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
Before we get too tied up in what De Tocqueville may have said, I’d like to point out he toured America 30 years before the period at issue.
He was obviously extremely observant, but it is not unreasonable to assume attitudes may have changed in America, in both sections, over this 25 to 30 years.
In particular, 1830 was approximately in the mid-point of the southern switch from viewing slavery as a difficult-to-get-rid-of evil to a positive good. Washington to Stephens, if you will.
Similarly, northern attitudes went from indifference about slavery in the south to a quite common belief (accurate or not) that the Slave Power was plotting to force slavery on the entire nation. While still a small minority, abolitionists in 1860 were a much larger and more influential group than they were in 1832.
“The only thing that would give us a good name in the eyes of you and your yankee comrades would be complete and total capitulation to your revised history.”
No, I like various Lost Causers, and some of your stock arguments have force. Let the record show I believe in the right to secede and don’t think invasion was necessary despite the shelling of Ft. Sumter being cause for war. So it’s not irrational animus on my part.
However, anyone who honestly compares “the yakee method of slavery,” i.e. the condition of the descendants of slaves to this day—meaning, I guess voting Democrat and living on welfare—to real slavery is a bad person. Not just wrong, but a bad person. I’m willing to go that far.
“I don’t want to upset you, so after your obligatory “so what” to the above, just know that when I call Bubba ‘ignorant’, I’m not using a slur; I’m just sticking with the Webster’s definition of the word”
I am a little offended that you think I don’t know the definition of “ignorant.” Oh, wait, you’re using my bringing up the dictionary as a premise for your lame joke. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, and so on.
“I don’t want to upset you, so after your obligatory ‘so what’”
I get the feeling you don’t think I really have an obligation to ask “so what,” and that in fact it is little more than space filler. But you never answer it, apart from the bogus armistice argument, the bogus mobilization as act of war argument, and the bogus they tricked us argument (or are those the same arguments?), so I’ll keep asking.
I’ve tried quite a few time to get Lost Causers to answer two extremely simple questions: Do slaves have a moral and natural law right to rebel against the ultimate in oppression? If they don’t, on what possible basis can they say the American Revolution was justified?
I have yet to get one to answer the question in a straightforward fashion. For some of them, unfortunately, I fear this indicates they have more fellow-feeling for the slavers than the slaves, and, IMO, this makes them Bad People and un-American.
YMMV.
On second thought, that’s too harsh. It makes them believers in an evil and un-American ideology. I won’t judge them as people.
“The one Navy Captain Adams referred to in his response/refusal to accepting their order to violate it.”
You’re suddenly clinging to that like a baby to his blanky. Ever wonder why it lacks the power of persuasion to the rest of us that it holds for you?
“What’s that, 6 times you’ve ignored the letter now?”
For someone who complains about people ignoring parts of their posts, I beleive you’ll see I didn’t ignore it this time. Either that guy was using armistice in a different way than you, or he is wrong. For the last time, the North did not violate the peace by attempting to resupply the fort.
“The ‘doesn’t matter’ is par for the course.”
No, it doesn’t matter. If he used the term the way he used it he was wrong. An armistice is an agreement not to fight in the midst of a war, not an agreement not to arm a fort in time of peace or during a possible buildup to war. The conditions between the Confederacy and the U.S. before April 12th was not an armistice as you mean it no matter how Cpt. Adams described it.
“the Navy Captain was wrong”
Yes!
“Tocqueville’s wrong”
Yes! What, are these men, Gods? No.
“Your consistency of circular logic for when war’s are ‘necessary’ and when they’re ‘not’ is noted.”
Perhaps it seems circular because it’s not a matter of logic. Nations choose war for their own reasons, which aren’t always consistent. There’s a difference between traditional and widely accepted causes for war and actualities of war. Do you expect I should give you a chart that will tell exactly what will happen if X does Y to country Z? I’ve never claimed to have such knowledge.
Picture in your head what you consider to be legitimate cause for war. Mobilization of a fort that had been promised to be kept empty, for instance. Now imagine it wasn’t the U.S. that mobilized against the Confederacy, but country X against Y. Could you say, based on that alone, whether Y had grounds for war against X? No. But I could say that Y has grounds for war against X if X “shoots first,” no matter who they are. Your position is based on it being the Confederacy and the Union; mine holds good for all time. Who is more likely to be rationalizing?
“Feel free to return to your bridge.”
So now I’m a troll? You have almighty Evidence in the form of Quotes, and all I have is obstinence and circular logic. Why, then, are you the one resorting to ad hominem? Why do you so often digress to bring up the debating tactics of others? Why’s it always everyone else who’s drifting from the point, cherry-picking quotes, not reading your entire posts, ignoring evidence, employing faulty logic? Why would someone so secure in their position spend so much time away from substance?
“I fear this indicates they have more fellow-feeling for the slavers than the slaves”
That may be true of some. Cowboyway, for one, seems to verge on it. Most others, I’d say, are induced, partly against their will, to excuse aspects of the peculiar institution because of dedication to their anti-Lincoln, anti-statist, pro-secessionist sentiments.
