Posted on 11/23/2016 6:01:04 PM PST by Loud Mime
I am studying our Civil War; anybody have any recommendations for reading?
I find you no less repugnant and in some ways far more repellant. BFD.
“Maybe “racial equality” isn’t the right word, but Dickens, who showed great compassion and love of justice in some cases had some real blind spots.”
Lincoln. What about Lincoln? Was Lincoln really a white supremacist?
When you look at where his thinking about race started and how far he came, it's quite impressive.
By the end of his life Lincoln was willing to countenance giving at least some African-Americans the vote -- at a time when Dickens was mocking the idea.
THE
WAR OF THE REBELLION:
A COMPILATION OF THE OFFICIAL RECORDS OF THE UNION AND CONFEDERATE ARMIES PREPARED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE SECRETARY OF WAR, BY BVT. LIEUT. COL. ROBERT N. SCOTT, THIRD U.S. ARTILLERY AND PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO ACT OF CONGRESS APPROVED JUNE 16, 1880.
WASHINGTON: GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1880
It kind of rankles you when someone throws in your face the fact that New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland and Rhode Island have slave state histories. These states could have prevented the U.S. Constitution from incorporating slavery. There is a reason they didn't. They did not want to.
Now, tell this board how four states forced nine other states to agree to slavery against their will.
They wanted a big country. They didn't want to have a competing country a few miles away. They weren't anti-slavery at the time -- though they were moving in that direction. Nobody denies that all the original states had slavery during the Revolutionary era, but that's not what we were talking about.
You said: "You might say that in 1861 the Deep South was motivated by a desire to preserve the Constitution." I wouldn't say that, because I recognize that equating slavery with the Constitution is fallacious. Also, it's strange to say that repudiating and rejecting the Constitution is somehow preserving it.
“When you look at where his thinking about race started and how far he came, it’s quite impressive.”
I was asking if you thought Lincoln was a white supremacist. If you don’t think he was, just say, “Lincoln was not a white supremacist.”
Just keep reading the current news...
It is not what you were talking about. Probably the reason you don’t talk about it much is because you don’t want word to get around.
The slaves states - all 13 of them - wrote slavery into the U.S. constitution. And the 13 states provided a method of changing the constitution - constitutional amendments.
Do you know why Lincoln and the northern states did not use the constitutional amendment process to end slavery peacefully?
“They wanted a big country. They didn’t want to have a competing country a few miles away.”
Agree, but there is more. They wanted secure borders. They wanted more allied states in the event of war. They wanted trading partners and a larger economic market. They wanted, as you say, a big country, to produce prosperity and wealth.
They wanted, in a word: money.
And that’s why northern states wrote slavery into the constitution - until their accountants convinced them they could make more money with a different workforce model (combined with monopolies).
Ten seconds after that, they found that it was morally wrong for economic and political rivals in the southern states to own slaves.
Over simplified? Yes, but not by much.
FYI:Spoiler Alert: When you get to the part where Abe, after having won the war and gotten re-elected, gets into a carriage with Mrs Lincoln to head off to Fords Theater, just stop reading right there. A lot of people, to this day, are very upset about what happened next.
The only thing our pro-Confederates hate worse than having Fort Sumter equated to Pearl Harbor is having 1860s Confederates compared to 1940s Nazis, and yet, when it comes to slavery, the equation is rather good.
The reason is, 1940s era Nazis, like 1860s Confederates were also unapologetic slavers.
You see, when Hitler invaded the USSR in 1941, his purpose was to make slaves of Slavs.
Slavs were "untermenschen" suited only for slavery or death, and Hitler didn't care how many died so long as the remnant became serfs on Nazi plantations.
What's the point?
It's that after nearly a century of global abolitionism, by 1940 slavery still excited the imaginations of little Hitlers around the world.
Japanese also practiced slavery on subjugated populations, notably Koreans, and today slavery fires the passions of Nazi-offshoots like al Qaeda and ISIS.
Point is: slavery did not die a "natural death" as a worn-out obsolete idea whose time had passed.
Instead, it was a snake with many heads, all of which have not, even to this day, been chopped off.
So there's no reason to suppose that the Southern Slave Power would ever wish to free and make citizens of millions of their slaves -- especially in regions where slaves were the majority population.
It just wasn't going to happen, not in 1880, not in 1980.
And our pro-Confederates are just deluding themselves to think otherwise.
Just more pro-Confederate bovine excrement.
