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No way... yall wanted us here so bad we're staying,but if yall want leave that'll be fine with us.
No we did not. Lincoln was a fool...they should tear down his memorial in DC. Go ahead and leave and declare a Christian Taliban style theocracy with Palin as your supreme ayotollah.
No way... yall wanted us here so bad we're staying,but if yall want leave that'll be fine with us.
Yup, I want you to leave. You and SC, MS, TX and all the rest of you southern traitors. Start a movement and go for it. I'll join one in the north to help in your cause so you can get out of the USA. You're a bunch of dis-loyal traitor worshippers.
I could care less about Lincoln personal feelings on slavery. In fact based on his alleged writings Lincoln was probably a racist. But the bottom line is despite his own personal beliefs’ he moved the nation forward by enacting the Emancipation Proclamation.
The undeniable fact is the nation a better place without slavery. If the overwhelming majority of Americans wanted to live in a nation with slavery there is no way the Union could have won the Civil War.
But again, this is a tremendous oversimplification.
Slavery was a terrible institution. No one is defending slavery. But it was an institution that was implemented and maintained by Southern AND Northern interests. Southern business owners didn't send ships to Africa. Northern investers did. And built fortunes because of the trade. And Northerners also shipped the products of slave labor to Europe, and profited mightily in doing so. And it was Northerners who insured slaves and who loaned money using slaves as collateral.
Southern plantation owners were rich. But typical of people who farm for a living, they didn't have much in the way of equity. They borrowed money to plant their crops. They lived on credit. And when the crops came in, they exchanged a portion of the profits to get those crops to the buyers. When they got paid, they paid off their creditors, they paid off their loans, they put the remainder of the money back into the land, buying more land, building barns, buying farmstock. Then, when it was time to plant, they borrowed money to plant their crops. When Northern banks were willing to lend them even more money, using slaves as collateral, instead of their future and not guaranteed profits, it was a blessing. And when they were using slaves as collateral, they had to insure those slaves with insurance companies from the North.
Now, if abolition happens suddenly, if it's imposed by a national law, and the farmer loses that property, he's still holding the debt owed to the bank. And he's got nothing to offer the bank in exchange, except land. If that happens to everyone, that land suddenly becomes worth much less, much like the real estate crisis we've been experiencing recently. But the financial crisis is limited to one region, a region that hasn't got any equity to pull it through. The banks from the North are going to pull whatever value they can to help see their region through the financial crisis. And the South is plunged into a financial quagmire ten times worse than the Great Depression.
It doesn't matter whether Abraham Lincoln was going to abolish slavery or not. It doesn't matter what his attitudes, feelings, or prejudices were. What mattered to the South when he got elected was that his election was a demonstration of political clout. Whether the Republicans intended it or not, they demonstrated with clarity that the South could be politically sidelined.
How is a President elected? By the electoral college. And the electoral college is a clear reflection of the power wielded by the states. If the electoral college could be dominated by one political region, totally eclipsing another region, then the legislature can also be dominated by one political region, totally eclipsing another. The electoral college is a mirror of the legislature.
Slavery dominated the conversation of the day, because it represented at least a fourth of the economy in the South. Abolition had more far-reaching implications than simple freedom, and those implications were of particular concern to one region of the country. And that one region of the country got itself schooled during a Presidential election, and the lesson learned was that in a representative form of government, political power is concentrated in urban regions, making rural regions superfluous to the political process.
The American Revolution was fought because colonies were superfluous to the political process in Great Britain. The South had fought in that Revolution alongside the North. But eighty years later, the South was looking at a very similar political position, that of being part of a country in which you have no say. More than that, it didn't take a genius to see the writing on the wall. The North had grown exponentially. Immigrants to the "New World" were settling in the cities of the North. Industrialization was creating a demand for labor, for people, that an agrarian economy could not compete with. In 1860, the leader of the United States was selected, and the South was excluded from that selection process. And it was part of a trend, not a singular event.
