Posted on 01/18/2013 5:53:09 PM PST by Para-Ord.45
This Humean notion of Americanism that acknowledges the right of a self-governing people to secede is framed in the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration is primarily a document justifying secession, but it has been thoroughly corrupted by Lincoln’s reading of it and the ritualistic repetition and expansion of that reading. The Lincoln tradition reads the Declaration as affirming a metaphysical doctrine of individual rights (all men are created equal) and takes this to be the fundamental symbol of the American regime, trumping all other symbols, including the symbol of moral excellence internal to those inherited moral communities protected by the reserved powers of the states under the Tenth Amendment. Indeed, this tradition holds that the Declaration of Independence is superior to the Constitution itself, for being mere positive law, the Constitution can always be trumped by the “higher” metaphysical law of equality.
The Constitution of the United States was founded as a federative compact between the states, marking out the authority of a central government, having enumerated powers delegated to it by sovereign states which reserved for themselves the vast domain of unenumerated powers. By an act of philosophical alchemy, the Lincoln tradition has transmuted this essentially federative document into a consolidated nationalist regime...
Lincoln’s vision of a consolidated nationalism in pursuit of an antinomic doctrine of equality had its roots in the French Revolution, which sought to unify the decentralized traditional order of France into a consolidated nationalism in pursuit of the rights of man. But Lincoln’s vision was also forward looking. By the 1830s, the forces of nationalism and industrialism were sweeping Europe, and had begun to have an impact on an industrial North all too eager to compete on the world stage with the empires of Europe. For this project, centralization and consolidation were necessary. Lincoln’s vision of consolidating the states into a nationalist regime was of a piece with that of Garibaldi in Italy, Bismarck in Germany, Lenin in Russia, and the general consolidating, industrializing, and imperializing forces on the move in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
(excerpt)
The revisionism is yours as those “facts” are easily to disprove.
You were never very good at this but you used to be better. Losing your grip - or just your interest?
You tell me.
During the 1840s and 50s various filibustering attacks from the USA, primarily if not exclusively supported by southerners, were made on Sonora, Cuba, and Baja CA.
William Walker conquered Nicaragua and reintroduced slavery there, then attempted to conquer the rest of Central America.
The annexation by war/purchase of Santo Domingo, Cuba and the Yucatan were at various times debated by Congress.
In 1854 the ambassadors of the southern-dominated Pierce administration to Spain, France and UK issued the incredibly maladroit Ostend Manifesto, very nearly declaring an ultimatum against Spain if it refused to sell Cuba to the USA.
So it is not at all unrealistic to believe that there were strong tendencies in the South to expansion southwards. Indeed, it was their only option if they were to prevent eventual northern domination of the nation.
I will sure agree that the Civil War should not have happened. The southern slave power should not have rebelled, and should not have started the war.
Their insurrection was illegitimate, and unabashedly in support of evil goals using evil means.
After all, the presence of vast numbers mixed race slaves gave ample proof to the southerner’s continuing affection for their negro concubines.
The torture and mutilation of black slaves for various pretended offenses gave ample proof to the southerners fear of their black slaves. They couldn’t let the slaves escape, and insisted in court that northern states, in violation of any notion of ‘state’s rights’ succumb to the slave power.
The rest of your statement is so pathetically silly I don't even know where to start. Black participation in the Union army wasn't even permitted until 1863. At the end of the war it was less than 10% of the Union army and blacks were not primarily serving in combat units. The Irish constituted an even smaller percentage -- just over 7% by most estimates. The highest I've ever seen was 7.5%.
While it's incredible the history you Lost Causers are ignorant of, it's nothing compared to what you think you know that's simply wrong.
The New York City draft riots (July 13 to July 16, 1863; known at the time as Draft Week[2]) were violent disturbances in New York City that were the culmination of working-class discontent with new laws passed by Congress that year to draft men to fight in the ongoing American Civil War. The riots were the largest civil insurrection in American history.[3]
President Abraham Lincoln diverted several regiments of militia and volunteer troops from following up after the Battle of Gettysburg to control the city. The rioters were overwhelmingly working-class men, primarily ethnic Irish, resenting particularly that wealthier men, who could afford to pay a $300 commutation fee to hire a substitute, were spared the draft.[4][5]
So Lincoln, besides being a butcher was a liar. Ok. I can go with that.
Great googly-moogly cva - do you not know what “conciliatory” means?
Let’s see if we can chip in and buy poor cva a dictionary ;-)
I see why you neglected to cite your source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_draft_riots
Wackypedia doesn’t say what you think it said, and doesn’t support your larger contention. Go back and read it again.
Composition of the Federal Army:
Thus, only under one-third (1/3) of all troops were non-natives distributed approximately as follows: German c. 200,000 Irish c. 150,000 British c. 150,000 Canadians c. 50,000 others c. 75,000 (mostly European)Link here
Sick of doing research for Lincoln cultists.....
If you substitute the word "immediate" for "real," we are in agreement.
That fact that the immediate cause was the seizure of American ("Federal") property and subsequent secession of the Cotton States, along with Lincoln's conciliatory attempts to save the Union as his principle short-term goal, has caused no end of mischief with Lost Causers, who want to pretend that what was merely the latest case was the actual cause of the War.
