That's fine - I respect that.
This is my first flag:
And some Americans believe this is their first flag:
And others, this:
To each his own, I suppose...
Posted on 11/29/2002 7:57:37 AM PST by End The Hypocrisy
Three MAJOR civil war cinema epics are due in 2003. 1) Robert Duvall plays Robert E. Lee in Gods & Generals, out Feb. 21; 2) Jude Law portrays a jaded confederate in Cold Mountain, due Dec. 25, 2003; and 3) Tom Cruise plays a Civil War veteran who witnesses the end of a Japanese culture in The Last Samurai, due Dec. 12, 2003. Gods & Generals is replete with special effects, although director Maxwell still used more than 10,000 extras to re-create battle scenes.
(Excerpt) Read more at usatoday.com ...
That's fine - I respect that.
This is my first flag:
And some Americans believe this is their first flag:
And others, this:
To each his own, I suppose...
Actually, I'm a southerner.
When I read the speaches of the Pols of the decade before the Civil war, what comes through to me is that southerners were feeling two major 'pains'. Economic issues and the balance of power between the Federal government and the States.
As far as the economic issues consider the Northern tariff. It was imposed to benefit Northern industrial interests by subsidizing their production through public works. But it had the effect of forcing the South to pay more for manufactured goods and disproportionately taxing it to support the central government. It also injured the South’s trading relations with other parts of the world. The battle over the tariff began in 1828, with the "tariff of abomination." Thirty year later, with the South paying 87 percent of federal tariff revenue while having their livelihoods threatened by protectionist legislation, it became impossible for the two regions to be governed under the same regime. The South as a region was being reduced to a slave status, with the federal government as its master.
Further, As industry in the North expanded it looked towards southern markets, rich with cash from the lucrative agricultural business, to buy the North's manufactured goods. However, it was often cheaper for the South to purchase the goods abroad. In order to "protect" the northern industries Jackson slapped a tariff on many of the imported goods that could be manufactured in the North. When South Carolina passed the Ordinance of Nullification in November 1832, refusing to collect the tariff and threatening to withdraw from the Union, Jackson ordered federal troops to Charleston. A secession crisis was averted when Congress revised the Tariff of Abominations in February 1833.
As far as the balance of power, look no further than the Confederate Constitution. It is a duplicate of the original Constitution, with several improvements. It guarantees free trade, restricts legislative power in crucial ways, abolishes public works, and attempts to rein in the executive. No, it didn’t abolish slavery but neither did the original Constitution (in fact, the original protected property rights in slaves).
As for the slavery issue, beginning in the late 1840's the conflict over slavery began to boil over. The Compromise of 1850 contributed heavily to the split in Democratic Party. On a national scale David Wilmot, Lloyd Garrison, and Harriet Beecher Stowe enflamed the abolitionists. James G. Birney and Theodore Weld were more effective against slavery. The Dred Scot decision, Kansas-Nebraska Act, and harsher Fugitive Slave Laws gave the South some redress.
The new Republican Party became a home to the alienated abolitionists. Although they totaled less than 3% of the population at large, they formulated the Republican platform to include the abolition of slavery as a plank. The party then nominated Abraham Lincoln for president. Few gave him any chance of success, but 3 other candidates split the popular vote and Lincoln won. Convinced that Lincoln would ruin the South economically, possibly by freeing the slaves, the heartland of the South withdrew from the Union. Shortly thereafter the upper south joined them. The attack on Fort Sumter launched the war.
Southerners abolished the African slave trade in the Confederate Constitution. In the North "Preserve the Union" was the battlecry and Lincoln quoted "...a house divided shall not stand..." from the Bible. In fact the Emancipation Proclamation(1862), a foreign affair ploy, cost Republicans control of the legislature that November. Hard to make the case for slavery as the issue, esp when the North turned over the legislation as a result.
Just some observations.
Actually the demand was already there. The south was producing goods in the most expensive manner possible. Had the north been able to figure out how to reduce manual labor (cotton picking was not the only need) on the farm, and done so in a manner that was less expensive, the normal movements of markets would have forced slave owners to reduce their dependance on slavery.
Your comments that the technology was not there at the time is valid - it is not possible to guess what might have been.
You would do well to read some other historical works on the War. It's not all South=bad, North=good.
Are you skeered a few Confederate movies will create a wave of support for butternut and gray!?
So says you. There are many more accounts that Lee was an upstanding gentleman, and a fine Christian would would nary whisper a hateful
Start you own General Lee bashing thread and see what happens.
"Gentle stranger, drop a tear,
The C.S.A. lies buried here:
in Youth it lived and propered well,
But like Lucifer it fell:
Its body here, its soul in -- well
E'en if I knew I wouldn't tell.
Rest C.S.A. from every strife,
Your death is better than Your life:
And this one line shall grace your grave --
Your death gave freedom to the slave."
Your Grant quote has certainly been making the rounds of the Internet, but always without any source given. It looks like the attribution of a cheap modern one-liner to Grant. "The Gray Book" was a short collection of essays in defense of the Confederacy published by the Sons of Confederate Veterans in 1935. It doesn't look like it was a serious study of historical records, but if anyone has the book, it would be interesting to see if they footnote the quotation and give a reference to some earlier document, or if it's just part of the folklore of the day. A lot of these polemical books just draw off the last generation of argumentative or propagandistic books and don't look at the existing records from the Civil War period.
The other quotation ("If I had known, etc.) comes from a "Democratic Speakers' Handbook" by one Matthew Carey, Jr. It was published when Grant was running for President in 1868. Given the partisan passions of the day it's not a reliable source. Historians haven't found earlier or more authoritative references for the quotation, and it contradicts what Grant said on other quotations, so it looks a lot like a fabrication.
Where have I gotten all bent out of shape by the fact that yes in my mind part of the WBTS was over the issue of slavery?
I'm not. Just another evolution in humanity and civilization in my view and way down the list of horrible historical occurrences. How big a part slavery played can be argued in volumes. I simply don't care to hear non-introspective Yankees telling me how to think or behave period. Never have never will.
Why don't you go find another cause to feel good about? Like the plight of white farmers in Zim or enslaved Christians in the lower Sahara? Somewhere were it costs you to "do good and feel good" lol
Next emotive counter please?
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