Posted on 11/24/2023 6:29:31 AM PST by devane617
Spent Christmas there two years ago. Very nice. It was like New Orleans without the grundge and squalor at least where we were
I have come to believe that had it not been a certainty that blacks would rubber stamp Republicans in elections, the Republicans never would have allowed them to vote.
I used to believe that they were given citizenship and the right to vote because it was the right thing to do, but studying history you quickly learn they never intended to even free them, let alone treat them as citizens.
It becomes clear their motivation was not "the rights of man" or morality, but raw political power, which incidentally is the exact same reason the liberal party of today wants to give illegals the right to vote.
It's about power today, and it was only about power in 1868. We are fooling ourselves to believe it was ever about morality.
Absent that disenfranchisement, South Carolina would’ve been sending Black Republican Congressmen from the Charleston and interior areas until at least the 1960s.
Which is exactly why the white population wanted to keep them from voting. They were simply giving power to the liberals who had used the force of government to kill them and deny them the economic independence they wanted from the corrupt oligarchs of the North which controlled Washington DC in those days, and still control it today.
It's no accident that all the media outlets are under the thumb of wealthy New York liberals who make a *LOT* of money from Democrats controlling congress and the presidency.
We can now all see it is nothing but a big corruption scheme, and the evidence indicates it has been a big corruption scheme since at least the 1850s.
The blacks are just pawns in it.
Though clearly there are truthful aspects of what you say here, I don’t necessarily view it as as mercenary as your conclusions. Obviously wanting a bloc of voters (as the Republican Black contingent would be) was a net positive, but short of mass-disenfranchisements of Whites in the South, only Mississippi and South Carolina on the basis of their population could guarantee Republican majorities.
Obviously the Corwin Amendment was the last-ditch effort to try to hold the Union together by permitting slavery. Lincoln himself stated that if he could hold together the country without freeing the slaves, he would’ve done it. But the South wasn’t about to trust an ostensible anti-slavery party. They didn’t trust the moderate Sen. Douglas as a status quo Democrat.
Lincoln was pragmatic to a degree, he wanted the Union united. When Corwin wasn’t tenable, it forced the route of abolition. Quite probably that was the hand of Providence at work (as much as we wish slavery had been outlawed in the 1770s). Morality was not central, as it often isn’t with politics, even if it appears that was an overriding issue.
As I stated in the prior post, I don’t quite like engaging in strict left vs. right arguments prior to 1896. Hence what “liberals” wanted in the 1860s/70s can only be agreed upon if you consider such a group then to be as such. I don’t consider slavery to be a right vs. left issue in the same way we look at your example of (the left) wanting illegals to vote. As a Conservative, I consider the notion of slavery in a nation of ours to be repugnant and antithetical to the foundation of this country. I would’ve thought the same in the 1860s and 1770s.
Since I associate totalitarianism with the political left, the institution of slavery is as totalitarian as one can get, hence those defending such a status as anti-freedom and anti-justice.
Of course, as a Southerner, I also know that neither side was all moral or all evil. Both divisions had an axe to grind against the other. Many so-called abolitionists seemed fine and dandy to incite the civil war (Sumner of MA a premier example) when we should’ve been trying to find every possible method to phase out slavery completely without resorting to all-out war. The South, the bulk of whom were the wealthy that controlled most of the slavery, had fallen into a corrupting institution that had damaged them morally, and often refused to acknowledge that.
It wasn’t just Black (slaves) that were pawns, but lower-class Whites as well, who did the bulk of the fighting for both sides. Lincoln miscalculated in presuming poor Southern Whites wouldn’t fight for the wealthy oligarchs, failing to take into account that they would see this as a Northern invasion, and in those days, your state WAS your nation and you would defend it as such.
Of course, as we’ve seen for so long now, almost every war is a political one, with usually only those in power benefitting from said war. I’ve come to the conclusion that today, most folks should generally tend to resist participating in wars (especially in the Ukraine, Israel, et al), because it’s the oligarchs (most of whom are corrupt and evil) that are the instigators trying to hold onto their power. As we’ve seen with the “Derp State” and its war against the American people and President Trump. The only wars by the people that should be waged are entirely against them, because they are the true enemy.
Well they did that. They disenfranchised all the whites, and it took them years to get back the right to vote. During that period, the Republicans rammed through everything they wanted, and much of it was detrimental to the South.
