Posted on 09/26/2004 8:41:19 AM PDT by GaryL
Shhhh.... Don't confuse the boy with facts. ;-)
Very interesting. The Prussian Machine, without a Western front to drain their resources...would have finished off the Russian Marxists by 1919.
free the southland,sw
free dixie,sw
It's no more beside the point than you bringing the matter up in the first place. It has nothing to do with the historical fact that the Sectional Crises that led up to and caused the Civil War were driven by the South's desire to expand slavery into the western territories and states, and the North's desire to limit the spread of slavery.
arrogance, ignorance & hatefullness has forever been the province of the damnyankee.
free dixie,sw
Hm. You sound like a leftist.
NOBODY here would accuse me of being a leftist.
free dixie,sw
I was merely commenting on the fact that your "arguments" against Heyworth are the same ones -- even the same words -- that are used by leftists who haven't got a real argument.
Perhaps you should learn a lesson from that.
most scholars would tell you that the VAST majority of northerners cared NOTHING about slavery, the plight of the slaves OR the expansion of slavery in 1860 AND they certainly would NOT have prosecuted a war (that KILLED a MILLION people) to hasten the end of a dying institution.
the populus of the north WAS willing to fight a war to "preserve the union".
free dixie,sw
The Sectional Crises were about slavery. The Sections were North and South. The South wanted it in new territories. The North said no.
Yes, you could plow with them, if you wanted to, but it was cost prohibitive. Just supplying the beast with the water and fuel to keep it running required more horses than it took to plow the field. It required more men, to run the machine and run the teams of horses. They were also colossally heavy and very expensive.
But ultimately, since your whole thesis relies on the notion that the south was unable to mechanize farming until it did because the mean ol' yankees looted the massah's house and he couldn't afford it, why then did farming in the north, midwest and west not go to tractors until the 1910s, when internal combustion tractors came along? Could it be because they were cheaper, lighter, and required a whole lot less more technical knowledge and risk (since they didn't blow up like steam engines could).
Also, please explain how the labor-intensive process of chopping cotton (distinct from picking, as I'm sure you know) would have been made less labor intensive by mechanization, when, in the REAL WORLD, it was the development of herbicides in the 1940s the eliminated the need for it.
Contact Dr. Lubar yet?
That's it? That's your evidence? A letter from a general outlining a plan? Pray tell, what was Stanton's response? Since the slaves were not kept under permanent military discipline, we can only conclude that Butler's letter was ignored and did not become government policy.
That's the biggest laugh coming from you, Watie. In the thread where this started, I posted all sorts of evidence from academic histories of cotton mechanization. Your only bit of evidence was the refrain "Don't argue with me, argue with the agricultural curator at the Smithsonian." You know the rest. He refuted you, and you accused me of lying about it, but refuse to check it out for yourself by writing to him.
For anyone reading this thread, e-mail me and I'll forward the entire correspondence to you. And feel free to write to Dr. Lubar at the Smithsonian yourself. Only he's not, as Watie claimed, the agricultural curator. He's a history of technology specialist. He directed me, however to the actual agricultural curator, who sent a longer e-mail discussing the whole subject, and which also refutes Watie at every turn.
do you not know that KNOWLEDGEABLE people here are laughing AT you? don't you care???
i notice that you also didn't mention the mule-drawn cottonpickers/cultivators, that were pulled by 8-12 mules and required the labor of ONE man. is that because you aren't informed enough to know about them OR don't you care that your rant is FACT-FREE???
free dixie,sw
NOBODY else in the southland, except the slavers or course, cared if slavery was spread to the western territories. since only 5-6% of southerners EVER owned a slave AND the "peculiar institution" was DYING an UN-lamented natural death, most people north OR south did NOT care about the supposed "spread of slavery".
free dixie,sw
do you not know that KNOWLEDGEABLE people here are laughing AT you? don't you care???
I'm still waiting for just one of them to come into this argument on your side, Watie. You've become a laughingstock to the Lost Causers. They're all off arguing fine points of Constitutional law while you're raving about imaginary machines for which you still haven't posted a SINGLE PIECE OF EVIDENCE. ("Don't argue with me, argue with the agricultural curator at the Smithsonian").
i notice that you also didn't mention the mule-drawn cottonpickers/cultivators, that were pulled by 8-12 mules and required the labor of ONE man. is that because you aren't informed enough to know about them OR don't you care that your rant is FACT-FREE???
Uh, that's because I've posted about twenty pieces of evidence that prove that everbody in the world but you knows that, whatever bizarre early experiments were conducted to harvest cotton, nothing worked effectively until the Rust brothers developed their machine in the 1930s.
Evidence, Watie? You make this assertion a lot, but you still haven't posted one scrap of evidence for it, other than a mention that it was in the unpublished dissertation of a professor of yours who is now dead. I've posted academically-accepted evidence that about 30% of southern FAMILIES owned slaves, which is not a number incompatible with your 5-6%, calculated as heads of households with average size families, but you don't accept that formulation, do you?
Your namesake was apparently one of those slaveowners. It seems that the Ridge-Watie faction, in fact, owned most of the Cherokee's slaves.
We've already dealt with and disposed of this. The Sectional Crises, which ultimately caused the South to secede, and which thereby led to the Civil War, were about slavery. Nothing more or less.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.