Unfortunately for them, one has to ignore the foundational basis of the Republican Party, Lincoln's own personal history, and nearly the entire history of intra-American disputes from the 3/5 Compromise going forward to believe that slavery was not the real cause of the War. (Actually, you can go back further than the Constitution, and even before the Revolution.)
The question of Southern Honor puts me in the mind of Emerson's famous phrase: "The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons..." but yes, I will concede there was a large element of that. But actually, I believe there are two other important causes that you miss: 1) The slavers (as distinct from Southerners, generally) had bargained in bad faith for years. The election of 1860 precipitated a crisis because it was now clear that the three separate parties all calling themselves "Democrats" could no longer keep a coalition together well enough to retain Federal power. 2) New York and Pennsylvania had both eclipsed Virginia as the most important states of the Union. They were both far more populous by 1830, and in the succeeding 30 years industry had lifted their ascendant populations out of poor immigrant status. The prestige and influence of the South was rapidly waning. This produced in the slavers a "crisis mentality." (Which the election drove forcefully home.)
As to rest, we agree. The Charles and Mary Beard version of history and its many variants are pathetically silly, and the fact that it was taken up by academia so enthusiastically (and its various incarnations have managed to survive despite Beard's own demise) is a testimonial to the fact that "progressive" academia is nothing very new.
Or as my Dad once put it, in reference to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the "no blood for oil" idiots: "I didn't sign-up for the combat infantry on December 10th, 1941 because of the expansion of US markets into the Far East. That's all crap. I signed up because of 2400 dead guys at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, and so did everybody else."
Duty, Honor, Country, yes.
Money? No.
The Germans were immigrants who came in waves from the early 1800's forward. Germans made up the largest minority percentage of the United States Army in the Civil War. That's not surprising: they are the largest identifiable group of immigrants in the country today, and they were then as well.
They are my kin. My Father's family came here in 1807. Two generations of my grand sires fought for America during the Civil War. They were, in fact, Americans, not Germans.
Yeah, there were draft riots -- so what? This has nothing to do with your idiotic claim that Irish and Blacks were used for "canon fodder." The only general who used Blacks for "cannon fodder" was Bobby Lee, who put Black Union prisoners under fire to construct his defenses, in clear violation to the laws of War.
One of cva’s routine contentions is something along the lines that the north imported or drafted off the boats foreigners to fight against the rebels. Thus his emphasis on “Foreign Soldiers”.
I have yet to see any evidence of that. What cva provides is evidence that immigrants were willing - or compelled - to fight. This link: http://www.upa.pdx.edu/IMS/currentprojects/TAHv3/Content/PDFs/Immigrant_Soldiers_Civil_War.pdf puts the Irish immigrant participation at 9.1%. I guess somehow he feeeeeeeeeeels that this proves his point (whatever that is).
But here is where it becomes interesting. The same documentation that shows the diversity of northern soldiers also shows that the confeds were pretty much a white-bread operation with only about 9% foreign born. Source: http://www.upa.pdx.edu/IMS/currentprojects/TAHv3/Content/PDFs/Immigrant_Soldiers_Civil_War.pdf
So the interesting part comes when the revisionist lost causers (but I repeat myself) attempt to portray themselves as champions of diversity. Read this document and notice how that same 9% is presented to look like a rainbow of diversity: http://www.florida-scv.org/Camp1316/Minorities%20in%20the%20Confederate%20Army.pdf
I guess it isn’t so much the truth as it is the telling ;-)
I prefer your wording.
Although you can make a decent case that an anti-slavery majority in Congress could immediately start whittling away at the viability of slavery using perfectly constitutional means.
For instance, interstate commerce in slaves, even between slave states, could have been prohibited under the appropriate clause.
I'm not enough of an economist to know how this would have affected things, but certainly the Upper South and Border states, with export of slaves to the Deep South a critical components of their economy, would have been severely affected, as would the Deep South states, which needed those slaves to keep expanding their acreage under cotton.
In fact, I would suspect that just the threat of such a closure would make the South suddenly a lot more reasonable about considering gradual emancipation in return for not immediately implementing the proposal. Except of course that they would have not considered any such thing, they would have seceded. But in this scenario with a little more justification, to the extent any action in defense of slavery can ever be justified.
Interesting that you don't include who had William Walker killed and why.
To save the Union from what?
He was actually telling the truth in that instance. Lincoln and his backers didn't give two hoots about slavery. That issue was merely a wedge in their political toolbox.
What "dead guys" did Lincoln invade the South for?
I don’t see how it is terribly relevant, but I’m perfectly well aware that Walker was captured by the Royal Navy, which turned him over the local Hondurans who quite reasonably executed him under the Laws of War as a non-state actor waging war on a nation state.
What at the time was called a pirate.
The percentage of foreign-born soldiers in the Union Army was actually smaller than their percentage of the population.
My father was 1/2 German, and his kin were among those who fought in the Kansas Union regiments.
On my mom’s side I have ancestors who fought for the CSA and others who fought for the USA. Family legend has it that one non-direct ancestor was a “galvanized Yankee” who fought for the South till captured, then agreed to fight for the Union against the Indians. :)
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