Obviously the Corwin Amendment was the last-ditch effort to try to hold the Union together by permitting slavery.
I see people put forth that argument a lot, but they never get into why it was important or necessary for the Union to hold together. What argument can you put forth that would not work equally well in holding the Colonies to the United Kingdom?
Our Declaration of Independence asserts that it is a right given by God for people to have independence if they want it. Why was it right for Virginia to have it's independence in 1776, but not in 1861? What is the moral argument for compelling it to stay politically bound to Washington DC by use of force?
Lincoln was pragmatic to a degree, he wanted the Union united.
Well sure he did. The South was producing 72% of the total tax income for the nation, and also pumping 700 million per year into the economy of the US, most of which went to the North. Who wouldn't want other people paying their taxes and making them rich?
The problem was, the South didn't like it and didn't see it as fair. That's the real reason they wanted out.
Here is Paul Craig Robert's argument on that point.
When Corwin wasn’t tenable, it forced the route of abolition.
Not really. If the South had been defeated quickly as Lincoln had expected, they would have kept slavery intact, because it was just too economically beneficial to the government and the Northern industrialists.
Don't fool yourself. When the war began, Lincoln had every intention of keeping slavery exactly where it was. It was the economic engine pouring money into the US Government and he wanted that to continue. It wasn't until it became clear that the South was serious about getting away from Washington DC's control of them that he started threatening Abolition.
As I stated in the prior post, I don’t quite like engaging in strict left vs. right arguments prior to 1896. Hence what “liberals” wanted in the 1860s/70s can only be agreed upon if you consider such a group then to be as such.
There are too many parallels between modern Liberals and 1860 Republicans to not regard them as the same.
For one, they live in the exact same place geographically. Boston, New York and Chicago were all Republican and today they are hotbeds of liberalism.
For another, their policies are roughly similar. They favor High Taxes, Protectionist Tariffs, Big Government, Big Government spending, and social change. They favor expanding the voting franchise to people who will help them get elected (Illegals today, former slaves in 1868) regardless of whether or not it is in the best interest of the nation.
The Socialists of that era, i.e. Karl Marx, were on their side and vociferously supporting what they were doing.
As a Conservative, I consider the notion of slavery in a nation of ours to be repugnant and antithetical to the foundation of this country.
Yes, it's disgusting, but the problem is, it was the law. We may not like bad laws, but we should not pretend we have the power to overturn laws we don't like without going through the process to do it legitimately.
If the North wanted to abolish slavery, it could have taken a vote. (Which it would have lost.) People's hatred for slavery does not justify them taking the law into their own hands. It should have ended peacefully, which it would have done eventually as it became less and less profitable and more and more socially repugnant.
As ugly as slavery was, it was the law until changed, and people should have worked to change it through the election process.
Of course, as a Southerner, I also know that neither side was all moral or all evil.
I'm not a southerner, but I now see what the North did as more evil than what the South did. When you invade other countries and kill people to subjugate them to your will, you become the bad guy.
Many so-called abolitionists seemed fine and dandy to incite the civil war (Sumner of MA a premier example) when we should’ve been trying to find every possible method to phase out slavery completely without resorting to all-out war.
I now hold a cynical view of that. I've read too much which leads me to believe the US Government would have kept slavery because it was just too economically beneficial to them. As I said, the Southern states produced 72% of the tax revenue for the nation in 1860.
Do you know how many Republicans voted for the Corwin Amendment? It takes a 2/3rds majority to vote for an Amendment in the House and Senate, and both were controlled at that time by Northern Republicans.
I now think they said one thing to their voters, and did another when it came to being serious.
The South, the bulk of whom were the wealthy that controlled most of the slavery, had fallen into a corrupting institution that had damaged them morally, and often refused to acknowledge that.
Well according to Charles Dickens "notes on America", he spoke with many wealthy Southern slave owners, and they lamented that they wanted out of the slavery business, but didn't know how they could get there. Apparently Social forces, legal forces, and economic forces combined to make it more difficult to just stop.
Lincoln miscalculated in presuming poor Southern Whites wouldn’t fight for the wealthy oligarchs, failing to take into account that they would see this as a Northern invasion, and in those days, your state WAS your nation and you would defend it as such.
