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| When slave states seceded, if ever. (Click on map to enlarge.) You can see three distinct tiers from south to north, with Virginia (which still included WV in 1861) the great anomaly, the only state to secede north of 36'30". If Virginia doesn't secede in April 1861, then neither do VA's tag-along followers NC, TN, and AR. |
Perhaps to celebrate the Battle of Gettysburg’s 150th anniversary, liberal Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson announced on June 25th that, in effect, it’s too bad Pickett’s Charge of July 3, 1863 failed.
From Meyerson’s “Start the border fence in Norfolk, Va.”:
Until that day, though, if the federal government wants to build a fence that keeps the United States safe from the dangers of lower wages and poverty and their attendant ills — and the all-round fruitcakery of the right-wing white South — it should build that fence from Norfolk to Dallas. There’s nothing wrong with a fence, so long as you put it in the right place.
This is another manifestation of what John Derbyshire calls the Cold Civil War: “good old American sectionalism—two big groups of white people who can’t stand the sight of each other.”
One reason that America’s internal animosities have become so virulent is that since the Soviet Empire’s collapse two dozen years ago, we lack worthy external foes.
I go on to explain how a more experienced Lincoln could have headed off the Civil War in 1860-61.
Read the whole thing there.
By the way, here's a long article documenting the bizarre disdain of most Civil War historians for Secretary of State William Seward's brilliant April 1, 1861 memo to Lincoln (which Lincoln tragically brushed aside) explaining the most plausible plan anybody came up with at that late date for heading off the Civil War.
And it's not like Seward was some weirdo crank outsider. He was a great man. While Lincoln wasted time during those crucial weeks, Seward came up with a plan that might have worked, or at least bought time.
Perhaps it's just the déformation professionnelle of Civil War historians to be irrationally averse to anybody and anything that might have made their profession needless, even if it would have saved 750,000 American lives.
By the way, here's a long article documenting the bizarre disdain of most Civil War historians for Secretary of State William Seward's brilliant April 1, 1861 memo to Lincoln (which Lincoln tragically brushed aside) explaining the most plausible plan anybody came up with at that late date for heading off the Civil War.
And it's not like Seward was some weirdo crank outsider. He was a great man. While Lincoln wasted time during those crucial weeks, Seward came up with a plan that might have worked, or at least bought time.
Perhaps it's just the déformation professionnelle of Civil War historians to be irrationally averse to anybody and anything that might have made their profession needless, even if it would have saved 750,000 American lives.
ReplyDeleteHistorical mind games are fun, aren't they!
Now, what if Hitler & Mussolini had welched on their Axis pact with Japan, and not declared war on the U.S. following Pearl Harbor?"
The ultra-Number One World Champion Reductionist would distill the foregoing down, down, down to ask the age-old, most baffling fundamental essential mystery question of all historical mind-game questions: "What if Custer's outfit had Winchesters?"
"One reason that America’s internal animosities have become so virulent is that since the Soviet Empire’s collapse two dozen years ago, we lack worthy external foes."
ReplyDeletethe cultural marxists have always hated america and have always sought to destroy it. they have been working to undermine and destroy the US from within since 1950, and they began to move to destroy the US in earnest by 1965.
while real americans were busy building america and fighting her enemies, america's domestic enemies built nothing and avoided military service, instead infiltrating it's universities, law system, and media outlets.
now they're all 60 years old and in the prime of their careers, and have situated themselves in many positions of political and legal power. cultural marxists, who never contributed a productive day of labor in their life, now control what millions of real americans spent 200 years building and creating.
the american cold war didn't just start recently. these people hated america in the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s. the current president is an excellent example of a do nothing, know nothing, cultural marxist lawyer who, without the enormous artificial legal apparatus constructed after world war 2, wouldn't have amounted to a hill of beans in a meritocratic, you-get-what-you-earn, not-what-you-steal-swindle-and-shake, united states.
his entire life, indeed, the entire adult lives of most of the democrat politicians at the national level, exist wholly within this artificial legal bubble, a bubble made possible only by real work done by real americans over the previous century, a bubble which insulates them almost entirely from the real world.
"If the federal government wants to build a fence that keeps the United States safe from the dangers of lower wages and poverty and their attendant ills — and the all-round fruitcakery of the right-wing white South — it should build that fence from Norfolk to Dallas. There’s nothing wrong with a fence, so long as you put it in the right place."
ReplyDeleteCoolio. Be sure to take all our colored folk, though, lest we be tempted to oppress them.
i doubt harold meyerson's ancestors were even around for the civil war. indeed, harold meyerson-americans seem awfully insterested in something which they had almost nothing to do with.
ReplyDeletei imagine him like i imagine a 5 foot nothing, 100 and nothing pound asian nerd at duke, viciously taunting 6-10 africans on the kansas team from the sidelines. "Yeah we beat you in 1991 and we'll beat you again!"
um, i'm pretty sure not only that you had nothing to do with it, you weren't even there. you should just chill, bro.
drum up your own nonsensical racial/time period contrasts for further lulz. perhaps 20 year old mexicans in LA ranting on the internet to 20 year old cubans in miami about how "we had the longest winning streak in 1972, you guys won't beat us, you won't even get close to 33 games in a row". and so on and so forth.
The Civil War not being a particular fetish of mine, I have no strong opinions on Lincoln. But I have never really understood the canonization of a man who "saved the union" by ending federalism and carrying on a war that killed ~600,000 Americans. If that's greatness, I'm from Pluto. It especially eats at me that this is the same man who opposed, on moral grounds, the US taking control of 500,000 square miles of all-but-unsettled land from Mexico.
ReplyDelete"Coolio. Be sure to take all our colored folk, though, lest we be tempted to oppress them."
ReplyDeletethat would be easy, and the best part of building a wall on the mason-dixon line.
after the south becomes a separate sovereign nation, it simply votes to end all government handouts. then sits back and watches the african and mexican population self deport for greener pastures up north, or back to mexico down south.
one way bus tickets and maps to the most generous yankee cities would be quite helpful and assist the process greatly.
Steve, another thing overlooked is Jackson also faced Secession from South Carolina. His response was that he would promptly hang all the signers of any document. He meant it -- a backwoodsman he hated the Tidewater Aristocracy as much as he did the New York trade barons and the New Englander manufacturers and shipping magnates.
ReplyDeleteEarly and heavy pressure (by Buchanon) could have prevented even South Carolina from Secession, particularly if Lincoln bought off various leaders by cabinet appointment.
But the carrot always had to be matched with the stick, and the stick be very unpleasant and realistic -- not empty threats.
A measure of the non-nastiness of the feelings after the Civil War was all the Confederate generals attending Grant's funeral; the respect the North had for Lee; and the frequent moving around by the combatants after the war. Even Nathan Bedford Forrest ended the Klan when it interfered with his ability to raise capital in the North; the former Confederate soldier Samuel Clemens refashioned himself a Connecticut Yankee; and Sherman retained his affection and liking for the South.
America does however have enemies. Realistic ones, ones that can kill us. Don't ever be dismissive of "those little men, the boys will soon see them off" as the British were in Singapore. Iran will soon have nukes, and ballistic missiles -- the technology is already half a century old. North Korea already has them.
Think of it this way -- the strongest bodybuilder and more potent martial artist can be the victim of a frail thirteen year old with relatively old technology dating to say, Sam Colt's day in 1835. Yeah America has lots of neat tech and lots of people -- many of them NAMs by the way, but we lack the will, and increasingly the ability to hit back. When the Towers came down, there was no will or even real ability to make "the rubble bounce" to quote Derb.
The Roman Legions were invincible. Until they were not, at Adrianople. Where the Visigoths destroyed them. And after that, it was all over for the Romans in the West.
We DO have real enemies. We just don't want to face up to that fact because it would destroy the power of elites and the underclass who in combination really rule -- and you might credibly argue that is the NAM underclass who really rules America, NOT the White elites.
OT: but here are the names of the 19 young (white) men that died fighting the fires in AZ.
ReplyDeleteAndrew Ashcraft, 29
Robert Caldwell, 23
Travis Carter, 31
Dustin Deford, 24
Christopher MacKenzie, 30
Eric Marsh, 43
Grant McKee, 21
Sean Misner, 26
Scott Norris, 28
Wade Parker, 22
John Percin, 24
Anthony Rose, 23
Jesse Steed, 36
Joe Thurston, 32
Travis Turbyfill, 27
William Warneke, 25
Clayton Whitted, 28
Kevin Woyjeck, 21
Garret Zuppiger, 27
I think MacKenzie might have been 1/4 Asian, as his father looks happa. Other than that, as white as Obama's data analysis team.
"A rare contribution of the Muslim world to intellectual life ... An impoverished tribe out on the fringe of the Sahara would develop an esprit de corps allowing it to conquer the coast’s rich but decadent civilization. Over a few generations of soft living, the new ruling clans would lose their asabiyyah"
ReplyDeleteNope, Steve, this is not a "rare contribution of the Muslim world to intellectual life."
Roman historians made this point about their own and other nations hundreds of years before.
For example, in his Commentaries On The Gallic Wars, Ceaser discussed this point at length in his many digressions on Gaulish history and his repeated comparisons and the relative strengths and weaknesses of his Italian army with his various Gaulish, German allies and enemies, but in a more sophisticated manner than your Tunisian seems to more than 1000 years later.
I love the idea that the solution to secession was to declare war on two other nations.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, here's an article that demonstrates that while race is just a social construct, apparently "ethnic groups" aren't.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/one-size-fits-all-bmi-index-may-be-wrongly-applied-by-doctors-for-ethnic-groups-says-nice-8684008.html
Not convincing, I'm afraid. The South hated Lincoln and wanted to secede. He did right by showing some spine at Ft. Sumter--a federal fort! As the other blogger suggests, Andy Jackson would have done at least as much.
ReplyDeleteLincoln was trying to reach out to unionists in Virginia, but wasn't finding any. Virginia made a bad choice on its own.
Politicians tried to prevent a breakup since the Missouri compromise. It always required giving in to the Slave lobby.
BTW, I've been to Gettysburg many times. How Lee was supposed to win that battle, I'll never know. The historians tend to present it as a "damned close run thing" but it really wasn't.
The south hated Lincoln and wanted to secede. He lamented how he was always hearing about unionists in Virginia but never finding any. He showed some spine supplying Ft. Sumter, a federal installation, after all. Andy Jackson would have had Major Anderson fire on Charleston!
