GOP candidate: Civil war wasn’t about slavery

The Hill ^ | June 25th, 2018 | Lisa Hagen

[Mariner]

Republican Senate nominee Corey Stewart said that he doesn’t believe that the Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery, arguing that it was mostly about states’ rights.

In a Monday interview with Hill.TV’s “Rising,” Stewart, who recently won the GOP nomination in the Virginia Senate race, said that not all parts of Virginia’s history are “pretty.”

But he said he doesn’t associate slavery with the war.

“I don’t at all. If you look at the history, that’s not what it meant at all, and I don’t believe that the Civil War was ultimately fought over the issue of slavery,” Stewart said.

When “Rising” co-host Krystal Ball pressed him again if the Civil War was “significantly” fought over slavery, Stewart said some of them talked about slavery, but added that most soldiers never owned slaves and “they didn’t fight to preserve the institution of slavery.”

“We have to put ourselves in the shoes of the people who were fighting at that time and from their perspective, they saw it as a federal intrusion of the state,” he said.

Stewart also said he doesn’t support a Richmond elementary school named after a Confederate general deciding to rename it after former President Obama.

[Bull Snipe]

As I stated in an earlier post, Only by smuggling.

[arrogantsob]

A census is a requirement of a government. There is also no mention of an “Air Force” either, is it legitimate?

Show me the word.

[lastchance]

I didn’t tell you that. Slavery did not need to be mentioned. It was an acknowledged fact of the time that slavery was a legal institution. The question of fair representation arose over how slave population should be counted.

[DiogenesLamp]

Jefferson was terribly conflicted about slavery and he treated his slaves like family.

It is my understanding that most slave owners did so as well. Of course the abolitionists searched far and wide to find examples of sadistic bastards abusing slaves, and they made certain to create the impression that it was widespread, very much like the deliberately lying "Fake News" media of today. Liberals have to make up histrionic accusations on the basis of very little reality, as they recently did with the illegal alien children at the border who were separated from their parents who were in custody.

A good lie always contains a small part of reality in it.

Correcting your use of the word “enshrinement” is hardly nit-picking. But you used it for its rhetorical value.

I used it because it is commonly used to refer to anything which is put into the US Constitution. It is reverence for the Constitution that motivates the usage of such words as "enshrinement".

[Jim Noble]

The whole discussion is interesting, but unproductive.

This conversation is like discussing whether women can get pregnant if they are raped.

It’s of some intellectual interest, but it pales in importance to beating Tim Kaine, which just became incredibly more difficult.

[CodeToad]

” Chattel slavery would have continued on until into the early twentieth Century.”

In the North too, because the North had slaves at the time of the war they started. They even started the Jim Crow laws in New York.

[arrogantsob]

Nations do not normally establish relations to rebellions so the non-recognition shows the US was considered one country not two even though it cost them a huge amount.

Jefferson’s first act as president was to aid the French in reconquering Haiti.

[jeffersondem]

“What did you have to say about delivering the mail?”

All I remember was it involved my cerebral wit and keen charm.

[arrogantsob]

I do not dispute that it was 20 years before an amendment could be passed which freed the slaves.

However, it is telling that they were too ashamed to use the word and it necessitated beating around the bush.

why did they not use the word instead of such an awkward substitution?

[arrogantsob]

Only three Northern states allowed slavery.

[Bull Snipe]

Slavery would have continued on in the North, but would have probably died out soon there than in the Confederate State.

[DoodleDawg]

All I remember was it involved my cerebral wit and keen charm.

Still the kidder.

[gandalftb]

“Slavery could have ended peaceably”

That is just not reasonable. Again, in S Carolina, 1/3 of the residents owned 2/3 of the residents, political power would never ever have changed hands peacefully.

In fact the strife to this day of that political change continues 150+ years later.

The northern farmers I descended from knew little of any other issue than slavery. When Fort Sumter was fired upon, there were mass enlistments within days in both Iowa and Wisconsin, that included my family.

In fact, the Iowa militias organized so fast without waiting for a federal call to arms, that they outfitted themselves at their own expense in gray uniforms, unaware the Confederates had picked that color and ignorant that their own federal army wore blue.

And then they had to wait to enter the fight until blue uniforms could be obtained. The early Iowa regiments were state and personally financed.

My family helped many slaves escape to the north and still talked about the danger of the slave hunters around the area. Slavery was a big issue, especially around the Methodists.

[jeffersondem]

“I know exactly what it says. It dealt with more than... “persons held for service or labor” ...Compromising in the present does not mean the future would be the same.”

That is why the founding fathers, including all the Southern delegates, insisted on including in the United States constitution a provision allowing the document to be peacefully amended.

Slavery could have, and should have been, eliminated by a peaceful constitutional amendment. Not war.

For all the talk, neither Lincoln nor any northern Congressman or Senator ever introduced before the war a proposed constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. And Lincoln actually served in Congress.

[DiogenesLamp]

I raised the issue on a prior thread. You were unable or unwilling to substantiate your claim then either. You can rest assured that every time you claim Government subsidization of Northern railroads or shipping activity, I will ask for the legislation that authorized that action.

