Posted on 04/24/2002 9:33:49 AM PDT by wasp69
RICHMOND - It's only a two-hour drive from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House here on Clay Street.
It took four years and more than 600,000 lives to make that same journey during the second American Revolution, now officially known as the US Civil War.
It's odd that this nation's bloodiest war, a war between brothers, stretched from 1861 until 1865 when the capital of the COnfederate States of America in Richmond is only 100 miles south from the capital of the United States of America in Washington.
Thousands of Americans annually visit Civil War battlefields, museums and monuments.
Enthusiasts study in passionate detail the leaders, military strategy and battles of the Civil War.
My fascination with the Civil War has less to do with military engagements than with the motivations of up to 1.5 million Southern men and boys wiling to die to tear the nation in two in defense of slavery, an utterly indefedsible institution.
Had the conflict, also known as the War of the Southern Planters, been fought only by Southern slave owners, it would have been over in weeks rather than years.
As it was, brilliant and charismatic Confederate Generals such as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson led armies of poor, non-slave-owning Southerners into battle and came dangerously close to winning the war.
My mother's and father's ancestors were Southerners who fought for the Confederacy. I'm pleased that their side lost.
As a young man I fought for passage of civil rights laws that would eliminate the vestiges of slavery and the continued denial of equal rights to black Americans. What, I wondered, could my Confederate ancestors have been thinking?
I did not find the answer during my tour of the White House of the Confederacy or in the next-door Museum of the Confederacy.
A curator at the museum understood my state of perplexity but could only tell me that it's impossible to judge the decisions of my Confederate ancestors based on todays standards.
Although slavery was central to the decision by the Southern states to break away from the Union, many causes over the years led to conflict.
Sectional rivalry developed as the North became industrialized and gained population with European immigration.
The North wanted to build roads, canals and railroads to accommodate growing industries. Without personal or corporate taxation, revenue was raised by tariffs, which protected Northern products and increased prices of imported goods needed by the nonindustrialized South.
Southerners felt they were being gouged by their Northern brethern. They also felt that the states, not the federal government, had the authority to regulate commerce and other affairs. They also felt that the states had the right under the Constitution to separate from the Union, an idea that had strong supporters in both the North and South.
Deciding whether new territories and states would be slave or nonslave became a North-South fight for power in Congress and within the federal government.
Northern abolitionists demonized the Southerners and backed them into their own regional corner. Many Americans in the early years of the nation felt stronger regional and state pride than national pride.
Lee, who did not want to break up the Union, declined an offer to command the Union Army. He chose fight for Virginia and the South.
There must be lessons to be learned from the Civil War that can be applied to current and future conflicts.
The Funk and Wagnalls dictionary published with the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1965 ed.
Walt
You called your conclusion a deduction. A deduction by definition cannot prove absolute truth. You stated something as absolute truth that was only circumstantial --something you deduced. When push came to shove, you lied. Now you are upset because you got caught.
Walt
That we can agree on.
Nonsense. You are arguing semantics that you yourself have not even established to be true.
But since you insist upon taking the argument down this route, I guess I'll just have to beat you there like I did when you took us down the route of appealing to authority. Since you appear to want a semantics war, consider yourself to have gotten one.
de·duc·tion Pronunciation Key (d-dkshn) n.
4. Logic.
a. The process of reasoning in which a conclusion follows necessarily from the stated premises
American Heritage Dictionary 2000 edition
See that walt? FOLLOWS NECESSARILY from the stated premises. To follow necessarily means to follow with certitude. Live with it.
You stated something as absolute truth that was only circumstantial --something you deduced.
To the contrary. I established by causality that truth in my assertion was logically inescapable. You have yet to even address my proof much less attempt to rebut it. Therefore it stands.
When push came to shove, you lied.
Since you fail to substantiate your above assertion, I may reject it in a word. Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
Now you are upset because you got caught.
Caught at what, Walt? You certainly haven't established that much. So again, I may reject it in a word. Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
But which cannot be absolutely proven.
La-de-dah.
You lied.
Walt
Says who? And no Walt, neither you nor those little voices of Abraham Lincoln in your head count as such an authority.
As a side note, to demonstrate necessarily is to prove. To demonstrate that if X is true, Y must necessarily be true is to demonstrate the truth of Y with certitude. Live with it.
La-de-dah.
Are your voices singing to you again, Walt?
You lied.
No, and I can say so with certitude as you have not even specified your allegation, much less proven it. Therefore it may be rejected in a word. Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negature. Live with it.
From the 2000 American Heritage Dictionary...
nec·es·sar·y Pronunciation Key (ns-sr) adj.
3. Logic
1. Unavoidably determined by prior conditions or circumstances; inevitable: ex. the necessary results of overindulgence.
2. Logically inevitable.
in·ev·i·ta·ble Pronunciation Key (n-v-t-bl) adj.
1. Impossible to avoid or prevent. Certain
Let's recap:
1. To deduce is to reason a conclusion that follows necessarily from the stated premises.
2. To be necessary (as in following necessarily) is to be logically inevitable.
3. To be inevitable is to be impossible to avoid.
4. Hence, a deduction is capable of proving something that is impossible to avoid - in other words, an absolute posessing of certitude.
So there you have it Walt. Just as when two pulitzers beat one I win, properly followed semantics beat improper distortions of them, so again I win. That makes you a double loser. Live with it.
Walt
For you to disparage the well-documented spread of the Gospel among the Confederate troops is unconscionable and small-hearted.
An evidence that God indeed works in strange ways is that the side that defended something we today find abhorrent no doubt enjoyed the greater revivals during the war.
You don't have to like it; please don't deny the truth, though.
The ultimate paradox of the War is the surrender of the godly Lee to the drunk Grant.
Abraham Lincoln, 30 million Americans, and God are the cause of your distress over the defeat of the slave power.
"And God?" My, you do seem to be impressed with your own 'authority' - speaking for God as you do. Is that the same 'authority' that allows you to 'transmogrify' the specific, written, English word "Constitution" in your oath into "the government of Washington and Lincoln?"
And I can not help but ask, to which "slave power" are you referring? The one for which you voted in 1984, 1988, 1992, and 2000?
What I said was that I had never voted for a Republican presidential candidate. I voted for John Anderson in 1980. In '84 I voted Democratic. Same in '88. In '92 I DID vote for Clinton, although I was for Perot until he went batty. In'96 I didn't vote. In '00, I did vote for Al Gore.
Walt
780 posted on 2/28/02 10:49 AM Pacific by WhiskeyPapa
;>)
What was the GNP of the so-called Confederate States in 1866?
Oh.
Walt
Oh.
What is the GNP of the so-called Republic of [South] Vietnam today?
Oh.
"...I can not help but ask, to which 'slave power' are you referring? The one for which you voted in 1984, 1988, 1992, and 2000?"
;>)
;>)
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