Yep, it looks like the nation... 
sure did losted it!
Say, Blaze... 
ya'll blazing any saddles down that way. Sure smells like it--
Posted on 10/14/2007 7:14:10 AM PDT by proudofthesouth
I'm curious as to what FReepers have to say on this topic. Did our (America) go downhill with the start of Abraham Lincoln being elected and the South loosing the Civil War?
Up to the invention of the cotton gin in the early 1800s, slavery was dying out in the South as well as the North. It was unprofitable.
The cotton gin gave the institution a 50 year lease on life by making it highly and increasingly profitable.
Up to around 1820 almost all southern leaders agreed that slavery was a Bad Thing. They just didn't know how to get rid of it.
After 1820 the standard attitude in the South towards the Peculiar Institution shifted first towards slavery being morally neutral and then to it being a positive Good Thing. The Good Thing idea was dominant by 1860 and had a great deal to do with developing the attitudes that led to secession.
There is no question that the more powerful northern states were in control of the federal government, and were passing laws to their benefit and the souths detriment.
Well, actually, there is a lot of question. Look at the sectional distribution of presidents, Supreme Court justices and congressional committee chairmen from the Founding to 1860. Southerners and "northerners with southern principles" dominated throughout, far out of proportion to their population.
The major reason for this was that the Democrats were the dominent political party throughout this period, and bloc-voting southerners could control the party by threatening to walk out. Of course, when southern Dems finally did walk out of the party in 1860, they precipitated events that led directly to Lincoln's election, secession and civil war.
It would be much more accurate to say that southerners were concerned about losing control of the federal government and felt that they were unsafe in the Union unless they were in control of it. So as soon as it looked like they were losing control, they left.
Yep, it looks like the nation... sure did losted it!
Say, Blaze... ya'll blazing any saddles down that way. Sure smells like it--
((((Snicker)))
It’s certainly a period of resolution of the old questions. Look a little farther into the period leading up to that, especially Clay, Webster, Calhoun: the Triumvirate. The new Federal Constitution left a few loose ends that were not tied up until the Civil War resolved everything. The XIVth Amend after the Civil War produced the present system, which is predominantly economic under Federal authority.
I can't concur with that. Too much passing the buck. Europeans were well entrenched in slavery long before Islam existed.
The spread of Christianity made it harder and harder to justify slavery of one's fellow man. The escape clause became what constituted a fellow man. Black Africans fit the bill, being different enough to be nonhuman. Curiously, this was never fully accepted in the South, given the demand that slaves have representation in Congress. If we had a primate line with IQ's of 80 that could not interbreed with us, we'd still have slaves.
Muslims still have slaves because Islam allows that only Muslims and not all humans, should be treated with respect. I see the defining of fetuses as nonhuman to be the same convenient logic in modern context.
Yes, an appalling lack, even though that Tariff stuck in the minds of the States who were subjected to it when it was recast as the Morrill Tariff and set as high as 37.5%, and indeed echoes of the Abomination rang clear in Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address where he clearly said
“... The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere....”
from:
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html
>>
At the time, Taussig says, the import-dependent South was paying as much as 80 percent of the tariff, while complaining bitterly that most of the revenues were being spent in the North. The South was being plundered by the tax system and wanted no more of it. Then along comes Lincoln and the Republicans, tripling (!) the rate of tariff taxation (before the war was an issue)....
“We are going to make tax slaves out of you,” Lincoln was effectively saying, “and if you resist, there will be an invasion.” That was on March 4. Five weeks later, on April 12, Fort Sumter, a tariff collection point in Charleston Harbor, was bombarded by the Confederates. No one was hurt or killed, and Lincoln later revealed that he manipulated the Confederates into firing the first shot, which helped generate war fever in the North.”
from:
Lincoln’s Tariff War
By Thomas J. DiLorenzo
Posted on 5/6/2002
http://www.mises.org/article.aspx?Id=952&FS=Lincoln’s+Tariff+War
Yes, indeed, pay the taxes we levy as abominable as they may be and **there will be no invasion**.
I agree. Thanks to Lincoln, the federal government became coercive and has never looked back. The government itself now actively molds the public opinion required to keep it in power. Damncrats, the educational system and media are its puppets.
“...and half the nation favors slavery.”
It appears that a sufficient majority of the nation favors *tax* slavery, much as 5 wolves and 3 sheep would vote on what to have for dinner.
Even worse, with the fiat money, central banking system that every nation on earth employs, governments enjoy the self-appointed right to counterfeit private wealth by ‘borrowing money into circulation’ which is used to purchase goods and services. Even our own Fed openly sets a target of inflating the currency by 2% per year. Every single dollar they borrow into circulation is one dollar of value they did nothing to earn, and is nothing less than a proportionate dilution of the private wealth.
It is a parasitic system of theft from which there is no escape especially when coupled with an tax on worldwide income expressed in nominal dollars. If slavery is defined as theft of labor by the threat of deadly force, and where the slave cannot leave the master without his permission, this is the pure form of slavery yet devised by mankind.
I believe the US Civil War was unfortunately inevitable. Slavery, though not the only reason for the war, was an open wound that had to be cauterized. Regrettably, the Union victory seems to have destroyed states' rights along with it.
“Your thesis proves you are no historian. ‘I am no historian’ is the only thing you wrote that makes a modicum of sense.”
Where did anyone ask you to comment, in light of your belief the post was so senseless?
Since Ad Hom. is your method, let me borrow from you and say that I think you sound like a ass-hat.
No. Lincoln deserves his place in history as one of the greatest presidents we’ve ever had. He preserved the union. Nuff said.
No. Lincoln deserves his place in history as one of the greatest presidents we’ve ever had. He preserved the union. Nuff said.
Exactly. Look where it's gotten us. We're the richest, most powerful nation on the planet. We enjoy liberty unparalleled on the planet. In short we're the greatest nation on Earth.
No. While money and power have never been truly divorced in any society, we are not a plutocracy. We're missing a fundamental pillar of that particular form of government.
In a plutocracy, not only does power consolidate with wealth, but the barriers to becoming wealthy range from extremely difficult to impossible. There exists no greater social mobility than in America, so we cannot by definition be a plutocracy.
That was hillarious.
Poor argument. Women were chattle during the age of chivalry. Chivalry itself became highly romanticized over the depictions of chivalry amongst the aristocracy, but the common women of the time saw little of it.
Good post. I agree.
The reason our country goes down hill is the ACLU,greedy, traitorous politicians and citizens,social engineering,judges making law from the bench, communism, apathy,cowards,and most of all, turning away from God.
No one person can make or break the country.Only the millions who let that person get away with it.
Now it’s too late.
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