ReplyDeleteI always think that the best situation would have been if the Northern states had seceded back in the early 1800's as they almost did. It was only contingent upon Aaron Burr being elected Governor of New York. It's interesting to think about the alternative timeline in that scenario. The North probably would have joined up with Canada (the Southern states were the ones who dragged the US into the War of 1812). They probably would have come into conflict with the South over settlement of the West, as the South would have inherited the Louisiana Purchase, but a large population of Northern Settlers would have encroached upon it. In the end, the South would have been worse off, if for no other reason than they would have been stuck with a large NAM population. The black migration to the Northern cities wouldn't have happened. And the South, assuming they controlled the West up to New Mexico, Arizona, and the Colorado River, would serve as a buffer between the North and Mexico, absorbing most of the Hispanic immigrants.
ReplyDeleteLincoln should have invaded Iraq.
ReplyDeleteGood to see more people questioning the Cult of Lincoln.
ReplyDeleteWho's he kidding? The minute we built that fence and started dealing seriously with all the Trayvons and Juan's in an adult manner this anti-white and his ilk would begin crying 'g-g-g-genocide!!!" And demand the North bomb and invade the South under R2P fairy tale doctrine.
ReplyDeletewouldn't have amounted to a hill of beans in a meritocratic, you-get-what-you-earn, not-what-you-steal-swindle-and-shake, united states.
ReplyDelete------------------
You get your head handed to you in California for saying this. Say this to a native, a black, even a Jew or Asian. It shows complete lack of perspective thinking. Absolutely critical in 2013. There's a significant minority (majority?) or whites who are disgusted by this swill, too.
One reason that America’s internal animosities have become so virulent is that since the Soviet Empire’s collapse two dozen years ago, we lack worthy external foes.
ReplyDeleteFrom the mid-1960s on, I don't recall the Cold War as having any unifying effect. The Left's main enemy was the same as it is now: those Americans who opposed Communism.
So many errors one knows barely where to begin.
ReplyDeleteA rump Confederacy confined to the Deep South might have eventually been bought off by the plan Lincoln floated in the middle of the war for ending slavery voluntarily by compensating slave-owners with the proceeds from the sale of Western lands.
Um, yeah, if the Deep South had seceded because there was an emancipation plan on the table, compensated or not. But there wasn't--Lincoln explicitly said upon his election he had no intention of interfering with slavery in states where it was legal. For him to try to "buy off" the fire-eaters with compensated emancipation would simply have confirmed their fevered paranoia that Lincoln was an abolitionist.
The Upper South would have seceded faster if they had seen Seward running the show--that's why he didn't get the GOP nomination in 1860 in the first place; he was perceived as too radical, a closet abolitionist. The Republicans went with Lincoln because they thought he'd be more reassuring--the moderate-conservative ex-Whig who was more interested in Henry Clay-style public works and industry protection than taking on the Slave Question. Not that it worked--the fire-eaters were so far gone that even the most conservative Republican would have provoked them.
And an 1861 "Iraq Attaq"? Really? The reason it would have been opposed by most northerners (not just Lincoln) is the same reason that people opposed the Iraq war--they could see the postwar mess that would result. In this case (assuming the US didn't get clobbered by Britain and France) America ends up with new territories in the Caribbean and Mexico--which will then be open to the expansion of more slavery.
the cultural marxists have always hated america and have always sought to destroy it. they have been working to undermine and destroy the US from within since 1950, and they began to move to destroy the US in earnest by 1965.
ReplyDeletewhile real americans were busy building america and fighting her enemies, america's domestic enemies built nothing and avoided military service, instead infiltrating it's universities, law system, and media outlets.
now they're all 60 years old and in the prime of their careers, and have situated themselves in many positions of political and legal power. cultural marxists, who never contributed a productive day of labor in their life, now control what millions of real americans spent 200 years building and creating.
the american cold war didn't just start recently. these people hated america in the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s. the current president is an excellent example of a do nothing, know nothing, cultural marxist lawyer who, without the enormous artificial legal apparatus constructed after world war 2, wouldn't have amounted to a hill of beans in a meritocratic, you-get-what-you-earn, not-what-you-steal-swindle-and-shake, united states.
his entire life, indeed, the entire adult lives of most of the democrat politicians at the national level, exist wholly within this artificial legal bubble, a bubble made possible only by real work done by real americans over the previous century, a bubble which insulates them almost entirely from the real world.
That is, for lack of better words, right on the money.
Lincoln has to be the most over-rated President in US history. Presidential historians like him, despite the fact that he presided over our bloodiest war, which exclusively killed our own people, because....well, little people are just grist for their mill, aren't they? What does Doris Kearns Goodwin care about the toll of human life and misery - she's too busy telling us how brave Lincoln was for sending other men to die from shot and steel and the shits, while he dined on pheasant in a mansion. The prominence of "Presidential Historians" - there is even a name for them now - betrays a slavish, toadying love of power for it's own sake, that is inimical to the notion of a Republic (which we of course no longer have) and that increasingly characterizes this nation. People like Goodwin are nothing more than c**ksuckers of the powerful - a crude, ugly term - but it is apt.
ReplyDeleteThis just shows how DWLs really don't care about blacks at all. Excuse me, African-Americans.
ReplyDeleteI didn't read BETTER OFF WITHOUT THEM but in it the author interviewed an AA civil rights hero who resides in the south.
The guy got very vehement when he spoke about splitting up the Union, because he knew damn well that if this happened, his goose would be cooked, and his people would be cut off from their source of power: the federal trough.
Meyerson's just taunting and jeering anyway, to see what kind of rise he can get from his opponents, and to play to his audience. Seems like he did his job. This country really is effed, there is no opposition to the cultural Marxists now.
His main response to his election in November 1860 was to hire a second secretary to help answer his increased mail from politicians seeking patronage.
ReplyDeleteWell, news flash: the biggest part of the day-to-day job description of the President of the United States in the antebellum (and pre-civil SERVICE) era was answering the mail--literally. Building up a patronage network of local postmasters was not only the way things were done, but the only an Administration got anything done. Lincoln's initial approach to the first wave of succession was not that misguided--his problem was that he hadn't even been on the ballot in 1860, so he figured getting the Republican Party on the ground in Dixie could help start to get more moderate factions there to prevail, and quietly walk back the succession resolutions once the initial mania started to cool down.
I didn't think I'd live to see the day that Steve Sailer endorsed an Invade-the-World/Invite-the-World War of Distraction, but maybe it doesn't count when it's a century before he was born.
I suppose it all depends on your attitude towards the multiple universe interpretation of quantum mechanics. If there really are two new universes created at every choice point in history, then everything in your speculation did in fact take place - just not in our time line. Lincoln took up Seward's suggestion and there was no Civil War.
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly why I generally don't care for alternate universe Sci-Fi stories. If anything is possible nothing is interesting. It's like Superman without Kryptonite.
In Newt Gingrich's Gettysburg alternate universe novels Lee takes Longstreet's advice and redeploys around the Yankees. This is in fact a common theme in Gettysburg speculation. In fact a simple examination of the maps will show that this would have been a very, very dangerous movement. Not bold, more like foolhardy.
But there are plenty of other choice points that could have turned the battle the other way. The most obvious was Ewell's failure to take Culp's Hill at the end of the first day. Lee's plan for the second day was also not executed because of the failure of his commanders. And finally on the third day Pickett's Charge actually succeeded - he did indeed reach the Union lines - but he was not supported by other units who had been ordered to do so and had to withdraw. Again Lee's commanders did not follow orders. But of course Sickles for the North was the most openly disobedient subordinate on the field.
You could read the whole battle as one of contending disobedient subordinates. Lee this time had three and Meade only one and so he lost. You can make the battle go any which way you want if you just hypothesize one little change.
That's why I don't have much taste for alternate history.
Albertosaurus
While the anti-Southern animus of the media class is pretty pathetic, Meyerson has a point that the Southern political and business classes have generally opposed building broad based, stable prosperity and preferred rent seeking and low wages.
ReplyDeleteWhile Meyerson pays up the racial angle (of course), white Americans shouldn't be too fond of a Southern elite that was happy to work whites to death through convict leasing. The history of the South is full of dubious treatment of the poor whites in turpentine factories, cotton mills, and cash crop farms, and the elite never cared to spend any money on building infrastructure or educational services that would have benefited working class whites.
With the exception of some of the Populists and New Deal democrats and their successors, the Southern elites have been a disaster for poor whites, even if they tried to cushion it a little by kicking blacks around even worse.
Noted economic historian Michael Lind gives a good overview of the Southern elites love of cheap labor, whatever its color, and how it continues today:
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/19/southern_poverty_pimps/
(Despite being posted at Salon, he takes a much more nationalistic and labor focus than standard liberals)
Anonymous:" But I have never really understood the canonization of a man who "saved the union" by ending federalism and carrying on a war that killed ~600,000 Americans."
ReplyDeleteOf course, one might just as easily observe that Jefferson Davis and Co were willing to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans so that they could keep on owning slaves....
Nothing particularly innovative about Seward's proposal, he was just continuing a long tradition of English warrior nationhood.
ReplyDeleteThe myth that both Americans and English people like to tell themselves is that they are both peaceful naturally isolationist people who hate being sucked into foreign wars. The truth is that England is a warrior nation at least since the Norman conquest. It spent from 1066 to 1558 fighting near constant wars in France, often times particularly under the reign of the three Edwards precisely to keep the aristocracy busy and out of the country. It was only after they were kicked out of France that England became a big time sea power with a global empire and only after it got kicked out of France that it actually set out to rule Ireland rather than claim some meaningless overlordship. It has been fighting wars basically continuously until 1960 when it pulled out of Africa. America is the same. It spent the first few hundred years fighting indians and mexicans and so forth to secure the North American continent and then turned its attention to the rest of the world. Personally I believe that what the civil war really was was the biggest Indian war of all. A war by the Federal government to secure 1/3 of the country, transforming a third world economy like the South into a first world one like the European transplant the was the Northern US.
Anyone who's seen KBurns' civil war program will remember Shelby Foote's explanation of America as transforming from an are to an is. That couldn't have been done without a war.
Buchanan: Worst president in American history.....Also, very probably the only homosexual president....
ReplyDeleteComrade Meyerson: "...and the all-round fruitcakery of the right-wing white South..."
