House drops Confederate Flag ban for veterans cemeteries

politico.com ^ | 6/23/16 | Matthew Nussbaum

[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.

[DiogenesLamp]

Much more careful studies still show Deep South cotton hugely important to total US exports, but not 72%, rather closer to 50% depending on what-all you include. And US tariffs in 1860 averaged around 15%, not the "30% to 50%" the piece claims.

...

But none of this was listed as a "Cause of Secession" in any secessionist state document.

Really? Perhaps you just didn't look very hard once you found the word "Slavery."

The Southern States now stand in the same relation toward the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation, that our ancestors stood toward the people of Great Britain. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress is useless to protect them against unjust taxation, and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British Parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue -- to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures.

There is another evil in the condition of the Southern toward the Northern States, which our ancestors refused to bear toward Great Britain. Our ancestors not only taxed themselves, but all the taxes collected from them were expended among them. Had they submitted to the pretensions of the British Government, the taxes collected from them would have been expended on other parts of the British Empire. They were fully aware of the effect of such a policy in impoverishing the people from whom taxes are collected, and in enriching those who receive the benefit of their expenditure. To prevent the evils of such a policy was one of the motives which drove them on to revolution. Yet this British policy has been fully realized toward the Southern States by the Northern States. The people of the Southern States are not only taxed for the benefit of the Northern States, but after the taxes are collected three-fourths of them are expended at the North. This cause, with others connected with the operation of the General Government, has provincialized the cities of the South. Their growth is paralyzed, while they are the mere suburbs of Northern cities. The bases of the foreign commerce of the United States are the agricultural productions of the South; yet Southern cities do not carry it on. Our foreign trade is almost annihilated. In 1740 there were five shipyards in South Carolina to build ships to carry on our direct trade with Europe. Between 1740 and 1779 there were built in these yards twenty-five square-rigged vessels, beside a great number of sloops and schooners to carry on our coast and West India trade. In the half century immediately preceding the Revolution, from 1725 to 1775, the population of South Carolina increased seven-fold.

Wasn't the Port at South Carolina the sticking point? The Union quietly relinquished Forts all over the South, but not *THAT* one.

Funny that.

[DiogenesLamp]

It was that -- by the end of the war.

It was no different at the beginning of the war. The evilness of Slavery didn't change between the start and the end, yet somehow it became a goal 18 months after the war started.

But if anybody told you that the war started because Northerners wanted to abolish slavery and you didn't question it something was terribly wrong with your education.

I went to Lincoln School for grades 1-3. On Lincoln day we made Lincoln Silhouettes out of thick paper. They told us Lincoln was famous because "He freed the slaves." That is all they told us. I showed my Mother my Lincoln Silhouette. She said "That's wonderful dear!"

It wasn't until HighSchool that I ever heard any of this "To Preserve the Union" business. Even then, the lessons were heavily concentrated on the Slavery issue. I actually never paid much attention to this civil war stuff until I visited the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. and saw those quotes carved into stone.

What? He would have kept slavery? So what is the great moral crusade if it can be traded away with another "Let's Make a Deal!" ?

Why is "Preserving the Union" worth the lives of 750,000 people? (Latest upward revised numbers) This sort of shook my world view. When I thought they went to war to free several million people, I thought it was a moral crusade to do what was right. After learning that no, they didn't go to war to free anybody, they just went to war to force people back into their Union, then I decided it had lost all moral force, and became an expression of despotism.

Lincoln was doing exactly the same thing that George III was doing; Stopping people from getting their independence.

Anyway, I don't know how old you are or where you grew up, but 50 and 60 year old White Southerners who tell you they were taught in school to venerate Abraham Lincoln and never questioned this until they happened to read some book a few years ago, just aren't telling the truth.

I have driven through some of the States of the old Confederacy, but I have never lived in any of them. (apart from an overnight stay) I don't know what they were taught, and I can tell you nothing about that. I can tell you what *I* was taught, and it was that Lincoln was a great hero because he freed the slaves. They never mentioned that this was one of those "Let's make a Deal" things at the time.

No serious historian says that most Northerners went to war to free the slaves, but few would agree that the war was all about Northern greed. There are a host of motivations in between those to extremes that you don't take into account.

