Posted on 04/25/2011 9:31:58 AM PDT by Iron Munro
I am responding to a column by Leonard Pitts Jr., a noted black columnist for The Miami Herald, entitled, "The Civil War was about slavery, nothing more" (Other Views, April 15).
I found this article to be very misleading and grossly riddled with distortions of the real causes of the War Between the States. I find it so amusing that such an educated person would not know the facts.
I am a proud native of South Carolina. I have spent my entire life in what was once the Confederate States of America. I am currently associated with Southern Heritage causes, including the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Tampa.
It's been 150 years since brave, patriotic Southerners drove the imperialist Yankee army from Fort Sumter, S.C. It also marked the beginning of the Confederates' fight to expel this foreign army from the entire Southern homeland.
After all these years, there still exists national historical ignorance and lies about this war. The War Between the States was about states' rights — not about slavery.
Remember, the original colonies voluntarily joined the union and never gave up their individual sovereignty. These independent states always retained their right to manage their domestic affairs and to leave this voluntary association at any time.
This voluntary union was for limited reasons such as national defense from the foreign powers, one language, interstate commerce, disputes between the sovereign states and matters of foreign affairs.
When the Southern states tried to leave this union, the Northerners had to put a stop to this. The slavery issue was masterly inserted into the movement of Yankee aggression.
We are a union of independent and sovereign states free to determine our own destiny. This sovereignty is meant to be free of Yankee federal domination and control. This should still be in principle and practice today as it was before the first cannon shots at Fort Sumter.
Slavery of any people is wicked and morally wrong. Domination of one people over another is just as evil and morally wrong.
The facts are that throughout history, just about every race of people has been slaves to another people. Slavery has always been a failed institution and a dark mark in history. One-hundred years before the first slave made it to the auction blocks in Virginia, African kings were running a booming enterprise of selling their own people into slavery. It was also customary that defeated people became slaves.
Slavery as an institution worldwide was coming to an end before the War Between the States. Slavery in America would probably have come to an end within 50 years.
The great eternal lie — that the war was to "free the slaves" — is still being propagandized today by modern spin-makers, schools and even scholars. But the facts are plain and quite evident if you were to take off your Yankee sunglasses.
The Army of the Potomac invaded the South to capture, control and plunder the prosperity of Southern economic resources and its industries. This army also wanted to put a final nail in the coffin of states' rights.
If, and I say this with a big if , the War Between the States was to free the slaves, please answer these simple questions:
Why didn't President Lincoln issue a proclamation on day one of his presidency to free the slaves? Why did he wait so many years later to issue his proclamation? Why was slavery still legal in the Northern states? Before 1864, how many elected members of the imperialist Yankee Congress introduced legislation to outlaw slavery anywhere in America?
The slaves were freed — and only in territories in rebellion against the North — because the Army of the Potomac was not winning the war and Lincoln was fearful of foreign nations recognizing the Confederacy.
The Northern states needed a war to fuel their economy and stop the pending recession. The North needed rebellion in the South to cause havoc in the Confederate states. The North wanted the hard foreign currency being generated by Southern trade.
I hope this year not only marks the celebration of the brave actions of Southerners to evict the Northern Army at Fort Sumter but leads to the truthful revision of history about the war. Future generations should know the truth.
Al Mccray is a Tampa businessman and managing editor of TampaNewsAndTalk.com
As I’ve said before, most southerners fought because they were invaded. I don’t blame them for doing so.
I blame only those southerners who plotted to exacerbate tensions between the sections so they could break off the South and implement their dream of a great Slave Empire in Latin America. Truly evil, IMO.
They managed to get their secession and their war, but little else. Southern voters discarded just about all of these jerks immediately.
BTW, I have ancestors who fought for the Union, and others who fought for the Confederacy. In fact, I may have one who fought for the Confederacy and then the Union. (Records are a little unclear.)
Also in the territories.
good point, curious your name HMS are you from the Royal navy and why should CVhristie go to hell?
Not having a go but curious is all.
Bear with me, I'm a noob.....
Because, that Charleston shop clerk's customers would be comprised of the "losing economic group", so he would likewise be impacted. The Iowa farmer though, I don't know how much, if any, of their crops were priced according to foreign competition. They may have been able to price their crops high enough to compensate for the higher priced farm tools.
"The South lost the most only because it had a higher percentage of the losing economic groups."
That's how I'm understanding it.