ReplyDeleteAnd how do the FBI statistics fare this out. Are more crimes committed by those southern christmas baked goods, or by those Mana-from-heaven communities closer to Meyerson's own backyard.*
(*Metaphorically, since any self respecting NYT agitprop operative is going to have at least some distance between himself and those he loves so very, very much. A priesthood needs space apart so as to pray, contemplate, and write in earnest for the lumpenproles, yes?)
I'm amused on some level by the paleos of today who hate Lincoln, when the whole GOP platform of 1860 was basically their dreams in print:
ReplyDelete* No "free trade" con jobs like the South's resource extraction barons wanted. Protection for the American worker.
* Stricter immigration controls/scrutiny. The Republicans inherited most, if not all, of the "Know-Nothing" American Party rank-and-file from the 1850s. Plus the ban on further slave importation would be truly enforced.
* Sound money. You know derivatives and those fancy financial swaps and options? You think they were first invented on Wall Street in the 1980s? Try the late 1850s--the King Cotton bubble used all those junk instruments (and more shenanigans besides) in the countinghouses of New Orleans, Mobile, Charleston--and Copperhead New York.
* No overseas adventures. The Democrats of the antebellum years were all about "twisting the Lion's tail" (provoking Britain), trying to buy Cuba and Santo Domingo, and covertly supporting filibusters like William Walker in Central America. All of course to scoop up more blacks and more plantation grounds for the good ol' US of A.
* Getting Big Engineering Projects Done. Transcontinental railroads, western land surveys, canals, new shipyards, new roads, irrigation and mining. There would have been corruption, but sure as hell no minority set-asides or environmental impact statements.
* Affordable Family Formation. No western lands were to be sold or homesteaded to any but *actual* *settlers*--not FIRE elites in the big cities.
A rare contribution of the Muslim world to intellectual life was made by the Tunisian philosopher Ibn Khaldun in the 14th century. He developed a theory of the rise and decline of group loyalty.
ReplyDeleteSociological speculation is not a serious intellectual activity. The assabiya idea is trivial. Under other names it must have occured to millions of people before Ibn Khaldun. I like most of Steve's writing but I'm always annoyed when he takes ideas that are so simple that they cannot possibly have had single named originators and then pegs some famous guys' names on them. Malthus, Occam, Freud, Ibn Khaldun. OK, everyone else does that too. But it's still wrong.
Late Roman writers were convinced that Romans went soft, spoiled and selfish after years of opulent living. And some of them lamented the fact that formerly fierce barbarian tribes (Gauls for example) were being corrupted by Roman civilization in this way. Tacitus admired Germans explicitly because in his time that hadn't happened to them yet. They were still fierce.
We can associate sociological ideas with named people for the sake of convenience. But it's wrong to say, as Steve does about Ibn Khaldun, that any identifiable person could have "developed" any of them.
Seward's "so crazy it just might work" idea would have played right into the hands of the big money planters. They knew that slavery was probably not all that suited for the plains of Kansas or Nebraska--so they'd be happy to take a war-avoiding "compromise" that extended the 1820 line out to the California coast with the promise that slavery would be sacrosanct anywhere south of it. Because "anywhere" included lots of places that were good for plantation agriculture: the whole Caribbean basin, Mexico, and Central America (plus, in good time, Brazil and South America).
ReplyDeleteExcept that to get those places, they needed a foreign war. And that's just what Bill Seward has given them. Oh, and the planters got something else too: they know have shown that elections are meaningless--now anytime a presidential contest doesn't go their way they can nullify the result with the threat of succession.
Heck, Lincoln must have done a good job, because Karl Marx wrote him a fan letter. I love the way you can say all this stuff in such a cool, detached way. I always start ranting. Anyhow, linked and riffed on here, with an anime illustration, surprisingly enough:
ReplyDeletehttp://ex-army.blogspot.com/2013/07/lincolnolatry.html
"now they're all 60 years old"
ReplyDeleteIt is an interesting point that a lot of 1968-ers will be coming up to retirement now.
I think Mr Meyerson is being a little hypocritical over the racism of the South given that New York is trying to turn itself into the 21st century's first and only sundowner city while the New York media turn a blind eye.
ReplyDelete"What if Custer's outfit had Winchesters?"
ReplyDeleteWhat if Spartacus had a Piper Cub?
I can't remember where I read this, but the major reason the Union could not allow the Confederacy to exist was that the Union government depended on tariffs for funding. Southern cotton went out, and the Union taxed the European manufactured goods that returned.
ReplyDeleteThe Confederacy, with excellent ports and thousands of miles of indefensible borders with the Union, would have been a smuggler's paradise. The Union government would have lost tariff revenue, and Northern industry would have lost the market protection of the tariff. The Northern Establishment could not afford to let that happen.
The wealthy railroad attorney Lincoln was a tyrant, a killer and a bum. Hero? He is the greatest scar on the history of the United States. The story of the North's vicious war on the civilization population of the South has gone largely down the memory hole.
ReplyDeleteLincoln deliberately provoked the attack on Sumter, leaving the South with no choice, even while a peace seeking delegation from the South cooled its heels for days while Lincoln refused to meet them.
And all done for the Northern business interests with the "moral" air cover of the Puritan anti-abolitionists, whose real motive was a white-hot hatred of the aristocratic form of Southern society. The socially leveling Puritan impulse couldn't stand it. The abolitionists were essentially the multi-cultists of their day. No different in their colossal moral vanity and furious need to impose their will at any cost.
When I become supreme dictator of Amerika, my first act will be to pry off the Communist poem from the Statue of Liberty. My second will be to dynamite the Lincoln Memorial.
Steve, I never once read you mourning the death of 6 to 18 million Jews who died during the Holocaust. You never considered how that unique evil could've been preventeD!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wnd.com/2013/06/more-evidence-of-slain-u-s-ambassadors-secret-activities/
ReplyDeleteDisarm Christian American whites, arm Muslim radicals against a secular government.
"Steve, I never once read you mourning the death of 6 to 18 million Jews who died during the Holocaust. You never considered how that unique evil could've been preventeD!"
ReplyDeleteIt's foreign affairs, not America's business.
Sailer also hasn't written about how Ukrainians could have been saved from Stalin and Kaganovich, how 30 million Chinese could have saved from Mao during the great leap, how Cambodians could have been saved under Khmer Rouge rule, how Tutsis could have been saved in Rwanda and hoe Hutus could have been saved in Burundi.
And I don't recall Jews lifting a finger to do do anything to save all those people being killed by communism. As I recall, too many Jews were rooting or working for communism just when it was killing the greatest number of people.
Jews were more pro-commie when the killings were happening and less pro-commie when the killings had finally stopped. USSR in the 60s was repressive but no longer into mass murder. But by that time, USSR was anti-Zionist, so Jews began to hate it.
But when millions of Ukrainians were being killed, Jews loved the USSR.
ReplyDeleteYou're wrong, Steve.
"It has been fighting wars basically continuously until 1960..."
ReplyDeleteAnd that's when it all started to go wrong.
jody said:
ReplyDeletei imagine him like i imagine a 5 foot nothing, 100 and nothing pound asian nerd at duke, viciously taunting 6-10 africans on the kansas team from the sidelines. "Yeah we beat you in 1991 and we'll beat you again!"
.................................................................................
Thanks for the laugh, Jody.
-The Judean People's Front
Well, at least least Whiskey reliably spells "Buchanan" wrong, Pat or Prez.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
ReplyDelete"Steve, I never once read you mourning the death of 6 to 18 million Jews who died during the Holocaust. You never considered how that unique evil could've been preventeD!"
It's foreign affairs, not America's business.
Sailer also hasn't written about how Ukrainians could have been saved from Stalin and Kaganovich, how 30 million Chinese could have saved from Mao during the great leap, how Cambodians could have been saved under Khmer Rouge rule, how Tutsis could have been saved in Rwanda and hoe Hutus could have been saved in Burundi.
.................................................................................
Lalo's comment was an obvious parody of the laughably judeocentric view of world history held by some of my more obnoxious coethnics. Don't be such an Aspie.
-The Judean People's Front
MrAnon:"Lincoln has to be the most over-rated President in US history. Presidential historians like him, despite the fact that he presided over our bloodiest war, which exclusively killed our own people, because...."
ReplyDelete...And, of course, Jefferson Davis and his fellow plantation lords were willing to kill thousands of Americans for the right to own slaves
Mr Anon:"well, little people are just grist for their mill, aren't they?"
Yes, just like Blacks are just natural slaves who exist only to serve their masters
Mr Anon:" What does Doris Kearns Goodwin care about the toll of human life and misery - she's too busy telling us how brave Lincoln was for sending other men to die from shot and steel and the shits, while he dined on pheasant in a mansion."
Meanwhile, Jefferson Davis was dwelling in luxury....
Mr Anon:" The prominence of "Presidential Historians" - there is even a name for them now - betrays a slavish, toadying love of power for it's own sake, that is inimical to the notion of a Republic (which we of course no longer have) and that increasingly characterizes this nation. People like Goodwin are nothing more than c**ksuckers of the powerful - a crude, ugly term - but it is apt."
As opposed to, say, neo-Confederate lickspittles?
Steve--
ReplyDeleteThe Cold Civil War is frustrating for me to contemplate, but it's difficult to stop thinking about.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that one reason you and Derb find this topic compelling is that you're basically cosmopolitan, northern, blue-state SWPLs who vociferously support the Red/Southern/traditionalist side in this conflict.
I don't mean that as an insult--it takes one to know one, and it's exactly the position I find myself in. Probably some other folks here as well.
I'm not Southern or evangelical. I'm vaguely "diverse," although not in the kind of way that gets one money and prizes. All things being equal, I prefer the demographic prospects and cultural temperament of Iowa to those of Texas, to use a shorthand.
So I guess we're the "doughfaces" of the Cold Civil War.
I think it's interesting that the doughface president Franklin Pierce was from New Hampshire: it's just the sort of state that can and should be courted by our side in order to broaden our appeal in today's Cold Civil War.
Peterike:'The wealthy railroad attorney Lincoln was a tyrant, a killer and a bum."
ReplyDelete...And Jefferson Davis and Co were tyrants ruling over their fellow men
Peterike:' Hero? He is the greatest scar on the history of the United States."
As opposed to say, chattel slavery, the brutal subjugation of man by his fellow man?
Peterike:" The story of the North's vicious war on the civilization population of the South has gone largely down the memory hole."
