Lincoln

[Ludovicus]

I could never understand why Licnoln it's viewed as a great US statesman, afterall he was one of the culprits for starting the Civil War, the bloodiest US war ever.

His ferm position may arouse applaud, but a more diplomatic person could have calmed things over and prevent the useless bloodshed.

 

 

Kosmo, I hope that we have set you straight that Lincoln did not start the Civil War. Perhaps you have never read his most famous speech, The Gettysburg Address. Here it is:

 

 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

 

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Edited March 12, 2008 by Ludovicus

[Antiochus III]

Lincoln simply freed the slaves because it was convenient. This is obvious. The imperial United States at the time needed a moral reason to wield its power. The war was fought over issues that have little to do with slavery. In history books, (basically propaganda), they make out the war to be over slavery, and only slavery. They literally glorify the North to no end. I'm completely serious about this. The reason for this is it makes us seem like good, moral people, while hiding our ruthless imperialism, which has been evident for almost our entire existence, and continues today with our illegal war in Iraq. Sounds like Caesar's illegal war in Gaul, huh? In fact, we renamed the dept. of war the dept. of "defense." Ironically, a war has not actually been fought on our soil since the Civil War, so the gov't is just using this name to make the US people believe war is justified, even tthough it clearly is just an excuse to steal Iraq's oil reserves.

 

Antiochus III

[sonic]

By freeing the Confederacy's slaves, he quickly erased millions of dollars of the slave holders' capital and thereby impoverishing the enemy.

 

And gave Britain and France enough reason to remain neutral.

 

One aspect of all of this that is forgotten is the effect that the war had on Britain. Once the war started the North put a blockade around Southern ports to stop the export of cotton and the import of either money or goods to help the South's war effort.

 

Most people in Britain and America don't realise that this caused massive poverty and hardship to the cotton workers in Lancashire who relied on the South's cotton for their raw materials. The workers held meetings and discussed what action they should take (for example, pur pressure on the government to join the war etc). Despite the fact it would harm their own welfare, the workers voted to support the abolition of slavery and helped to maintain British neutrality in the war.

 

Sorry this is slightly of topic, but I feel that this selfless act should be wider known.

[Ursus]

While the South is overly romanticized by paleo-Conservatives and diehard Libertarians, I do believe they should have been left to their own devices. Slavery was just one of the arguments stemming from states rights; taxes and tarrifs were also a major issue. The South perceived the industrial North as trying to impose economic hegemony on them; surely there was an element of truth to it. The New England states wanted to opt out of the war of 1812 because it was interefering with their maritime trade, and I can see their point; states rights versus federal economic hegemony was nothing new.

 

I can see Lincoln's standpoint from a geopolitical perspective. A strong foreign nation to the South, backed up by European powers, with Canada in the north, would have put the Union at a possible two front war later in history. It was sound defensive strategy to prevent that. But on the other hand the South thought it was fighting a second War of Independence from an overbearing imperial power in DC, and I feel their argument has merits. Given the fact that the "emancipated" blacks were treated little better economically or politically than the slaves they had been, I find the North's moral posturing to be somewhat lacking anyway.

[Ludovicus]

By freeing the Confederacy's slaves, he quickly erased millions of dollars of the slave holders' capital and thereby impoverishing the enemy.

 

And gave Britain and France enough reason to remain neutral.

 

One aspect of all of this that is forgotten is the effect that the war had on Britain. Once the war started the North put a blockade around Southern ports to stop the export of cotton and the import of either money or goods to help the South's war effort.

 

Most people in Britain and America don't realise that this caused massive poverty and hardship to the cotton workers in Lancashire who relied on the South's cotton for their raw materials. The workers held meetings and discussed what action they should take (for example, pur pressure on the government to join the war etc). Despite the fact it would harm their own welfare, the workers voted to support the abolition of slavery and helped to maintain British neutrality in the war.

 

Sorry this is slightly of topic, but I feel that this selfless act should be wider known.

 

 

Do you think it's possible that the cotton workers also took the anti-slavery side because of their own self-interests in the debate? How can free labor ever compete with forced labor?

[sonic]

By freeing the Confederacy's slaves, he quickly erased millions of dollars of the slave holders' capital and thereby impoverishing the enemy.

 

And gave Britain and France enough reason to remain neutral.

