Dylan Roof arrested in church shooting

[NightSG]

The thing is:  Missouri, Maryland, Delaware and Kentucky did not start a freakin' war against other Americans for the express purpose of keeping their slaves.

 

It takes two sides to start a war.

[Just_A_Guy]

Robert E. Lee did not fight the Civil War because he wants slavers to keep their slaves. Lee flew the Confederate Battle Flag - each element of which symbolizes the Confederacy - to secede from the overreaching power of the Union.

 

Right.  That's why I drew a distinction between "a lot of the soldiers were simply doing the right as they saw the right" versus "the political ringleaders".  Based on my understanding of Lee, I'd put him in the former category.

 

 

Lincoln cannot afford for the Confederates to secede because then there wouldn't be enough money to keep the Union.

 

Anatess, this is the kind of crap that has made me do so much soul-searching about whether the left isn't onto something when they accuse some conservative elements of being outright Confederate sympathizers--or worse.

 

I mean, think about it.  The financial centers in the country were all in the North.  The vast majority of population, manufacturing, industry, transportation networks, and consumer markets were in the north.  The South had little industry, little population, and pretty much no exports except cotton.  It was a big part of US exports, yes--but as history showed, it was not indispensable.  A significant portion of Northerners, including the Peace Democrats, were perfectly content to let the South go in peace.  Can you point to a single statement that can reliably be attributed to Lincoln, to the effect that his opposition to secession was rooted in anything other than preserving the union, maintaining the idealistic experiment begun by the founding fathers, and keeping the country as a whole on a solid base from which to face the future?

 

No, Anatess.  The Lincoln-as-darned-money-grubbing-Yankee meme is nothing more than lost-cause horse manure.

 

 

Let's put this in another scenario. The Spanish National Combat Flag was flown by Spain on the Filipino-Spanish war in the 1890's with the colors and the royal crest representing a national identity. Spain left a legacy of over 300 years of oppression against the Filipino people. Spain lost the war. The Spanish Flag today still resembles that National Combat Flag. The Spain National Soccer Team has that flag on their team jerseys. Should the Filipinos demand Spain to stop flying that flag and ban the soccer team from playing in the Philippines unless they change their jerseys?

We don't. The Flag represents Spain - even though they have done many many atrocities against the Filipinos in the name of Spain, that Flag represents the sum total of their history and national identity. We, as a people, are not so thin skinned that we go ape over things that hold no meaning today unless some media personality keeps on insisting and convincing us that the Spanish Flag is racist.

 

The Spanish did not, at the end of that conflict, take oaths of national allegiance to the Philippines.  There are not, to my knowledge, large and vocal groups of Spaniards who continue to insist that Spain was in the right and that the Filipinos deserved everything they got.  The Spanish did not significantly reduce the use of their flag for the next ninety years, and then more-or-less resurrect the symbol during an era when they were trying to justify additional oppressive measures against native-born Filipinos.

[Just_A_Guy]

It takes two sides to start a war.

 

Agreed.  The Nazis and the Poles share comparable measures of moral culpability for the outbreak of war in Europe.  Likewise for the Imperial Japanese and the Americans vis a vis the war in the Pacific.

Edited June 26, 2015 by Just_A_Guy

[Vort]

It takes two sides to start a war.

 

Yes, in the sense that anyone who doesn't just roll over and give up when despots attempt to seize power is "starting a war". That does not mean the two sides are morally equivalent.

 

EDIT: JAG said it first, and better, albeit his subtle sarcasm might escape some.

 

It's worth noting that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was not unprovoked, but the US's blockade and other isolating tactics against a militarily aggressive Japan would probably strike most modern Westerners as a reasonable response. Many have suggested that Roosevelt wanted Japan to attack and allowed Hirohito to devastate Pearl Harbor in order to make sure that the American people would willingly join into what had, until then, been an unpopular "European" war. As much as I dislike FDR and his policies, I have a hard time attributing that level of infamous and traitorous behavior to him. But I do believe that the American government and military were looking for a good excuse to join the war, and Pearl Harbor certainly provided that. Yes, the levels of moral culpability were not comparable.

