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You mean the Union as it was in December of 1860. The notion of "preserving the Union" implies that the Union would've ceased to exist if the seceding states hadn't been forcibly returned to the USA. This is simply untrue, the Union would've continued to exist.
In what sense would the Union have continued to exist? The same way the Roman Empire exists, as a metaphysical or mystical construct?
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Originally Posted by Slowpoke_TX
Lincoln was no statesman, he was a tyrant who "preserved the Union" at the needless expense of 1.5 million American casualties, 620,00 of which were fatalities. Civil War Casualties
No honorable President would've sacrificed the lives of over half a million of his countrymen in order to maintain his vision of what the nation should be.
Sometimes war is needed such as when people don't listen to reason. Isn't the responsibility equally or more that of Jefferson Davis and other people mounting quixotic quests? Shouldn't they have known that secession would lead to war?
Educated and refined slaveowners still used the whipping machine--they might have hired someone else to hold it, but it still drove their profits.
You are trying to give one answer for millions of different situations across many different sectors of the US. Sectors with their own beliefs and mentality. Slavery wasn't correct in any of its forms, but was handled very differently from plantation to plantation. From many records, brain washing and fear tactics did much more than the slave tactics could have. This is proven by the records of slaves reporting other slaves wanting to escape and white sympathizers helping slaves escape. Not all slaves had to be driven by the cane, brain washing did much better. This is why they had black slave drivers, black slave owners, and formal slaves, commonly referred to as house (not going to post that word, I think we have over done it enough as it is). Again using logic, how are slaves to pick fine cotton when they are beaten half to death. Many common sense questions your professor can't answer. If you the south was bad, just read what France did.
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Originally Posted by TheCityTheBridge
Your two quotes are about what was really a crisis in Britain: the Civil War devastated the raw cotton exports that British industry depended on. So yes, when the American cotton exports collapsed, British firms had to seek out alternative sources--and India was the main alternative. Without the Civil War & the end of slavery, Britain would not have been looking to India for cotton.
Was there not an earlier post on here, from another one on your side, talking about how the evil US government installed tariffs to support New England's textile industry. So if England could get raw materials without tariffs and countless middle men, why wouldn't they. This was the case as the English empire had acquired territories before the civil war that were heavy cotton producers. To say the American cotton market would have crashed would have been laughable, but slavery didn't need a crash, it only needed a low point. We can see this only 40 to 50 years earlier.
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Originally Posted by TheCityTheBridge
The author is a historian at Cornell. He is respected and knowledgeable. He has written a book accessible to a lay audience that sits within the realm of research conducted by numerous well-regarded historians. It's not a liberal book--it is a history. Reading it will help you understand how cotton was intertwined with the broader American (and global) economy. When 1/3 of all American wealth was its slaves, it's pretty fair to associate American wealth with slavery.
1. All history is constantly warped, that is why we need historians. "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." - George Orwell. Also, propaganda sells books, not so much for history.
2. I already gave examples of his lack of knowledge of cotton harvesting in the 19th century. His math is also incorrect as he claimed that the same slaves had to account for all increase in volume. He correctly shows the increase in cotton, but incorrectly shows the increase in slaves, increase in hired pickers (YES THERE WERE HIRED COTTON PICKERS), and the shift of labor due to mechanical developments.
The number of slaves rose in concert with the increase in cotton production, increasing from around 700,000 in 1790 to around 3.2 million in 1850.
Smith, N. Jeremy (July 2009). "Making Cotton King". World Trade. 22 (7): 82
3. It received incredible reviews from all major liberal news source, with one going so far as to fire their critic after a terrible review and writing an outstanding one for the professor. Why do I think it is liberal propaganda, when a normal history book is published political sources don't care.
Reading it will help you understand how cotton was intertwined with the broader American (and global) economy.
I understand that, but realize this was the early to mid 19 century. Globalization was far from what it is today.
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Originally Posted by TheCityTheBridge
When 1/3 of all American wealth was its slaves, it's pretty fair to associate American wealth with slavery.
I understand, but we freed the slaves. According to your numbers, that was 1/3 of American wealth. The point I'm driving home is wealth has to be re-accumulated. Trying to tie the Antebellum South's (that was held by rich slave owners) money in with different parts of the US across different time periods is preposterous. Being a Capitalist, I will go as far as saying tying accumulated slave wealth with all Antebellum Southerner's wealth is preposterous. As I already stated that the south is very regressive, and somehow was more regressive in the past. If it was progressive or socialist, I would be fully on board, but that is clearly not the case.
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Originally Posted by TheCityTheBridge
Ask New York financiers and insurers how the 19th century booms built their industry. Ask textile mills across the north and upper midwest. Ask the ports, the commodities brokers, the shipmakers, and the sailors.
This is all wrong. I would normally be rude as I see this as spreading the blame, but I generally think you are being logical here.
1. Ask how much was established by southern raw goods and multiply that number by slaves to the low skilled employed. I would happen to think that percentage would be very low. Then ask them the effect that the Civil War had on the markets. Overall US wealth had decreased drastically because of our decision to end slavery. This is were we can also throw in the 1/3 of American wealth, I'm guessing you mean American assets by US wealth.
2. The ports that benefited were southern, they either were destroyed in the war or because of loss of imports and exports. Just like farmer, financiers and insurers have to constantly reap and sow. The financial famines of the past have wiped out many financial institutions and insurers.
By 1933, when the Great Depression reached its nadir, some 13 to 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half of the country’s banks had failed.