Well I think there are good reasons Historians have not suggested this scenario. First, they didn't think of it. Second, they have been taught the common propaganda their whole lives. Third, the University elite don't want our History going down this path. And so on.

I never considered the theory until just this year. I had seen that chart before, but it wasn't until I read accounts of how much money was created by Southern exports, versus how much tariff was collected at New York, that I began to realize that the money for virtually all trade ended up getting funneled through New York.

This was a curious thing, and it was not immediately apparent to me why this was so. It took me awhile to realize those tariffs collected at New York represent a much larger trade volume, 3/4ths of which were created by the value of Southern goods. Somehow (and I didn't know at the time how) The Value of Southern exports ended up in New York instead of their ports of origin.

[DiogenesLamp]

No. It's not. You keep holding Northerners of that day to an unrealistically high standard that you don't apply to Southerners of the day or people now. And you justify that by crying about how somebody told you their motives were simon-pure and how you believed them all these years.

I do not recognize any of my statements or positions in what you have said here. I have no animus for Northern businessmen provided they were honest, but those Crony Capitalists that Jiggered the laws to favor their interests were not honest businessmen. They were the monopolists of which Adam Smith warned us about, and they had snuck into power through money and influence.

They are the same forces with which we futilely contend today, and from the same region as they were in 1860. New York runs the media, and through it they mostly determines the composition of the Congress and the Presidency. Seven years ago they used their power to elect another race obsessed liberal lawyer from Illinois. Same as then. He also rules (as much as he can get away with) by "executive orders."

What's surprising isn't that Northern Whites weren't willing to sacrifice everything to free the slaves. No, what's surprising is that they showed such concern as they did about slavery -- that they weren't simply willing to benefit from business with slaveowners or unite behind the banner of White supremacy. Why they didn't is a result of a variety of factors that certainly go far beyond greed and envy.

We already covered this. What has now become the Unionized-North (as in Workers Unions) objected to slavery mostly on free-labor/wages issues. They saw it as a threat to their own labor and wages. (Same then as now.) Most of them did not care about Slaves, so long as they stayed out of their state. The North was extremely racist and intolerant of blacks. They *hated* them, probably more so than did Southern whites.

You can, for example feel or oppose what's going on in Darfur or South Sudan or wherever without wanting to move there or welcome Darfurians or South Sudanese here. And you don't have to have an economic motive to condemn abuses there. Isn't human feeling enough?

When I was younger, I thought we should do everything we could to end human suffering. Nowadays I realize that much of human suffering is the consequence of their own behavior and beliefs, and therefore the problem cannot be solved within their existing culture.

At this point, I see the same sort of dysfunction creeping into our own culture, and now I think the interests of my own family should come before much concern for others who live far away. I feel for them, but now we have our own problems.

You can feel that Chinese prison labor gives Chinese industrialists an unfair advantage and still find something morally condemnable buying prison-made products.

And this is closer to the Average Opinion of Northern men of that time period. The Globalists didn't mind though, so long as they are/were making profits off of this slave labor.

Businesses used slave labor. That meant they didn't have to pay decent wages to free labor. So free workers tended to avoid the South. Slaves didn't benefit from their own work as much as free workers would have, so they didn't put in the extra effort.

Okay, this speaks to the point. I follow you here.

Why did antebellum New York boom while Charleston and New Orleans lag behind? Are you going to say it was the Warehouse Act? Nonsense. New York grew because it was actually manufacturing things people actually wanted, while pre-Civil War Charleston and New Orleans weren't.

Well that, and the fact that multi-billions of dollars worth of capital had just evaporated, much of the infrastructure was wrecked, and people were not only having to figure out how to feed themselves, but the newly freed slaves also had to eat, and could now compete with laborers in the South.

New York had a very big head start with all that capital that had funneled through it thanks to the luck of geography and those jiggered laws. Their infrastructure and labor force was intact.

Are you seriously asking why a war torn city didn't fare as well after the war as one that had hardly been touched? (Except for that Draft riot thing, of course.)

You admit that. It was hard for Southern cities to match Northern ones in size before air conditioning. It wasn't just the heat. Yellow fever epidemics persisted in the Southern states down to the end of the 19th century. Even if a city wasn't directly effected, epidemics elsewhere in the South discouraged investment.

