Post #419,742
8/16/17 12:42:32 PM
8/16/17 12:44:09 PM
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No
Short excerpt from the long answer: The Civil War was not fundamentally about "states rights". Asserting a state's right to secede doesn't speak to why the state wants to secede. Steven's citation of reasons in his answer only serve to underline this. When the northern states were threatened by the War of 1812, they considered secession. When South Carolina was threatened by a tariff, they attempted to nullify the law. When a state's self interests come into play, they'll take advantage of whatever political mechanism they can imagine to assert that self interest, up to and including nullification, secession, and war.
The real story is not in the political mechanics but the underlying interest in preserving slavery that forced the South to become so hell bent on their "states rights". If Northern states had seceded over the War of 1812, we wouldn't assert the fundamental cause was a debate over state's rights. Rather we'd say it was their opposition to the War of 1812. The same applies for the South's secession as well. Their interest in preserving slavery drove them to use untested constitutional mechanism and eventually go to war. Short answer:
Edited by drook
Aug. 16, 2017, 12:44:09 PM EDT
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Post #419,743
8/16/17 1:03:08 PM
8/16/17 1:03:08 PM
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Read Foote's volumes and get back with me.
He knew a bit more about it than some pasty skinned IT worker.
bcnu, Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #419,745
8/16/17 3:07:39 PM
8/16/17 3:07:39 PM
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(sigh)
T.N. Coates: [...]
Thus in 1861, when the Civil War began, the Union did not face a peaceful Southern society wanting to be left alone. It faced an an aggressive power, a Genosha, an entire society based on the bondage of a third of its residents, with dreams of expanding its fields of the bondage further South. It faced the dream of a vast American empire of slavery. In January of 1861, three months before the Civil War commenced, Florida secessionists articulated the position directly:
At the South, and with our People of course, slavery is the element of all value, and a destruction of that destroys all that is property. This party, now soon to take possession of the powers of the Government, is sectional, irresponsible to us, and driven on by an infuriated fanatical madness that defies all opposition, must inevitably destroy every vestige or right growing out of property in slaves.
Gentlemen, the State of Florida is now a member of the Union under the power of the Government, so to go into the hands of this party.
As we stand our doom is decreed.
Not yet. As the Late Unpleasantness stretched from the predicted months into years, the very reason for the Confederacy’s existence came to threaten its diplomatic efforts. Fighting for slavery presented problems abroad, and so Confederate diplomats came up with the notion of emphasizing “states rights” over “slavery” — the first manifestation of what would later become a plank in the foundation of Lost Cause mythology. Read the whole thing. HTH. Cheers, Scott.
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Post #419,746
8/16/17 3:30:10 PM
8/16/17 3:30:10 PM
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Slaves were the key to the wealth of the South. HTH.
If you think that the North was opposed to slavery on moral grounds, you're deluding yourself. Had it not been for the disproportionate amount of wealth funneling to the South due to slave labor the North (comprised mainly of White Supremacists itself) wouldn't have given a tinker's damn about slavery.
bcnu, Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #419,748
8/16/17 3:46:46 PM
8/16/17 3:46:46 PM
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Whatever the reason...
The North opposed expanding slavery, while the South went to war to do so.
That's the bottom line, for me anyway.
YMMV.
Cheers, Scott.
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Post #419,749
8/16/17 4:22:45 PM
8/16/17 4:22:45 PM
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I don't really disagree with that.
The North opposed expanding slavery, while the South went to war to do so.
Yes, the North objected to slavery and the South wanted it continued. But both held their respective positions exclusively out of a concern for wealth; who got it and where. Just like all other wars, that war was about wealth, power and territory. This is not to be misread as some sort of white-washing of slavery. I'm merely pointing out the true motivation for the war. And even this is overly simplistic. For instance, in writing about a book he recommends, "Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South" by Ira Berlin, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. writes: Here’s where the monolith falls apart, however. As critical as Berlin’s findings about the North and South was his revelation that the South really consisted of “two Souths”: an Upper and a Lower, distinguished, among other things, by their histories, geographies and outlooks.
The Upper South (think Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and later Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and D.C.) had been marked by its earlier history of manumission following the Revolution; it also had a more negative outlook about slavery’s future as a result of its increasingly inhospitable soil (for more on this, see Amazing Fact, “What Was the Second Middle Passage?”).
The Lower South (think Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South, Carolina and Texas), by contrast, had never embraced manumission fever, and because there was still so much money to be made off the cotton trade (see Amazing Fact, “Why Was Cotton King?”), it never wavered in its commitment to the slave economy. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/free-blacks-lived-in-the-north-right/I've never read Berlin's book, but upon reading Gates, I'm inclined to pick it up.
bcnu, Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #419,777
8/17/17 3:09:54 AM
8/17/17 3:09:54 AM
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Ah. Not a White Supremacist then, only a Confederate Apologist. (Hyuuuuge difference.)
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Post #419,783
8/17/17 8:09:47 AM
8/17/17 8:09:47 AM
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Yet another miss.
bcnu, Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #419,784
8/17/17 8:15:44 AM
8/17/17 8:15:44 AM
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So it's just coincidence that you're pushing their arguments, word-for-word exactly? Yeah, riight...
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Post #419,786
8/17/17 8:43:07 AM
8/17/17 8:43:07 AM
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Reference? Links? Never mind. Check the other forum for reply.
bcnu, Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #419,801
8/17/17 5:19:54 PM
8/17/17 5:19:55 PM
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Now THAT conflation smacks mightily of
..that which you Despise in the BOx's oft-meandering fulminations. I deem ^this^ smack-dab amidst that level of (misplaced) puffery.
It's just simple-defamation. Pity. Do better or ... turn in your epaulets.
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Post #419,813
8/17/17 7:29:05 PM
8/17/17 7:29:05 PM
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he can, but if you look at the time stamp he hadnt had his bran muffin yet
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
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