Posted on 06/23/2016 2:04:08 PM PDT by ColdOne
A measure to bar confederate flags from cemeteries run by the Department of Veterans Affairs was removed from legislation passed by the House early Thursday.
The flag ban was added to the VA funding bill in May by a vote of 265-159, with most Republicans voting against the ban. But Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) both supported the measure. Ryan was commended for allowing a vote on the controversial measure, but has since limited what amendments can be offered on the floor.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Three hundred dollars? Pikers! The Confederate Conscription law set the price for substitutes at $3000 in specie, and a lot more in the worthless Confederate currency. Link.
But like I said, the average man on the street knew nothing of such things. For him it was simple. Pick up a gun, or go to prison.
That was true, North or South.
So that makes it a lot harder for wealthy people to get out of doing their Duty, doesn't it?
That was true, North or South.
The difference is, one was defending their land, the other was leaving their own to go attack others.
It guarantees that the very wealthy don't have to go. Apparently they were willing to see everyone else go as cannon fodder.
The difference is, one was defending their land, the other was leaving their own to go attack others.
Blah, blah, blah. If the Southerner was so motivated then why did the Confederacy have to forcibly extend enlistments in 1862, introduce conscription, deal with deserters and whole counties refusing Ricbmond's authority? (I watched that miserable Jones County/Matthew McConaughey movie again this weekend).
Oh, but in your side's estimation, the South were evil anyways, so what does it matter what they do? The question is, why was the Union doing the same sort of evil, and excusing a *LOT* more people in doing it?
Weren't they supposed to be the "good guys?" Seems like enslaving people to go die in a war they didn't want to fight wasn't good at all. Not very "anti-slavery" either.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21537/21537-h/21537-h.htm#CHAPTER_X
Expansion and Conflict by William E. Dodd
Her (the port of New York) tonnage had increased from a little more than 500,000 in 1830 to nearly 5,000,000 in 1860. The freight and passenger ships, built of iron, and encouraged by liberal subsidies from the Federal Government (Federal Postal and military contracts), employed 12,000 sailors and paid their owners $70,000,000 a year.
They carried the manufactures of the East to the Southern plantations, to South America, to Europe, and to the Far East.
This great fleet of commercial vessels was owned almost exclusively in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, and its owners were at the end of the decade about to wrest from Great Britain (and the South) her monopoly of the carrying trade of the world.
The merchants of that city imported three fourths of the European goods consumed in the country, and they in turn exported nearly all of the great crops with which the balance of trade was maintained.
New York was also a distributing center for the manufactures of the East which were sent to the South, the West, or the outside world.
The planters, on the other hand, had spread their system over the lower South in a remarkable manner since 1830. From eastern Virginia their patriarchal[Pg 194] establishments had been pushed westward and southwestward until in 1860 the black belt reached to the Rio Grande.
Tobacco, cotton, and sugar were still their great staples, and the annual returns from these were not less than $300,000,000; while the growth of their output between 1850 and 1860 was more than one hundred per cent. The number of slaves who worked the plantations had increased between 1830 and 1860 from 2,000,000 to nearly 4,000,000 souls, thus suggesting the comparison with the workers in the mills of the East.
The exports of the black belt composed more than two thirds of the total exports of the country; but they were largely billed through Eastern ports, and most of the imports of the South came through New York, where a second toll was taken from the products of the plantation.
“Yankee merchants had come to dominate the cotton trade. In the early days after the invention of the cotton gin, the American South had dominated the cotton industry and southern cotton was shipped directly from southern ports to the textile mills of England.
“Shrewd New York Yankee traders soon saw their opportunity and began sending agents south to purchase all the cotton they could and ship it by packet ships to England and Europe. The plantation owners found themselves in a bind. If they wanted to ship their own cotton to market, the packet ship owner would charge them very high rates.