What about the South's vicious war on Blacks? An endless struggle that entailed mass rape, brutal whippings, the selling of children, etc?
Peterike:"Lincoln deliberately provoked the attack on Sumter, leaving the South with no choice,"
They had a choice: Stay in the Union. They preferred to fight in the name of slavery...
Peterike:"And all done for the Northern business interests"
And the Confederacy was all in the name of Southern plantation overlords
Peterike:" with the "moral" air cover of the Puritan anti-abolitionists, whose real motive was a white-hot hatred of the aristocratic form of Southern society."
Aristocratic?Are you trying to be funny? The South was a herrenvolk democracy, not an aristocracy.
Peterike:" The socially leveling Puritan impulse couldn't stand it."
Yep, those same nasty Puritan levelers who wanted to have horrible things like universal literacy, good schools, representative government, etc
Peterike;" The abolitionists were essentially the multi-cultists of their day. No different in their colossal moral vanity and furious need to impose their will at any cost. "
And, of course, slave-owners were notorious for their lack of desire for domination...
Peterike:"When I become supreme dictator of Amerika, my first act will be to pry off the Communist poem from the Statue of Liberty. My second will be to dynamite the Lincoln Memorial."
Really, with a "K?"
By the way, I am, of course, sympathetic to Harold Meyerson's disdain for Cheap Labor policies.
ReplyDeleteYet, I also understand the traditional 20th century Southern opposition to high federal minimum wages that tended to price less productive Southern workers out of the market. Compromise on the minimum wage was a reasonable way for wealthier northern Americans to help their poorer southern American fellow citizens. And, indeed, the South did finally significantly catch up to the North in productivity. There are sacrifices that are reasonable to make for your fellow citizens that aren't reasonable to ask Americans to make for the entire rest of the world.
"I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that one reason you and Derb find this topic compelling is that you're basically cosmopolitan, northern, blue-state SWPLs who vociferously support the Red/Southern/traditionalist side in this conflict."
ReplyDeleteI'm a mid-Century Californian. I grew up on tales of the War in the Pacific, the nationalizing epic of California. My father worked in the Cold War military-industrial complex. I mostly like Americans and wish them (us) well. As the most noted Southern California philosopher asked, "Can't we all just get along?"
I'm a mid-Century Californian. I grew up on tales of the War in the Pacific, the nationalizing epic of California. My father worked in the Cold War military-industrial complex. I mostly like Americans and wish them (us) well. As the most noted Southern California philosopher asked, 'Can't we all just get along?'
ReplyDeleteRight. Just to be clear, my point was not to exploit the implicit subcultural and sectional divides of the Cold Civil War but to lament them as being divisive and beside the point.
Part of this is rancor is the natural stratification between the New Leftists and traditionalists, but it's purposefully being ramped up in the media to created rancor between Whites in a divide and conquer strategy. I now choose to view White leftist sell-outs as poor brainwashed souls who will come around to my way of thinking once they know what I know rather than as enemies. It does nothing to view my brethren with the natural disdain they elicit just because the cognitive dissonance has not caught smacked them upside the head yet.
ReplyDeleteBelow is an example of a series of exchanges posted in the comments section of a story that posted on Drudge a few weeks ago that illustrates how successful the divide and conquer strategy has worked:
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/dana-rohrabacher-john-boehner-speaker-92954.html
colonelcobwebs dixhandley • 16 hours ago
Hi, Dix.
I'm a white liberal heterosexual PRESBYTERIAN male. Married 30 years. 2 swell kids in college. I pay my taxes and earn 100K+ per year. Know why I'm selling you out?
Here's a hint:
I've never been fond of ignorant hicks (i.e., bullies with tiny brains and big mouths).
Kind regards.
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Chucky Greenwood colonelcobwebs • 16 hours ago
On display from colonelcobwebs: liberal “tolerance” for people who don't share their views, along with the inevitable name-calling and sprinkled with sarcasm at the end. Seen that post a thousand times.
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colonelcobwebs Chucky Greenwood • 16 hours ago
I tolerate those who tolerate me, Chuckster. Apart from that...I merely return the love and respect we progressives receive from those REAL AMURKINS on the right.
"the South did finally significantly catch up to the North in productivity."
ReplyDeleteBut in the way Mexico is doing now. By providing lower taxes, fewer regulations, and cheaper labor than in the North.
The innovative ideas in culture, finance, academia, science, technology, and etc are still coming from the 'blue states'.
Thus, even if south has lots of factories now, it's not the leading light of America but the manpower of America. Not much has changed in this sense.
Maybe the north should have just let the Confederacy have its independence? The war would have been avoided. This alone would probably have saved over a million lives. (I say over a million because the oft-quoted figure of 600,000 is way too low, and it doesn't include civilian losses, nor consider the drop in the birthrate during the war, etc). There were also at least 30,000 amputations in the armies of the north alone. The war also cost several billions of dollars (in 1860's prices too.) Also there would have been no black great migration. Who knows what Detroit would look like today SANS its black population? Also a diminished USA would not have intervened in the great war in 1917, which led to Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and WW2. Finally the CSA would have been a buffer between the USA and countries like Haiti, etc, and possibly even Mexico, if the southward line extended that far west. Border problems with Mexico would be the CSA's problem, not ours.
ReplyDeleteAnonydroid at 1:12 PM said: The innovative ideas in culture, finance, academia, science, technology, and etc are still coming from the 'blue states'.
ReplyDeleteHunsdon said: Are you claiming the innovative ideas in culture, finance and academia as bugs, or features?
"Hunsdon said: Are you claiming the innovative ideas in culture, finance and academia as bugs, or features?"
ReplyDeleteAs Bugs Bunnies.
I'm not sure Southerners would mind the fence. The most dynamic state economies in the country are in the South, and I doubt they appreciate people moving down in search of jobs and then voting like New Yorkers.
ReplyDeleteAnon @ 11:59 am, thank you for destroying that retard peterike. Peterike, take some time and read Lincoln's First Inaugural. The Confederate jackasses brought the war on themselves. Their choice, Lincoln's Constitutional duty to ass whoop them. Unfortunate that Grant and Uncle Billy couldn't have started the ass whooping in 1861, rather than 1864.
ReplyDelete"Anonymous said...
ReplyDelete...And, of course, Jefferson Davis and his fellow plantation lords were willing to kill thousands of Americans for the right to own slaves."
The difference was: the yankees were down south, killing southerners; the southerners weren't up north, killing northerners.
By the way, Lincoln was willing to kill thousands for the right of Kentuckians and West Virginians to continue to own slaves - as long as they remained in the union.
Just because the slave owning aristocracy of the Confederacy were wrong, doesn't mean that the Union was right.
Oh, also by the way, f**k you.
In the end, the South would have been worse off, if for no other reason than they would have been stuck with a large NAM population.
ReplyDelete"Stuck with"? I thought the Confeds wanted to keep on keeping slaves.
The black migration to the Northern cities wouldn't have happened. And the South, assuming they controlled the West up to New Mexico, Arizona, and the Colorado River, would serve as a buffer between the North and Mexico, absorbing most of the Hispanic immigrants.
Absorbing? You mean Mexcun slaves or demi-slaves? That might have happened. Amnesty for illegal Mexcuns in the Confederate Commonwealth? Not likely.
Wait, the demi- or semi-slaves part? That's sort of happening now, innit?
7/3/13, 3:04 AM
/////////////////////////
But there are plenty of other choice points that could have turned the battle the other way. The most obvious was Ewell's failure to take Culp's Hill at the end of the first day.
Lee failed to adjust to Ewell's failure.
Lee's plan for the second day was also not executed because of the failure of his commanders.
That's an old controversy. The oppposing argument is that Bobby Lee's plan for the second day was unrealistic.
Lee should have followed Longstreet's recommendation for second day: draw the Army of Northern Virginia up in a defensive position toward the Union left flank and roughly in between the Army of the Potomac and Washington.
If Lee had followed Longstreet's advice, history might have recorded Chamberlain's heroic but futile charge instead of Picket's.
And finally on the third day Pickett's Charge actually succeeded - he did indeed reach the Union lines -
With a small remnant of Picket's division
but he was not supported by other units ...
Who were also shot to pieces.
...
////////////////
It is an interesting point that a lot of 1968-ers will be coming up to retirement now.
Good,there is hope for the future.
/////////////////
"What if Custer's outfit had Winchesters?"
As economy measure, 7th Cavalry enlisted men were armed with single shot breach loading carbines instead of repeating rifles. Some of their Sioux opponents had Civil War surplus Henry repeaters.
///////////////////////
Aristocratic? Are you trying to be funny? The South was a herrenvolk democracy, not an aristocracy.
That's an old dichotomy: the Andrew J. or Nathan B.Forrest upcountry Scots-Irish versus the Tidewater pseudo-Cavalier wannabe aristos, of whom Sen. Lindsey or Linda? Graham is a living example.
The movie Gone With the Wind: slave owner Ashley "Graham" Wilkes upstairs in the mansion trying on Scarlet's gowns, while ragged Confederate soldiers march to defend Atlanta.
Question: In your value system, is a "herrenvolk democracy" a bug or a feature?
June 25, 1876: Was Custer Outgunned at Little Bighorn?
ReplyDeleteBy Tony LongEmail AuthorJune 25, 2009 | 12:00 am | Categories: 19th century, People, Warfare and Military
...
The Lakota and Cheyenne warriors did join the battle with a number of Henry and Spencer repeating rifles, which provided a higher rate of fire than the single-shot Springfield Model 1873 carbines carried by the cavalry troopers. But the Springfields — chosen in part by the Army Ordnance Board because a single-shot weapon would help conserve ammunition — were considered more accurate and had a greater range than the Henrys or Spencers. On the other hand, they were also prone to jamming, because the copper cartridges tended to expand in the breech as the rifle heated up during repeated use.
Historians continue to debate whether or not the guns played a key role in Custer’s defeat, or whether he was simply outgeneraled by chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.
...
June 25, 1876: Was Custer Outgunned at Little Bighorn?
Wikipedia on Henry and Winchester rifles: Benjamin Henry continued to work with Smith's cartridge concept, and perfected the much larger, more powerful .44 Henry rimfire. Henry also supervised the redesign of the rifle to use the new ammunition, retaining only the general form of the breech mechanism and the tubular magazine. This became the Henry rifle of 1860, which was manufactured by the New Haven Arms Company, and used in considerable numbers by certain Union army units in the American Civil War. ...
