Posted on 10/11/2017 8:33:29 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Lt. Col. Robert F. McTague, U.S. Army (Ret.) Best Defense office of Second Civil War affairs
If we have a second Civil War, trying to understand what is happening will feel more like Ukraine in 2014 than Virginia in 1861.
Our first Civil War was primarily about slavery, but that was in the context of social and economic models in the South that were ripe for extinction. The South’s reaction was to launch a last-ditch effort to maintain and prop up its way of life at all costs, so it was visceral and violent.
Likewise, Trump’s election was an angry, defiant death throe, a angry cry against demographic and economic changes that are in fact irreversible. So, if you are a New Right strategist today — call them the Great Disruptors — the question is, how do you confront those inevitabilities?
First, you continue at the low level, with some really advanced, effective gerrymandering, as in Wisconsin. You continue to enflame working class whites, who have been ignored by the Democrats for decades. You also try to limit immigration and free trade as much as possible.
Even so, even as they do this, the New Right’s Disruptors know they can slow down changes to the nation, but they can’t stop them. So what’s the next step? You up the ante. You make it holy war. You persuade your base that there is no other way but violence. I believe many, perhaps most, of the members of Trump’s base will sign up for that.
Why? Because they will believe they are on the side of good, of right, of Americanism.
Many people in the South and heartland in general often think of themselves as patriotic, loyal Americans, more so than “liberals,” “Yankees,” “elites” and people from the North and urban areas.....
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
You make my point. So why do you think the north didn't vote to amend the constitution in 1861 and just skip the war, the killings, and all the hard feelings?
That was a compromise between not counting slaves (and considering them merely as property), and counting slaves (and increasing the power of slaveowners and diluting that of free voters). It wasn't anything that "enshrined" slavery in the Constitution.
It's interesting though, that you take the view of the contemporary left that the Constitution as a pro-slavery document. In itself, that doesn't mean that you're wrong, but it sure is interesting.
There is a reason that slavery was enshrined - err, I mean included - in the U.S. constitution and it's not happenstance.
Slavery is included in the U.S. constitution because the states of New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Rhode Island and Providence Plantations voted to include it.
Oh yes, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia also voted to include it.
There had to be a compromise to keep the 13 colonies together as one country.
So what?
Do you want to bring back slavery?
It is an interesting historical fact that northerners did not want to count slaves at all for purposes of representation in congress while southerners wanted to count them as full human beings.
This early, baby-step by the South to recognize slaves as full human beings was scuttled by northern economic and political interests. Had that concept been allowed to enter the political landscape at the nation's founding the course of history could possibly have been changed for the good.
The 3/4th compromise forced on the South created a stigma that still rankles.
No. They wanted to count them as human chattel to increase their own power. What slaveowner or tyrant in history didn't measure his worth and power based on how many people he had under his thumb.
This early, baby-step by the South to recognize slaves as full human beings was scuttled by northern economic and political interests. Had that concept been allowed to enter the political landscape at the nation's founding the course of history could possibly have been changed for the good.
No, that would have made slavery an unassailable, unchallengeable part of the national heritage. Something you would undoubtedly like.
What rock did you crawl out from under and why don't you go back there?
My point was Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia bear 4/13th responsibility for slavery being enshrined in the U.S. constitution.
“Do you want to bring back slavery?”
No.
Can you cite anything I have written saying otherwise?
“What rock did you crawl out from under and why don’t you go back there?”
Well, that is not very nice!
Words like that must have been written in jest.
Because it wouldn’t have passed. 3/4 of states needed to ratify. If you think we are divided today. It was by far much worse then. When Lincoln was elected they left the union.
Earlier in your post 117, you wrote:
“Politically it also became clear early on that the Union could not be put together the way it was. Emancipation was the only way.”
Let's combine your two thoughts: the North, ostensibly, wanted to “free the slaves” but couldn't do it peacefully because they didn't have the votes required by the constitution that all the states agreed to so many years before.
If true, what the North needed was a war. But first they needed a pretext for war - perhaps, “Save the Union!”