“Sandbars at the mouth of the Mississippi had presented merchants with a problem that their shipbuilders solved with a unique vessel of shallow draft that had an almost perfectly flat bottom, which made it possible to clear the sandbars without getting stuck. An added benefit was that now bales of cotton could fit more easily in the flat-floored hold and carrying capacity was greatly increased. At first, the sailing qualities of such a vessel was doubted, but soon, to the relief of their owners, these flat-bottomed ships proved to have fine sailing qualities. They were in sharp contrast to the V-bottomed hulls of the day.
“With the cotton market now firmly in their control, some of the more savvy New Yorkers by the 1830s began to alter the triangular cotton trade by shipping the cotton first to New York by fast coastal vessels. And then transferring their cotton cargoes at New York to the Atlantic packets for the final leg of the journey to Liverpool. All along the way, the middlemen took their cut and New York Yankee merchants prospered. Coastal packet shipping became a very lucrative trade. Stevedores now had lots of work. Wharf owners stayed busy and Atlantic packets now sailed eastward on the “Downhill Passage” with full cargoes and stayed very busy for years.
“Eventually, southern planters began to complain that New York merchants were making 40 cents on every dollar, but being constantly in debt to the New Yorkers, they were hardly in a position to change this state of affairs. The Yankees were in full control of the market. This would eventually turn out to be one of the causes that led to the Civil War.
You can read more here: http://www.eraoftheclipperships.com/page7web.html
I feel as if I have been awoken. Now that I know what i'm looking for, I see the pervasive influence of this power structure elite in much of history and likewise in current events.
I used to think naively that things were just what they seemed to be, but now I know that powerful people work at keeping things (media and public policy) advocating positions which benefit them.
We cannot balance the budget because these power barons want the spending. It enriches them and their allies. Indeed, it is way beyond a "military industrial complex" it is Henry Clay's old "Mercantilism" made manifest. It is that same old collusion between government and industry to increase the power of both at the expense of freedom and individuality. As David Rockefeller said:
"WHEN YOU'RE THE 'STATE', IT'S A PRETTY GOOD DEAL!"
The people who influenced the government to start the civil war are still with us. The problems of then are still the problems of today. We have an elite class that presumes to govern us to their benefit and not our own.
Same now as then.
I'm assuming the question is rhetorical since nothing could change your mind on it anyway.
Weren't they supposed to be the "good guys?" Seems like enslaving people to go die in a war they didn't want to fight wasn't good at all. Not very "anti-slavery" either.
Remember it was the Confederacy who extended all enlistments for the duration of the war, state's rights be damned, while the Union never resorted to that. So in 1864 when all the three year enlistments were running out the Union army could have just melted away. Instead the Union soldiers reenlisted in overwhelming numbers to continue the war. Maybe it was because they were fighting for something greater than slavery? And the Confederates had to force their men into the ranks because slavery was all they had?
"...since independence, and through the first half of the 19th C., American manufacturing was struggling. American-made cloth could not compete on price with imported cheap, industrial-made British cloth that flooded the American market. So American manufacturers, many of them in the northeast, began pressing Congress for protectionist tariffs against British cloth and other manufactures, to give their industries a chance to compete and take root.
Already from the start, we begin to see the kernel of what would later become known as “American System”, a nationalist-protectionist doctrine, what may be regarded as an updated American version of old Mercantilism. This began as early as Alexander Hamilton in the 1780s. Hamilton realized that political independence alone was not enough, that the American economy remained dependent on Britain, and envisaged the federal government as a tool to break that dependence. Hamilton advocated the establishment of the First Bank of the United States to promote US commerce and manufacturing and had already begun promoting protectionist tariffs in 1791.
The first protectionist tariff was passed in 1816 Early activists like Matthew Carey of Pennsylvania, raised protectionism into a major item of the political agenda. It became part of the platform of Henry Clay's Whigs. The economics behind it was given theoretical depth by Carey's son Henry C. Carey and the German exile Friedrich List, who provided “infant industry” arguments of a “national system” of protectionism. It was labeled the “American System” to contrast with the “British System” of Manchester School liberalism. The retardation of economics in American universities was partly because the best English-language textbooks of the day were based on classical Ricardian economics, peddling “British” free trade doctrines so inimical to the American industrialists who frequently served as university trustees. Economics was suspect, until Carey-based curricula were developed as alternatives. .
