Posted on 05/24/2007 6:03:30 AM PDT by Rebeleye
Well that’s good. As that song goes, “Keep on smilin’ through the rain...laughin’ at the pain...Just flowin’ with the changes, till the sun comes out again.”
Which lawschool did Ney attend which skipped the Bill of Rights?
“In the 80 years prior to the rebellion the South had dominated all branches of the government. It it was out-of-control then it’s because Southern leaders made it so.”
The Southern leaders made it so? The Southern leaders implemented the tarrifs? The North favored protective tariffs for their manufacturing industry. The South, which exported agricultural products to and imported manufactured goods from Europe, favored free trade and was hurt by the tariffs. Plus, a northern-dominated Congress enacted laws similar to Britain’s Navigation Acts to protect northern shipping interests.
“That constitution also guaranteed that no state could outlaw slavery and specifically protected slave imports.”
You are correct, but I restate. Slavery was not the issue at hand. The North had slavery at the time too. The South was continuing the status quo with regard to slavery. (I’m not condoning this policy). The South had slavery, but did not seceed due to slavery.
“Not for the North, no. It was for the Southern leaders, and the single most important reason [Slavery] for their rebellion.”
The facts simply don’t bear our your assertion. The only person who interjected slavery into the War was Lincoln. This was done out of desperation because the war was not going well.
“It had got to be midsummer, 1862. Things had gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics, or lose the game. I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy” - Lincoln
“What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.” - Lincoln
Can’t quote the Southern leaders of the time because they’ll disagree with you.
“We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for independence.” - Jefferson Davis
“There is a terrible war coming, and these young men who have never seen war cannot wait for it to happen, but I tell you, I wish that I owned every slave in the South, for I would free them all to avoid this war.” - Robert E. Lee
“There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil.” - Robert E. Lee
“So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that Slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interest of the South. So fully am I satisfied of this that I would have cheerfully lost all that I have lost by the war, and have suffered all that I have suffered to have this object attained.” - Robert E. Lee
“It is stated in books and papers that Southern children read and study that all the blood shedding and destruction of property of that conflict was because the South rebelled without cause against the best government the world ever saw; that although Southern soldiers were heroes in the field, skillfully massed and led, they and their leaders were rebels and traitors who fought to overthrow the Union, and to preserve human slavery, and that their defeat was necessary for free government and the welfare of the human family.
As a Confederate soldier and as a citizen of Virginia, I deny the charge, and denounce it as a calumny. We were not rebels; we did not fight to perpetuate human slavery, but for our rights and privileges under a government established over us by our fathers and in defense of our homes.” - Richard Henry Lee, Confederate Colonel
Nobody is suggesting the institution of slavery was good. Far from it. Both sides had blood on their hands from slavery. But, I don’t think the record indicates the war was fought over slavery. The slavery issue was a last minute attempt by Lincoln used to garner support from abolitionists in an attempt to swing public opinion on the war. It was the right thing to do even if Lincoln only did it to perserve the Union.
There's some controversy over whether this is a real quote from Lee. More here.
"So far," said Lee, "from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interests of the South. So fully am I satisfied of this, as regards Virginia especially, that I would cheerfully have lost all I have lost by the war, and have suffered all I have suffered, to have this object attained."
This comes from John Leyburn's 1885 reminiscences of an 1869 conversation. D.S. Freeman accepts it as legitimate.
If Lee said it, it was well after the war when he did. I doubt that during the fighting he thought that all that Virginia was suffering was a fit price for emancipation.
“We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for independence.” - Jefferson Davis
Give more of the quotation from Davis:
"I desire Peace as much as you do; I deplore bloodshed as much as you do; but I feel that not one drop of the blood shed in this War is on my hands. I can look up to my God and say this. I tried all in my power to avert this War. I saw it coming, and for twelve years I worked night and day to prevent it; but I could not. The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves; and so the War came: and now it must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks, and his children seize his musket and fight our battle, unless you acknowledge our right to self-government. We are not fighting for Slavery. We are fighting for INDEPENDENCE; and that, or EXTERMINATION, we WILL have."
Now if we dispute that Davis actually "deplored bloodshed," "tried all in my power to avert this War" and, "worked night and day to prevent" the war, the end of the paragraph may also be called into question.
The man had a limitlesss ability to deceive himself about his own motivations. That's why some of us think so little of Old Jeff.
It's hard to have much respect for Davis and his opinions when he says "I feel that not one drop of the blood shed in this War is on my hands."
I agree that there are great places in the North. In fact, there are wonderful places all over the country. I've been to all 50 states, and I didn't find any of them as blah as you seem to find the South. But tastes differ.
We have amazing architecture up here as well. Frank Lloyd Wright did his best work in the Chicago area and examples of his creations are all over.
I like FLW's work. One of my sons is an architect and has toured some of Wright's homes in the Chicago area. One of my uncles, also an architect, was a student of Wright's at Taliesin West. Wright was a character.
I think that the difference is that I like diversity and people down South want everything to be the same. Growing up in Chicago you could go from one end of Lawerence Avenue to the other and literally travel the entire world by passing through different neighborhoods. Mexico, Puerto Rico, Poland, Ukraine, Sweden, Ireland, Russia, Israel, China, Korea all were clustered on or near Lawrence or Clark or points east and west. Amazing restaurants and music, fascinating people. Maybe I'm wrong but one thing I notice about the South and its people is you don't like change. You don't go for different. When you're home you want everything to be just like you, and get upset when it's not.
LOL! You are overgeneralizing.