Having previously seen the proof of it, I am a lot less anxious about finding it than you. I am confident that I will eventually run across it again, but I don't feel motivated to look for it right now. I much prefer the back and forth in which I am currently engaging.

I also perceive you really don't care about the proof, you just want to challenge everything and slow down the discussion by insisting on proof of which you already should be aware.

I will also continue to use the statistics on the slave trade from “slavevoyages.org” every time you make the claim that Northern ships carried all the slaves to the Western Hemisphere.

That's fine. Clearly Northern US ships only carried slaves after 1776, and therefore they are obviously not responsible for all the slaves carried prior to that.

I can speculate that if they went their own way. that the 200,000,000 would have been spent to buy more slaves and land to grow more cotton and tobacco.

Well there's actually proof that they wouldn't have done that. I've also shown it to you before, and since it is easy to find, here it is again.

Nothing to the west of Mid Texas could have been plantation farmed in the 19th century because cotton only grows there through modern irrigation practices. So no, they couldn't have grown any more than they were already growing. There was no land or climate that would support it.

To RinaseaofDs. Here is a graphic I use a lot. It proves that it was impossible to have plantation slavery in any of the territories because Cotton won't grow (much) in any territory north of Oklahoma, and it can't grow in West Texas or further west without modern irrigation.

The point here is to demonstrate that the concern about expanding slavery to the territories was probably astroturn nonsense created by a propaganda organization created in New York (of course) called "The free Soil Party."

You couldn't have any significant plantation farming in Kansas because you can't even do very much cotton farming in Kansas today.

The "expansion of slavery in the territories" appears to be made up astroturf intended to keep the Northern coalition of states in control of Congress.

They were using that majority in congress to make sure legislation kept money coming out of the South into their pockets. That's why they were so adamant about keeping control of Congress. They didn't really give a crap about the slaves.

[jeffersondem]

“That (Slavery could have ended peaceably) is just not reasonable.”

Why not? The United States constitution provides an amendment process - a peaceful one.

[DiogenesLamp]

Your sophistry won’t work here were people have some knowledge.

" Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring; there shallow draughts intoxicate the brian. and drinking largely sobers us again."

It isn't sophistry. It's math and economics. It is a paper trail to the cause of the war. Believing a Northern coalition that was about to lose a huge pile of money decided to start a war over the milk of human kindness, now that's sophistry!

The Southern states were never conquered and forced into an illegitimate union.

Are you implying the United Kingdom was somehow an Illegitimate Union?

No, the Southern states weren't conquered into it, (the first time around.) they were led into it without knowing they wouldn't be allowed to leave it, and then the North slammed the door down on them like a trap.

The very fact that it is coercive in sustaining participation, implies to me that it is in fact an illegitimate Union. The Communists also created a Union that required forced participation by people who didn't want to be in it.

"The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics", which is closer than ever to what we are slowly becoming.

[jeffersondem]

“I didn’t tell you that.”

I didn’t mean to imply that you did.

I saw you were interested in the debate, I made a comment, and added your name to the list.

I did not intend to offend and apologize if I did.

[jeffersondem]

“Still the kidder.”

In this case - yep. I'm kiddin’.

[x]

The various northern newspapers lamented that it would be impossible to levy taxes on the products that would have streamed across the long borders between the two. They recognized that the Northern imposed tariffs were effectively repealed, because they would be unenforceable with an independent South. (Think Mexico and Drugs.)

Think Confederates and slaves. It would be a lot easier for slaves to run away North than for smugglers to break up large quantities of manufactured goods down into concealable portions that could be sold at competitive prices. Of course, if you wanted to stop all those slaves from escaping and assert your independence against the North the border would become so patrolled and militarized that it would not be easy to sneak stuff through.

Think imported Chinese goods coming here in containers. If importers had to break them down into smaller quantities to sneak them past customs officials all the economies of scale would be lost. That is to say, the savings that came from importing in bulk would be lost because the big lots would have to be broken down into smuggleable quantities (which had already been subjected to Confederate tariffs) which couldn't be sold at low wholesale prices. That would be even more true in the 19th century when there were no trucks or cars. You could try to sneak things through in river boats or railroad cars (good luck with that), but most likely you'd have to rely on horses or horse-drawn carriages or rafts or backpacks and your own two legs -- and how much could you or a horse really carry? It wouldn't be a fantastically profitable trade in any case.

Think our border with Canada. It's highly profitable to smuggle drugs in across our Northern and Southern borders. If you smuggled nuts and bolts and screws, pins and needles, shovels and hammers, and shirts and socks across the border, it's much less profitable. We make them over here ourselves. Smuggling ordinary manufactured goods across the border isn't a thing -- or not much of one. Would it have been back in 19th century America? Was there much smuggling of British manufactured goods from Canada into America back in the 19th century? I don't think so. I never heard of much smuggling of household items back then. So why would it suddenly become epidemic across a Southern border?

The power brokers of that era could see it too. They were shrewd businessmen with an inherent understanding of their markets, even their captive markets like the Railroad shipping monopoly for farmers.

But you are not. Not by a long shot.

Don't you even get tired of your preaching nonsense?