He very badly did. He had been assured that they could whip those rebels quickly and restore everything back to normal before the end of the year. They were badly mistaken.
Lincoln was a genius, and I have long suspected that "geniuses" tend to get themselves into bigger messes than ordinary people simply because they think they are too smart to be wrong. Examples include Lincoln, Wilson, Kennedy, Carter, Clinton and Obama. Also Robert McNamara.
I’ve come to the conclusion that today, most folks should generally tend to resist participating in wars (especially in the Ukraine, Israel, et al), because it’s the oligarchs (most of whom are corrupt and evil) that are the instigators trying to hold onto their power.
And this is exactly the conclusion I have come to regarding the Civil War. I think Oligarchs instigated it, because with the South becoming independent, the Industrial Robber Baron class would have taken serious economic hits. The way the laws were rigged at that time, the North controlled most of the South's economy. (Which I didn't know until just a few years ago.)
As we’ve seen with the “Derp State” and its war against the American people and President Trump. The only wars by the people that should be waged are entirely against them, because they are the true enemy.
Yup, but I see them as the entrenched deep state which has been running DC and the Northeast *SINCE* the Civil war. They all come from Ivy league Universities in the North, and they are all well connected to the descendants of the Northern power brokers who benefited from the Civil War.
I now see our government as a corruption cartel, and this is why worthless bags of sh*t like Joe Biden can become fabulously wealthy. They are selling government to both foreign and domestic purchasers.
They will manipulate government policy or law to enrich themselves. The whole system is corrupt, and the Lincoln era is how it started.
They didn't disenfranchise all the Whites, or you'd not have had White officeholders in the period, save for some carpetbaggers. Of course, it isn't unusual for a party once in power to try to push for as much as they can get. That's simply the nature of politics. Whether it was explicitly detrimental to the South depends upon which laws you're taking issue with. One could equally argue that once the Democrats "Redeemed" said GOP-controlled states, they settled into stagnancy for almost the next century.
"I see people put forth that argument a lot, but they never get into why it was important or necessary for the Union to hold together. What argument can you put forth that would not work equally well in holding the Colonies to the United Kingdom?"
I would think the Union holding together and as to why it was important is self-evident. Breaking up into separate states as countries would tend to diminish the whole (right or wrong). I will, however, state that I believe individual states did (do) have the right to secede. Whatever else, the U.S. Constitution I don't view as a mutual suicide pact.
"Our Declaration of Independence asserts that it is a right given by God for people to have independence if they want it. Why was it right for Virginia to have it's independence in 1776, but not in 1861? What is the moral argument for compelling it to stay politically bound to Washington DC by use of force?"
Then, of course, you can add that not every individual within the sovereign state of Virginia was free, either in 1776 or 1860/61. As I said above, I do believe they had a right to secede, though the sitting President and Congressional majorities disagreed with that right. I can say both sides had a point, both were right, but both also were wrong. Secession rather went off half-cocked. Once the Confederacy was created and President Davis was empowered to make decisions as to warmaking (defense), it ran smack into the states rights' situation again, so you had an issue of hypocrisy. They were leaving one "federal" system only to find themselves in another. They also had little choice but to join the Confederacy because they couldn't hope to stave off attempts by the Union to take them back standing as separate states (again, rather nullifying the argument as to why they should leave in the first place). I find the Confederacy to be a political curiosity, but one that was likely doomed to failure even if the Union had chosen not to pursue these errant, fleeing states.
"Well sure he did. The South was producing 72% of the total tax income for the nation, and also pumping 700 million per year into the economy of the US, most of which went to the North. Who wouldn't want other people paying their taxes and making them rich? The problem was, the South didn't like it and didn't see it as fair. That's the real reason they wanted out."
I don't know what the percentage was, I'm not contesting your statement one way or another. Some states, like South Carolina, had been pissed about tariffs going back decades, and threatened secession. Of course, even the Democrat President Andrew Jackson saw secession as high treason and threatened to hang the leaders, starting with his own first-term Vice President and Nullification leader, John C. Calhoun. I still think the argument that "it wasn't really over slavery" is a bit precious. The South could jettison every issue but one, and slavery was something they were (at least the ruling oligarchs) not going to get rid of. It was too deeply culturally engrained at that point. If they had been smart, they could've abolished the institution at secession (and establishing a second-class status for former slaves akin to "Jim Crow"), which would've guaranteed the United Kingdom interceding on their behalf and halting the Union attempt to retake the South. They refused to do it, and hence blew the decisive opportunity to establish a new nation for the (relative) long term. Again, if it really wasn't about slavery, then abolition (even if just de facto) would've been on the table at the start. Ultimately why the Confederacy was NOT a serious enterprise.
