Posted on 07/06/2013 7:37:16 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A Conversation with Thomas Fleming, historian and author of A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War.
Thomas Fleming is known for his provocative, politically incorrect, and very accessible histories that challenge many of the clichés of current American history books. Fleming is a revisionist in the best conservative sense of the word. His challenges to accepted wisdom are not with an agenda, but with a relentless hunger for the truth and a passion to present the past as it really was, along with capturing the attitudes and culture of the times.
In The New Dealers War Fleming exposed how the radical Left in FDRs administration almost crippled the war effort with their utopian socialist experimentation, and how Harry Truman led reform efforts in the Senate that kept production in key materials from collapse.
In The Illusion of Victory, Fleming showed that while liberal academics may rate Woodrow Wilson highly, that he may have been the most spectacularly failed President in history. 100,000 American lives were sacrificed to favor one colonial monarchy over another, all so Wilson could have a seat at the peace table and negotiate The League of Nations. Instead, the result of WWI was Nazism and Communism killing millions for the rest of the century.....
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Some areas were heavily dependent upon slave labor, and some were not. That those areas not heavily dependent upon it were the ones moralizing the most is not at all surprising. Cheap morality, no skin off their noses.
That there were also regional rivalries and even ethnic differences played into the matter. There had been human bondage in one form or another for all recorded history up to that point, the southern states didn't invent the practice, and the United States did not put an end to it in the world, since it exists to this very day. Now, what were you saying, about this oddly hypnotic, all-powerful "slave power?"
The only state by pre ‘61 borders in the top half of incomes in America in the south is Texas.
That’s it. Northerner’s don’t get it but it has taken 150 years for the South, even in Texas - to catch up with the average of all the states let alone the average of the north. There’s a reason for that.
I don’t see how slavery in ‘65 was worse than the slavery today under Wilson in ‘13.
At least one side understood that what they were doing is morally wrong.
So why not compensation as was done everywhere else? The UK had abolition prior to the US.
Here’s a hint - the war wasn’t about slavery otherwise compensation was the solution. It was about the same thing it was back in the 1820s. Nullification.
Then you are delusional.
Protecting the future of slavery was the reason for Deep South declarations of secession -- there was no other reason of consequence, regardless of what today's pro-Confederate propagandists claim.
exit82: "What has become evident to me, is that the North did not have to fight a war, causing 600,000 deaths and the ruination of the South for a century thereafter, solely because of an attack on one fort."
The white Slave Power did not have to declare its secession, did not have to provoke war by illegally seizing every Federal property it could, did not have to start war at Fort Sumter (April 12, 1861) and did not have to formally declare war on the United States (May 6, 1861).
But it did, and the results were the only ones historically viable: Unconditional Surrender and the utter destruction of it's "peculiar institution", slavery.
exit82: "What would have been so bad about having two seperate countries in 1861?"
But one of those countries -- the Confederacy -- provoked, started and declared war on the other: the United States.
The Confederacy then launched invasions and military operations in every Union state and territory it could reach, including Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona.
Other states like California, Colorado, Vermont and even New York also suffered from Confederate special missions.
exit82: "After mechanization displaced slavery in another 15 or 20 years, the country could have reunited without all the bloodshed."
You must, must remember that 1860 was the high-water mark for slavery in America.
By 1860 slavery had been rapidly growing in numbers and value for well over 50 years, and its future looked brighter than ever -- to the white Slave Power.
The only thing Slave Power had to do was make certain slavery had plenty of territory to expand into.
And that's what anti-slavery Republican Lincoln's election threatened -- no expansion of slavery.
So, this whole notion that in 1860 slavery might eventually become "obsolete" or uneconomical was simply not contemplated by anyone then -- certainly not by the white Slave Power.
And why did slavery eventually become outlawed everywhere?
Answer: because the world's strongest military powers considered slavery an abomination.
But had there been a major Power, such as the Confederacy, so totally conceived and dedicated to the proposition that slavery was natural, necessary and legal, that Power could have delayed slavery's demise indefinitely.
Even as it was, the "ideal" of slavery long survived, grew and animated regimes world-wide at least through the times of Hitler's Nazis and Stalin's Communists.
Indeed, many argue that even today, a form of slavery is the goal of our Liberal/Progressive Democrats' many social welfare programs.
So slavery is far from dead, in theory or practice.
Even today, as 150 years ago, it must be defeated by very difficult political (or even military) lifting.
Populists? The planters who led Southern politics were anything but.
People love to portray history as a battle between rich, arrogant Easterners or Northerners and poor, downtrodden Southerners, as in the 1890s or the 1930s, but that wasn't always the case.
The antebellum South was a rich place and its leaders were often very rich men. Some of them ferociously snubbed the "rude mechanics" of the North (and their own backwoods).
Maybe it's not exactly the case now either. For all the snobbery and condescension you find in Northerners directed at the South, there's a distinct current of the same elitism going in the other direction.
I don't think this is entirely accurate. In the early days of the country, anti-slavery societies were more numerous in the South than the North, especially in VA.
This was during the period when slavery was not particullarly profitabe for most owners, and was assumed by pretty much everybody to be a doomed institution, and the basic discussion was about how to wind it down with the least turmoil resulting.
But after the first decade of the 19th or so, slavery was increasingly profitable, plus it drew more began moving away from their abolitionists.
Southerners more and more abandoned their original position that slavery was an immoral but necessary institution and in self-defense (as they saw it) became increasingly aggressive in insisting on the protection and expansion of slavery.