Of course I admit it. It is self evident. Before Air Conditioning, the South never had the potential to grow as populous as New York, and therefore would never have attained the level of infrastructure present in New York.

So why do you go on about how tariff differentials could have made Charleston competitive with New York City?

Because trade equations must balance. The way things were situated in 1860, the South was producing 3/4ths the value of all US exports. A huge chunk of that money was ending up in the US Treasury, and in the economy of New York.

Take that lost capital and return it to the people from whence it came, and the money would have created both development and it would attract more population.

Never as much of Either as New York, but substantially more than they would have otherwise had. Also, perchance the Southerners would be investing their new extra capital in New York businesses in the manner that New York businesses were previously investing in Southern commodities.

It would have likely ended up being the same sort of Globalist Power broker elites, they would just be mostly in Charleston rather than New York.

We probably wouldn't be better off, except for one thing. The "Right to leave" would have been established.

:)

[x]

Well I think there are good reasons Historians have not suggested this scenario. First, they didn't think of it. Second, they have been taught the common propaganda their whole lives. Third, the University elite don't want our History going down this path. And so on.

On the contrary, historians a century ago were very down on Northern capitalists. Google "Charles Beard Civil War" for pete's sake and you might learn something. Progressives, Marxists, and Southern revisionists actually had a similar take on rich Northern industrialists who supposedly caused the war.

So your POV isn't anywhere near as unusual or original as you might think. Over time, historians came to realize that slavery and slave owner expansionism couldn't be ignored. Also, the idea of industrialism or capitalism or Hamiltonianism as the root of all evil faded over time as historians came to understand that the world was more complex than that.

The North was extremely racist and intolerant of blacks. They *hated* them, probably more so than did Southern whites.

That is quite a generalization. WEB DuBois, who later ended up very radical and opposed to Whites, didn't have anything like that experience. There was some consciousness of race and color, but White feeling towards him was hardly unrelenting hatred. Many other African-Americans in the North had similar experiences. You are simply putting out your own simplistic generalization to replace another simplistic generalization that nobody believes anymore. You're comparing Southern gentlemen who may have professed war feeling for family servants with Northern mobs, but there were Southern mobs, and Northerners who weren't entirely focused on race (and maybe those Southern gentlemen and ladies weren't all you think they were).

I think the interests of my own family should come before much concern for others who live far away. I feel for them, but now we have our own problems.

So most Northerners would have thought at the time. That didn't mean, though, that they were indifferent to what happened elsewhere.

Because trade equations must balance. The way things were situated in 1860, the South was producing 3/4ths the value of all US exports. A huge chunk of that money was ending up in the US Treasury, and in the economy of New York.

Governments are a lot craftier than you think. Cotton mill owners recognized that their business depended on the flow of Southern cotton and thus didn't want to risk antagonizing the South, but the US government would have got along just fine.

Take that lost capital and return it to the people from whence it came, and the money would have created both development and it would attract more population.

Give it back to the slaves? I don't think the country was ready for that.

I notice that you haven't bothered to defend your absurd notion that Northern industrialists in 1860 were the Globalists of the day. Good move. Nobody who wasn't blinded by hatred and ignorance would make such an idiotic identification. True, I suppose somebody who loved Northern capitalists then and now might make such an association but that's not what we're talking about. There was a vast difference between somebody setting up a textile mill or iron foundry in the 1850s and Bill Gates and George Soros -- or Kofi Annan and Boutros Boutros Ghali -- today. The only thing they might have in common was being rich (and in fact, many pioneering capitalists ended up poor).

I'm not saying that plantation owners and secessionists leaders were "globalist" in the sense of being for a UN or world government, but they were anything but "small is beautiful" localists. They were very much tied in to the world economy. They were willing to attach themselves to the expanding British economy and empire, and many had imperialist ambitions of their own. They weren't a bunch of anti-government guys meeting in a garage to talk about guns, either, but were in favor of setting up their own government which could be as oppressive as any that they opposed. They weren't opposed to the idea of empire. They just wanted their own, or one that would pay them enough and not interfere in their own dominion.