After the war, Oliver Winchester renamed New Haven Arms the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. The company modified and improved the basic design of the Henry rifle, creating the first Winchester rifle: the Model 1866. ...
////////////////
Happy 4th of July! Fly the flag.
The Confederate jackasses brought the war on themselves.
ReplyDeleteYes, southerners forced the imperialist yankees to invade. Yankees had no choice but to mount a massive war of aggression, the poor, no-choice-havin' sods. Yankees were forced to turn blacks loose on America, the poor dears. And oppress the south for years after the war with violence and corruption.
I'm pretty sure the southerners hated the yankees for their freedoms, too.
Mr Anon:"The difference was: the yankees were down south, killing southerners; the southerners weren't up north, killing northerners."
ReplyDeleteUnion troops killed Confederate troops because the Southern elite wouldn't stay in the Union. Hence, every Confederate death was the Southern elite's fault. They were willing to see men die in the name of slavery.
Mr Anon:"By the way, Lincoln was willing to kill thousands for the right of Kentuckians and West Virginians to continue to own slaves -"
MMM, how do you figure that?I must have missed the part where the South was threatening to emancipate the slaves in Kentucky and West Virginia if they stayed in the Union...
Mr Anon:" as long as they remained in the union."
Well, you got that part right;Lincoln did want them to stay in the Union...
Mr Anon:"Just because the slave owning aristocracy of the Confederacy were wrong, doesn't mean that the Union was right."
1. They were not aristos, dear boy. Subtract the tidewater elite, and you are left with a bunch of middle-class types at best. Money alone does not make one an aristo. One also needs breeding and class..
2. MMMM, well it certainly makes the Union less wrong..
Mr Anon:"Oh, also by the way, f**k you."
Eloquent to the last....What was it that I said about proper breeding being necessary to an aristocracy?
Jefferson Davis's Revenge: The Great Migration. One of the most spectacular cases of blowback in our nation's history.
ReplyDeleteThe burning of Atlanta doesn't hold a candle to what has happened to Detroit, Newark, Philly, Baltimore, Chicago, etc.
The Union is still reaping that particular whirlwind... with no end in sight.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteUnion troops killed Confederate troops because the Southern elite wouldn't stay in the Union."
Who says they were obligated to remain in the Union? The nation was founded in an act of secession from the British Empire. The North had no right to say "this far, but no farther"
"MMM, how do you figure that?I must have missed the part where the South was threatening to emancipate the slaves in Kentucky and West Virginia if they stayed in the Union..."
Your knowledge of even rudimentary American history is as lacking as your snarky, ignorant posts would suggest. The Emancipation Proclamation did not - pointedly DID NOT - free the slaves in those slave states which stayed with the Union.
""Oh, also by the way, f**k you."
Eloquent to the last....What was it that I said about proper breeding being necessary to an aristocracy?"
What is ineloquent about "f**k you"? A good four-letter anglo-saxon word that concisely conveys its point, it is as eloquent a reply as a snarky, stupid little f**k like you deserves.
ReplyDeleteMr Anon;"Who says they were obligated to remain in the Union?"
The Constitution. There is no secession clause in it.
Mr Anon:" The nation was founded in an act of secession from the British Empire."
Yes, and that secession was a colossally bad idea.Think how much better the world would be if the USA had remained part of the British Empire.
Mr Anon:" The North had no right to say "this far, but no farther""
Really? Why not? The American colonies had far more legitimate grounds for secession, seeing as how they had no representation in Parliament. The South, in contrast, was not revolting in the name of political rights. they were revolting in the name of despotism and tyranny. They were revolting because they wanted to protect the right to own people....
Mr Anon;"Your knowledge of even rudimentary American history is as lacking as your snarky, ignorant posts would suggest. The Emancipation Proclamation did not - pointedly DID NOT - free the slaves in those slave states which stayed with the Union."
Oh, I'm quite aware of what the Emancipation Proclamation did, dear boy. Lincoln freed the slaves where he could (it would have been a bit beyond his war powers to free slaves in states that were not in rebellion). Everyone at the time, however, knew what the Proclamation meant. Slavery's days were numbered.
Mr Anon:"What is ineloquent about "f**k you"? A good four-letter anglo-saxon word that concisely conveys its point, it is as eloquent a reply as a snarky, stupid little f**k like you deserves."
Well, at the very least it does indicate that the language of neo-confederates is as vulgar as their politics...
Lalo said...
ReplyDeleteSteve, I never once read you mourning the death of 6 to 18 million Jews who died during the Holocaust. You never considered how that unique evil could've been preventeD!
You must discuss the Jews to their satisfaction. Then maybe, it's okay to think about something else.
A unique evil? Then it isn't worth thinking much about. Not like there could be anything to learn and apply to other situations.
Of course, black slaves were pretty much incapable of much agency. That's parta bein a slave. European Jews on the other had considerable control over their own lives, and others' lives.
Any reasonable 'how the holocaust could have been prevented' would have to be based on why it happened. That'd be too waahnti-Semitic for you, I'm sure.
Oh yeah, how'd you come up with the 18 million Jewish people murdered? Is there some evil anti-Semitic conspiracy to fool us into thinking the 6 million figure is right?
Of course, the South could just have not seceded, but I suppose that owning human property was just too exciting an idea...
ReplyDeleteOf course, the "yoo owned people (that we delivered!)" thing is a perfect justification for...invading people so you can own them.
Yankees are such sissified maniacs. Can't come right out and be bloodthirsty and honest about it. They've got to be FIGHTIN' FOR GAWD!
Like they really invaded to end slavery, and but for slavery, would've stayed home. LOL.
...And, of course, the Southerners were forced to own Blacks as chattel slaves, I suppose...
Yeah, Yankees are such good friends to the negro. That's why they're still more segregated than the south.
....As, say, opposed to the violence that the Southerners dealt out to their human property?It's also pretty funny to see someone describing Reconstruction as oppression....Seeing as how millions of Blacks were oppressed by Southerners in the most brutal fashion imaginable...
Reconstruction was oppression. And thanks for describing the pitiful limits of your imagination.
.... well they did envy their book learning...
And their peaceful, Christ-like, freedom-loving ways, no doubt.
Live and let live, that's the Yankee motto.
Union troops killed Confederate troops because the Southern elite wouldn't stay in the Union. Hence, every Confederate death was the Southern elite's fault. They were willing to see men die in the name of slavery.
I love sociopaths, they just can't help but out themselves:
"This here beatin is your fault, darlin. You've showed yourself willing to take a beating, rather than know your place and still your tongue."
We're gonna burn the south to save it! We have to invade the south in the name of freedom! We have to crush the very ideas of secession, independence, and self-determination, so that freedom and justice may ring out!
ReplyDeleteThey'll welcome us with flowers and candy, etc. Good to know the "mine eyes have seen the glory" spirit of bloodlust ain't dead yet.
No different in their colossal moral vanity and furious need to impose their will at any cost.
ReplyDeleteThe Yankee spirit in a nutshell.
ReplyDeleteSvigor;"Of course, the "yoo owned people (that we delivered!)" thing is a perfect justification for...invading people so you can own them."
Of course, dear boy, the position of a White man in the South in 1868 was exactly equivalent to being a slave....
Svigor:"Yankees are such sissified maniacs. Can't come right out and be bloodthirsty and honest about it. They've got to be FIGHTIN' FOR GAWD!"
As opposed to the Confederates, who needed to spill a lot of obfuscating ink about states' rights as cover for their real reason for fighting (owning people)?
Svigor;"Like they really invaded to end slavery, and but for slavery, would've stayed home. LOL."
MMMM, Union invades the South to end rebellion;the South was rebelling because of slavery...
Svigor:"Yeah, Yankees are such good friends to the negro."
"Negro?" How old are you?
Svigor:" That's why they're still more segregated than the south."
MMMM, which is worse, de facto segregation or chattel slavery?I'll go out on a limb and say slavery.
Svigor:"Reconstruction was oppression. And thanks for describing the pitiful limits of your imagination."
Yeah, I suppose that not being able to own people was pretty oppressive to people with a real taste for it...
Svigor:"And their peaceful, Christ-like, freedom-loving ways, no doubt."
Well, certainly more freedom-loving than the South, you know, what with the whole owning millions of people thing...
Svigor:"Live and let live, that's the Yankee motto."
MMMM, certainly wasn't the Southern motto, what with the Fugitive Slave Law (talk about violating
States' Rights), their desire to bring back the Atlantic Slave trade, etc...
Svigor:"I love sociopaths, they just can't help but out themselves:
"This here beatin is your fault, darlin. You've showed yourself willing to take a beating, rather than know your place and still your tongue."
MMMM, words that many a Black slave heard as his Southern master prepared to whip him...
Svigor:"I love sociopaths, they just can't help but out themselves:
ReplyDelete"This here beatin is your fault, darlin. You've showed yourself willing to take a beating, rather than know your place and still your tongue.""
Odd posting, considering Thomas Jefferson's thoughts on the deleterious effects of owning slaves:
"The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal.
This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to his worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. " (Thomas Jefferson"
Seems that Jefferson thought that owning slaves had a corrupting effect on morals...
Svigor:"We're gonna burn the south to save it! We have to invade the south in the name of freedom! We have to crush the very ideas of secession, independence, and self-determination, so that freedom and justice may ring out!"
ReplyDeletethe South as embodying ideas of "independence" and "self-determination?"Remind me again, how did the slaves vote on the issue of secession?
Svigor:"They'll welcome us with flowers and candy, etc."
MMMM, the slaves in the South certainly seemed to be rather pleased by the end of the whole slavery business...But, then again, they were rather biased, seeing as how they were on the receiving end of the whip....
Svigor:" Good to know the "mine eyes have seen the glory" spirit of bloodlust ain't dead yet."
...And it's always good to know that neo-confederate maudlin self-righteousness is still flourishing ("We just wanted to own people. Was that so bad?").
Svigor:"The Yankee spirit in a nutshell."
ReplyDeleteMMMM, what would be the Southern spirit in a nutshell?The inalienable right to own people , I suppose.
Seems that Jefferson thought that owning slaves had a corrupting effect on morals...
ReplyDeleteSo why didn't Tom J. free his slaves?
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteThe Constitution. There is no secession clause in it."
There does not need to be. It is a limit on the federal government, not on the states. Read the 10th amendment, or get someone smarter than you to read it to you.
