentage of all households in (insert Southern state here) owned slaves by simply assuming that there could be only one slaveowner per family and then dividing the total number of households by slaveowners.
Of course, this is a false assumption. There could well be more than one slaveowner per family. It wasn’t just the husband who owned slaves. Wives frequently inherited slaves - as the examples of Lee’s and Grant’s wives amply demonstrate. Also in slaveowning families, it was not at all uncommon for children to be gifted a slave (often a childhood playmate) as a personal servant. But of course, admitting this would slash the total number of households that owned slaves and their goal is to claim slave owning was widespread....even though it clearly wasn’t.
Answer the question, what did President Buchanan do to centralize federal power. Lincoln was not president when seven Southern States seceded.
Answer the question, what did President Buchanan do to centralize federal power. Lincoln was not president when seven Southern States seceded.
This guy has his priorities mixed up I think:
So they couldn’t possibly have left because they knew what was coming? Is that what you’re trying to argue?
The framers did address secession in the constitution when they made it the supreme law of the land. Their is no mechanism within the constitution for a state to leave. There is also no mention of murder being illegal in the constitution. But murder is illegal as is secession.
There is a natural right to rebellion, which is what our founders invoked when they rebelled against England. But Nations, like people, have a natural right of self defense. The founders did not expect England to just let them go or claim some imaginary legal right to separate from England.
Let’s go ahead and compare the revolution of 1776 with the “secession”(really rebellion)of 1861.
RW = the Revolutionary War, ACW = the American Civil War.
The rebelling party was a full member of the body politic:
RW: no. ACW: yes
The rebelling party had willfully and freely entered into the government from which it was rebelling:
RW: no. ACW: yes
The rebelling party had access to full representation on the national stage:
RW: no. ACW: yes
The rebelling party had attempted to have their grievances redressed, and hostilities began before they declared separation and independence:
RW: yes. ACW: No
The rebelling party began their rebellion after losing a free and fair election in which they were a full participant:
RW: no. ACW: yes
The rebelling party made clear in their documents of separation that their main concern was protecting chattel slavery of the African race:
RW: no. ACW: yes
The rebelling party made clear their right to separation through war and de facto independence:
RW: yes. ACW: no
How are these conflicts remotely similar?
One of the most interesting parts of the comparison is how they rebelled because they wouldn’t accept the results of a free and fair election. Democrats were the same then as they are now. They don’t like elections that don’t go their way and they want to keep people in slavery.
The Civil War was as tragic as it was fascinating. In the Olden Days when I went to public school in Chicago the schools were quite good. My history teacher asked us why the South fought against the North? We answered, “Because of Slavery!” She answered, “Yes, but the Civil War was also about State Rights. Does the Federal Government have the right to govern the individual State?” We looked at her totally confused.
Facts? Here are some facts.
“The constitution must be adopted in toto and forever.” James Madison to Alexander Hamilton 20 July 1788
“Let the thirteen states, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in erecting one great America system.” Alexander Hamilton Federalist 11
“Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is seperately and individuality independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious calamities.” Charles Cotesworth Pinckney at the South Carolina ratifying convention, 1788
I could go on but I think you get the point. We even have the thoughts of a founder when a state claimed this imaginary right of secession. During the nullification crisis of 1832 James Maddison wrote to a friend and said this about secession.
“It is high time that the claim to exceed at will should be put down by the public opinion; and I shall be glad to see the task commenced by one who understands the subject.” James Madison letter to Nicholas Trist Dec 23,1832.
If the father of the constitution is against secession then who can be for it? I was born an American and will die an American, I served 21 years in both the Marines and Army, both active duty and reserves, enlisted and officer. I will be against anyone, left or right, that would attack my country.
Yes but it’s much more accurate to look at families. Back then a wife and children would not be listed as owning a home, but were they homeless? No, they had a roof over their head and benefits from their husband owning the home. Just as the whole family benefited by owning slaves. As far as what the war was about I think Mississippi’s Declaration of immediate causes makes it clear.
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery— the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.“
Lincoln proposed such an endeavor, first in Washington DC (the Compensated Emancipation Act was enacted on April 16, 1862), but slave owners weren't interested and the effort failed to gain traction.
Do your own research, but read the Constitution before you do.
Oh, and please include the entirety of my statement, which goes on to say, “... the one that was envisioned in our Constitution in which we were to have a representative republic.” I would add, a Constitution that gave limited powers to the central government, but relegated all other powers to the states.
Everything in history occurs in a context and the Civil War was no exception. You might want to examine some of the efforts powerful, soon-to-be industrialists were taking to ensure that the South would not be industrialized, but remain an agrarian source of raw materials to the North; in essence, a colony.
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