If the US civil war was fought today...

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by jimmytrick


Using this line of thinking I am surprised you are not out warring on the evil forces of abortion.

You don't know much about me do you? This statement is addressed to the wrong man. I fight this battle one pregnant patient at a time. I've even won a few rounds too.

While it might be debatable whether or not holding slaves would yield a ticket to hell, there isn't any doubt concerning any mother, nurse or doctor involved in the murder of innocent unborn children.

Interesting. On the one hand you ardently protest that you are not a supporter of slavery, on the other hand here you seem to be "debating" its morality. It was that way in 1861 too, and has been that way ever since. Apologists for the slave states' crude attempt to preserve their criminal way of life veil their true intentions under a smoke screen of "state's rights" and etc., etc., etc.

[Capt Dizle]

Ned, I was just rounding it off to the nearest million.

I have seen lots of sets of numbers and some of those look low. Seems to be limited to military also. Still, I should be more accurate. It isn't relevant to my arguement anyway.

[Patroklos]

DP

[Patroklos]

"sigh"

If you disagree with it then dispute it. "sigh" is just you having nothing to say., because it is all true.

[Capt Dizle]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Interesting. On the one hand you ardently protest that you are not a supporter of slavery, on the other hand here you seem to be "debating" its morality. It was that way in 1861 too, and has been that way ever since. Apologists for the slave states' crude attempt to preserve their criminal way of life veil their true intentions under a smoke screen of "state's rights" and etc., etc., etc.

Nice try doc. Color me rascist and make my position a moot point. You got me. I intend to overthrow the government and place all blacks in chains. Right.

It is easy to judge southerners criminals for the institution of slavery using the enlightented vision of hindsight. It would be another thing to experience the issue from the inside out. I grew up in the South. I grew up in this culture. You don't have to lecture me about the evils of racism. I have lived amid the hail and brimstone whose smoke you only sniff at a distance.

If you want to pursue, or rather, maintain the simplistic view of the history of this war that brands the South and its people evil bastards, each and every one, it is neither my job nor a good use of my time to try to set you right.

But I will not yield my position that it was a war like any other, a fuse lit by politicians to suit there own personal agendas. The only thing close to just warfare American has been in would possibly be the world war, mostly likely WW2.

[Capt Dizle]

Originally posted by MrFun


Nope, that's not the case either.

In the late nineteenth century, white Northerners and white Southerners that included Civil War veterans reconciled with one another in the spirit of white supremacy.

As a result, the North lost the Civil War by reconciling with the South on their terms, in regards to race relations.

And because of this reconciliation through the fraternal spirit of white supremacy, the losers of the war have done a great job in mythologizing the causes of that war -- an exception to the historical norm of the victor always writing myths of a war.

Read David Blight's book -- Race and Reunion.

That's hilarious. Really priceless. What do you call that, a conclusion three times removed from the truth by multiple levels of mythology and six shovels of horseshit?

I'll pass on the book. I have heard it all before.

[Patroklos]

He calls believing in a theory because it is what he wants to hear, and supports his already preconceived prejudice.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Ned
You Southerners who lament the casualties seem to have a hard time understanding who started the war.

We understand it clearly. Secession was intended to be a peaceful political resolution to an intractible dispute. As sovereign states, our respective states agreed to form a union with other states, with a weak central government limited in its authority and scope. The Yankees later found it inconvient to adhere to the intent and purposes of the original agreement, so they started to abrogate that agreement, and further announced their intent to do so, so our states responded by leaving peaceably.

We should have been the aggressors, and sucked it up for another year while every damned bale of cotton was traded for rifled artillery, rifled muskets, copper and tooling, until we were in a position to negotiate with you people from your new provisional capital in Bangor, Maine.

In the runup to Fort Sumter, Lincoln and his agents lied repeatedly, and the Sumter "resupply" expedition had 29 guns and over 1400 men who could take up arms as an invasion force - given ol' Abe's track record with good faith negotiation, anyone in his right mind would have concluded that force was a serious threat, and the good hotheads of Charleston were under no obligation to let that threat become an actual landing force.

If you have a burglar coming through your front door and you shoot at him, you're not the aggressor for shooting first, nor are you the one who "started it."

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Ned
I think the million figure is double the KIA. Here is a table summarizing America's casualties:

Civilian casualties, including those of refugees, runaways, due to starvation, epidemics, etc. were also very high.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by jimmytrick


That's hilarious. Really priceless. What do you call that, a conclusion three times removed from the truth by multiple levels of mythology and six shovels of horseshit?

I'll pass on the book. I have heard it all before.

If you do not have any interest in serious, scholarly work on how the the North and South reconciled with one another and how that has since affected race relations, that is your loss.


Don't blame me if you want to continue to be willfully ignorant by adhering to popular culture misconceptions of the Civil War, rather than professional, scholarly work done by Northern and Southern historians.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Patroklos
He calls believing in a theory because it is what he wants to hear, and supports his already preconceived prejudice.

That's strange, considering I have no prejudice against white Southerners.