"Yes, and that secession was a colossally bad idea."
Then why are you gassing on about preserving the Union.
"Think how much better the world would be if the USA had remained part of the British Empire."
Oh yes, much better. Boys from Ohio, Vermont, and Georgia could then have taken part in the civilizing act of blowing Indians from guns during the Sepoy rebellion, and drunk their fair share of glory in being mowed down by machineguns at the Somme under the masterful leadership of General Haig.
"I'm quite aware of what the Emancipation Proclamation did, dear boy."
Your previous post indicated that you do not. And I am not your "dear boy", you stupid prick.
"Well, at the very least it does indicate that the language of neo-confederates is as vulgar as their politics..."
The only think vulgar here is your third-grade comic-book understanding of American history. One need not be a neo-confederate, as indeed I am not, to realize that the actions of the North were neither legal, nor sensible. And what of the slavery that the North engaged in during their conduct of the war: that kind of slavery we call "The Draft", whereby tens of thousands of men were impressed in an army (often generaled by idiots and fools who just got them needlessly killed) in order to fight - and die - in a cause they cared not a whit about.
And by the way - you simpering asshat - it is not vulgar to call out a d**k for being a d**k. It is just a simple truth, which your mother obviously never told you.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteMMMM, words that many a Black slave heard as his Southern master prepared to whip him..."
And some of those southern masters were themselves black. Actually, I believe that the first legal slave owner in the British colonies was a black man. Perhaps these facts were omitted from the back of the cereal box from which you received your schooling in history.
Svigor:"We're gonna burn the south to save it! We have to invade the south in the name of freedom! We have to crush the very ideas of secession, independence, and self-determination, so that freedom and justice may ring out!"
ReplyDeletethe South as embodying ideas of "independence" and "self-determination?"Remind me again, how did the slaves vote on the issue of secession?
We're agreeing, bub. If we examine a country and find that it doesn't hold with Yankee values, it deserves to be invaded and put to the sword. Fortunately, no country holds with Yankee values, so Yankees always have a deserving target for their bloodlust.
Svigor:"They'll welcome us with flowers and candy, etc."
MMMM, the slaves in the South certainly seemed to be rather pleased by the end of the whole slavery business...But, then again, they were rather biased, seeing as how they were on the receiving end of the whip....
And the women and faggots in Afghanistan and Iraq, the capitalists in Vietnam and Korea, etc. Gawd's always all-in for some good old fashioned Yankee bloodlust.
...And it's always good to know that neo-confederate maudlin self-righteousness is still flourishing ("We just wanted to own people. Was that so bad?").
Everybody needs a good killin' for Gawd. Nope, not hard at all.
MMMM, what would be the Southern spirit in a nutshell?The inalienable right to own people , I suppose.
The Yankee spirit in another nutshell: the inalienable right to invade - there's always a righteous cause from Gawd!
Mine eyes have seen the goriness inspired by the Lord!
They still have slavery in Africa. But, no Yankee invasions.
ReplyDeleteNothing to steal, I suppose.
You'll have to excuse me, I'm getting all misty-eyed at the thought of those saintly Yankees, invadin' and butcherin' and burnin' in an altruistic fever of bloodlust; nothing to gain, just doin' it for the love of the negroes (who they sold to the southerners in the first place, and who they still segregate worse than the modern south).
ReplyDeleteYep, southerners fought to defend slavery. Not to defend their homes from the rampaging Yankee lunatics who invaded their land, or anything. Makes perfect sense. If there'd been no slavery, obviously the southerners would've just rolled over for the Yankee invasion. Makes perfect sense; about as much sense as the idea that altruistic, saintly Yankees would never have invaded, if not for their holy crusade to end slavery and free their BFFs, the negros.
ReplyDeleteExhibit A of the Yankee mentality is its defenders.
Via WIKIPEDIA:
ReplyDelete"The Civil War sentiments of East Tennessee were among the most complex of any region in the nation. Whig support ran high in East Tennessee (especially in Knox and surrounding counties) in the years leading up to the war, as many people in the region were suspicious of the aristocratic Southern planter class that dominated the Southern Democratic party and most southern state legislatures. When Tennessee voted on a referendum calling for secession in February 1861, more than 80% of East Tennesseans voted against it, including majorities in every county except Sullivan and Meigs. In June 1861, nearly 70% of East Tennesseans voted against the Ordinance of Secession (which succeeded statewide), although along with Sullivan and Meigs, there were pro-secession majorities in Monroe, Rhea, Sequatchie, and Polk counties.[20] There were also pro-secession majorities within the cities of Knoxville and Chattanooga, although these cities' respective counties voted decisively against secession.[19][21]
In June 1861, the pro-Unionist East Tennessee Convention met in Greeneville, where it drafted a petition to the Tennessee state legislature demanding that East Tennessee be allowed to form a separate Union-aligned state.[20] The legislature rejected the petition, however, and Tennessee Governor Isham Harris ordered Confederate troops to occupy East Tennessee. Senator Andrew Johnson and Congressman Horace Maynard— who in spite of being from a Confederate state retained their seats in Congress— continuously pressed President Abraham Lincoln to send troops into East Tennessee, and Lincoln subsequently made the liberation of East Tennessee a top priority. Knoxville Whig editor William "Parson" Brownlow, who had been one of slavery's most outspoken defenders, attacked secessionism with equal fervor, and embarked on a speaking tour of the Northern states to rally support for East Tennessee.[22] Union troops didn't secure Knoxville until late 1863, however, and Chattanooga was only secured after a series of bloody campaigns late in the same year."
Wait, and here I thought that the Confederacy was devoted to the idea of secession and self-determination....
Some thoughts from the redoubtable Gregory Cochran on the Civil War:
ReplyDelete"The facts don’t have anything to do with whether an event was “justified”. The notion that slaves were to any significant degree Confederate nationalists is nonsense. The claim that blacks, to any significant degree, fought voluntarily for the Confederacy, is also false. I know all about the internal debate in the Confederacy on the subject – Patrick Cleburne, Lee, etc. It never happened.
As for the argument that the North had to keep the South from seceding because it needed the money from the Tariff – I guess that explains why the South had no trouble financing the war, while the North went bankrupt. Except that of course it was the other way around. The North had other ways to raise money, capisce?
Any state that casually allowed at-will secession would end up like the Holy Roman Empire, or disintegrate. Certainly the Confederacy didn’t: they used force to keep East Tennessee in, tried to get back West Virginia, sat on the hillbillies in Arkansas that wanted no part of the war, sent out troops to enforce the draft among the Germans in the Texas hill country, who were too literate to be true Southerners.
Of course the primary motivation in the North, stronger than antislavery (although that was significant) was support for Union. People didn’t want a rival significant state on the continent, since that would of course mean repeated wars, importation of European struggles, etc – as it had before, when the French still mattered.
The notion that the Civil War initiated an all-powerful centralized state (which I hear fairly often) is something that only an idiot or libertarian (I repeat myself) could take seriously. After the war, the average guy’s interaction with the Feds was largely confined to the Post Office. Forexample, in 1900, the Federal cut of GNP was 3% – which includes the Navy and the guerrilla war in the Philippines.
Slaves produced more economic value than they consumed – quite a bit more. Otherwise, why would anyone have bothered to buy slaves? After the War of the Rebellion, they got to keep a good deal more of that value for themselves. Their standard of living went up. Labor income was about the same for blacks and whites, after the war. They also didn’t have that annoying thing where other people got to sell their children.
There are myths about the Civil War generated in support of other ideological positions – like the claim that enlisted blacks made good soldiers, which Sherman, who had a certain claim to expertise, didn’t buy. But southern sympathizers have the harder job. Reminds me of a long-ago closed-list discussion in which I had to point out the chivalrous way in which the Confederate routinely executed captured black soldiers and their white officers."
Amen to all those refuting this "it's the Yankees" fault nonsense. Read Andrew Jackson's opinions on secession. Ask yourself why there was a Constitutional Union Party in the South. See how much support John Bell received in the border states. The cotton states caused the Civil War. Lincoln wasn't even on the ballot in 10 states. The poor Confederacy lost an election and weren't going to accept the results. As for Yankee blood lust, fighting was rather one sided in the East with Lincoln's generals quite overcautious until Grant took charge. The Confederates would have invaded Union states more often if numbers had permitted. Confederate raiders and guerillas were downright evil people that I can't find comparable versions on the Union side. Confederate states were refusing to send Jeff Davis troops and crops after a few years and even preferring to trade with Yankees to stay afloat. Some dedication to The Cause! As for Sherman's March, imagine a C in Chief fighting a war to defeat the opposition.
ReplyDelete"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteWait, and here I thought that the Confederacy was devoted to the idea of secession and self-determination...."
Again, you are behaving like an idiot. I have not said the South is blameless, or that slavery was righteous. I have only claimed that the North was no less blameless than was the South. 600,000 men died - died - in order to end slavery, which would inevitably have ended anyway. Most of them did not want to die for a people and a cause for which they felt no sympathy.
There is lots of injustice in the world, in our present age. Would you be willing to die to end it? Not some abstract other. YOU. If some great and worthy prince, one of the corrupt and hypocritical scoundrels who now govern us, forced you to join the army under pain of imprisonment or execution, and sent you off somewhere to fight for the liberation of some alien people - sent you off to a war where you would very likely catch a bug and shit yourself to death, or be ripped apart into little fragments of flesh - would you go? Would it be right to send you to your death - not someone else, mind you, but YOU.
Don't lecture us, you little d**khead.
Mr Anon:"Again, you are behaving like an idiot. I have not said the South is blameless, or that slavery was righteous. I have only claimed that the North was no less blameless than was the South."
ReplyDeleteWhich is completely wrong.The South caused the Civil War by attempting to illegally secede. No secession, no war.
Mr anon;" 600,000 men died - died - in order to end slavery, which would inevitably have ended anyway."
Which makes the South's willingness to kill for slavery seem all the more insane...
Mr anon:" Most of them did not want to die for a people and a cause for which they felt no sympathy."
MMMM, read the letters written by Union soldiers. Many of them seem to have had a rather keen sense of what was at risk in the war...
Mr Anon:"There is lots of injustice in the world, in our present age. Would you be willing to die to end it?"
Only if the people creating the injustice (cf the Southern secessionist slave owners)make me...
Mr Anon;" Not some abstract other. YOU. If some great and worthy prince, one of the corrupt and hypocritical scoundrels"
An amusing counterfactual. Of course, compared to scum like George W. Bush, Lincoln was a veritable god among men...