 

One aspect of all of this that is forgotten is the effect that the war had on Britain. Once the war started the North put a blockade around Southern ports to stop the export of cotton and the import of either money or goods to help the South's war effort.

 

Most people in Britain and America don't realise that this caused massive poverty and hardship to the cotton workers in Lancashire who relied on the South's cotton for their raw materials. The workers held meetings and discussed what action they should take (for example, pur pressure on the government to join the war etc). Despite the fact it would harm their own welfare, the workers voted to support the abolition of slavery and helped to maintain British neutrality in the war.

 

Sorry this is slightly of topic, but I feel that this selfless act should be wider known.

 

 

Do you think it's possible that the cotton workers also took the anti-slavery side because of their own self-interests in the debate? How can free labor ever compete with forced labor?

 

They took this stance because the reports on slavery during the Wilberforce era had made the conditions in which slaves lived known to the population of Britain - and the people of Lancashire recognised that the slaves lived in even worse conditions than they did.

 

I don't know what you mean by ' ... the cotton workers also took the anti-slavery side because of their own self-interests in the debate?'. There was no chance of the South ever making its own textile factories and competing with Britain: they didn't have the conditions, the capital or the navy to do so. Don't forget that Britain had outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and slavery within the Empire in 1833, well before the US civil war started in 1861, so there was no chance of slave-run mills in Britain.

 

What do you mean?

[Primus Pilus]

Lincoln simply freed the slaves because it was convenient. This is obvious. The imperial United States at the time needed a moral reason to wield its power. The war was fought over issues that have little to do with slavery. In history books, (basically propaganda), they make out the war to be over slavery, and only slavery. They literally glorify the North to no end. I'm completely serious about this. The reason for this is it makes us seem like good, moral people, while hiding our ruthless imperialism, which has been evident for almost our entire existence, and continues today with our illegal war in Iraq. Sounds like Caesar's illegal war in Gaul, huh? In fact, we renamed the dept. of war the dept. of "defense." Ironically, a war has not actually been fought on our soil since the Civil War, so the gov't is just using this name to make the US people believe war is justified, even tthough it clearly is just an excuse to steal Iraq's oil reserves.

 

Antiochus III

 

I don't think anyone here is suggesting that the war itself was fought over slavery. The war was fought over the preservation of the union and that is clear. However, the reason for the secession of the southern states in the first place was state's rights and the predominant state's rights issue was in fact slavery. While the south had issues with the north beyond that single issue, every attempt at negotiation and compromise between the regions over several decades was focused almost entirely on the slavery issue (Missouri Compromise 1820, Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854, the attempted Crittendon Compromise of 1860). The connection is unmistakable and can not really be denied regardless of how one feels about the school text books, the history of American imperialism or the current status of Iraq and it's oil reserves. I do agree that it should be readily apparent that most of the soldiers in the north were not aggressive abolitionists at heart and were not fighting a war for some great moral cause, but whether making slavery the primary issue in the books makes people feel better about themselves today or not is quite irrelevant in determining the underlying causes of the war.

[Ingsoc]

I actually saw the civil war as a result of the old arguments, that existed since the colonies were freed from Britain, about whatever they should be the United States or the States United. if you look back to American history you will see that this arguments inside the union was allways present and what brought it into open was the radicalization of the South-North rivalry in the years leading to the war.

[Kosmo]

I don't think anyone here is suggesting that the war itself was fought over slavery. The war was fought over the preservation of the union and that is clear. However, the reason for the secession of the southern states in the first place was state's rights and the predominant state's rights issue was in fact slavery. While the south had issues with the north beyond that single issue, every attempt at negotiation and compromise between the regions over several decades was focused almost entirely on the slavery issue (Missouri Compromise 1820, Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854, the attempted Crittendon Compromise of 1860). The connection is unmistakable and can not really be denied regardless of how one feels about the school text books, the history of American imperialism or the current status of Iraq and it's oil reserves. I do agree that it should be readily apparent that most of the soldiers in the north were not aggressive abolitionists at heart and were not fighting a war for some great moral cause, but whether making slavery the primary issue in the books makes people feel better about themselves today or not is quite irrelevant in determining the underlying causes of the war.

 

Slavery was not only an economic or moral problem. Slaves were blacks, a visible and distinct racial group, so freeing them would pose for the South a complex problem with an ethnic minority. This kind of problem it's much more explosive then all the others together. If southerners believed that their existence was threatened by abolition then they would do everything in their means to prevent it. A proof to this feeling it's that some of them tried to send the slaves back to Africa. Pushing southerners on what was a crucial aspect of life for them was to risk seccesion and war.