As long as you keep blaming Lincoln for everything up to and including a cloudy day. Seward had his own agenda, and he wasn't much of a Lincoln fan, having been a disappointed candidate for president himself. The simple fact is that he wasn't speaking for Lincoln when he spoke to the southern representatives.
Do you also want to dispute his orders to militarize against Pickens back in March in violation of the existing armistice?
By "militarize against Pickens" do you mean resupply and reinforce a US fort? More to the point, what "armistice"? You keep claiming that there were formal agreements, but there weren't.
Did his generals obey their commander in chief or were they acting on their own when attacking Pickens
What on earth are you talking about? Pickens was never attacked by the US. It started in US hands and it remained in US hands.
By "persuaded," you might want to mention that it was Andrew Jackson who said of South Carolina's actions "if a single drop of blood shall be shed there in opposition to the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man I can lay my hand on engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach."
Bumpmark.
Are you sure of that? I only wonder because Dred Scott still stood as far as I know.
Love how revisionist liberals have attempted to rewrite history.
Slavery was evil to the bone, no man should be lorded over.
It is our duty to see that history remains intact for future generations.
SCV
Ending slavery was, at the time the Civil War began, a minor reason for the North to fight (given the slaveholding states they still possessed), albeit a reason that grew in importance and stature as time went on. But not the only one, goodness know.
However, just as the North’s reasons for fighting the war had little to do (at first) with ending slavery, the South’s reasons for fighting had everything to do with slavery.
Had slavery not been an issue, all of the other alleged grievances that Southern states had with the North COMBINED would not have been enough to induce them to secede.
Had all other issues been nonexistent...but slavery still an issue? Secession occurs.
This has been a great thread.
Good discussion.
I suppose in that day, as now, each man had his own reasons for doing what they did.
I have no “yankee” history to draw from so I don’t feel able to comment on the common yank’s motivation, and I’m not talking about the aristocrats on either side, but when I think about the common “Johnny Reb” I suppose what drove a man was a mixture of patriotism (for the State), and opportunity.
The patriotic call was put forth and answered by many. Others I think were attracted by the offer of $10 bucks a month (or whatever it was). It would have been very difficult for a Georgian to not support the war in what ever way he could.
I suppose it was pretty much the same for the common yankee as it was for the common southerner.
There is a story on one side of my family line of 4 brothers in mid-Georgia where one refused to participate, telling the 3 younger brothers that they always survived by scraping a living off the land, and no matter how the war turned out, in the end, they would still survive by scarping a living off the land. The elder brother hid out in the swamps for the duration and refused to participate.
The other 3 brothers went off to the war; one became a Captain and was killed at Petersburg; another (my ancestor) was with Lee’s army at the surrender in Appomattox; the records of the fourth brother are sketchy, abut he served in the same unit as his brother, the Captain.
After it was all over, and all was said and done, the surviving brothers returned to their little farm and scraped a living off the land, just like they did before.
Unlike the omniscient like yourself, I am, as a mere mortal, unable to see into the hearts of men. I can only read the documents they leave behind. Like the legislators of South Carolina who proclaimed the reasons for secession, the men of the Continental Congress declared, in writing, the reasons for their independence. I will leave the deconstruction of their "true" intentions to "historians" who can hold seances and talk to the dead with their crystal balls.
Since the battle at Fort Sumpter (two opposing armies firing at each other to conquer the same piece of dirt) doesn't qualify as "civil war", perhaps we should call it a "kinetic military action."
Furthermore, if Lincoln had been alive during the Revolutionary War and had used the same kind of reasoning that he used against Southern secession, he would have sided with the British.
Wow, amazing. Could you explain what type of mathematics I was taught; and my mom has always wondered what kind English I was taught. After the trip to France with my wife, she was perplexed about the French I was taught. I need to hold a seance, so I can call on the ghost of old Abe Lincoln and get answers to other curious questions.
Can you provide evidence of this elusive written "peace treaty"?
The Tariffs fell most heavily on the South, because that is where you’d the manufactured good - the North had an industry.
Also, I don’t know that markets were as insanely overdeveloped as they are now (although I recall reading about what amounted to rice futures in feudal Japan...).
The Tariffs fell most heavily on the South, because that is where you’d the manufactured good - the North had an industry.
Also, I don’t know that markets were as insanely overdeveloped as they are now (although I recall reading about what amounted to rice futures in feudal Japan...).
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