Mr Anon:" who now govern us, forced you to join the army under pain of imprisonment or execution, and sent you off somewhere to fight for the liberation of some alien people - "
MMMM, your counterfactual is a tad off, dear boy. The Union army was not sent off to Russia to liberate the surfs; they were sent out to keep the Union together and (ultimately) to end slavery.It was a very intimate affair...
Mr anon:"sent you off to a war where you would very likely catch a bug and shit yourself to death, or be ripped apart into little fragments of flesh - would you go?"
You mean, of my own will? Men do not know their mettle until it is tested.
Mr Anon;" Would it be right to send you to your death - not someone else, mind you, but YOU."
Are you asking if I believe in conscription? Yes, I do. Indeed, one complaint that I have with Civil War Draft policy is that it allowed men to buy their way out. Conscription should have been universal.
Mr Anon:"Don't lecture us, you little d**khead."
Ah, and the eloquence just never ends. Perhaps you should read Bierce and Wilde. Perhaps then your insults would have the saving grace of wit.
Svigor:"Yep, southerners fought to defend slavery."
ReplyDeleteMMM, Alexander Stephens certainly seemed to think that secession was about slavery...For that matter, South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas, in their declaration of causes, all named slavery as a central factor...
Svigor:" Not to defend their homes from the rampaging Yankee lunatics who invaded their land, or anything."
MMM, I tend to imagine that the Union army saw the land as being part of America....
Svigor:" Makes perfect sense. If there'd been no slavery, obviously the southerners would've just rolled over for the Yankee invasion."
If there had been no slavery, there would have been no secession...So, no slavery, no Civil War...
Svigor:" Makes perfect sense; about as much sense as the idea that altruistic, saintly Yankees would never have invaded, if not for their holy crusade to end slavery and free their BFFs, the negros."
The Union would never have attacked if the South had not seceded. Again, dear boy, the cause of the war rests entirely with the South...
Svigor:"Exhibit A of the Yankee mentality is its defenders."
MMMM, I don't know, Sviggy. Your refusal to recognize the centrality of slavery (cf your weird idea that the Civil War would still have happened even if slavery did not exist) seems to indicate that something is a tad wonky about the Southern mentality.
svigor:"You'll have to excuse me, I'm getting all misty-eyed at the thought of those saintly Yankees, invadin' and butcherin' and burnin' in an altruistic fever of bloodlust;"
ReplyDeleteAs, say, opposed to the Quaker-like South.....
Svigor:" nothing to gain,"
MMMM, the integrity of the Republic and the end of the moral stain of slavery sound like rather big gains to me...
Svigor: just doin' it for the love of the negroes (who they sold to the southerners in the first place,"
MMMM, what about the slave-merchants in Liverpool and Bristol? For that matter, did slave-dealers hold guns to the heads of Southerners ("Buy this slave or else!")?Not to mention the fact that the South wanted to start-up the Atlantic slave trade again.
Svigor:" and who they still segregate worse than the modern south)."
MMMM, once again, I'll go out on a limb and say that chattel slavery is just a teensy bit worse than de facto segregation. Perhaps you feel differently, dear boy.
svigor:"They still have slavery in Africa. But, no Yankee invasions.
ReplyDeleteNothing to steal, I suppose."
Might have something to do with Africa not being part of the USA, dear boy. Remember, no secession, no Civil War.
David Davenport:"So why didn't Tom J. free his slaves?"
ReplyDeleteHypocrisy. He understood the foulness of the system, but he could not imagine a way out that would not affect his elegant lifestyle.
ReplyDeleteSvigor:"We're agreeing, bub. If we examine a country and find that it doesn't hold with Yankee values, it deserves to be invaded and put to the sword."
MMMM, must I once again invoke the dread spectre of secession? I suppose that I must. No secession, no Civil War.I know that neo-confeds like to imagine that somehow Lincoln was going to send in the troops even if the South stayed in the Union, but that is an opium dream..
svigor:" Fortunately, no country holds with Yankee values, so Yankees always have a deserving target for their bloodlust."
MMMM, seems to me that Southerners know a thing or two about bloodlust (cf several million whipped Black slaves....)
Svigor:"And the women and faggots in Afghanistan and Iraq,"
MMMM, I see that the weakness of the neo-confederate position is prompting you to move far afield, eh?Remind me again, when were Iraq and Afghanistan part of the USA?When did they illegally attempt to secede?
" the capitalists in Vietnam and Korea, etc. Gawd's always all-in for some good old fashioned Yankee bloodlust."
It's always fascinating to see how far afield neo-confeds will wander in their attempt to avoid talking about secession and slavery....Incidentally, when did LBJ and Harry Truman turn into Yankees?
Svigor:"Everybody needs a good killin' for Gawd. Nope, not hard at all."
MMM, is that your attempt to depict a New England accent? Reads weirdly Southern.As for the "Gawd" business, I seem to recall reading quite a few Southern ministers who defended the "righteousness" of slavery....
Svigor:"The Yankee spirit in another nutshell: the inalienable right to invade - there's always a righteous cause from Gawd!"
MMMM, this could be fun, swapping tags that best describe the mentality of a region. Let's see...The Southern spirit: God has granted the White man the inalienable right to own Black people.
Svigor;"Mine eyes have seen the goriness inspired by the Lord!"
MMM, visionary politics are not really in my line, but one could certainly note how "goriness" permeated Southern society...
ReplyDeleteMr Anon:"And some of those southern masters were themselves black. Actually, I believe that the first legal slave owner in the British colonies was a black man. Perhaps these facts were omitted from the back of the cereal box from which you received your schooling in history."
Are you seriously going to argue that chattel slavery in the American South was a racially neutral enterprise?
Mr Anon:"There does not need to be. It is a limit on the federal government, not on the states. Read the 10th amendment, or get someone smarter than you to read it to you."
ReplyDeleteMMMM, the bulk of constitutional scholars beg to differ, dear boy. For that matter, one of the key objections of the Anti-Federalists during the ratification of the Constitution was over the lack of a right to secession in the document.
Svigor;"Then why are you gassing on about preserving the Union."
Because preserving the Union is the second best thing to union with Britain.
Mr Anon:"Oh yes, much better. Boys from Ohio, Vermont, and Georgia could then have taken part in the civilizing act of blowing Indians from guns during the Sepoy rebellion,"
MMMM, seeing as how it happened anyway, what difference would it have made? It's not as though the independent USA had clean hands in the 19th century (cf Indian Removal policy). For that matter, had the USA been part of Britain, Slavery might have ended without war in the 1830s when Britain abolished slavery.At least, I like to think that the South was not so insane as to defy a British empire that also encompassed the bulk of North America..
Mr Anon:" and drunk their fair share of glory in being mowed down by machineguns at the Somme under the masterful leadership of General Haig."
MMM, I tend to think that the Germans would have been somewhat less inclined to go up against a British Empire that included the USA.Hence, without an American Revolution, there might have been no First World War.
Svigor:"Your previous post indicated that you do not."
REally? How so? Your post stated that Union troops were defending slavery in Kentucky, as the Emancipation Proclamation did not cover states in the Union. Such an assertion would only make sense if the Confederacy were threatening to Emancipate slaves in Kentucky. Unless, of course, you were simply being silly and attempting to argue that Lincoln should have let the South seize Kentucky as a way to emancipate the slaves in that state. Frankly, that would be taking us into cloudcoockooland.
Svigor:" And I am not your "dear boy", you stupid prick."
Whatever you say, sweetie (or would you prefer darling?)
Svigor:"The only think vulgar here is your third-grade comic-book understanding of American history."
MMMM....there are third-grade comic books on American history?
Mr Anon:" One need not be a neo-confederate, as indeed I am not, to realize that the actions of the North were neither legal, nor sensible."
Actually, they were both legal and sensible (on the sensible front, kindly read Mr Cochran's comments on what happens to states that allow secession in a willy-nilly fashion)
ReplyDeleteMr Anon:" And what of the slavery that the North engaged in during their conduct of the war: that kind of slavery we call "The Draft","
MMMM, how is the Union draft not like chattel slavery? Let me count the ways...1. Conscription was of limited duration (one was not drafted for life)2. Drafted soldiers' children were not born into military servitude . 3.Once the soldiers were of age, they could cast votes (Secretary of War Stanton was quite adept at making sure that as many Union soldiers as possible could cast votes)4. They were part of the military justice system (Slaves would have been overjoyed if they had had something comparable), etc.Oh, one might also add that the Confederacy also had the draft...
Mr Anon:" whereby tens of thousands of men were impressed in an army (often generaled by idiots and fools who just got them needlessly killed) in order to fight - and die - in a cause they cared not a whit about."
MMMM, need to do a bit more reading of Union soldiers' letters, darling.Many of them were quiet invested in the cause for which they fought.
Mr Anon:"And by the way - you simpering"
I do my best, sweetie.
Mr Anon:" asshat"
Of all our current vulgarisms, "asshat" must surely be the most inane.
Mr Anon:" - it is not vulgar to call out a d**k for being a d**k."
If it's not vulgar, then why the asterisks, sweetie?
Mr Anon:" It is just a simple truth, which your mother obviously never told you."
Well, my mother was a very refined woman.The nearest thing to a vulgarism that she ever uttered in my presence was the occasional "damn."
Svigor:"And the women and faggots in Afghanistan and Iraq"
ReplyDeleteI though that you blamed American intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan on the Jews?Have you now changed your mind on the matter?Are the Yankee WASPS pulling the Jews' strings?Or is this just a rhetorical ploy?
Svigor:"Yankee lunatics"
ReplyDeleteMMMM, that's an odd phrase, dear boy, especially when one bears in mind the Southern mindset. After all, illegally seceding from the USA and attempting to establish an independent country in the name of slavery certainly seems rather lunatic....
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteWhich is completely wrong.The South caused the Civil War by attempting to illegally secede. No secession, no war."
Cite the law as of 1860 that made secession "illegal", as you put it. You can't.
"Which makes the South's willingness to kill for slavery seem all the more insane..."
Most southerners weren't fighting for slavery; they were fighting an enemy who had invaded their land.
"MMMM, read the letters written by Union soldiers. Many of them seem to have had a rather keen sense of what was at risk in the war..."
Sure, a handful of abolitionists. How many? Can you quantify that? That is a highly selective sample - what I would expect from a decietful louse like you.