"Not really. If the South had been defeated quickly as Lincoln had expected, they would have kept slavery intact, because it was just too economically beneficial to the government and the Northern industrialists. Don't fool yourself. When the war began, Lincoln had every intention of keeping slavery exactly where it was. It was the economic engine pouring money into the US Government and he wanted that to continue. It wasn't until it became clear that the South was serious about getting away from Washington DC's control of them that he started threatening Abolition."
I still believe it was untenable, because the Republican Party base and the bulk of its elected officials wanted abolition. It had already ripped two parties apart, destroying the Whigs and splitting the pro- and anti-slave factions within the Democrats. If the new GOP settled into a status quo party, it would've swiftly been voted out of power, because they could've just kept the Democrats if that's all they were going to do. The South knew what the Republican Party agenda was, and status quo wasn't it. They'd have had no reason to panic or secede otherwise. As an aside about Lincoln's opponent in 1860, Sen. Stephen Douglas, if Douglas had somehow managed to win (and survive his early death soon after), I think Douglas would've been forced into the same position as Lincoln. Had Douglas lived to 1865, he would've ended up in the Republican Party (as did his IL seatmate, Lyman Trumbull, who had previously been a Dem). That's why the South didn't want a President Douglas, either.
"There are too many parallels between modern Liberals and 1860 Republicans to not regard them as the same. For one, they live in the exact same place geographically. Boston, New York and Chicago were all Republican and today they are hotbeds of liberalism."
These weren't Communists. Virtually every city in America has gone Communist and embraced Satanic values today. I cannot equate Abolitionists, many of whom were strident Christians, as being the modern equivalent. This was an absolute rejection of those values. It was only more towards the end of the 19th century and the importation of mass numbers of Eastern & Southern European immigrants who were favorably disposed to the Socialist ideology that had been largely rejected amongst the early North/Western European settlers of the United States that you started to see the ideological radicalization - and most of that occurred in the Democrat Party. NYC, for example, the Republican Party was rarely in the majority from its founding up through to today. The Democrats, aside from splits within the Tammany Machine, were almost always firmly in control. They followed that leftist radicalization.
"For another, their policies are roughly similar. They favor High Taxes, Protectionist Tariffs, Big Government, Big Government spending, and social change. They favor expanding the voting franchise to people who will help them get elected (Illegals today, former slaves in 1868) regardless of whether or not it is in the best interest of the nation. The Socialists of that era, i.e. Karl Marx, were on their side and vociferously supporting what they were doing."
Marx initially had high hopes for the Republican Party, but was soon deflated when he realized this was not going to be the vehicle for Socialist change. The nation simply did not support such radical movements at that time, and they certainly weren't going to embrace an anti-Christian ideology. That would come together later within the Democrat Party.
"Yes, it's disgusting, but the problem is, it was the law. We may not like bad laws, but we should not pretend we have the power to overturn laws we don't like without going through the process to do it legitimately.
If the North wanted to abolish slavery, it could have taken a vote. (Which it would have lost.) People's hatred for slavery does not justify them taking the law into their own hands. It should have ended peacefully, which it would have done eventually as it became less and less profitable and more and more socially repugnant.
As ugly as slavery was, it was the law until changed, and people should have worked to change it through the election process."
This wasn't just bad law, this was a law that flew in the face of the very foundation of American society. If you were a slave, would you merely be content to "follow the law" that gave you no rights of any real sort and wait it out, or would you fight for your freedom ? The South bet on its long-term viability until it became indistinguishable from the center of its culture and could not give it up. This was a profoundly deep flaw in its morality that was truly indefensible. Unquestionably, they built a seemingly beautiful society down here, but it was done on the backs of individuals who had no way to share in it, a very ugly underbelly that was basically evil. Even then, many knew that it was (down South), but would politely excuse it as being part of the culture or just didn't know any other way the South could function without it or how to get rid of it. Kicking the can down the road had horrific consequences. Having studied some of the demographics of the Southern states, pre-Civil War, they were literally playing with fire in not expecting a Haitian-level uprising. When you had areas of the South outnumbered 10-to-1 slave to White, including Charleston, I'd have been living in fear every day that the house of cards was going to collapse. That it was ever allowed to import countless millions of Black slaves was insane, and thinking it could be maintained in perpetuity. Either this was the kind of thinking that Blacks were too stupid to rebel (Haiti should've put that thinking to rest) or that you could control them with minimal effort was again astonishingly ignorant and naïve.
