Posted on 05/24/2007 6:03:30 AM PDT by Rebeleye
...he was stunned to see two large Confederate flags flying from trucks...emblazoned with the words "The South Shall Rise Again." I'm stunned, too, that people still think it is cool to fly this flag. Our society should bury these flags -- not flaunt them...because the Confederate flag symbolizes racial tyranny to so many... ...This flag doesn't belong on city streets, in videos or in the middle of civil discussion. It belongs in our past -- in museums and in history books -- along with the ideas it represents.
(Excerpt) Read more at kansas.com ...
Three problems:
1. As LexBaird points out further down, the Confederacy almost certainly would have balkanized. Had the North let the South go without a fight, the North would have balkanized as well.
2. The Confederacy was a kludge. By that I mean that the confederate government couldn't get out of its own way, and the several states were so obsessed with the idea of avoiding any centralization of power that they carried it to extremes. I recall that the governor of one state demanded that Jefferson Davis reorganize the army so no soldier would be commanded by any officer from another state. I suspect that if anyone tried to tighten the Cofederate organization up, some of the states would have seceded over it, and then we have three countries... Plus, the South would have been mired in poverty with no industrial base. All their value was tied up in slaves. Maybe that wouldn't keep them from being a nation, but they wouldn't be a successful one.
3. As to the welfare state, the modern American welfare state was founded on the conversion of the (mostly Northern) urban black family to welfare in the late Sixties and early Seventies. All those folks' ancestors would have been bound in slavery for some time past the Civil War (at least a decade, as there was NO movement for abolition in the South) and then would have had a much harder time migrating North. So, the North might not have built a welfare state so easily because the racist Left wouldn't have had the false "blacks are still poor because they were disadvantaged by slavery" talking point or otherwise had them to pat on the head, or Southern blacks might have provided leverage for Southern liberals (y'all had them, too) to turn the CSA/Balkan Belt into wlefare states.
Trust me, there's no way that a nation sitting on the backs of slaves was going to do well. Lincoln was right in his Second Inaugural when he said the Civil War was a punishment from God for slavery.
Bingo! Spot on. I think one of the few consensus points that exists about the war was that the South did not have the industrial infrastructure needed to fund an extended war or produce its war materials.
A complete torque monster!!!
400ci 350HP 440 lb-ft torque Muncie M21 4 speed
Plus it provides better handling and a better ride quality then a Chevy A body from that generation.
One day I’ll figure out how to post an image and get it up on my page.
‘The U.S. wasn’t the basket case the confedercy had become very early in their rebellion’
True. The North was a ‘basket case’ when it came to the leaders it installed at the head of the various army’s it had in the field.
I’ve always thought Stonewall Jackson would have had his ass handed to him during his famous ‘Valley Campaign’ if he had encountered just one competent General in opposition, for example. Years later, Grant expressed a similiar point of view in his memoirs. What would have happened if Sheridan, or Sherman, or even Meade, let alone a Hancock had been there instead of Fremont?
I do love this era, and the what ifs.
The point was not to bash NO or the South, the point was that huge population + liberal government = chaos no matter where the city is located.
We were discussing John Brown.
I said he was scum.
You said he wasn't scum.
I pointed out that he was a serial killer.
You are now trying to change the subject. No matter what anyone else did, John Brown was a serial killer and I say that as a guy so pro-Union I wanted to name my younger son after Johua Chamberlain. The pro-Southern militias you mentioned were full of serial killers, too, but that doesn't change what John Brown was.
YouTube Video: "That's how they do it in Dixie"
Stainless, thanks for the ping.
Deo Vindice
/jasper
“Slavery, according to Calhoun, occupied a special place in the Constitution, and certainly it occupied a special place in his theory of state rights. It was, he insisted, the only kind of property that the Constitution specifically recognized (though, in fact, the document did not mention slaves or slavery by name; it referred only to “free Persons” and “all other Persons” and to a “Person held to Service or Labour”). Therefore, nullification could be used to defend or strengthen slavery but not to attack or weaken it. Calhoun strenuously objected when, after 1842, several free states tried their own brand of nullification by adopting “personal liberty” laws that forbade state authorities to assist in the enforcement of the Federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.
