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
me too.
gonna stop back later to see how this one goes.
If a state or states secedes today, would you join the federales in quelling those states righters?
So,, seeing that slavery is nutty, is the same as the final collapse of Winston? Can you explain this answer and maybe relate it from a slaves point of view? Should he learn to accept the “massa” as knowing better for him, and learn to love him?
Why does a discussion with defenders of slavery seem to faintly echo the discussions with people that always gloss over and defend Nazi germany as actually being “anti-communist”?
you’re starting to see the bigger picture! most of the population and wealth was in the north. most of the taxes and tariffs were paid by the south. economic oppression was as big an issue for them being fed up as it was for another group 90 years prior
“African kings were running a booming enterprise of selling their own people into slavery. It was also customary that defeated people became slaves. “
I think if they won’t sold into slavery, they were killed. Anybody know if this true?
If the states seceeded so they could forcibly put captives on the auction block,,, would you go out there to defend it? If so,,,explain how that is different than radical islam.
The concept of States Rights are now polluted and connected in the public mind with slavery.
I don’t care to argue who is to blame for that.
He is revered for supposedly keeping the union from splitting up. Even though he did it by allowing a war to break out and vigorously pursuing it to the point 600,000 Americans killed each other for principles still being argued.
If Lincoln was half the great man the history books present he would have spent his time on diplomacy and reconciliation instead of planning and executing the most terrible war in our history. A great president would have avoided some, most or all of the deaths. A great president would not have presided over the scorched earth savaging and destruction of half of the nation he supposedly wanted to save.
Lincoln was no more president of all the people than is Obama. They both had/have their constriuencies - the rest be damned.
If my state wanted to secede I will defend her against all threats, including thuggish fascists.
i agree totally.
#1: I defy anyone to tell me how candidate Abraham Lincoln proposed to change the balance of power between the several states and the federal government. I haven't seen it. Furthermore, modern critics tend to fault Lincoln for campaigning only on the premise of restricting the spread of slavery instead of abolition. Even the Emancipation Proclamation only impacted secessionist states.
The American Civil War did end up vastly increasing federal power-- but let's not fall into the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy.
#2: The key issue of organizing the western territories seems to be about slavery. "Bleeding Kansas" featured low-level partisan warfare long before Ft. Sumter was besieged. In fact, according to The Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson, even the southerner appointed as governor of the Kansas Territory called for federal intervention to stop the bloodshed-- instigated by pro-slavery Missourians who crossed the border to stuff the ballot box.
#3: I am not sure what your point here is. I do know that one of the more revealing maps that I saw was one about railway guages and mileage in 1860. The CSA had five different railway guages. But if the North was a more efficient industrial economy (and who doubts that?), why did the difference arise? Well, Alexis De Toqueville observed the radical difference of life on each side of the lower Ohio River. It's like my observation about the difference between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso. The cultures on each side of the river were different. But what was the essential diffrence? In the former case-- it's slavery.
Leonard Pitts Jr. another dunderhead who doesn’t know history...
Abraham Lincoln can’t be blamed for the Civil War because the southern states had already succeeded before he had been inagurated.
ping
The North was far more industrialized, but that industry didn't necessarily produce a whole lot of things that Europeans were capable of producing for themselves.
The other bit of irony in the whole controversy was that the North really didn't hold any kind of moral high ground in the dispute over slavery. The North didn't rely on slavery to the same extent as the South mainly because they simple didn't need slavery. Due to the massive wave of immigration in the mid-1800s -- mostly to Northern cities -- the North had a plentiful source of cheap workers who weren't much better off than slaves.
NB Forrest, arguably the most effective soldier of the war on either side:
“If we ain’t fightin’ fer slavery then I’d like to know what we are fightin’ fer.”
We’d still like to know.
Yeah that's nutty but is there anyone seriously contemplating leaving the union today? Big Brother is loved and defended.
I guess I should’ve explained that passage but I was sure it was pretty obvious in meaning.
Draft riots before the conscription act? How's that work?
I am an historian to the extent that I teach American History at the college level and as with all discussion of the war’s causes and purposes, there remains the important conjecture that it likely would have not occurred when it did had a candidate other than Lincoln prevailed in the election of 1860. He was the only candidate (among many) in that contest that viewed slavery in a moral (rather than political) context.
Maybe it’s just that democrats don’t take well to coming out on the short end of the voting process so they decided to flee.
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