You should read my last major paper I did in the previous semester, where in connection with my topic, I stressed that white Southerners cannot be treated as a simplistic, monolithic group of people with one ideology.

[Guynemer]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
It is easy to judge southerners criminals for the institution of slavery using the enlightented vision of hindsight. It would be another thing to experience the issue from the inside out. I grew up in the South. I grew up in this culture. You don't have to lecture me about the evils of racism. I have lived amid the hail and brimstone whose smoke you only sniff at a distance.

You want to compare tales of growing up in the South with Dr. Strangelove?

This ought to be hugely entertaining. You're going to lose, jimmy.

[chequita guevara]

It's funny how many Southerners think Northern conceptions of the South are based on that antebellum and Civil War period, rather than on 20th Century history.

The idea that slavery was going anywhere peacefully is laughable, gien yours states reactions to the Civil Rights movement. Sharecropping, debt peonage, tennant farming, night riders, lynching, Jim Crow, poll taxes, and chain gangs all served to continue the institution of slavery in another form up until the 1960s. I suggest that freedom delayed 100 years is no freedom at all.

If the South hadn't tried to defend the indefensible, no one would have died.

If you refuse to fight aganst evil in your own country, how can you justify fighting it abroad?

[MichaeltheGreat]

But of course, the north was a beacon of freedom and brotherhood in that century, as well.

And it's awfully nice to redefine the word slavery to incorporate any and every form of social and economic injustice or lack of power - I guess that fits in with the commie view, but what the hell, we can include Irish and Italians and Chinese and immigrants in general in that great extended notion of "slavery" - maybe we can all get into one big reparations suit against the estates of Jay Gould and Vanderbilt.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
But of course, the north was a beacon of freedom and brotherhood in that century, as well.

Despite the problems, Black people did sem to think so. Black newspapers kept writing articles telling Southern Blacks to move North, and during the Great Migration, almost half the Black population moved to the North in the three decades from 1930 through 1960. (In spite of some rather bad race riots in Chicago and Springfield, IL.)

And it's awfully nice to redefine the word slavery to incorporate any and every form of social and economic injustice or lack of power.

They were replacements which replicated slavery for all intents and purposes. In the case of the chain-gangs, it was slavery. Oh, need 50 workers to build a road, go round up 50 "vagrants" and the state will even provide housing and guards for your convict workers.

[Patroklos]

The only reason why any of that existed Che is BECAUSE of the Civil War.

Like I said, did any of the European states experiance these things when they willingly ended slavery? No.

What was their impetus for them ending slavery? The industrial revolustion between 1820-1860 that transformed their economy into something that no longer needed them (the idealisitc reason grew from that, not the other way round).

When did America expreiance the same industrial growth that would have led to the same economic maginalization of a slave class? 1850-1880.

All the Civil War did was mandate that all those things you mentioned would happen. It was a predictable result copnsidering the switch in ideology the North pulled. I especially love how good ol Abe changed the Union goal from preserving the Union to freeing the slaves more than halfway through. That was the nail in the coffin to any blacks still living in the South because, as I said, who could the defeated more easily take revenge on?

The US was a Western nation that while differing in specifics followed the general direction of all the other ones, though understandably a few decades behind. There is no reason to think our course on slavery would have been any different. Do you think the activists of the day in England didn't debate slavery for decades before they abolished it? But go ahead and tell us why, if the Civil War didn't happen which meas all that you said did not exist, the slaves would still be in bondage today.

As a communist you should no better than to claim that, your theory clearly states that the slavery will change form as industrial development increases. For all of us rational people that means no more slaves but an oppressed poor working class.

[chequita guevara]

Slavery was practiced in Southern factories. Industrialization is not in and of itself a automatic end to slavery. Capitalist industrial slavery is extremely profitible, even today.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
But of course, the north was a beacon of freedom and brotherhood in that century, as well.

And it's awfully nice to redefine the word slavery to incorporate any and every form of social and economic injustice or lack of power - I guess that fits in with the commie view, but what the hell, we can include Irish and Italians and Chinese and immigrants in general in that great extended notion of "slavery" - maybe we can all get into one big reparations suit against the estates of Jay Gould and Vanderbilt.

How many times do we need to remind you that we are well aware of how Northern white factory workers were exploited on pathetic wages? On how northern factories used child labor?

Tell us how many times we need to remind you.

[Ned]

MtG, the "war" started before the first shot was fired when several of the Southern States seceeded -- unilaterally. Clearly there was a dispute about whether this was legal. That issue should have been by petition to the Supreme Court by the Southern states that asserted they had that right. Absent such a petition, the Union had no choice but to reinforce its garrisons and deny the legality of what had happened.

It is not sufficient to point to the reasons for secession, however justified those reasons may have been, to avoid an orderly legal process. If it were not for the Civil War, I think the Supremes may have supported the unilateral right of secession.

[MrFun]

Not to mention that it goes against the basic human interest to establish a government that would allow for its own destruction.

Don't tell me that secession does not destroy a country -- that would be like saying that two-wheeled bike can work properly with one wheel.