[x]

Why did antebellum New York boom while Charleston and New Orleans lag behind? Are you going to say it was the Warehouse Act? Nonsense. New York grew because it was actually manufacturing things people actually wanted, while pre-Civil War Charleston and New Orleans weren't.

_______________________

Well that, and the fact that multi-billions of dollars worth of capital had just evaporated, much of the infrastructure was wrecked, and people were not only having to figure out how to feed themselves, but the newly freed slaves also had to eat, and could now compete with laborers in the South.

New York had a very big head start with all that capital that had funneled through it thanks to the luck of geography and those jiggered laws. Their infrastructure and labor force was intact.

Are you seriously asking why a war torn city didn't fare as well after the war as one that had hardly been touched? (Except for that Draft riot thing, of course.)

Can you read, Diogenes? Do you see the words "antebellum" and "pre-Civil War"? That means I am talking about the years before the Civil War. Even then, New York outstripped Charleston and New Orleans in economic growth. Are you really so hung up on the victim thing that it's affected your cognitive abilities? Or is this just you changing the debate again when you realize that you don't have a viable argument?

[BroJoeK]

Today I'm a few miles from Watertown, NY, near Canada.
In winter they get lots of snow, but today is as pleasant as pleasant can be, 60s to mid 70s.

So, picking up where I left off, was trying to explain to HangUpNow the similarities / parallels / equivalencies between Fort Sumter and Pearl Harbor.
HUN has astutely noticed that Pearl is much bigger than Sumter, but I've been hoping to point out that relatively speaking they were roughly equivalent.
Here goes, again at post #538...

:-)

[BroJoeK]

HangUpNow: "No, I'm *really* still laughing at your premise."

Laugh all you want, it's still true.

HangUpNow: "Yeah -- some "parallel:
One 'attack' was the defense of an American Southern Fort by Northern aggressors that resulted in TWO deaths because TWO of Lincoln's martyred agitators accidentally died from some ammo exploding."

Relatively speaking, Sumter & Pearl were the same.
Beginning here: in round numbers the entire US Army in early 1861 was 17,000.
By contrast, in December, 1941 the entire US military was around 1,700,000 or roughly 100 times larger than early 1861.
So, comparing Sumter & Pearl, relatively, we start by adding two zero's to Fort Sumter numbers.

Here then are the analogies:

1. Strategically, in late 1941 three most important US overseas forces were 1) MacArthur's in the Philippines, 2) Kimmel & Short in Hawaii and 3) the division strength Panama Canal forces.
   After secessions in early 1861, equivalents were three Union manned forts of Pickens at Pensacola, FL, Jefferson in the Lower Keys and Sumter at Charleston.

2. The overwhelming Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor matched the Confederate assault on Fort Sumter, where about 5,000 Confederates used 4,000 cannon & mortars to assault 85 Union troops with 21 working guns within the fort.

3. At Sumter, Union casualties totaled six of 85 = 7%, or roughly the same percentage as US casualties at Pearl Harbor, compared to total US forces on Oahu.

4. In terms of relative losses, Fort Sumter was greater than Pearl Harbor, since Pearl remained in US hands, plus nearly all ships "sunk" in 1941 were later repaired & returned to the fight, while after April 1861 Fort Sumter remained in Confederate hands, protecting the port of Charleston, despite costly Union attempts to retake it.

5. But the most compelling analogy between Pearl & Sumter were the effects each had on US public & leaders' opinion, which had previously opposed war but now enthusiastically supported it.

Confederates assault Fort Sumter, Japanese attack Pearl Harbor:

[BroJoeK]

PeaBrain: "It was only after Lincoln called up the state militias, ordered the blockade of Southern ports, and prepared to send Union troops into Virginia that war began.
The United States government formally determined this event as the beginning of the war."

No, irrelevant, since for example: everyone today "gets" the idea that radical Islamists have long been "at war" against the US & western civilization, while we do very little in response.
So a state of war does not begin when we respond, but when they increase levels of violence from "provocation" to "acts of war".

Consider likewise, in WWII both Japanese & Germans committed provocations against US forces, especially by attacking navy ships, but none of these provocations rose to the level of act of war before Pearl Harbor.

So also with US Civil War.
For months secessionists provoked war with numerous acts and threats of violence against Union officials & property.
But Confederate bombardment of Union troops in Fort Sumter was their first action rising to the level of act of war.