All well and good but . . . President Lincoln took an oath to defend and uphold the U.S. constitution not to overthrow it and the provisions he didn't like by using the military.
By your telling, that's what he did. And he killed a lot of people in the doing. As you say, he could get the 3/4 vote to ratify and “emancipation was the only way.”
The South sowed the seeds of slaverys distruction when they seceded. And they seceded...the first 7 states anyway...because Lincoln became president. The war was precipitated when the South fired on Fort Sumter.
In your post 71 you write: “The institution of Slavery was the fabric of the entire economic system of the south...without slavery their economy would collapse. . . That is what the South was defending when they seceded.”
If what you say is true - that the North did not have the 3/4 vote required to peacefully amend the constitution - the South must have known it. What then were they “defending against?”
Can you think of any reason the South might believe the North was planning to destroy them militarily, economically, and politically in contravention of the U.S. constitution?
Your logic is flawed. If the north did not have 3/4 of the states for an amendment to abolish slavery....why secede? Besides no where pre civil war was there any effort to amend the constitution to end slavery. Both sides hated the radical abolisionists. The compromise efforts before lincoln was inaugurated to turn back from secession..failed. The main debate regarding slavery was not moral but economic. The south was losing their power. The balance of power between free and slave states was moving irrovocably toward the free states. Lincolns election sealed their fate and they left to protect their institution slavery. The fire eaters wanted it. You do know the south almost seceded in 1850...except for the compromise of 1850.
when we say, "the North" or "the South" what are we really including in each?
I 've always tended to think of it in terms of those who were dissatisfied and ultimately broke away, and those who stayed with the union. I think the fault line ran along the division between agriculture and industry, but hasten to say these were particular forms of agriculture. Southern Cavalier planters were one, and the smaller scale Scots-Irish homesteaders who aspired to become gentry were the other. As I mentioned before, it seems German immigrants, Dunkers, Mennonites, Moravians, etc. managed their farms within their families and didn't want slavery.
Should Federal spending be proportional to populations (number of congressional representatives), or to geographical size...
I would expect most people to want their cut to be proportional to their contribution.
everything which wealthy Mississippians needed, from railroads & steamships to pots & pans, was produced elsewhere, mostly in more Northern states...could Northern contributions be less important than anybody else's?
I think that was the real issue. The South felt they were being forced to trade domestically, limiting their market and return. They were also more likely to buy manufactured goods in Europe. They resented and feared duties or treaties favoring domestic trade and suppressing exports and imports. Plantations were few and far between, indignant though they were, the issue wasn't exactly life or death for that class. I think the Scot's Irish and post-colonial but upwardly striving groups were the actual backbone of the succession; they would have seen it as a door slammed in their face, or even the impending loss of their tenuous, as they saw it, grip on solvency and station. Thanks I'll try and get to the rest when I can.
“If the north did not have 3/4 of the states for an amendment to abolish slavery....why secede?”
The South no longer trusted the North. The South believed the North would seek a pretext to attack and destroy the South because the North wanted economic and political dominance.
And the South had this principle: “ . . . Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Note well the words: “as to them”.
The North once believed in that principle but for economic and political reasons - in a word, money - decided to unilaterally change the nature of the covenants between the states. The South said no.
Nice try whitewashing the impact of slavery. It was the planter class and the fire eaters that led the deep south out of the union, with all your appeals to the declaration of independence not withstanding. The confederacy was founded on the principle that the black man was not the equal to the white....and that slavery was their natural state(read the primary sources). Those same primary sources did not appeal to the declaration of independence.
Bravo PaulZe! Your first sentence says everything - all else from our FRiend here becomes bluff and bluster....and bullspit.
jeffersondem has a nasty habit of conjoining two disparate thoughts and then imputing them to his opponents as though they were ours. I suspect that nothing short of a baseball bat will deter him from his poor habit - and of course there’s no profit in going down that road.
You write that, “Both sides hated the radical abolitionists”. I might quibble just a bit there, preferring to say that neither north or south had any time or interest for them. Slavery, as an institution, was slowly winding its way toward its final solution and ultimate demise. It was the 500 pound gorilla in the room that no one could ignore and wasn’t going to just go away.
The Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850 demonstrates the primacy and urgency of the issue, and the dissension and disaffection felt by northern and southern neighbors. The two pieces of legislation were messy, were awkward, were severely flawed, and weren’t much favored by anyone - except for the alternative. This was government doing what governments ought to do - negotiate and compromise. It was only those radical abolitionists who spoke of universal abolition, including constitutional remedies, and no one was having it.
One of the favored sayings of the neo-confederates is that the south “just wanted to be left alone”. In truth, the south wanted what it wanted and effectively negotiated in their own interests for decades. The south dominated federal politics for most of our nations early history. And for the leadership of the south, the slavers, life couldn’t be better. They were prosperous far beyond their own expectations, fabulously wealthy, and immensely powerful. They wanted to keep things just as they were - as long as they were dominant.
Among the peculiarities of slavery is the fact that slaves didn’t want to be slaves. As a consequence they had a habit of running away. Naturally, being an expensive proposition in the first lace, slave owners didn’t care for this propensity and sought the errant slaves’ return. Testy exchanges were common when southerners came into the free states and started turning things upside down looking for their chattel property. Slave owners were indignant that yankees objected to their presence and negotiated laws strengthening their rights in the reacquisition of their chattel property.
I’m sure you can imagine the sense of repugnance that some northerners felt to be so obliged - sort of like forcing the proverbial baker to bake a cake for faggots I imagine. These actions served to increase tensions between northerners and their southern cousins.
None of this occurred in a vacuum. Most of the industrialized nations had already done away with slavery. The united States was fast becoming an outlier. And then came Scott v. Sanford and completely overturned the cart. Two dramatic changes came with that horrid decision: the first (and far away the foremost) was Taney’s unilateral judgement that the negroe race was significantly less than human and unsuitable for citizenship. The second was that the Peculiar Institution had no boundaries - that slave owners were “free” to take their chattel property anywhere they pleased and with complete impunity, and that northerners who wished their communities not to be slave states were kindly invited to sit down and shut up.
I apologize for my verbosity - I’m almost done!
Neo-confederates or confederate apologists wring the trees looking for possible alternative excuses or rationalizations for the Civil War but you hit the nail on the head - the Peculiar Institution of slavery saturated every aspect of the south - its economic interests, its culture, and ultimately like the proverbial tiger caught by the tail, its mortality.
They couldn’t let it go, they couldn’t imagine life without it, and they sure as heck weren’t going to let anyone decide otherwise for them! The election of Abraham Lincoln was perceived as a death knell for the slavocracy. Despite Ol Abe’s exhortations that he would leave it alone, southerners felt otherwise. This time around the southern leadership decided not to negotiate. And they had zero desire to compromise. So they took a belligerent tone and said FU to their northern cousins, along with anything that wasn’t nailed down. Not because of anything that Lincoln did - he hadn’t even taken office yet. Not because of anything Lincoln said - his record was consistent and conciliatory. Not because of Lincoln - he was merely the pretext - the excuse for their misbehavior.
Because they wanted what they wanted, and would do anything to get it. Forget the honor, forget the oaths, forget the consequences, and forget the price. Southern leadership had a temper tantrum at losing an election and took it out on whoever they could by blowing everything up.
Liberals are violent - we’re NOT.
This is more projection and wishful thinking on the part of a violent leftist... They would love to see us fall into the trap of ‘brain-dead street violence’...it might be the only level they have a chance at... ‘biggest thug wins’ and all.
It’s not gonna happen.
We’re going to win the way we’ve been winning for the past ten years - - voting liberals and their pets out of office. Over a thousand democrats have been voted out of office and slowing we’re replacing their shills in government jobs with our people. We’re playing the long game. And they’re idiots.
The North did the South an economic favor when they ended slavery because the loss of CHEAP LABOR forced the South to start using machinery and innovation ... Similar to the problem we have with the 3rd world CHEAP LABOR Mexicans and what that's done to agribusiness - keeps them from making better choices...
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