Ranged against the northern protectionists were the plantation lords of the South. They feared retaliatory British tariffs on their cotton exports. Southerners did not accept the Northern argument that a growing American cloth industry could substitute for British markets. British industry was so much larger and more developed than the American equivalent. Being still small and unproductive, American cloth manufacturers could not hope to offer as good a price for Southern cotton as the British manufacturers could, nor could they sell Southern consumers manufactured goods as cheaply as the British did. In Southern calculation, a US-wide tariff would turn the terms of trade against them – what they produced would sell for less, what they consumed would cost more to buy. A protectionist tariff would hit Southern pocketbooks, and hit them hard.
The battle over the tariff was bitterly fought throughout the 19h C. between Northern and Southern representatives in Congress. Northerners demanded protectionism, Southerners demanded free trade. Whenever northerners gained the upper hand in Congress, the federal tariff was pushed upwards. Whenever southerners managed to get in the saddle, the tariff was pulled downwards.
In 1828, Northerners in Congress managed to pass a stiff protectionist tariff – the ‘tariff of abominations’ as it was known then. It caused a very serious quarrel as Southern states rallied against the tariff. Some Southern states, notably South Carolina, refused to collect the tariff at their ports even threatened to secede from the Union if the issue was pressed (’Nullification Crisis’). This quarrel nearly broke out in civil war, but it was quietly resolved with a compromise tariff in 1833. But it was a dress rehearsal for what was to come.
Between the 1830s and 1850s, the to-and-fro over the tariff continued. Into this configuration entered the new states of the West, conquered in the Mexican-American War of 1848. Realizing that the entry of any new state into the union would tip the mathematical balance between Northern & Southern interests in Congress, Southerners insisted that they become slave states and thus aligned with their interests, while Northern representatives insisted the new states be free soil. Tariff calculations and the slavery question became more intertwined. American System propagandists, like Horace Greeley, were quick to conjoin them together with the paradoxical slogan that a vote for protectionism was a vote for freedom, while voting for free trade meant voting for slavery.
Things reached an apex with the election of 1860. A new party, the Republican Party, had been formed, which promised three things on its platform: free states in the West, a protectionist tariff and a homestead act (hand out federal land for free to western farmers). Experienced Southern politicians had defeated tariffs before by means of divide-and-rule politicking and had forced free-slave compromises on new states. But the Republicans were different. They represented a shatter-proof coalition of Northern manufacturing interests (who wanted the tariff) with Western farming interests (who wanted the homestead act). Together, their representatives outnumbered the Southern delegations. Try as they will, Southern politicians failed to drive a wedge between them. The Republican coalition held together. With the electoral victory of Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans in 1860, the Southern states knew the game was up. The Congressional mathematics were now against them, they could no longer use crafty politics to obstruct the passage of the Northern program. The triumphant Republicans promised the passage of a highly protectionist tariff – the Morrill Tariff – as the first item of the Congressional agenda of 1861. In anticipation, the Southern states, led by South Carolina, promptly seceded from the Union, and the Civil War began.
In a larger sense, the Civil War was not merely a war over slavery or tariffs, but over the nature of the country itself. Is the United States going to be an industrial or agrarian nation? Self-sufficient or entangled abroad? Is the elite going to be composed of enlightened country gentlemen or arriviste industrialists? Jeffersons or Hamiltons? This debate, this tug-o’-war, had been raging from the start of the nation's birth, long before tariffs or slavery hit the headlines. http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/schools/american.htm
It seems clear, at least to me, that any comparison of relative war conduct and comparisons to states’ rights were rendered moot by the tide of war rushing south.
Conscription and the forced extension of enlistments didn't come till a year later, so it wasn't all-out war at the beginning.