"I now hold a cynical view of that. I've read too much which leads me to believe the US Government would have kept slavery because it was just too economically beneficial to them. As I said, the Southern states produced 72% of the tax revenue for the nation in 1860.
Do you know how many Republicans voted for the Corwin Amendment? It takes a 2/3rds majority to vote for an Amendment in the House and Senate, and both were controlled at that time by Northern Republicans.
I now think they said one thing to their voters, and did another when it came to being serious."
Well, it wouldn't be the first time a party has done that. However, as I stated above, I think had they taken that "status quo" course, the GOP would've been out in 1862, and certainly by 1864. Unlike today, where foot-dragging can go on for decades, the more serious voters of that era, most of whom had skin in the game, were not going to cotton to liars and charlatans right to their faces.
"Well according to Charles Dickens "notes on America", he spoke with many wealthy Southern slave owners, and they lamented that they wanted out of the slavery business, but didn't know how they could get there. Apparently Social forces, legal forces, and economic forces combined to make it more difficult to just stop."
That was the above excuses I presented. They may have lamented it to outsiders, but let's face it, if they really wanted action on something, they'd have done it. They were quite comfortably ensconced in this "peculiar institution." Even well after the Civil War forced its end, many many folks down here would've been happy to see it resume again. Think of it the way a lot of us meat-eaters might lament having to see how our meat is butchered (a sweet cow in a field, a lamb, even clucking chickens) and agree with vegetarians on the barbarity, but we ain't going to give up eating it. Sure, it's awful having a poor animal slaughtered, but it's just too delicious. Of course, it also helped that many Southerners viewed Black folk like livestock: dumb, helpless animals.
"Lincoln was a genius, and I have long suspected that "geniuses" tend to get themselves into bigger messes than ordinary people simply because they think they are too smart to be wrong. Examples include Lincoln, Wilson, Kennedy, Carter, Clinton and Obama. Also Robert McNamara."
Although I might say their "genius" was highly overrated. Worse than that, they had a nasty habit of taking things that weren't broken and destroying them. I think it was more arrogance and hubris than genius. I've thought it a shame that we could not come up with a measure that could be implemented at the start of a new administration that can essentially "roll back" or wipe out everything to the start of the previous regime. Meaning an instant restoration of prior spending, prior sized government, et al., albeit with the stipulation it can only be rolled back, not restoring something that was previously larger and more massive (that would have to be done individually, as it is now). Of course, I'm getting off on a different subject.
"Yup, but I see them as the entrenched deep state which has been running DC and the Northeast *SINCE* the Civil war. They all come from Ivy league Universities in the North, and they are all well connected to the descendants of the Northern power brokers who benefited from the Civil War.
I now see our government as a corruption cartel, and this is why worthless bags of sh*t like Joe Biden can become fabulously wealthy. They are selling government to both foreign and domestic purchasers.
They will manipulate government policy or law to enrich themselves. The whole system is corrupt, and the Lincoln era is how it started."
I still see the difference is that Lincoln was inherently evil. But there have been countless corrupt and evil individuals in government since the beginning of our nation. It's been on us to remove them. However in our unfortunate move to make America less Republican (as the Founding Fathers wanted) and more "Democratic" (a tyrannical mob rule) with mass-enfranchisement, it has only dramatically increased the number of corrupt and dangerous subversive individuals within the government (and in both parties today). Until we get back to true Republicanism and reign in the "Democracy", we will destroy ourselves before long. You can only loot so much until there's nothing left to take.
Well firstly, I think they had something like 4 billion dollars tied up in slaves, and that just evaporated. So anytime you take that much money out of such a small system, you are going to leave it massively undercapitalized.
Additionally, they destroyed their industries and their means of support. I've seen articles alleging millions died as a result of the aftermath of the war, and what was left was poor.