[Ludovicus]

I don't think anyone here is suggesting that the war itself was fought over slavery. The war was fought over the preservation of the union and that is clear. However, the reason for the secession of the southern states in the first place was state's rights and the predominant state's rights issue was in fact slavery. While the south had issues with the north beyond that single issue, every attempt at negotiation and compromise between the regions over several decades was focused almost entirely on the slavery issue (Missouri Compromise 1820, Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854, the attempted Crittendon Compromise of 1860). The connection is unmistakable and can not really be denied regardless of how one feels about the school text books, the history of American imperialism or the current status of Iraq and it's oil reserves. I do agree that it should be readily apparent that most of the soldiers in the north were not aggressive abolitionists at heart and were not fighting a war for some great moral cause, but whether making slavery the primary issue in the books makes people feel better about themselves today or not is quite irrelevant in determining the underlying causes of the war.

 

Slavery was not only an economic or moral problem. Slaves were blacks, a visible and distinct racial group, so freeing them would pose for the South a complex problem with an ethnic minority. This kind of problem it's much more explosive then all the others together. If southerners believed that their existence was threatened by abolition then they would do everything in their means to prevent it. A proof to this feeling it's that some of them tried to send the slaves back to Africa. Pushing southerners on what was a crucial aspect of life for them was to risk seccesion and war.

 

 

That keeping human beings enslaved was "a crucial aspect of life" for the South underscores how wrong the South was. The 18th century British certainly found the 13 rebellious colonies a threat to "a crucial aspect" of their colonial system. But here in the US, we didn't let their objections deter us from overthrowing it.

[sonic]

That keeping human beings enslaved was "a crucial aspect of life" for the South underscores how wrong the South was. The 18th century British certainly found the 13 rebellious colonies a threat to "a crucial aspect" of their colonial system. But here in the US, we didn't let their objections deter us from overthrowing it.

 

I agree that the keeping of slaves in the South was a "crucial aspect" of the Southern economy. I'll also agree that it was wrong, whichever way you look at it. But what was the "crucial aspect" of the British "colonial system" to which you are referring? A quick look at the history of the period shows that the British were heavily engaged in a major European war and would shortly be faced with the threat of Napoleon. Wasn't this more of a problem than the rebellion of a few small states? Don't forget that only after the rebellion would the US become a superpower: at the time of the rebellion they weren't quite there yet!!

Edited March 21, 2008 by sonic

[Kosmo]

That keeping human beings enslaved was "a crucial aspect of life" for the South underscores how wrong the South was.

 

Slavery it's imoral for us, but so it's starting a major war.

 

My point was that sometimes ethnic groups are tied to a social position (e.g. polish landlords, jewish merchants and ukrainian peasants in k.u.k Galicia or white farmers in recent Zimbabwe) and at that point any reform it's difficult because social change puts in peril the established ethnic relations.

[Moonlapse]

Just a relevant article I came across yesterday...

The War Against the South and Its Consequences

[Primus Pilus]

My point was that sometimes ethnic groups are tied to a social position (e.g. polish landlords, jewish merchants and ukrainian peasants in k.u.k Galicia or white farmers in recent Zimbabwe) and at that point any reform it's difficult because social change puts in peril the established ethnic relations.

 

Indeed, this is and was the case. As I said in a previous post, the majority of white farmers in the south were not large plantation slave holders, but, there was a real concern that emancipation would throw off the social and economic status of those generally poor white farmers. In their minds (understanding that I am speaking in very broad and generic terms), at least they held a position above slaves and they supported its continuation despite not really gaining any direct reward from that forced labor (and in fact had a tough time competing with the large slave owning plantations).

[M. Porcius Cato]

All what ifs of course, and still a violation of states rights in our strictest constitutional terms, but there are in fact some rights that I believe no state, nation or individual human should maintain.

 

Are you suggesting that the federal government couldn't legally abolish slavery? I don't see why not. The Constitution places clear limits on what states may do. For example, states may not negotiate foreign treaties, regulate trade with other states, or deprive US citizens of the right to vote. What counts as a US citizen is also not up to individual states to decide. Thus, if Congress decides that all US-born humans--regardless of sex or ancestry--are citizens, states have no Constitutional basis for interfering with that.