[Ned]

Pat, and other defenders of the South, just how could Lincoln and the dastardly Republicans have freed the Slaves all by themselves without the cooperation of the South in ratifying a constitutional amendment?

That it may have been the long term goal of Lincoln, et al., it could not be accomplished merely by statute or by edict since slavery was recognized in the Constitution itself.

The proximate cause of the secession appears to be the Republican platform and objective to end the slave trade in interstate commerce and in the Territories.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Ned
MtG, the "war" started before the first shot was fired when several of the Southern States seceeded -- unilaterally. Clearly there was a dispute about whether this was legal. That issue should have been by petition to the Supreme Court by the Southern states that asserted they had that right. Absent such a petition, the Union had no choice but to reinforce its garrisons and deny the legality of what had happened.

Secession is a political matter, not one of law, and the authority of SCOTUS to settle political matters does not exist. There is also a jurisdictional point, in that states petitioning the Federal judiciary to adjudicate any dispute are admitting Federal jurisdiction over them as a matter of law, thus mooting a case regarding secession even if SCOTUS had the authority to determine political matters.

The Union, i.e. the United States of America, had every choice - this was not a matter of subordinate units of government rebelling, it was a matter of sovereign states who voluntarily chose to form a sort of limited confederation determining that they no longer wished to do so, as was their right as sovereign states. Nothing in the Constitution ever extinguished the sovereignty of individual states.

It is not sufficient to point to the reasons for secession, however justified those reasons may have been, to avoid an orderly legal process. If it were not for the Civil War, I think the Supremes may have supported the unilateral right of secession.

The Federal judiciary is dependent on the Federal executive for enforcement of it's decisions, so even if SCOTUS had the authority, and the United States waived the issue of personal jurisdiction over the State of South Carolina, (an executive decision, as the Solicitor General is subordinate to the Attorney General), it would still be a matter of executive action to comply with any such decision - and ol' Abe made his position clear.

There was no valid legal process available - only a political process, which each seceding state defined.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by MrFun
Not to mention that it goes against the basic human interest to establish a government that would allow for its own destruction.

There was no destruction of the United States of America. Just a few states no longer associated with it.

Don't tell me that secession does not destroy a country -- that would be like saying that two-wheeled bike can work properly with one wheel.

Congratulations, that's the dumbest analogy I've heard in years.

So tell me, how does a 13 wheeled bike that morphed itself one wheel at a time into a 36 wheeled bike suddenly not work as a 25 wheeled bike?

[chequita guevara]

I've been reading A People's History of the Supreme Court, and it seems clear from the Framer's intent that the Compact was meant to be a binding one. Once you agreed, you were in, and yoo couldn't leave again.

[Patroklos]

Not sure how you came to that conclusion from available evidence Ned.

Are you stating the North instigated and started the Civil War for the sole purpose of removing troublsome states from the law making process so they could ammend the Constitution to free the slaves? Waited a little long to do that if this is the case, shuffled their feet for 5-6 years. The motivation for the North to participate in hostilities was in no way linked to freeing the slaves. There was a very vocal minoity of acitvists who did espouse such thoughts, but they are not representative in the slightest of the vast number of Northern citizens or its political leaders. Maybe some influential politicals did later, but never the Northern people themselves. Even a cursory study of Union wartime diaries clearly shows freeing slaves was not on most of their minds, especially in the early war. I would abandon this line of thougth if Iwere you.....

Che, what exactly would an industrial society do wout 10 million slaves? Produce goods so they can buy them themselves with their own money and then GIVE them to their servants? You need a POOR working class as apossed to a slave one to sell your stuff too. You keep them poor to keep them economically dependant on you, as a steady source of income at exagerated gain.

The South did have slaves working in factories, the one mill within 100 miles There is no comparison between that and using slavey as your main workforce in a fully industrialized economy. And like I said, I was sure you would bring up egregiously minority exceptions, but industrial slave work in third world coountries today "works" because;

1) They are third world, America was anything but in the 1800s.

2) What you call a "slave" today rarely are. They are just abused workers working for underpaid wages much like every factory worker in America in the 1850-1880. Perhaps we can call them "economic slaves" but they are hardly the same thing as the pre-civil war American black version.

3) These people are hardly indicative to the average worker in the world wide integrated economy. The black slave WAS the average worker in the limited Southern economy of the day.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat



So tell me, how does a 13 wheeled bike that morphed itself one wheel at a time into a 36 wheeled bike suddenly not work as a 25 wheeled bike?

You were taking that analogy WAY too literally.

[TCO]

Slavery was ended after 1865. And this is EXACTLY what the south fought to stop. they were right about the abolitionists. And they wanted their slaves. They wanted to steal from the black man. Steal his labor. kill him and rape his women. If you are pro-South, you are pro-slavery.

[MrFun]

TCO -- do you ever post anything serious, instead of something sarcastic??

[TCO]

Originally posted by MrFun
TCO -- do you ever post anything serious, instead of something sarcastic??

I actually mean it. I just like being over the top with it. Did I say "top"?

[MrFun]

Geez -- you just like to steamroll over everyone with your biting sarcasm barbs, don't ya?