The Great Depression - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com
The Panic of 1837 was another instance of financial institutions loosing their on their investments.
3. As for regionally, I believe many of the Midwest textile factories and looms used wool. As the cost was less and local. The English also had laws against its imports, which made it profitable for the Midwest to open its few 19 century textile factories. The Woolen Industry of the Midwest on JSTOR
The Midwest was build on much different things than cotton and sugar. If you want us to pay restitutions, it should be to the Midwestern natives.
This has been gone over often in this thread. Slavery was not dying. If it were there would have been mass famine among released slaves. There wasn't. Thus they were earning a significant economic profit for their owners; enough that the slaves were going for some good prices at auctions.
Slavery was not dying? Why do you think it disappeared--worldwide, without wars in any other nations--after this time period? And BTW, there actually was mass famine among released slaves, mitigated by the extensive taxpayer support allocated to address that specific problem: "Most southern black Americans, though free, lived in desperate rural poverty." https://www.khanacademy.org/humaniti...-after-slavery "Homeless, with few possessions, blacks fleeing to Union lines for protection found themselves as dependent on the Federal government for their existence as they had been on their masters." Freedmen, The Freed Slaves of the Civil War "Hundreds of thousands of slaves freed during the American civil war died from disease and hunger after being liberated" https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...tion-civil-war
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Originally Posted by jbgusa
Article VI of the Constitution says....Thus the Federal government was supreme over the states.
You are quoting the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution (Article VI, Clause 2), but your conclusion that it means "the Federal Government is supreme" is WRONG. "Whether out of ignorance or convenience, they fail to look at the Supremacy Clause in its proper context..the Supremacy Clause only applies if an act of the Federal Government is in pursuit of its constitutionally authorized powers. In other words, Federal laws are valid and are supreme, only to the extent that those laws were adopted in pursuance of—that is, consistent with—the Constitution. To read the Supremacy Clause as big government proponents would have you—that ALL FEDERAL LAWS ARE SUPREME—would render the remainder of the Constitution meaningless.Tenth Amendment Center | State Supremacy vs the Supremacy Clause
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Originally Posted by jbgusa
Expressio Unius Est Exclusio Alterius or "the expression of one thing is the exclusion of the other."
Do you really think ANY state would have joined the union if they thought they would be forced--by military might--to remain, at a later time when the union had turned totalitarian? And as to whether states had the "right" to secede, about HALF of the states certainly thought they did just before the Civil War.
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Originally Posted by jbgusa
Remember the Constitution had an amending formula. It was used to create the income tax which you decry.
Yes, the Constitution was amended to allow an income tax. But I seriously doubt the Founding Fathers ever considered (or would have allowed) the amendment process to be used to totally wipe out a fundamental right of the people (freedom from slavery to government via income tax)
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Originally Posted by jbgusa
Read some mainstream books. They are good.
Considering there are millions of mainstream books on every imaginable specific topic, obviously your comment is nothing more than childish slander and namecalling--the hallmark of the far-left Progressive. Don't worry, we already had you labeled from your incorrect rebuttal points.
[b]Any chance we could focus on Abraham Lincoln in a thread titled "anyone dislike Abraham Lincoln?"
Last post on this thread, it has gotten messy.
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Originally Posted by karstic
Why the PC crowd never mentions that during most of the American History most slaves were white? Not talking about indentured, but stray kids from English cities kidnapped and sold in America, etc, etc.
That is what I was hinting at earlier. I was talking about records I found from mid and lower Illinois that shows this was done with Chicago children. However, I think your post would make since. It was common knowledge that repeat pick pockets were sent to the British prisons, North America, and Australia. I just never new what they did with them afterword. Then, of course you always had your sex slave businesses.
Slavery was not dying? Why do you think it disappeared--worldwide, without wars in any other nations--after this time period?
We're not talking about slavery worldwide, we're talking about slavery in the US. It was not dying. As has been posted already, slavery had increased over every census, including a 20% increase between 1850 and 1860. It was constitutionally protected, a protection which only increased with the Dred Scott definition.
You can stick your fingers in your ears and say"nananana" all you want, it doesn't change the fact that in 1860 there was no end in sight to American slavery.
Being from the north part of the U.S. I grew up being told that he was one of the greatest men who ever lived. Not directly but you get the point. Never anything bad said about him only hero worship to the nth degree. But I am thinking different about him now. For one thing he was not a popular president back in the days that he got elected but got in by some kind of a fluke in the political system. Also, he ordered the first shots fired of the civil war when he ordered union ships to fire on fort Sumter South Carolina. In the debates between Lincoln and Douglas I thought that Douglas was the realist and was more in tuned to what the issues were about. But also just the fact that he is given this almighty super human aura by the media and historians makes me wonder about the truth of who Lincoln was. Anytime someone says someone is so great I have to catch myself and say lets looks at things closer. The old saying goes if it looks too good to be true it probably is.
What would you expect a POTUS to do exactly, when one of his military bases was being sieged by a hostile terrorist government? Abe did the right thing, the only thing that could have been done. The war was already a matter of fact and was going to start anyway. It was simply a matter of time.
And I think it was actually the CSA's General Beuaregard who ordered those first shots anyway.
Abe was probably the greatest President ever. He is in ANY historian's Top 3. Anyone's. There is no excretion to this rule.
And the fact he was not popular with many, as you said, made him all the more impressive and his accomplishments all the more tremendous. And he did this while enduring many personal tragedies in his personal and familial life that would have brought a lesser man to his knees, or caused him to resign the Presidency.
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