Lincoln's initial responses were not acts of war, since, for example, calling for 75,000 troops did not even match the Confederacy's army of 100,000.
Nor is an announced blockade, by itself, necessarily an act of war, as President Kennedy demonstrated when blockading Cuba against Soviet missile-carrying ships.

A serious act of war is just what the words imply: a major military assault on another military, such as Pearl Harbor and Confederate actions against Union troops in Fort Sumter.

[BroJoeK]

HangUpNow: "Well, I can see Beck has had your ear in the recent past."

Ha! No, I only assume Beck reads my posts, and that's where he got the idea! ;-)

HangUpNow: "Lincoln, like Wilson answered to and wound up enforcing the will of the economic elite. 600,000 lives worth "

So, like DiogenesLamp, you are a secret Marxist railing against "the rich" or "the 1%" or "economic elites" while posing as a conservative defender of the Confederacy?

In fact Wilson was Virginia born, son of a slave-holder and was a young boy during the Civil War, when he met General Lee, and saw Union troops marching through South Carolina.
So Wilson's First World War plan for "peace without victory" over Germany doubtless reflects the terms he wished the South had received.
Wilson's political progressivism reflected his times (and ours to a degree): both racist and statist.

Lincoln was a different man of a different era.

HangUpNow: "600,000 lives worth (NOT including the maimed, the widowed, the orphaned, and the economic disastrous effect upon the South for 100 years.)"

All those lives & injuries should properly be blamed on those secessionists who first started the war, then refused to surrender until forced into "unconditional surrender", when much better term for the South could have been negotiated at earlier points of the war.

HangUpNow: "Btw, your "ape" comment is uncalled for and incendiary. "

But I only took it from one of your fellow pro-Confederate posters.
"Ape Lincoln" was used by secessionists during Civil War along with "Black Republicans" to describe how secessionists felt about them.
So why would you object to something they believed appropriate?

HangUpNow: "But I guess that just your clumsy, un-clever way of implying those who opposed Lincoln's tyranny and monumental feral overreach disliked blacks and supported slavery."

No, slave-holder secessionists often loved their black slaves, as DNA studies today prove, but only as slaves, not as freed-men or women.

HangUpNow: "Well gee -- that's mighty bourgeoisie of you."

And there you go with that Marxist-talk again!
So you really are a Democrat poser, false-flagger pretending to be jess ordinary Southern conservative folk.
So why not just tell us the truth about who you are and why you come here spreading Marxism?

HangUpNow: "Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, LBJ, and 0blah-blah are ALL kindred political spirits."

No, Lincoln was the Republican, a genuine conservative attacked by Democrats who started & prosecuted Civil War until they had no poor white men left to fight with.

HangUpNow: "Today we are still paying for the tyranny, social, and economic aftermath of... "

...of Democrats starting, declaring and prosecuting war against conservative constitutional values, as they continue doing to this very day.

[BroJoeK]

PeaBrain: "Brojoke would have us believe: Confederate Congress declared war?
Would you cite the source for this."

It's in many Civil War histories, including web sites, for example this one.

[BroJoeK]

rustbucket: "The Tenth Amendment gave the individual states the power to secede."

HangUpNow: "Succinct but devastating rebuttal for those who can't shake off our K-12 indoctrination."

As posted in #501 above, that was Jefferson Davis' argument to the US Senate in January 1861.
But no US Founder ever made that argument.
All insisted that disunion could only come from mutual consent or from serious breach of compact, neither of which existed in December 1860, when South Carolina unilaterally declared secession, "at pleasure".

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp to HangUpNow: "That is another extremely relevant point.
Yes, Teddy Roosevelt is known for interfering with the Crony Capitalism that had been going on since.... well.... since Lincoln. "

Any suggestion that "crony capitalism" in America somehow started with Lincoln, or was illegally supported by him, is ludicrous to the max.
It only shows the absurd lengths which pro-Confederates will go in creating fantasies to support their nonsense.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Washington and New York still have an unholy alliance that pits the financial interests of the New England power brokers against the rest of the nation...."

So how is that DiogenesLamp doesn't even know the difference between New York and New England?
Do you fantasize that New Yorkers take orders from New England?
Sorry, but you're just babbling nonsense and really should stop making your own abysmal ignorance the chief subject of discussion here.