Calhoun was farther outraged when the House, though not the Senate, passed the Wilmot Proviso in 1848, which aimed to exclude slavery from all territories to be acquired in consequence of the Mexican War. Then, when the Compromise of 1850 proposed to admit California as a free state and thus to upset the balance of free and slave states, he thought the time had come for the slave states to resort to their ultimate redress, secession.”
So once again I ask the question, other than the threat of abolition what state rights were infringed upon?
Please point me to the section in the Constitution that states slavery is unconstitutional, as I am unable to find it. The Constitution prior to the civil war, that is.
There was a boob or two running the Army of the Potomac and other commands. But the Union command in the west was pretty solid.
Years later, Grant expressed a similiar point of view in his memoirs. What would have happened if Sheridan, or Sherman, or even Meade, let alone a Hancock had been there instead of Fremont?
It's had to say for sure. Sherman almost had a nervous breakdown running what would become the Army of the Cumberland for a short period late in 1861. Sheridan was a regimental commander when Jackson was in the valley. It's easy to look at their actions after 2 or 3 years of war and say they could have whipped Jackson, but it's hard to make the case that they would have automatically done better than Fremont in mid-1862. Likewise, if Fremont had a little less ego and had spent the war working for Grant he might have made a good army commander by 1864.
Jackson was not perfect. His actions during the Seven Days battles was mediocre at best, but he improved as his relationship with Lee grew longer. Lee was beaten his first time in the field, at Cheat Mountain in September 1861. Grant struggled a time or two early on as well. But as the war went on the cream quickly rose to the top and with a few exceptions the crud usually settled to the bottom.
‘There was a boob or two running the Army of the Potomac and other commands.’
You are very ‘kind’ here.
McDowell, Pope, Hooker, BURNSIDE, Sickles, Howard come to mind immediately.
Foote was brutal in regards to Jackson’s performance overall as I suspect you know.
I’ve concluded Longstreet was probably the single best corps commander in either army overall. They all made errors, some larger than others, to be sure.
But the level of incompetence among the North’s ‘high command’ negated the huge advantages in manpower and industry. To me, the war should have ended on the banks of Antietam creek.
I think slavery was the major cause of the war, but not the only cause. From the Texas Ordinance of Secession [Source: Texas]:
The Federal Government, while but partially under the control of these our unnatural and sectional enemies, has for years almost entirely failed to protect the lives and property of the people of Texas against the Indian savages on our border, and more recently against the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico; and when our State government has expended large amounts for such purpose, the Federal Government has refused reimbursement therefor, thus rendering our condition more insecure and harassing than it was during the existence of the Republic of Texas.
This was a big issue in the state. In the late 1850s there were Indian raids in the Texas counties where my ancestors lived. The Federal government eventually offered partial compensation for the funds Texas had to expend fighting off the Indians and the bandits from Mexico (both of which were federal obligations) but would not fully reimburse Texas. One of my ancestors fought the Indians as a member of a frontier battalion and another fought the Mexican bandits while serving under Rip Ford.
Here's another excerpt from the Texas Ordinance:
They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance.
That refers to sectional aggrandizement. High protective tariffs benefited the North at the expense of the South. The Daily Chicago Times editorialized on December 10, 1860:
The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole . . . We have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually.
Furthermore the southern states were acting illegaly and against the constitution by denying others their god given right to liberty, which is why almost all Northern states abolished slavery shortly after the US Constitution was sighned, because slavery is unconstitutional.
Slavery by name wasn't mentioned in the Constitution. The Constitution did have a provision calling for the return of fugitive slaves. If slavery were unconstitutional as you claim, why would the following statement be in the Constitution?
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
‘Likewise, if Fremont had a little less ego and had spent the war working for Grant he might have made a good army commander by 1864. ‘
Hmmmmm. I never really considered that. Food for thought.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
You recall exactly right. Actually, there were a couple of legal challenges to the census trying to substitute models for a real count on the ground that the models were more accurate than the real thing!
