Granted it has gotten progressively worse since then.
Please don't flame! I'm posting this to learn and to find out what (better informed) FReepers think.
The War between the States had been building since the early 1800’s. John C. Calhoun foretold the Civil War and the reasons for it.
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. Slavery (or rather the constitutional right to own slaves) was the flash point.
An end to slavery meant the destruction of the South’s agrarian economy. (Exactly what happened in the Reconstruction). Nullification and disunion by the States was blocked time and again. After the Supreme Court ruled in the south’s favor in the Drew Scott case, and northern states ignored it, war was inevitable.
Was it Lincoln’s fault?....no. It was the North’s responsibility as a whole. The war changed forever the right of states to rule themselves, giving us our runaway federal government, and the loss of many liberties.
My own opinion that slavery in the South would have disappeared with the advent of the cotton gin and other technological advances. The South would have followed Britain’s lead when it was possible. Freeing the slaves was not the reason for the Civil War, it was a power play pure and simple, and the South lost.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
What?
If the South had not lost there would be no America.
Get it?
Obvious troll is obvious.
In what way?
That is obvious.
Google Copperheads to see what the left was up to then.
A reassertion of powers divided between the States and the Federal government hasn't completely been abandoned, but we are headed that way. Beware following the example of contintental Europe in that regard........
What actually took place was that Lincoln made law foremost and upfront in the public arena; having studied it and being somewhat mentored in it, he set about on an ambitious course of bringing his early successes in applying local laws in disputes among landowners, boundary demarcation and territorial preeminence to a national level when the national map was but a mere third of what it now encompasses.
He, alone among all the rest of the ambitious and restless men, saw in 1860 what the future could bring - not just increasing wealth and trade but a chance to remake and expand the unexplored frontier that lay to the west even while shrouded in tales, myths and disappointing opportunities, still beckoned as a siren.
Having had no personal contact with the Negro other than the time he spent on the Mississippi River while piloting a rather ramshackle boat he learned real fast the importance of making friends with important people in high places and the persuasive qualities of high-falutin’ speech so it was but a small step to make a landmark declaration superseding the Constitution itself.
Desperate for the all-important second term, he suspended the writ of habeas corpus, mandated that all the union troops vote in the election before deployment (where they might die before November 1864), and single-handledly declared himself the tax collector for the entire nation.
But he was a good republican and he did enjoy a night at the opera.
The 1800s were full of changes in industry, technology, religion, art, music, education, transportation, communication, politics, the economy, etc. The changes in all these areas influenced all the other areas. If I had to pick one event that has a direct causal relationship to all the world's troubles, I'd say it had to do with eating fruit from a certain tree....
Lincoln was never the aggressor. Read his first inaugural address. The south started the war when they fired on Fort Sumter. Thereafter, the federal government was in a fight for survival against insurgents who wanted to seize the nation’s capital and take control of the governament. The war was never totally about state’s rights. A brief study of history will show this. Read “The Civil War”, by Benson Lossing.