Edited June 26, 2015 by Vort

[Just_A_Guy]

It's worth noting that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was not unprovoked, but the US's blockade and other isolating tactics against a militarily aggressive Japan would probably strike most modern Westerners as a reasonable response. Many have suggested that Roosevelt wanted Japan to attack and allowed Hirohito to devastate Pearl Harbor in order to make sure that the American people would willingly join into what had, until then, been an unpopular "European" war. As much as I dislike FDR and his policies, I have a hard time attributing that level of infamous and traitorous behavior to him. But I do believe that the American government and military were looking for a good excuse to join the war, and Pearl Harbor certainly provided that. Yes, the levels of moral culpability were not comparable.

 

Right--the fact that there is a war at all indicates that both sides were able to find some pretext for proclaiming that the Other Guys were bad enough to deserve killing.  The relative virtues of those pretexts, of course, is another matter.  :-) 

 

FWIW, Congress' declaration of war from December 8, 1941 included only Japan.  The only reason FDR was able to ram declarations against Italy and Germany through Congress three days later, was because those nations had already issued formal declarations of war against us in the intervening time.  Isolationist and even pro-German settlement was still pretty strong, and I've seen historians argue that Hitler's declaration was a colossal blunder and that--Pearl Harbor notwithstanding--more skillful maneuvering could have kept the US out of the European war for at least a few more months.

Edited June 26, 2015 by Just_A_Guy

[prisonchaplain]

Summary thus far:  The church shooter needs Jesus, and should spend the rest of his life in a controlled environment.  The Confederate flag has no place on public grounds.  Oh...and the South lost the Civil War, meaning, for better or for worse, we remain the United States. 

[Vort]

I have no strong feelings -- in fact, pretty much no feelings at all -- about the Confederate flag. It has been incorporated into the state flags of many southern states. Being from the Pacific Northwest, and thus about as far removed, geographically speaking, as possible from the South while still remaining in the contiguous US, I have never found it to be a topic of contention or really even of discussion. My outsider view tends to be that it's a lot of ado to make about a flag.

[Vort]

What's wrong with all of you people? How can you not see that you are bad people?

Btw, this makes me laugh.

•  
•  

[Guest]

The thing is:  Missouri, Maryland, Delaware and Kentucky did not start a freakin' war against other Americans for the express purpose of keeping their slaves.

Of course not. They had no interest in seceding from the Union... meaning... they didn't mind having the President dictate laws to their Governors. Interestingly, they didn't get rid of their slaves until after the War. Seems like the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 only freed Southern slaves and not Northern ones. U Grant did not free his slaves until 1865 if I remember correctly.

[mordorbund]

In Anatess' defense, South Carolina's Declaration of the Immediate Causes that formally announces the reason for secession spends a solid 2/3 of it listing the principles of States rights and 1/3 dealing with the slave issue at hand (specifically the Fugitive Slave Act). In rebuttal though, if the Confederate flag is to represent the cause of secession, we cannot ignore a solid 1/3 of that Declaration which announces it is for the cause of slavery. The flag represents both, and slavery cannot be divorced from it (I think it would be a shame if States rights is lost from the symbol as well, but given the climate of "you're a bigot - I win!" I'm resigned to see that as a lost cause).

 

I see this as being similar to when the Citadel started accepting female cadets. There was a big legal battle and all kinds of debate over it, but 5 days after gaining admission, Shannon Faulkner quit. Surely those who wanted women in the Citadel could have found a better Rosa Parks for their cause (concern was expressed during the trial as to whether she could physically hack it - not because she's a woman, but because of fitness level). I feel the same about SC's secession. I love that they were bold enough to say "enough! you Feds had better check yourselves!" But c'mon, for slavery? I can't back you for that.