No, your argument has a flaw. There was a study of this in the Journal of Economic History. I think the authors are C. Knick Harley and Peter Temin. Basically they found that the tariff did NOT hurt Americans, that the imports we had (esp. in the south) were different types of finished textiles than the U.S. produced. In other words, we would have bought them whether the tariff was there or not at the same prices. The more work that economic historians do on the tariff issue, the weaker and weaker it becomes as an issue for secession. The data is not on your side.
If the federal government had absolute authority in the matter of slavery, why were the States even 'allowed' to choose?
The Big Picture > States Rights
States Rights
States rights was an old idea in 1860. The original thirteen colonies in America in the 1700s, separated from the mother country in Europe by a vast ocean, were used to making many of their own decisions and ignoring quite a few of the rules imposed on them from abroad. During the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers were forced to compromise with the states to ensure ratification of the Constitution and the establishment of a united country. In fact. the original Constitution banned slavery, but Virginia would not accept it; and Massachusetts would not ratify the document without a Bill of Rights.
The debate over which powers rightly belonged to the states and which to the Federal Government became heated again in the 1820s and 1830s fueled by the divisive issue of whether slavery would be allowed in the new territories forming as the nation expanded westward.
The Missouri Compromise in 1820 tried to solve the problem but succeeded only temporarily. (It established lands west of the Mississippi and below latitude 36_30’ as slave and north of the line—except Missouri—as free.) Abolitionist groups sprang up in the North, making Southerners feel that their way of life was under attack. A violent slave revolt in 1831 in Virginia, Nat Turner’s Rebellion, forced the South to close ranks against criticism out of fear for their lives. They began to argue that slavery was not only necessary, but that, in fact, it was a positive good.
As the North and the South became more and more different, their goals and desires also separated. Arguments over national policy grew even more fierce. The North’s economic progress as the Southern economy began to stall fueled the fires of resentment. By the 1840s and 1850s North and South had each evolved extreme positions that had as much to do with serving their own political interests as with the morality of slavery.
As long as there were an equal number of slave-holding states in the South as non-slave-holding states in the North, the two regions had even representation in the Senate and neither could dictate to the other. However, each new territory that applied for statehood threatened to upset this balance of power. Southerners consistently argued for states rights and a weak federal government but it was not until the 1850s that they raised the issue of secession. Southerners argued that, having ratified the Constitution and having agreed to join the new nation in the late 1780s, they retained the power to cancel the agreement and they threatened to do just that unless, as South Carolinian John C. Calhoun put it, the Senate passed a constitutional amendment to give back to the South “the power she possessed of protecting herself before the equilibrium of the two sections was destroyed.”
Controversial—but peaceful—attempts at a solution included legal compromises, arguments, and debates such as the Wilmot Proviso in 1846, Senator Lewis Cass’ idea of popular sovereignty in the late 1840s, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, and the Lincoln-Douglas Debates in 1858. However well-meaning, Southerners felt that the laws favored the Northern economy and were designed to slowly stifle the South out of existence. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was one of the only pieces of legislation clearly in favor of the South. It meant that Northerners in free states were obligated, regardless of their feelings towards slavery, to turn escaped slaves who had made it North back over to their Southern masters. Northerners strongly resented the law and it was one of the inspirations for the publishing of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852.
Non-violent attempts at resolution culminated in violence in 1859 when Northern abolitionist John Brown abandoned discussion and took direct action in a raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Though unsuccessful, the raid confirmed Southern fears of a Northern conspiracy to end slavery. When anti-slavery Republican Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election in 1860, Southerners were sure that the North meant to take away their right to govern themselves, abolish slavery, and destroy the Southern economy. Having exhausted their legal and political options, they felt that the only way to protect themselves from this Northern assault was to no longer be a part of the United States of America. Although the Southern states seceded separately, without intending to form a new nation, they soon banded together in a loose coalition. Northerners, however, led by Abraham Lincoln, viewed secession as an illegal act. The Confederate States of America was not a new country, they felt, but a group of treasonous rebels.
Touche, excellent counter argument...
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