"Only if the people creating the injustice (cf the Southern secessionist slave owners)make me..."
That's a dodge. Are you willing to put YOUR life on the line or not. My guess is no. Which makes you a hypocrite, in addition to being a creepy little coward.
"MMMM, your counterfactual is a tad off, dear boy. The Union army was not sent off to Russia to liberate the surfs; they were sent out to keep the Union together and (ultimately) to end slavery.It was a very intimate affair..."
"The surfs"? You mean, like the Beach Boys? What are you - sixteen years old - or are you just stupid?
"Are you asking if I believe in conscription? Yes, I do."
So, you also believe in slavery.
"Ah, and the eloquence just never ends. Perhaps you should read Bierce and Wilde. Perhaps then your insults would have the saving grace of wit."
A d**khead is all you are. A d**khead is all you deserve to be called.
"Whatever you say, sweetie (or would you prefer darling?)"
Or, perhaps I should call you a simpering faggot. You write like one, you loathesome piece of filth.
Some interesting info from Macpherson on how the South dominated the federal government during the period 1789-1861:
ReplyDelete"During forty-nine of the seventy-two years from 1789 to 1861, the presidents of the United States were Southerners--all of them slaveholders. The only presidents to be reelected were slaveholders. Two-thirds of the Speakers of the House, chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee, and presidents pro tem of the Senate were Southerners. At all times before 1861, a majority of Supreme Court justices were Southerners....
The dominant political party most of the time from 1800 to 1860 was the Democratic Republican Party under the Virginia dynasty of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, which metamorphosed into the Democratic Party under the Tennessean Andrew Jackson. Southerners controlled this party and used that leverage to control Congress and the presidency. In 1828 and 1832 Jackson won 70 percent of the popular vote for president in the slave states and only 50 percent in the free states...
As an example of how such leverage could translate into a Slave Power, six of the eight Supreme Court justices appointed by Jackson and his handpicked successor were Southerners, including Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, author of the notorious Dred Scott decision and of other rulings that strengthened slavery...
Southern politicians did not use this national power to buttress state's rights; quite the contrary. In the 1830s Congress imposed a gag rule to stifle antislavery petitions from Northern states. The Post Office banned antislavery literature from the mail if it was sent to Southern states. In 1850 Southerners in Congress plus a handful of Northern allies enacted a Fugitive Slave Law that was the strongest manifestation of national power thus far in American history. In the name of protecting the rights of slaveowners, it extended the long arm of federal law, enforced by marshals and the army, into Northern states to recover escaped slaves and return them to their owners."
ReplyDeleteMr Anon:"Cite the law as of 1860 that made secession "illegal", as you put it. You can't."
MMMM, evidently you have not heard of statutes against civil insurrection and treason, sweetie.
Mr Anon:":Most southerners weren't fighting for slavery; they were fighting an enemy who had invaded their land."
MMMM, of course the actual Southerners who were not fighting for slavery were the ones who enlisted in the Union's Armed Forces (over 100,000 Southern unionists enlisted in the US army during the Civil War).
Mr Anon:"Sure, a handful of abolitionists. How many? Can you quantify that? That is a highly selective sample - what I would expect from a decietful louse like you."
MMMM, depends on what you mean by a handful, darling. For example, 70% of the vote from soldiers serving in the Union Army in 1864 went for Lincoln, an overwhelming majority....
Mr Anon:"That's a dodge. Are you willing to put YOUR life on the line or not. My guess is no. Which makes you a hypocrite, in addition to being a creepy little coward."
MMM, well, let's see, if the Southwestern USA attempted to form the independent republic of Aztlan, I would definitely volunteer to preserve the territorial integrity of the USA.Given your pro-Confederate politics, I'm guessing that you would be o.k. with the Southwest breaking away.
Mr Anon:""The surfs"? You mean, like the Beach Boys? What are you - sixteen years old - or are you just stupid?"
Oh, that's adorable, pointing out a typo. Of course, darling, you know that I meant the serfs...Now don't make me start pointing out your spelling goofs ("what I would expect from a decietful louse like you." It's spelled "deceitful", not decietful,sweetie)
Mr anon:"So, you also believe in slavery."
MMM, you must not understand the difference between conscription and slavery, darling. Allow me to, once again, enumerate some of them:1. Conscription is of limited duration (Slavery has no termination date)2.Conscripts, if they are of age, get to vote (Slaves don't get to vote)3. Conscripts are governed by military law (slaves in the South would have loved to have had the legal protections that Soldiers enjoyed)4. Conscripts get paid for their services (very few slaves received remuneration; hence the charm of the institution for slave owners).
Mr Anon:"A d**khead is all you are. A d**khead is all you deserve to be called."
MMM, how do you decide which letters to replace with asterisks?You seem to favor d**khead. Why not d***head or di**head, sweetie?
Mr Anon:"Or, perhaps I should call you a simpering faggot. You write like one, you loathesome piece of filth."
MMMM, why does "d**khead" get asterisks but not faggot, darling? Oh, and it's spelled "loathsome", not "loathesome" (See what you've started?)
Some observations on the illegality of secession:
ReplyDelete"Constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar argues that the permanence of the Union of the states changed significantly when the U.S. Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation. This action "signaled its decisive break with the Articles' regime of state sovereignty."[25] By adopting a constitution—rather than a treaty, or a compact, or an instrument of confederacy, etc.—that created a new body of government designed to be senior to the several states, and by approving the particular language and provisions of that new Constitution, the framers and voters made it clear that the fates of the individual states were (severely) changed; and that the new United States was:
Not a "league", however firm; not a "confederacy" or a "confederation"; not a compact on among "sovereign’ states" — all these high profile and legally freighted words from the Articles were conspicuously absent from the Preamble and every other operative part of the Constitution. The new text proposed a fundamentally different legal framework.[26]
Patrick Henry adamantly opposed adopting the Constitution because he interpreted its language to replace the sovereignty of the individual states, including that of his own Virginia. He gave his strong voice to the anti-federalist cause in opposition to the federalists led by Madison and Hamilton. Questioning the nature of the proposed new federal government, Henry asked:
The fate ... of America may depend on this. ... Have they made a proposal of a compact between the states? If they had, this would be a confederation. It is otherwise most clearly a consolidated government. The question turns, sir, on that poor little thing—the expression, We, the people, instead of the states, of America. ...[27]
The federalists acknowledged that national sovereignty would be transferred by the new Constitution to the whole of the American people—indeed, regard the expression, "We the people ...". They argued, however, that Henry exaggerated the extent to which a consolidated government was being created and that the states would serve a vital role within the new republic even though their national sovereignty was ending. Tellingly, on the matter of whether states retained a right to unilaterally secede from the United States, the federalists made it clear that no such right would exist under the Constitution.[28]" (VIA WIKIPEDIA)
More on the illegality of secession:
ReplyDelete"Amar specifically cites the example of New York's ratification as suggestive that the Constitution did not countenance secession. Anti-federalists dominated the Poughkeepsie Convention that would ratify the Constitution. Concerned that the new compact might not sufficiently safeguard states' rights, the anti-federalists sought to insert into the New York ratification message language to the effect that "there should be reserved to the state of New York a right to withdraw herself from the union after a certain number of years."[29] The Madison federalists opposed this, with Hamilton, a delegate at the Convention, reading aloud in response a letter from James Madison stating: "the Constitution requires an adoption in toto, and for ever" [emphasis added]. Hamilton and John Jay then told the Convention that in their view, reserving "a right to withdraw [was] inconsistent with the Constitution, and was no ratification."[29] The New York convention ultimately ratified the Constitution without including the "right to withdraw" language proposed by the anti-federalists.
Amar explains how the Constitution impacted on state sovereignty:
In dramatic contrast to Article VII–whose unanimity rule that no state can bind another confirms the sovereignty of each state prior to 1787 –Article V does not permit a single state convention to modify the federal Constitution for itself. Moreover, it makes clear that a state may be bound by a federal constitutional amendment even if that state votes against the amendment in a properly convened state convention. And this rule is flatly inconsistent with the idea that states remain sovereign after joining the Constitution, even if they were sovereign before joining it. Thus, ratification of the Constitution itself marked the moment when previously sovereign states gave up their sovereignty and legal independence.[30]"
(VIA WIKIPEDIA)
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteSome observations on the illegality of secession:"
The legal natterings of jurists are of little import to the legality of secession. I could find and quote as many in support of secession as you might find against (one such anti-secessionist was John Marshall, one of the worst scoundrels in American history, who invented out of whole cloth his authority to interperet the Constitution and so arrogated to himself the right to legislate from the bench). The Constituion is a contract that defines the terms of Union between the states. If it is seen by several States that the central government has broken it's end of the bargain, there is no reason why they should keep theirs.
Mr Anon:"Big words from a man (and with regards to you, I use that term loosely - eroneously even) who thinks that the Czar freed "the Surfs"."
ReplyDeleteOh, dear, still harping on typos, are we? Well, I suppose that I can point out that it should be spelled "erroneously," not "eroneously."
Mr Anon:"But I will bow to convention, and note that you are a loathsome piece of filth. Good day to you, you odious, crapulent pustule."
All my love to you too, sweetie.
Mr Anon:"
ReplyDelete"The legal natterings of jurists are of little import to the legality of secession."
MMMM, good to know that you are unmoved by the opinions of experts...
Mr Anon:" I could find and quote as many in support of secession as you might find against"
....And they would be wrong.
Mr Anon:" (one such anti-secessionist was John Marshall, one of the worst scoundrels in American history, who invented out of whole cloth his authority to interperet the Constitution and so arrogated to himself the right to legislate from the bench)."
MMMM, seems that someone is carrying a chip on his shoulder, darling.
Mr Anon:" The Constituion is a contract that defines the terms of Union between the states."
Of course, as Patrick Henry pointed out, if that is the case, why does it begin with "We the people of the United States," and not "The states?"
Mr Anon:" If it is seen by several States that the central government has broken it's end of the bargain, there is no reason why they should keep theirs."
Because they have no right to do so, darling. The only option left open is the extra-constitutional one of revolution. And the Revolution option depends on the claim of resistance to tyranny. Frankly, the revolution option was simply not open to the South in 1861. The election of 1860 was a perfectly legal one. If anything, it was biased in favor of the South (cf the blatantly undemocratic three fifths clause and the fact that Lincoln was not even on the ballot in most Southern states).