[Just_A_Guy]

Of course not. They had no interest in seceding from the Union... meaning... they didn't mind having the President dictate laws to their Governors. Interestingly, they didn't get rid of their slaves until after the War. Seems like the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 only freed Southern slaves and not Northern ones. U Grant did not free his slaves until 1865 if I remember correctly.

 

First off, I am sincerely baffled as to where you're going with this.  What law did any president attempt to dictate to any Southern governor prior to the ratification of the Confederate constitution?  If I remember correctly, Kentucky even went so far as to refuse Lincoln's call for volunteers and declared itself neutral.

 

As for the Emancipation Proclamation:  You kind of undermine your own argument here.  The Emancipation Proclamation was based in Lincoln's authority as commander-in-chief over regions that were then in rebellion or under military administration--he didn't attempt to free the slaves in the loyal states because he didn't believe he had the legal authority to do so.  He declined to apply the EP to certain Union-occupied areas of the south, mostly where it appeared that new Unionist governments either had been established or were about to become so.

[Blackmarch]

Yep, there's a difference between a dead-ender trying to go out with a bang, and a terrorist attempting to push his ideology and usher in a race war.  In this case, the short term difference is that probably fewer people were murdered in the church that day.  Not sure what the long-term difference will be.

well If i was a police officer over there, I'd be very happy about that.

[yjacket]

Pardon the apparent glibness of this question, but . . . were you black?

 

So . . .because I'm not black means I have no say in how I or my peers viewed the Confederate flag.  What kind of insane crap is that?  I grew up in the south, yes we were all white and pretty much no one ever flew the flag as a racist message. So I'm going to let somebody else tell me how I and my peers viewed the flag?  The Confederate flag meant, I'm part of the South, I'm a redneck, you can take your Yankee mentality and shove it and racism ain't got nothing to do with.

 

Perception is reality and people see what they want to see.  Blacks, and northerners want to see the Confederate flag as racist and so it is; but that just isn't the reality among the people who actually fly it.  I grew up in redneck, hick town, in the south, but wait for it . . . because I'm not black my opinion is worthless.  

 

I do love the our victimology culture; just make a claim that flying a flag is racist and everyone comes running.

[yjacket]

As for the Emancipation Proclamation:  You kind of undermine your own argument here.  The Emancipation Proclamation was based in Lincoln's authority as commander-in-chief over regions that were then in rebellion or under military administration.

 

His authority was as meaningless as King George's authority over the colonies.  The Colonies seceded from England; they claimed by duly elected representation they were a separate country. The South did the exact same thing; the only difference is they lost. 

 

If the principles of the founding of the United States are true principles; then by logical extension, Lincoln's authority over the South ended the moment they claimed they were a separate country.

 

The really sad thing is that we have modern examples where countries have split apart without bloodshed and everything is fine.  The Czech Republic and the Slovac Republic, they peacefully divided. Had Lincoln actually not been a tyrant much like King George, two things wouldn't have happened 1st the south wouldn't have seceded and 2nd any secession would have left 2 stronger nations without bloodshed and the South would have ended slavery voluntarily (like every other slave country in the world). 

Edited June 27, 2015 by yjacket

[Guest LiterateParakeet]

So . . .because I'm not black means I have no say in how I or my peers viewed the Confederate flag.  

 

I don't think that is what JAG intended at all.  I took his point, which I agreed with, to mean that you should consider how Black people might feel about it.  

 

For example, the swastika is still a sacred symbol in Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainsim, and Odinism.   But if there were a community where Buddhists and Jewish people lived together, would it be appropriate to fly a flag with a swastika?  

 

Yes, for Jewish people the swastika is a symbol of hate, and of pain, murder, broken families and more.  For Black people the Confederate flag is a symbol of pain, murder, broken families and more.  

 

If an individual wants to fly a Confederate flag, that is their choice, but that flag should not fly over a state capitol.  

I grew up with Rednecks, and in my experience they are extremely racist.  Perhaps you don't see it because you've grown up with it. 