I've also seen it alleged that the carpetbaggers robbed everything they could get their hands on, and people lost their land for failure to pay ridiculous taxes.
The North did a number on the South, and I believe it wouldn't have recovered even if it had Republicans running it. For one, the hostility from the North would not soon abate, and they were the only ones with materials the South desperately needed after the war.
I would think the Union holding together and as to why it was important is self-evident.
Most people do, but it isn't self evident to me. The entire purpose for the original union was strength in numbers against England, but by the time of the civil war, neither England nor anyone else could possibly pose a threat to either the USA or the CSA.
So what is the argument for taking 72% of the income out of the economy of the South to redistribute it into the North? Why would the South want that to continue? Would it cause the collapse of the USA if they just kept their own money instead of sending it to New York and DC?
I will, however, state that I believe individual states did (do) have the right to secede. Whatever else, the U.S. Constitution I don't view as a mutual suicide pact.
There is much evidence that the framers saw states as having the right to secede, and very little evidence to believe the contrary.
Then, of course, you can add that not every individual within the sovereign state of Virginia was free, either in 1776 or 1860/61.
If you are talking about the slaves, they weren't free before the nation was founded and they weren't free after. In applying the Principles of the Declaration of Independence to 1861, the slaves are irrelevant. Yes, they should have been freed in 1776, but they weren't, and therefore their bondage is immaterial to whether or not states have a right to leave the union.
I find the Confederacy to be a political curiosity, but one that was likely doomed to failure even if the Union had chosen not to pursue these errant, fleeing states.
I see it as the exact opposite. I see it as an actual dire threat to the Union. The South was going to become an economic powerhouse, and it would have been so lucrative that the border states would have joined it too. Eventually other states would join it as well, leaving behind the Northeast as a Rump country of what it once was.
Why do I think it would become an economic powerhouse? Moving 140 million per year into it's economy would have helped accomplish that, and that's just from the foreign trade. Trade with the North (500 million in 1860) would have been greatly reduced in favor of trade with Europe, and so Northern prices for materials and goods would have to come down to remain competitive. This keeps money in southern pockets.
I could get into more detail, but suffice it to say, if Lincoln didn't stop them, they would eventually have challenged the economic supremacy of the Northeastern states. They even said that this was a threat in some of the Northern newspapers at the time. I believe it even said that the centers of finance would move from the North to the South.
I still think the argument that "it wasn't really over slavery" is a bit precious.
The Corwin amendment proves that slavery was not the priority issue for the North. The fact that the South didn't take the deal proves it wasn't a priority issue for the South.
The one sticking point was independence. The North agreed to give the South complete protection for slavery forever, but they would not agree to let them run their own economic affairs.
Can you not see? 700 million per year at stake in a 4 billion per year economy. Do you believe there is any way that it would not be over money? The North already conceded the entire slavery issue, so what's left but the money?
Again, Northern newspapers of the era even say it was about the money. They lamented that the South would destroy them economically by getting out from under the protectionist tariffs that had been crippling their trade up to that point.
If they had been smart, they could've abolished the institution at secession (and establishing a second-class status for former slaves akin to "Jim Crow"), which would've guaranteed the United Kingdom interceding on their behalf and halting the Union attempt to retake the South. They refused to do it, and hence blew the decisive opportunity to establish a new nation for the (relative) long term. Again, if it really wasn't about slavery, then abolition (even if just de facto) would've been on the table at the start. Ultimately why the Confederacy was NOT a serious enterprise.
I don't understand your reasoning here. I believe you are premising your arguments on their enemy's propaganda about them. If their only issue was slavery, they could have had that with just the Corwin Amendment. Clearly, their main issue was not the continuation of slavery. The North had already conceded that point.
I still believe it was untenable, because the Republican Party base and the bulk of its elected officials wanted abolition.
But it's leadership voted for the opposite. Ponder that for a moment. Republican controlled Congress voted by a 2/3rds majority to make slavery legal forever. The chief proponents of this bill in the House and Senate were Republicans. Apparently when push came to shove, they weren't all that stubborn about keeping slavery, despite whatever their constituents wanted.
They'd have had no reason to panic or secede otherwise.
As you said, they had been wanting to leave for a long time. As far back as Andrew Jackson's presidency, and so 1860 just looks like the final straw so far as I can tell.
