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It was also a war that Lincoln and the North should not have fought.
When one's property is being confiscated, the rule of law decimated and last but not least, your troops are being fired upon, its a bit difficult to sit back pretend that you are Buddha.
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Slavery could have been ended without war.If Lincoln were really a great leader, he would have worked to end slavery without war.
Since Lincoln had absolutely no intention of ending slavery and made that abundantly clear to anyone who would listen your argument is a complete and utter non sequitur.
There is one thing that makes me wonder. I have run into otherwise nice, rational people, from the South, that will argue to the bone that slavery had nothing to do with the secession of the Southern states. I have proof(specifically the Articles of Secession) to the contrary. I figured slavery had something to do with it. I just wish I knew this in high school.
A few years ago I had a talk with a friend from high school. She told me that some students in our old high school merely wore the Confederate flag t-shirts for less than nice reason. Furthermore, she mentioned that alot of the students didn't even have relatives who fought in the Civil War.
I remember one summer I made my opinion known about the Confederate flag. The person I made this known to responded somewhat by mentioning that her ancestors didn't own slaves. Well, looking at it now, I feel that is even more of a reason not to wear the rebel flag. The way I look at it, it was not in the best interest of most Southerners to fight in the Civil War. Most White Southerners didn't own slaves. Alot of elite Southern leaders were standing up and openly admitting they were prepared to fight to keep and expand slavery. It is in the Articles of Secession. However, most White Southerners didn't own slaves, were too poor to own any, and couldn't benefit from slavery. As valiantly and bravely as they fought, I feel thy were being used. They were sent off to war for something they would not benefit from. If you are a plantation owner and you have slaves, why pay someone to harvest your crops? You don't need to. You have slaves to do that for free and you own them, so you have a permanent source of labor. How does the average poor White person in the South benefit? Not at all.
You see it this way because you don't recognize that behind the slavery issue was a struggle over power. The Civil War put an end to slavery. But that wasn't the only result of the Civil War. The Civil War changed the American government in very fundamental ways. The consolidation of power within the federal government was probably just as important an outcome of the Civil War as the abolition of slavery. And Lincoln's Presidency, the huge seizure of power by the executive branch, also changed the balance of power within the federal government. The balance of power was supposed to be between THREE branches of power, but Lincoln's usurpation of power has led to 150 years of struggle for control between the executive and the legislative branches, with the judiciary often pushed aside. The judicial branch sometimes steps up to the plate, but the struggle between President and Congress dominates what we the people see as our government. Today, as the GOP assumes control over the House of Representatives, is the beginning of a new chapter in that struggle. You can say, well war is transformative, and it is. But the struggle for power between the states and the federal government was just as dominant before the Civil War as the struggle between the President and Congress is now. The divisive issue of the day was slavery. But the political tension in 1859 stemmed from the struggle for power between states and the central, federal government.
The constant refrain then and throughout the 19th century was that by abolishing slavery, the intent of the abolitionist and the "Black Republicans" was to place black people on a equal footing with the same political rights as white people. That was the stated motivation of po white folks, before, during and after the civil war. Strangely, it is not unlike the pabulum still being fed by the current crop of neo-Confederates.
That's bizarre, given the fact that there were numerous laws passed in the free states restricting black people from moving into the North, from living in certain communities, from owning property, from owning businesses. While the "equal footing" refrain might have been a meme, I think most Southerners realized that the overwhelming majority of Northerners didn't consider black people to be their equals at all. Affording black people equal rights did not afford them equal status. Which is a fundamental part of the problem, isn't it?
Yes, it was a war that the South should not have fought. It was also a war that Lincoln and the North should not have fought. Slavery could have been ended without war. If Lincoln were really a great leader, he would have worked to end slavery without war.
But states rights and the oppression of the North made that impossible. I doubt that very many of the soldiers on either side were fighting over the issue of slavery.
In my book, they are all American war heroes. Always will be.
Lincoln wasn't interested in working to end slavery. Personally, he was opposed to the practice. But politically, he was pragmatic about slavery. And slavery would have ended without war, much more slowly than it did end, of course, but eventually it would have become increasingly less financially feasible.
States rights certainly were involved. But to my way of thinking, the cultural divide between the two regions, and the cultural differences that would have grown more marked between the west and the rest of the country, were fundamentally the schism that made state rights such an issue, and eventually made slavery such an issue. The North and the South were completely different from one another, economically, socially and culturally. An alliance between them worked as long as there was a presumption of equality within that alliance. When the equality was lost, very evidently, by the GOP's ability to control the electoral college, the alliance between North and South was no longer attractive to the South, and they tried to end the alliance.
Lincoln wasn't just pragmatic, he was also an idealist. He believed in the ideal of a government of the people. The United States was the first country to try this kind of rule. Lincoln believed, fervently and passionately, that it could work. And he recognized that once the states started seceding, that the result would be more fragmentation, and squabbles and wars would break out between the individual states. Fighting amongst ourselves, we would not be able to fend off foreign invaders. Less than a century from our beginnings, we were falling apart. Lincoln believed in the possibility that our Founding Fathers had believed in, and he was willing to risk everything for that possibility. The war went by several names while it was going on. One of the most prevalent ones was the War to Save the Union. For a reason.
Whew...and thank goodness he did. Judging from the behavior of the South for the next hundred years after the war was over, he clearly didn't kill enough people.
He killed Americans, both Northerners and Southerners. And destroyed America's infrastructure.
Interesting that you revel in so much death and destruction. That tells a lot about you.
He didn't have the power to nationalize the rail system, suspend habeas corpus, send federal troops into foreign land without a declaration of war, etc.
Lincoln took on more power than any President in History.
Yes, and that's why he may be our worst President. He expanded federal power and set us on a course of total domination by the federal government.
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