[Just_A_Guy]

So . . .because I'm not black means I have no say in how I or my peers viewed the Confederate flag.  What kind of insane crap is that?  I grew up in the south, yes we were all white and pretty much no one ever flew the flag as a racist message. So I'm going to let somebody else tell me how I and my peers viewed the flag?  The Confederate flag meant, I'm part of the South, I'm a redneck, you can take your Yankee mentality and shove it and racism ain't got nothing to do with.

 

Well, your original statement seemed to say that the flag is not racist . . . period.

 

Now, your subjective use of the symbol may not be racist.  But it is not for you to make a blanket assertion that there is no latent racism in the symbol, because you aren't the only one who has used it (or had it used against them).  When an expressive symbol is placed on state property, it becomes an expression of the people.  All the people.  Who are you to force blacks, or the outright racists who use the same symbol as you; to forget all other meanings of that symbol and adopt your own?

 

 

Perception is reality and people see what they want to see.  Blacks, and northerners want to see the Confederate flag as racist and so it is; but that just isn't the reality among the people who actually fly it.

 

Would these be the same people who can liken Abraham Lincoln to King George III without missing a beat?  Those people?

 

 

The South did the exact same thing; the only difference is they lost.

 

But, oh, what a difference . . .

 

Anyways, none of that really affects my point to Anatess, which was that the EP's failure to free slaves in the loyal border states was not hypocracy on Lincoln's part:  rather, it was proof that he did respect the local governments of the states--so long as those states were not fomenting rebellion.

 

I don't have a lot of interest engaging in Lost Cause pontifficating about the legal intricacies of secession in general.  I think everyone here understands that at some point, a government might overreach to the point where the citizenry is justified in taking up arms to defend itself.  The question isn't whether secession can ever be morally justifiable (clearly, it can) or whether it can ever be legally justifiable (frankly, as you point out, might makes right in this type of situation).  The question is whether secession in 1861 was morally justifiable given the stated goals of the Southern political leadership.

 

 

Had Lincoln actually not been a tyrant much like King George, two things wouldn't have happened 1st the south wouldn't have seceded and 2nd any secession would have left 2 stronger nations without bloodshed and the South would have ended slavery voluntarily (like every other slave country in the world).

 

Your first point is belied by the facts that seven states had already seceded before Lincoln ever took office, and that he was not elected on an abolitionist platform.  All he said was that he opposed expanding slavery into the territories. 

 

Your second point runs into difficulty when one considers a couple of things.  First, the Constitution guaranteed the continuation of the slave trade only through 1808.  The South had had twenty years' notice that it might have to abandon the institution; and by the time they seceded they had been living on borrowed time for over fifty years.  Second:  your point utterly evaporates when one reads the actual text of the Confederate Constitution, which a) prohibited both the confederate government and the individual states from abolishing slavery within their borders, and b) allowed for the confederacy to add new territories.  Read up on the "filibusters" sometime, and what the South thought about them.  Letting slavery die of its own accord was something that only worked if the slave empire wasn't expanding its territory.  The South understood them, and that is why they hated Lincoln so much--because he was clear, from the get-go, that he would oppose slavery's expansion.

 

Letting the South go in peace would not have alleviated the Confederacy's demands for lebensraum.  The South would have picked fights with Mexico, Cuba, and the rest of Spanish America; possibly triggering European intervention to contain the slavers' bloodlust.  The North still could well have ended up in its own war with the South over New Mexico and Arizona; and South still may have sent raiding parties up into the border states to bring them over to the Confederacy (and to Kansas, just for the sheer joy of it--as Quantrill ultimately did). 

 

If the South had managed to survive that drubbing and remain an independent republic, they might have seriously taken up the question of amending their constitution and eradicating slavery just in time for Adolf Hitler to hop on a zeppelin to Richmond and urge them to steel their commitment to the founding ideals regarding the white man's innate superiority.  Heaven only knows what would have happened from there.

 

And that's not even taking into account what an utterly despicable institution slavery was.  Three generations of blacks had been born into slavery since the Constitution's contemplated end of the slave trade in 1808.  How many more generations would you have allowed to live that way on American soil, yjacket?