These weren't Communists. Virtually every city in America has gone Communist and embraced Satanic values today. I cannot equate Abolitionists, many of whom were strident Christians, as being the modern equivalent.
You make a mistake in your understanding of the society of that era if you think most of the North were abolitionists. An ugly little secret I learned from the last few years of studying this stuff is that most Northerners didn't hate slavery for moral reasons. They hated it because they hated blacks and they saw slaves as an economic threat to themselves because they traded their own labor for wages.
To get an idea of what the real feeling in the North was regarding blacks, I advise you to take a look at the Illinois black codes. These laws show that the people of Illinois clearly hated black people and wanted them kept out of their state. The laws also allowed for black people without papers to be captured and sold into slavery in the South.
So the North wasn't particularly abolitionist in the 1850s. The abolitionists were regarded as nuts by most people in the North during that time, and it wasn't until support for the war became linked to abolition that it gained popularity among the larger population.
NYC, for example, the Republican Party was rarely in the majority from its founding up through to today. The Democrats, aside from splits within the Tammany Machine, were almost always firmly in control.
Teddy was Republican, and considered an outcast by a lot of his New York peers because he went after corruption instead of practicing it as they came to expect.
Franklin was a Democrat, and if I recall properly he became one because he served as an official under Wilson, but they were both of the same social class and old money wealth of New York.
I think it is the class of wealthy elite that has pretty much stayed the same and stayed in control of the Country, regardless what party name they chose to affiliate with at any point in history.
Oddly enough, it is this wealthy class that appears oddly intrigued with communism and are most responsible for furthering it in this country.
This wasn't just bad law, this was a law that flew in the face of the very foundation of American society.
I suspect you are basing this statement on the "all men are created equal" line in the Declaration of Independence?
Well, the thesis of the document was that people have a right to leave a government that no longer suits their interests and to create a new one that does. That "all men are created equal" is a beautiful thought, but the men of the era that signed the document saw it as meaning themselves, and they didn't intend for it to refer to slaves. In 1776, every state was a slave state. There were no free states, and of course people wouldn't sign a document that they would see as casting them as hypocrites. They saw themselves in that statement, and that view is what they meant at the time.
So does slavery fly in the face of the very foundation of American society? Not really. Not the way they saw it anyways. That came later as people began to realize that statement ought to apply to slaves.
Fortunately it was economically easier in the North because slaves just weren't that useful in the North. People are a lot more willing to look at something fairly if they don't have their own money on the line.
The South bet on its long-term viability until it became indistinguishable from the center of its culture and could not give it up. This was a profoundly deep flaw in its morality that was truly indefensible.
Again, you are looking through the eyes of Northern propaganda against them. As I mentioned before, Charles Dickens recounted numerous discussions with Southern slaveowners who wanted to find a way out of the slavery business. There were anti-slavery organizations in the South. Both Roger Taney and Robert E. Lee were against slavery and wanted it ended. That slavery was the center of Southern culture is I think a Northern fiction they pushed to help them demonize the Southern states as people always demonize their enemies in war.
Having studied some of the demographics of the Southern states, pre-Civil War, they were literally playing with fire in not expecting a Haitian-level uprising.
Now here I agree with you. They allowed an expansion of the black population to the point where it would become a grave threat if it turned violent. I think the impetus was that a slave was valued at around $100,000 dollars equivalent in modern cash. (roughly $1,000 in 1860) The more slaves you had the more wealth you had.
Unlike today, where foot-dragging can go on for decades, the more serious voters of that era, most of whom had skin in the game, were not going to cotton to liars and charlatans right to their faces.
I don't think most voters of that era were as obsessed about slavery as modern people would like to believe them to be. I doubt any of those 2/3rds that voted for the Corwin amendment really believed it to be a threat to their careers. You are asking too much of courage to believe they would do something that would result in them getting kicked out of office. I'm pretty sure most of them thought they were safe enough to vote as they did.
I still see the difference is that Lincoln was inherently evil. But there have been countless corrupt and evil individuals in government since the beginning of our nation. It's been on us to remove them.
I think much of the corruption is entrenched in the bureaucracy. When did they pass that Civil Service Act which kept all the malingerers from one administration to the next? It was 1883, wasn't it? Pretty much right around the era of corruption.
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