By 1850 they had indeed reached the attitudes you describe, but that was most certainly not how G. Washington or T. Jefferson or most of the contemporaries viewed things.
The peculiar part of all this is that both sides viewed themselves as only defending themselves against the aggression of their opponents. And they were both right, in a way.
The Confederate government was aiming at detaching as much (slave) territory from the union as it could and dividing the rest of the country as much as possible. If there'd been a serious effort to sit down in Congress and hash out a separation agreement before any state took unilateral action perhaps the country could have been peacefully divided, but in the hurried and panicked circumstances of the time that wasn't going to happen. If you couldn't guarantee whether the capital city would be in the same country from one day to the next , you weren't going to get a peaceful separation.
What has become evident to me, is that the North did not have to fight a war, causing 600,000 deaths and the ruination of the South for a century thereafter, solely because of an attack on one fort.
They didn't start the war. Why attack the fort in the first place? What was Davis aiming at? Did he expect the union would just crumble and let him have everything he wanted? Did he expect to best the United States on the battlefield? Or was he as caught up in the rush of events as everyone else and trying to maintain his position at the front of the wave? One thing we've learned from history is, don't push the US around. We stand up for ourselves -- and we should. What made Davis think we wouldn't?
Then you know nothing about Marxism, history or the South.
More important, you have zero reading comprehension, having understood only what you wished to think.
RegulatorCountry: "Slavery as an institution preexisted statehood."
And slavery was destroyed only because the Deep-South Slave Power first declared its secession, then provoked, started and formally declared war on the United States.
Had the white Slave Power been content to operate within strict Constitutional limits, slavery might still in some form be lawful today.
RegulatorCountry: "That those areas not heavily dependent upon it were the ones moralizing the most is not at all surprising.
Cheap morality, no skin off their noses."
Before 1860 virtually zero Northerners cared a whit about slavery in the South.
They considered it a necessary price for Union and before 1856 all Northerners voted for pro-slavery parties -- Democrats or Whigs.
It was only when the white Slave Power began to overreach -- most especially in the 1857 Supreme Court Dred Scott Decision -- trying to make slavery legal everywhere that the majority of Northerners decided: enough was enough.
RegulatorCountry: "Now, what were you saying, about this oddly hypnotic, all-powerful 'slave power?' "
Thanks for that question.
The white Slave Power ruled the United States from the Founding in 1787, until it declared secession in 1861.
It's the reason Thomas Jefferson (no, not Bill Clinton) was called "the first Negro President" -- because Jefferson had been elected President by those 3/5 of slaves counted for representation purposes.
Before Lincoln in 1860 not one seriously anti-slavery President had ever been elected, and Slave Power representatives dominated Federal Government in Washington -- the Presidency, the Senate, House, Supreme Court and the highest military officials.
These people all supported expansion of slavery into territories and even into non-slave states, as seen in the 1857 Supreme Court Dred Scott decision.
That was too much for most Northerners, and it drove them to switch from pro-slavery parties -- Democrats and Whigs -- to anti-slavery Republicans.
Agreed, and indeed, 1860 era slavery was different from, say, 1760s slavery and very different from 1660s slavery.
The institution and those supporting it changed considerably over the years -- and not for the better.
But I suspect there was a "moment of truth" in Thomas Jefferson's life which probably marks the turning point from Southerners' considering slavery an unnecessary evil to insisting it was a necessary and good thing.
That moment happened when Jefferson was working at his estate's financial books, adding up the numbers, and realized that his slaves not only did productive work, producing an operating profit, they also increased in value over time producing higher net worth, and they increased in numbers at a predictable rate.
Suddenly the light goes on in Jefferson's mind and he realizes: what's not to like about slavery?
This happened early in the 1800s, and the Slave Power never looked back, or revisited the question afterwards.
Samuel Cooper was the most senior, followed by Albert Sidney Johnston, Lee, Joe Johnston, and P.G.T. Beauregard.
On the contrary, my reading comprehension is quite adequate enough to have detected that you deem our Founding Fathers to have been this "slave power" that holds such sway over your imagination, a trait collectively held by Marxist rabble the world over.
Thank you for laying it out so succinctly.
Flemings quite rightly proposes a clash of absolutes. In any case, the number of abolitionists was small but significant, including most of the New England intelligentia and many northern evangelicals in the banks of settlers reaching all the way into Iowa. Like Muslim radicals, they had the support of many moderates, who silently nodded their approval, and voted for the right sort. When such men gain the levers of power, they can work a revolution, just as the gay activists have done,
There is an element of truth in what you say. I had telephone dealings with some “Georgia boys” once and we had a lot of fun. One was a native Georgian for centuries. My Great-Great-Grandfather was in Company E of the 25th Illinois Volunteers. They enlisted in September 1861 and their enlistment expired in September 5, 1861. “Unca Billy” came down to see if they would re-enlist for the march. I told the Southern boys: “your hospitality was so great that they all went home to a man!”
= loyalists.
All the mericans left Massachuttes ant went west leaving behind the loyalist detritus
Reminding me that Shermans army was an all- volunteer army. If they hadnt decided to re-up the western army would not have existed. Also, trivial. Thomas, a Virginian, was one of the norths best generals. Too bad for the South that he wasnt on their side. Alsl he got ignored when they started handing out honors.
It would be foolish to claim slavery was not a causal factor in leading to The Civil War." probably even the "Final Cause" to us older language. But it was not the only cause or even a major cause.
Each and every discussion on slavery assumes it was an evil that is the basic premise. A moral judgment. The Bible never condemns slavery which fact is sometimes commented on.
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