[BroJoeK]

HangUpNow's Alinskyite-rant: "As you remind us, the record certainly indicts a post CW Union (specifically, vampires from the North, more specifically, New England's cadre of olde monied elites) of rampant profiteering and opportunistic crooks...."

I'm no expert on Reconstruction, but it does seem that Lincoln's "better angels of our nature" somewhat deserted the country for a time.
So why would any non-Marxist focus on things like "rampant profiteering" when more serious post-Civil War problems in the South are represented by the KKK, lynchings & disenfranchisement of black voters, segregation and discrimination against African-Americans?

[BroJoeK]

rustbucket trying to explain geography to clueless HangUp & DiogenesLamp: "Some New Englanders have very parochial attitudes.
I went to college in Massachusetts with New Englanders who had never been west of the Hudson River and saw no reason to go.
For them, Boston was the hub of the universe."

Nice try, FRiend, but it seems that, to DiogenesLamp & HungUp anything north of Virginia or west of Texas is "New England".

[BroJoeK]

x to DiogenesLamp: "Does Diogenes read over the stuff he types up?
The plantation owners and the Confederate government were the globalists of the day."

I am increasingly satisfied that posters like DiogenesLamp and HangUpNow are really Marxists/Democrat/Alinksyite posers consumed with Liberal angst over "the top 1%" or "the rich" and "elites".
That such concerns flow out of pro-Confederates might not be so surprising...

[PeaRidge]

Brojoek, I don't think you fully realize how the sophomoric tenor and content of your recent posts is wasting bandwidth here.

Attempting to co-mingle unrelated events and mixing in non sequiturs from your imaginary analogies is leaching the patience of fellow posters.

You have no stature here to present your definition of war.

Here is the Supreme Court case that defines the beginning as an act originating in President Lincoln's office. None of your supercilious comments resemble anything in the ruling.

Here is the case number:

Protector, 79 U.S. 12 Wall. 700 700 (1870) APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE

UNITED STATES FOR THE DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA

Syllabus

1. The beginning and termination of the late rebellion in reference to acts of limitation is to be determined by some public act of the political department.

2. The war did not begin or close at the same time in all the states.

3. Its commencement in certain states will be referred to the first proclamation of blockade embracing them and made on the 19th April, 1861, and as to other states to the second proclamation of blockade embracing them, and made on the 27th April, 1861.

Both were political acts by Lincoln.

If you continue to posit your war beginning canard, you will receive this same document every time.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp to x: "I think those ups and downs would have been more than offset by the absence of the FedGov and New York's cuts of their profits."

The important point to remember here is that 100% of those commercial relationships were voluntary, and they corresponded to their political alliance -- between the Southern Democrat Slave-Power and Northern Democrat big-city bosses -- i.e., Tammany Hall.

Politically, the slave-power dominated Southern-Democrats, while Southern-Democrats dominated the Democrat party and nationally Democrats were nearly always the majority in Congress, on the Supreme Court and elected Presidents.
That means: normally whatever the Democrat slave-power wanted from Washington DC, the slave-power got.

The election of "Ape" Lincoln and his "Black Republicans" in November 1860 was the first time ever even mildly anti-slavery people were to gain some power in DC.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Fantasy is the notion that a Nation founded on the God given principle of Independence, should think it appropriate to fight against other people's right to Independence."

No, fantasy is the notion that Confederate military force which first provoked war, then started war and formally declared war on the United States, while supporting pro-Confederates in Union states, and then refused to seek peace on any terms short of "unconditional surrender" -- only fantasy could suggest that those Confederates were anything other than politically insane.

[BroJoeK]

x to DiogenesLamp: "being a major shipping port doesn't translate into being a major manufacturing city or a world financial center.
That wasn't going to happen to New Orleans and it certainly wasn't going to happen to Charleston."

Thanks for a great response!
Sadly, DiogenesLamp seems utterly consumed by his anti-historical fantasy of Charleston SC suddenly becoming an economic rival to New York, or any other major US ports.
There's just no evidence suggesting Charleston could ever, even under conditions of peace between US & Confederacy.

But that doesn't stop DL from letting his imaginings run wild.