Edited June 27, 2015 by Just_A_Guy

[bytor2112]

The confederate battle flag has been co-opted by some pretty ugly groups. Sadly, the public school teaching that the good folks from the north fought the evil folks from the south to free slaves is so pervasive that most blacks and all liberals see it as a symbol of hate. I am angered when I see garbage like skin heads and the KKK use the flag as a  banner for their hatred. But they also use the cross and the US flag as well.

 

Most narratives don't take into account the human aspect of the period or the war. The build up to seccession was born of politics, money and political power and certainly the southern politicians felt that power was rapidly shifting to the northern states because of the population explosion that occurred in the decade before the war. Of course the good folks from the north owned slaves as well....until it became more profitable to not as they were becoming increasingly industrialized. 

 

The average enlisted soldier did not own slaves, though the exact percentage is debatable, it is usually agreed upon that less than 10% owned slaves. Many slave owners, like Robert E Lee's father in law had made provisions in there wills to free slaves at their passing. Lee was charged with doing just that after Mr. Custis passed. 

 

Of note, Lee and Jackson did not believe in slavery and Lee particularly opposed secession. A common element of the times was state identity rather than national identity. Lee was a son of Virginia, first and foremost. He was married to a great grandaughter of George Washington and his own father a revolutionary war hero gave the eulogy at Washingtons funeral. "First in war, first in peace and first in the heart of his country men". Lee was offered command of all Union forces but declined because Virginia secceded and as he stated he could not lead an army against his familiy and his home. Such was the prevailing allegiance of the time. US Grant flatly stated that if he thought the war was fought over slavery...he would offer his sword to the other side and he infact had black body servants given to him by his father in law...a slave owner. During the Vicksburg campaign, Grant returned runaway slaves to any slave owner who pledged allegiance to the union.

 

Southerners formed regiments from their local counties and were musterd into the CSA and just like their northern counterparts fought for the glory of....not the CSA or USA....but for the state from which they came. Southerners saw themnselves as the rightful heirs of the continental army and saw Lee as Washington. They did not want to be ruled by european rabble that had migrated in ever increasing hordes to the North. Much of the union armies were made of men who did not speak a common langauage and after the emancipation proclamation and the draft began, Lincoln had to send troops to put down riots in New York because the very idea that northern boys coming home limbless and/or in boxes by the thousands were fightimng now to free slaves was repulsive.

 

I have been a student of this period of history literally all of my life and have probably forgotten more than I remember as I do not study it often any longer. That said, it was a complicated time and politics and politicans aside, the great tragedy is the soldiers of both sides and the damage that it caused....damage that reverberates even in 2015.

 

My great-great-great grandfather was a soldier in the Army of Norgthern Virginia as were many uncles and cousins and my family owned many slaves and a 5000 acre plantation. I make no apologies for their decisions....it was a different time. Ironically, my father married a woman from New York and grandfathers and uncles and cousins fought for the union...perhaps on thesame fields as my fathers family.

 

Slavery was and is dispicable and is a national tragedy....not just a southern one. Money, politics and consolidating power led to war and the average american, north and south paid the price in blood and treasure. I own a confederate battle flag and understand it's place in history. That said, the southern cross should not be flown over any statehouse or capital buildings, but should rightfully be displayed at historcal places honoring the brave men who fought and died for a cause that most of us in 2015 cannot fully understand. 

Edited June 28, 2015 by bytor2112

[bytor2112]

Charlie Daniels wrote the following:

 

I was born in 1936, a mere 71 years after the Civil War ended, when the South was looked upon by what seemed to be a majority of the Northern States as an inbred, backward, uneducated, slow-talking and slower-thinking people, with low morals and a propensity for incest.

This was in the days before television, and about all the folks up North knew about Southerners was what they heard. There were a lot of people who took great pleasure in proliferating the myth, and some still do it to this day.

As you might suppose, people in the South bitterly resented this attitude of superiority, and in some quarters the words “damn” and “Yankee” became one word. And a somewhat fierce type of Southern pride came into being.