While the areas where I grew up may not have had the melting pot kind of diversity of Chicago, I listened in Texas to local radio stations play Cajun, Mexican, and Czech oompa music, and I went to school with people from all three of those cultures as well as second generation Italians. There was even an American Indian in my Boy Scout troop. In Georgia, we would see black women carrying baskets on their heads much like people did in Africa. We'd listen to blacks speaking Gullah in the parks, and on the radio and on records we'd listen to Howlin' Wolf, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Leadbelly. When I was a boy we went to see Risa Stevens sing Carmen when the Met toured San Antonio. My personal choice in music nowadays is baroque opera/oratorios.
I liked my Irish landlady when I lived in Boston as a student. She had a nice brogue. I marched in a large annual St. Patrick's Day Parade in the South. We didn't dye our local river green or have green beer though, but as a marcher I did get squirted with green ink.
I wish nine more years in the South for you. That's the greatest kindness I could do you. Maybe you could enjoy our Cajun, Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, Mexican, Turkish, South and Middle American, French, Italian, Middle Eastern, barbeque, German, Czech, fresh seafood, soul food, etc., restaurants this time around. We even have pizza here though it may not be as good as Chicago pizza.
Cheers.
“The man had a limitlesss ability to deceive himself about his own motivations. That’s why some of us think so little of Old Jeff.
It’s hard to have much respect for Davis and his opinions when he says “I feel that not one drop of the blood shed in this War is on my hands.””
From the many things I’ve read on the Civil War, I simply believe it was over state’s rights and not slavery. Even if I discount Davis, et al, and their motives, I can look at Lincoln’s own words and see that slavery was not a major concern of his going into the war and only became a concern when he felt the need to garner public support late in the war from the abolitionists.
States' rights to do what? Set tariffs? The Constitution settled that in Article I, and Andy Jackson further settled it in the 1830's, with both houses of Congress held by Southern Democrats. So, it can't be that.
The right to send slavecatchers into other States and compell them to help return run aways? No, I guess that would be an Anti-States' rights stance.
The right to take "property" in the form of other humans into a State or Territory where possession of Slaves was illegal, yet still retain posession? No, that would seem to be Anti-States' rights as well.
I'm at a loss. What "States' Right" was being violated in 1860?
Well, too, with men like John Buford and George Meade on the field, the North's loss of the good Reynolds hurt a lot less. The loss of A. S. Johnston (pace his critics) cost the South their only really competent generaling west of the Appalachians. They had to wait until Pat Cleburne came along, to discover another man of that quality, until Longstreet came down to Chattanooga.
The South, it has been often noticed, suffered from bad generaling at the army level (except for Lee and a few of his reports). Longstreet IMHO would have been better at the conceptual level, advising Davis -- or quartermastering in lieu of whatever miserable packrat they had running the Confederate commissary, who deprived both Confederate armies and Yankee prisoners of sustenance (he should have been hanged next to Wirz, or even instead of him, for Andersonville). Longstreet needed supervision and shepherding as a corps and army commander. Hood was a great brigadier and division commander, but failed with an army command. Braxton Bragg should have been made an ambassador or delegate or something -- which is what you are supposed to do, I think, with obstructive, deleterious people who don't actually deserve to be imprisoned or shot. Polk was more bishop than general. Anybody else? Kirby Smith I don't know enough about to make a judgment, except to say that a little more Confederacy and a little bit less Kirby Smithdom west of the Mississippi might have been helpful.
Kansas? Isn’t that where one of America’s first home grown terrorists - John Brown hailed?
It's genetic. Robert McNeil, in his book on the English language, noticed that the English have the same opinion of people from east Anglia, i.e. Norfolk and Suffolk, and generally the area from The Wash down to the Thames, in easternmost England. That is the source area for many of the Massachusetts Bay colonists, and they and New Englanders have many cultural traits in common, all deplored by the mass of civilized humanity.
You will notice, too, that colonial history was marked by several moves by English settlers to distance themselves, i.e. literally to secede, from those persistently unpleasant people in Massachusetts.
Uhhhhhhhhhhh - unless you know your history reeeeeeeeeeeeeal well you should refrain from posting on a subject you are so ignorant about. But then it sounds like you bought the socialist line like the damnYankee you are.
Now, now. If you ever rode out a real hurricane (I've been in two), you might change your mind. And don't get too carried away by your detestation. Remember that the man who saved Reginald Denny's ass was as black as the Crips who were trying to kill him for being randomly white.
I say that knowing full well the destructiveness of "identity politics" (which is what Hillary calls it when it's working for her).
I’ve been seeing this thread for a long time, but hadn’t read it, because I find all the North vs. South arguments boring and pointless. Tonight, I clicked on it to see why it was still alive. If you want a laugh, find out who Richard Ney is. He’s a scumbag defense lawyer who makes piles of money defending obviously guilty murderers. he’s a real piece of human garbage.
It's called cultural coherence, and knowing who you are and who are yours. The French call it eclat. It's a sign you're alive -- even to people who don't like you and find your aliveness dispiriting, because they'd rather you just weren't there.
So maybe that's why I was underwhelmed by the South, too much sameness. Maybe that's why it isn't home and could never be home.
I'm sure educated pan-Germans travelling through the ghettos of fin de siecle Europe felt the same way.
Homework ploy.
Sorry, not interested.
That's not what you said in 1861. Make up your mind.
Why stop there? Why not ditch the federal system and join the NWO? They're creating a chic new superstate to go with their global fascist economy. It'll be so good for business once nobody has to bother with all those chickenpuke little people and their little podunk countries anymore.
One world, one law, one money, one state, ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer! It should be really, really great once we can educate people to lift their eyes above their nothingburger little rights and laws and communities and see the Big Show.
No, he wasn't from there, but that's where he did some of his definitive work.
“Make up your mind”.
Great retort, LC!!!!!
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