It seems clear, at least to me, that any comparison of relative war conduct and comparisons to states’ rights were rendered moot by the tide of war rushing south.
I wouldn't say it was that clear to others around here. Otherwise I think that this thread would have ended over 1200 posts ago.
DiogenesLamp: "I'm sorry BroJoeK, but I am not sure there is any point in attempting to argue with you.
It's like you trying to reason with a Muslim.
Everything I say is "Allah Ackbar" this, and "Allah Ackbar" that.
"It is pointless for you to attempt to reason with fanaticism like mine.
"It's a pity though, because you do seem to have some I have no knowledge of real history, only ludicrous propaganda and you might otherwise be a worthwhile person with which to engage in a discussion, but you are I am obsessed with what you I wish to believe, and contradictory evidence simply makes no impact on you me!"
I'm certain that's what you sincerely intended to say, except for clumsy finger typos. ;-)
DiogenesLamp: "But there is one point on which I think I might like to hear your opinion.
When Texas broke from Mexico (The independence of which Lincoln supported and argued was a "sacred right")
Was this "at pleasure" or not?
Never mind.
Because Lincoln supported it, i'm pretty sure you are going to say it wasn't "at pleasure", because for you to do otherwise would contradict your previous narrative the facts of history.You I will redefine whatever principles or definitions you I need to redefine so as to go along believing what you I wish to believe.
There is no objective standard to your my position, it is literally warped this way and that to attain the outcome you I desire.
(That your my "Team" were the good guys.)"
Obviously, FRiend, you are a highly confused puppy, eagerly chasing your own tail and balls of twine for amusement, rather than focusing like a beagle on real game.
But OK, I'll play along, if only for amusement.
You may not remember this (of course you don't, since actual facts of history are irrelevant to a genius like DiogenesLamp), but in 1835 when people living in what is now Texas revolted, those people were not American citizens of the USA, they were Mexicans.
Yes, Mexicans of US American descent, but citizens of Mexico.
They revolted because the government of Mexico arbitrarily revoked its federalist republic constitution of 1824 and became a military dictatorship.
Revolt was thus essentially a repeat of the colonists' revolution against King George in 1776.
That makes it the opposite of "at pleasure", I'd say, but regardless, in 1836 these were Mexicans revolting against Mexico, with no involvement of the US government.
The US did not become involved until Texas requested and the US granted it statehood in 1845.
But your issue is Lincoln's view on a "sacred right" to revolt.
Lincoln's carefully considered opinion, I'm sure, would be: of course, just as American colonists revolted against Britain, but only after Brits had first abrogated their old Charter of government and then declared and perpetrated war on Americans.
That made American revolution pure necessity, not some whimsical "at pleasure" activity.
The trouble with asking you the time is you start with Adam and Eve.
Good evening.
“The trouble with asking you the time is you start with Adam and Eve.”
I’m not going to lol.
5.56mm
Bribing voters with publicly owned assets to get their agenda passed. Now which party does that sound like?
I recently stumbled across this very same point in another history book. It wasn't that anyone was trying to do slave farming in these new territories, it was that they would be voting in the Congress with the Southern states, and as a result they would be cutting the money stream which government policy kept flowing towards the Northern Shipping and Industrialists. (The same people F***ing with us today.)
Basically it was a Shipping/Industrial complex that eventually morphed into the "Military/Industrial complex" that Eisenhower warned us about. Basically a collusion between Industry of all types, and government.
And we are still facing the descendants of that same power structure which ran the nation for it's own interests back in 1860, and it is still headquartered in the Boston->DC corridor.
The Liberal Media are the propaganda arm of this same group of people, basically the "owners" of the US Government. It appears we are essentially still fighting the Civil War.
As with all your other attempted rebuttals, you focus on the trivial, and ignore the significant point. I think i'll skip whatever else you have written, just as I skip most of what you write.
And as usual, your only contribution is snark and cheer leading.
Irony’s lost on you old boy, isn’t it? You, the Confederacy biggest cheerleader and the soul of civility.
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