The Confederate battle flag was a sign of defiance, a sign of pride, a declaration of a geographical area that you were proud to be from.

That’s all it is to me and all it has ever been to me.

I can’t speak for all, but I know in my heart that most Southerners feel the same way.

I have no desire to reinstate the Confederacy. I oppose slavery as vehemently as any man, and I believe that every human being, regardless of the color of their skin, is just as valuable as I am and deserves the exact same rights and advantages as I do.

I feel that this controversy desperately needs to be settled without federal interference and input from race baiters like Al Sharpton. It’s up to the individual states as to what they allow to be a part of their public image. What the majority of the people of any given state want should, in my opinion, be their policy.

Unfortunately, the Confederate battle flag has been adopted by hate groups – and individuals like Dylann Roof – to supposedly represent them and their hateful view of the races.

Please believe me when I say that, to the overwhelming majority of Southerners, the flag represents no such thing, but is simply a banner denoting an area of the nation and one’s pride in living there.

I know there will be those who will take these words of mine, try to twist them or call them insincere and try to make what I’ve said here some kind of anti-black racial statement, but I tell everybody who reads this article, I came up in the days of cruel racial prejudice and Jim Crow laws, when the courts were tilted against any black man, when the segregated educational system was inferior and when opportunities for blacks to advance were almost nonexistent.

I lived through the useless cruelty of those days and did not get my feelings out of some sensitivity class or social studies course, but made my own decisions out of experience and disgust.

I hold no ill feelings and have no axes to grind with my brothers and sisters of any color. The same God made us; the same God will judge us; and I pray that He will intervene in the deep racial divide we have in this nation and make each person – black or white – see each other for what we truly are, human beings. No better, and no worse.

It’s time to do away with labels: Caucasian-American, African-American, Asian-American, Native American and so forth.

How about just a simple “AMERICAN”?

[Just_A_Guy]

Most narratives don't take into account the human aspect of the period or the war. The build up to seccession was born of politics, money and political power and certainly the southern politicians felt that power was rapidly shifting to the northern states because of the population explosion that occurred in the decade before the war.

 

While this is true, it also needs to be borne in mind that the population explosion happened because of the economic opportunity available there--the jobs.  The jobs came from industry, which came from free labor and capital--to which the South had been openly hostile ever since the Revolution.  There were some efforts to industrialize the South's economy in the two decades before the war, which largely failed because most Southerners believed the Jeffersonian agrarian lifestyle was more inherently virtuous.  Even the industrialization movement's architects ultimately threw up their hands and conceded that the urban centers of the North were cesspools of immorality, anyways.

 

When Jefferson Davis--faced with recalcitrant governors who resisted his presidential authority--icily remarked that the Confederacy's epitaph should read "Died, of a theory"; he was far more correct than he would have wished to admit.

 

 

Of course the good folks from the north owned slaves as well....until it became more profitable to not as they were becoming increasingly industrialized.

 

In the mid-Atlantic states, to some degree, yes.  But in other areas, slavery never really caught on--often because of the mores of the people who settled the regions (New England, for example--certainly there were isolated cases, but it never went mainstream).  Yeah, I've heard that "the climate was ill suited for slavery"--but, moral compunctions aside, who wouldn't want legal claim to 100% of the income of another worker, in any economy?  Slavery flourishes to the present day in far poorer climates than what prevails in the northeastern United States.

 

 

Much of the union armies were made of men who did not speak a common langauage and after the emancipation proclamation  . . .

 

I think both armies had regiments composed entirely of Irishmen, Germans, etc.  The English of Henry Wirz, the camp commandant at the infamous Andersonville prison, was reputedly atrocious.

Edited June 28, 2015 by Just_A_Guy

[bytor2112]

 think both armies had regiments composed entirely of Irishmen, Germans, etc.  The English of Henry Wirz, the camp commandant at the infamous Andersonville prison, was reputedly atrocious.

