Posted on 04/08/2002 2:17:58 PM PDT by WhowasGustavusFox
Confederate effort was not about slavery
It appears a March 30 letter-writer who condemned the Confederate flag has learned no more from his history courses than did Editor Beth Padgett. However to Ms. Padgett's credit, she has a better understanding of the word compromise.
Compromise is and always has been the lifeblood of survival. Both the letter-writer and the NAACP need to take a refresher course in human psychology to grasp that fact.
Neither President Lincoln nor Jefferson Davis could have gotten enough men together to have formed a single Boy Scout unit, let alone two opposing armies, had the issue been slavery. Slavery was a national institution, not a Southern preferential privilege, as was implied.
Lincoln should have first freed the slaves in the North. This would have removed the hypocrisy that so blatantly stands out. U.S. Grant's slave had to be freed by an act of Congress nine months after the war. The unstable Tecumseh Sherman was arrested on several occasions for physical abuse of his slaves. General Robert E. Lee, as a matter of conviction, freed his slaves prior to the war. Obviously his support of the Confederate war effort was not based on a pro-slavery cause.
Southerners fought for noble causes, not slavery. States' rights, the consent of the governed, was the primary issue. Thomas Jefferson stated "without the consent of the governed, a people have not only a right but an obligation to expel such a government."
Bill Hunt Townville
Then why did Lee sign the papers freeing them in 1862?
Bump for Confederate Flags on profile pages!
Right on both counts, sheltonmac. The Northern soldier fought to preseve the Union. The southern soldier? Well he was motivated by other concerns.
If you truly believe that the southern soldier fought for states rights or tariff relief, then you are either ignoring or haven't bothered to read the speeches and writings of the time. The long and short of it is that the southern soldier fought to preserve his place in society's pecking order. He fought to keep 3.9 million black people in bondage because the idea of what 3.9 million free black people - people who could vote and live where they wanted and compete for jobs and farmland - was terrifying. And the local press and leadership knew that and used it to whip up their sentiments. Southern politicians and southern newspapers used the abolitionist threat to whip up popular opinion in the south, and it wasn't because the poor southern white man aspired to slave ownership. Governor Brown of Georgia summed up the position. Slavery, he said, "is the poor mans's best government. Among us the poor white laberor...does not belong to the menial class. The Negro is no sense his equal...He belongs to the only true aristocracy, the race of white men.. Thus yeoman farmers will never consent to abolition rule, for they know that in the event of the abolition of slavery they would be greater sufferers than the rich, who would be able to protect themselves." An Alabama newspaper wrote that the election of Lincoln "shows that the North intends to free the negroes and force amalgamation between them and the children of poor white men of the south." A Georgia secessionist asked, "Do you love your mother, your wife, your sister, your daughter?...In ten years or less our children will be slaves of the negro." James Furman of South Carolina warned, "Abolition preachers will be at hand to consumate the marriage of your daughter to black husbands." In Alabama they were asked, "Submit to having our wives and daughters choose between death and gratifying the hellish lust of the Negro?...Better ten thousand deaths than submission to Black Republicanism." Those are but a few of the quotes that make it clear that southern secessionist leaders used the equality of white men and their superiority over the black man as their rallying cry. Southern men marched off in rebellion to protect their way of life and the biggest threat that they saw to it, regardless of their social status, was an end to slavery and freedom for the black man.
I honestly don't care what you do with the flag. Take it down, leave it up, it means nothing to me. It is absolutely no threat to me or mine, do whatever you want.
LOL!! Four years into the war and with no support to rely on that he even had to change political parties to run for President. Anyone that thinks the war was over slavery should study some of lincoln's own words, especially the FIRST Inaugural Speech, his plans to ship blacks to Liberia, and his defense of slaveowners in court. Yeah, but it was over slavery. Makes you wonder how three, count them THREE world empires were able to get rid of slavery without a shot fired in almost as short a time as lincoln did while killing 300,000 of his own citizens and 300,000 of another nation's citizens
Yes, I have. And yes, it was...for the recruits.
There weren't many young farmers or northern coal miners who EVER understood the ramifications of the Civil War, let alone what actually started it. Their eyes would have glazed over. So both the North and the South recruited using what governments use best...emotionalism.
The war itself was fought over politicians from the North wanting to create a NATIONAL debt. It was a very unfair proposal since the economies of the North and South were so vastly different. The South did NOT want to be forced to pay for the North's debts. When Lincoln held the Union by FORCE, he effectively cancelled out States' Rights because the FED trumps the state every time. Witness the medicinal marajuana law in CA and the assisted suicide law in ?Oregon.
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The leading spokesmen were largely state-centered men with regional and local interests and loyalties. Madison wrote, "The anti-Federalists attacked wildly on several fronts: the lack of a bill of rights, discrimination against southern states in navigation legislation, direct taxation, the loss of state sovereignty."
Lincoln should have first freed the slaves in the North. This would have removed the hypocrisy that so blatantly stands out. U.S. Grant's slave had to be freed by an act of Congress nine months after the war. The unstable Tecumseh Sherman was arrested on several occasions for physical abuse of his slaves. General Robert E. Lee, as a matter of conviction, freed his slaves prior to the war.
Why should I keep silent? If I did then people would accept it at face value when it is a fact that Lincoln could not free the slaves up North without a Constituional amendment; that neither Grant or his wife or his inlaws owned a slave past early 1863; that Sherman never owned a slave in his life; and that Lee freed his slaves in 1862. If you can't make your case through the truth then why is your cause worth fighting for?
Might I inquire where you got this? About 30% of southerners owned slaves at least in Texas and Louisiana.
Come on, billbears. Look at this article. The man who wrote it couldn't lie straight in bed. There are a great many things about the actions of the North and the south that is open to interpretation, and you and I have debated most of them. But facts are facts and the truth is the truth and this bozo wouldn't know the truth if it bit him.
In the 1860 census there were 76,651 White Families in Texas and 21,878 of them owned slaves. 70,994 in Louisiana and 22,033 owned slaves.
In 1850 there were 347,525 slave holders in the South (head of Households)
Forget that stuff for a moment and answer this: What was THE major issue that vexed the nation when the time came to add states to the Union?
It was slavery, of course, and the aggressive efforts on the part of the South to ensure that at least half of all new states would permit slavery.
Why were those alleged advocates of states rights so very concerned about propagating the "peculiar institution" to new states? Why would slavery be such a potent issue for a secession movement that began before 1850?
Consider John C. Calhoun, the eminent pro-slavery senator from South Carolina. In his famous speech against the Clay Compromise of 1850, Calhoun said: Unless something decisive is done, I again ask, What is to stop this agitation before the great and final object at which it aims--the abolition of slavery in the States--is consummated? Is it, then, not certain that if something is not done to arrest it, the South will be forced to choose between abolition and secession? Indeed, as events are now moving, it will not require the South to secede in order to dissolve the Union. Agitation will of itself effect it, of which its past history furnishes abundant proof--as I shall next proceed to show. [emphasis mine]
Abolition or secession -- Calhoun presents a pretty stark choice.
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