“I won’t judge them as people.”
Okay, maybe it’s misleading to say they’re bad people overall. Various aspects of our personhood balance out. But the part that believes “the yankee method of slavery” is as bad as real slavery is bad.
That might be because you're a federal bootlicking fascist, non-sequitur.
“Still haven’t read up on your Union League, et al. pamphleteerin groups have you?”
They were in power, right? Or was that the free-soil Republicans? I forget.
“Unequal taxation is not cause for war.
Best...quote...ever!”
Why? You think it is? Perhaps you’re thinking of the American Revolution. Well, maybe I shouldn’t expect you to understand the subtlety of distinction, but that war was not fought over taxation; it was fought over independence. Taxation was an inducement to independence, but I digress. Secession wasn’t, or just barely, induced by taxation. But even if it was, as I’ve pointed out, the war did not start over secession. It started over Ft. Sumter.
“Tell it to Der Lincoln (in response to VA, repeat VA not SC, request to abandon Sumter): ‘If I do that, what would become of my revenue?’”
Here’s more of your Mighty Evidence. I guess that settles it. Lincoln started the war over taxes, after the South struck first.
“What other reason was there to retain a military presence in the mother of all tariff collecting ports in the south again?”
Do I have to answer this? How about another question. What other reason did Bush use the color-coded terror alerts but to keep us docile and productive in order to collect taxes and continue feeding Haliburton? Is that paranoid enough for you? Hey, the result of taxation was to redistribute it partly to Haliburton, wasn’t it? Just like the result of the Civil War was the erection of the American System. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
“Oh, ok. I’ll read it a few more times and see if I can infer the same.”
Are you being facetious?
“what does that have to do with the war?”
Well, it could mean the invasion was proper on natural right grounds, at least retroactively after it officially became about slaves (insofar as it was about slaves). I believe Thomas DiLorenzo, revisionist extraordinaire, made that argument.
More importantly, how you answer that question demonstrates how far you’ve let support for the Confederacy poison your mind. Unfortunately, that’s pretty far for some.
“So what’s your point?”
Slaves had much better reasons to rebel than cutting off trade and taxation without consent. If they couldn’t legitimately unyoke themselves, the revolutionaries certainly couldn’t.
“Repeatedly dismissing, belittling, ignoring, and (by any means possible) deflecting away from such facts makes the baby laugh.”
What about my claim of he shoots first starts it, which, unlike a particular letter from a particular captain, can be demonstrated by evidence covering, if not the whole of human history, then at least history since the Enlightenment, and the entire diplomatic and international law tradition? Or how about my evidence from the entry under “armistice” in the dictionary?
Do these not count? Only cherry-picked quotes from all the things I haven’t read—most likely books and websites that happen to be friendly to your point of view? Okay.
“LOL! Baby’s about to poo his diaper he’s laughing so hard! Who saw that one coming???”
How did you see that coming? Perhaps because I already said so. How funny, ha ha ha.
“This guy’s been showing up and taking my money each week (let’s call him Tony from South Philly). I told him I’m done with this nonsense yesterday, but today he showed up asking for his money and he has a gun this time. He said he’ll put the gun away if I just pay him his money, but now his buddies are crossing the street with their guns too. I’m not sure I trust him. I have a gun too, but I don’t wanna shoot first, so what should i do?”
Guantanamo Bay is a stupid analogy, but this is acceptable? Where’s that Epic Fail picture, again?
Aren’t you up past your bedtime?
If so, "everyone" is wrong. This meme was disproved long ago and I'm surprised to see anyone still trying to foist it upon us.
Surely you will not claim that the wives and children of a family owning slaves are not slave owners, simply because title vests legally in the head of the family?
Here are the percentages, per the 1860 census, of Deep South white families that owned slaves.
South Carolina with 48.7 percent of the white families owning slaves, Mississippi with 48 percent, Florida with 36 percent, Alabama with 35.1 percent, Georgia with 38 percent, Louisiana with 32.2 percent and Texas with 28.5 percent.
This is the order they seceded from the Union.
For the CSA as a whole the percentage was 31% of white families. Admittedly this was a minority, but since whites outnumbered blacks in the South as a whole, it could hardly be otherwise.
This was probably a higher percentage of significant capital investment than in northern states.
The accounted for almost all of the slave trade into the south and kept the institution going around the world even after the war.
Importation of slaves from outside the USA was outlawed in 1807, with very nearly unanimous support both north and south. Slave traders were considered guilty of piracy and the penalty was death, although we had to wait till Lincoln's presidency before we got to actually hang one.
Would you care to explain how "the evil north" kept the institution of slavery going around the world after the war? After, BTW, they had forced through the 13th amendment abolishing it throughout the USA, including what was essentially confiscation of property of KY Unionists.
How exactly did the north keep slavery going around the world after 1865? The only two significant "western" areas I'm aware of where it persisted were Cuba and Brazil.
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