 

 

Yes....about 25% were non native in the Union vesus about 5% in the CSA

[yjacket]

Would these be the same people who can liken Abraham Lincoln to King George III without missing a beat?  Those people?

 

 

The Ab. Lincoln who suspended habeus corpes, who destroyed the press, who threw into jail a sitting congressman. Refused to allow the Maryland legislature to sit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Vallandigham#Arrest_and_military_trial.

The man who prior to being elected was called "Leaping Lincoln" for jumping out of the 2nd story window with a band of followers to prevent a vote.  Yes, Lincoln was most certainly the closest we came to a tyrant.

He was shot and the words of the Booth when he shot him was "Death to Tyrants" Lincoln was vilified in the north and it was only decades later after his death that his memory was etched as some great god.

 

Your first point is belied by the facts that seven states had already seceded before Lincoln ever took office.

 

Either you are completely ignorant of history or you are being disingenuous for your own purposes.  Either way, I do not care to debate facts and history with someone who cannot accept the fact that it was directly Lincoln's election that caused the southern states to secede. Lincoln's election took place on November 8, 1860 and on December 20th, 1860 South Carolina seceded.

 

Lincoln only won 39.7% of the popular vote and was elected entirely by the North. Instead trying to actually unite the country, he divided it. The majority of the United States wanted someone else as President. Seeing as the North was now able to win the Presidency without any of their support, they proceeded to indicate to the South that they would ramrod anything and everything down the south's throat.

 

I have been a part of State-wide politics and one of the worst situations one can have is when a minority (or a small majority) gains control and then starts to use their 51% power to shove the 49% out. The art of politics is compromise and not compromise where no one wins, but the art of understanding that no one will get everything they want but that everyone can get something of what they want-find the common ground and act on it.

 

Lincoln (and the Republican Party) wanted none of it, didn't want to compromise with the south on any issue and basically told the South to stick it.

 

Lincoln's election lead directly to the secession.  Dec. 20th the war didn't start for another 4 months. To think that slavery was the only issue is just being ignorant of politics and history in general.

[David13]

That's pretty much the history.

This revisionist idea that the Civil War was some great crusade by the North to end slavery is just that.  A new idea that isn't true.

dc

[yjacket]

That's pretty much the history.

This revisionist idea that the Civil War was some great crusade by the North to end slavery is just that.  A new idea that isn't true.

dc

 

Yeap, very much like the idea that the US entered into WWII to stop the genocide of the Jews. It wasn't mid 1942 that reports were really coming out about the holocaust and no one really had any clue about the extent of it.  It wasn't until '44  that people really started understanding what was happening.

[Just_A_Guy]

David, the fact that the Civil War didn't start as an anti-slavery crusade by the North doesn't mean it didn't start, in large part, as a pro-slavery crusade by the political leaders of the South.

Yjacket, it's remarkable foresight on the South's part to anticipate all those horrible things Lincoln would do--especially given that to date, all he had done was to play hooky from an Illinois legislative session.

But, here's the odd thing. Mark Neely, who wrote a Pulitzer-winning analysis of Lincoln's civil liberties record, later published another review of Southern practices and concluded that the Confederacy was actually slightly worse; the mythos of Confederacy-ex-civil-liberties-panacea having been created after the war by Lost Cause apologists culminating with Davis himself. The Confederacy, too, revoked habeas corpus, established "habeas corpus commissions" with power to interrogate citizens, incarcerated at least 4,000 political prisoners, ordered all Unionists expelled, confiscated their property, and set up a puppet rump legislature in Kentucky. A decent comparison of civil liberties in the north versus the south can be found in this National Review article.

And, yeah--this certainly is a tu quoque argument. On the other hand--I find those to be pretty effective when used against an ad hominem. Especially when said ad hominem was deployed as a red herring to distract us all from the truth that--yes, Virginia--the Southern political leadership really did start a war against other Americans so that they could preserve and expand slavery.

Edited June 28, 2015 by Just_A_Guy

[David13]

Again, not really.  All they did was leave the union.  That's what their intention was, not to fight.

dc