If you want to simplify the Civil War, then it was fought over political power in a system that inevitably and always gives the advantage to urban centers over rural areas. States' rights is a euphemism, because the balance is not between federal government and states, it's between rural America and urban America. Urban America has the upper hand, always and forever, and rural America is always struggling to get heard. That's the reality of our political system. Today and in the 1800's.
Yup, I want you to leave. You and SC, MS, TX and all the rest of you southern traitors. Start a movement and go for it. I'll join one in the north to help in your cause so you can get out of the USA. You're a bunch of dis-loyal traitor worshippers.
The thing is, they will never leave now. How will they support their livelihoods without our federal tax dollars?
Regardless, why the heck should we commemorate the civil war? Its like Germans celebrating the Nazi regime.
It's amazing that the southern states celebrate that regime, isn't it? Kind of gives you an insight into their mindset. They wrap it all up in some kind of misty eyed love of their valiant ancestors fighting to the end for their noble lost cause. In reality, it was a despicable regime that fired upon and killed their fellow Americans in order to perpetuate slavery.
Northern slavery was never a major enterprise. The topography, climate and soil did not lend themselves to large farming enterprises. The North satisfied itself with the profits of the slave trade. It supplied the ships and seamen to transport the slaves, it invested in the purchase of the slaves from Africa, and it reaped large profits from the sale of those slaves. It further enforced its profiteering by selling insurance to Southern slaveholders, and from loaning money to the Southern planters using slaves as collateral. The North was far from blameless in the development and the entrenchment of slavery, and even in the case of abolition, calling them apprentices for life instead of slaves does not absolve someone from owning slaves. Hence, at the beginning of the Civil War, New Jersey still had several "apprentices for life", not to mention the numerous laws in the North forbidding people of color from owning property, or, in some cases, from living within the state.
Slavery was a national issue. The North was happily allowing individual states to resolve their issues as each state saw fit. That same accommodation was not afforded to the South.
I am not a civil war expert. I agree that the north benefitted from slavery even though slavery was not practiced there by 1860. I also agree that Lincoln was a crafty politician. HOwever, it is not true that slavery was being practiced EVERYWHERE in 1860, as someone stated. The farms in the northeast and midwest were not worked by slaves, as they were in the southern and border states. There was little difference in the farming techniques in the border states and the states just north of them, e.g Maryland v Pennsylvania, or Kentucky v Illinois.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stayinformed40
I beg to differ. Slavery was also practiced in the north.
Not in 1860.
Last edited by Katarina Witt; 11-30-2010 at 02:57 PM..
The libs like to try to re-write history so that they can cry racism and a host of other pathetic things. It is getting so old!
My husband joined a local branch of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and I cannot say enough good about the group. It is truly about heritage. I am so sick of people trying to make it all about slavery and racisim. The fact that the NAACP is getting involved in the upcoming celebrations to protest - let alone the fact that the NAACP is even a recognized organization - is racism at its finest.
I am looking forward to the upcoming Sons of Confederate Veterans events in my town!
stayinformed40 !!! ... Well Said !
Yes indeed ... What an outstanding "Heritage" and what an excellent "Historical" organization to be associated with !!!!
A true source of "America Pride" is without a doubt the "Sons Of Confederate Veterans Organization" !
The good folks way up here on the Old East Coast absolutely embrace this sensational group of "Patriotic Americans" !!!
"Proud Southerns" 2010 ..... indeed we may well be on the threshold of a tremendous "national awakening" regarding recognition of the dynamic
factual history of the Confederate States Of America !
The American PC "Idjits" and " Racist's Bitchers" may well be out of demand before much longer !!!!!
A Way Down South In Dixie !!!!! Thanks Y"ALL / Old Sgt. Lamar
Did the South miss the train of industrialization back then?
What always amazes me is how people back then obviously avoided dealing with all the moral and religious aspects of slavery. Even later on in all the other colonies, same thing... I mean, those Southerners, Brits, French etc. were modern humans just like us, they must have known and felt that slaves were unhappy and that something was wrong
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"You Ain't Just Ah Whistlin DIXIE" !!!!