DiogenesLamp: "In 1776, the founders would have all agreed that all Englishmen were created equal, but they would have probably come to blows had anyone suggested that this meant the Slaves were equal to them."
Among our Founders in 1776 some were already beginning to think that slaves should be freed and treated equally in their own states.
Even Southern leaders like Jefferson understood that slaves with white fathers (i.e., Sally Hemmings) were considerably more than domesticated beasts.
DiogenesLamp: "But focusing on Slavery in the context of the Civil War is a red herring."
Slavery was extraordinarily important to 1860 Fire Eater secessionists, it was the reason they gave for disunion.
As such it deserves our attention.
Slavery also became increasingly important to the Union during the war, as a source for both Union manpower and disorder amongst Confederates.
Slavery was also the prime concern of those Northern abolitionists who elected Radical Republicans to Congress.
So slavery is never a "red herring" in the Civil War.
DiogenesLamp: "The willingness of the North to adopt the Corwin amendment, and statements by Lincoln himself indicate that they would have completely tolerated slavery so long as they could maintain that economic control of the Money stream emanating from the South.
Money was the meat of the war. "Slavery" was a side dish."
Still bovine excrement, regardless of how often, or how loudly you repeat it.
Slavery was at the core of Confederate motivations in 1860 and abolition became central to Union goals by 1865.
As for that money you claim to have been sooooo important, you may be certain that 99% of Unionists would not understand your argument, much less subscribe to it.
They were first and foremost motivated to defeat the military power which had provoked, started, declared and waged war against the United States.
First of all, regardless of how often you repeat that, or how loudly, it is still not what our Founders intended by their words.
Founders believed that disunion by mutual consent or necessity were legitimate, secession "at pleasure" was nothing but treason.
Second, our Founders considered slavery a form of imprisonment, which is why the actual 13th Amendment says nobody can be enslaved except by due process of law.
Today the US houses hundreds of thousands of convicted criminals -- "enslaved" in jails -- many of whom would doubtless wish to declare their secessions, "at pleasure".
But due process of law made them "slaves", regardless of their own wishes.
Voted for and supported by majority Southern Democrat members of Congress and Southern Presidents.
Why?
Well, being politicians, there had to be some quid-pro-Quo, something equally valid in their minds to whatever such "subsidies" amounted to.
What was that quid-pro-quo?
We don't know, but since slavery was first & foremost among Southern concerns, it perhaps had to do with protecting and expanding the range of slavery in the United States.
Not going to happen, ever.
But if good people can hang together politically, most of that can be rather quickly corrected.
jeffersondem: "Racial equality?
Is that now the standard for judging people who lived in the 1800s?
Just for the tally book, what was Lincoln’s position on fair housing laws?"
"Tally book"? Who uses that term?
Just for your, er.. "tally book", in the 1800s "racial equality" would have referred to such matters as abolition, citizenship and voting rights, not "fair housing".
And, yes, Lincoln was good with those.
No and yes.
DiogenesLamp also refuses to read numerous posts which blow his whole narrative out of the water.
So DiogenesLamp is not here as a truth-seeker or truth-teller, but only for one reason: to propagandize a false historical narrative which turns 1860s Democrats into today's Republicans and 1860s Republicans into today's Democrats.
In short, he's here to rewrite history regardless of real facts, reasons or logic.
That's why he can't be bothered to read & learn the many points on which his cockamamie nonsense utterly fails.
In the end, Lincoln helped accomplish every goal of radical Northern abolitionists of his time.
Lots of rubbish & nonsense to unpack in those few sentences, pal.
First of all, Founders like Thomas Jefferson believed that slavery had been imposed on Americans by the Brits, against Americans' will.
That was one item among many in Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration.
Second, almost immediately after declaring independence in 1776, several states set to work abolishing slavery, such that by the Constitutional Convention of 1787, most Northern states had already begun abolition and soon after the others followed.
So there were strong abolitionist sentiments amongst Founders in 1787.
Third, even Southern slave-holders like George Washington said that if he had to chose between slavery and Union, he would chose Union.
Fourth, however when push came to shove, there could be no Union in 1787 without acknowledging slavery in the Constitution, and so it was.
Rightly or wrongly, our Founders pushed the great issues of abolition onto future generations.
For Founders it was enough just to unite the Nation in 1787.
Bottom line: without slavery there could be no Union in 1787, so Union came first, abolition second.
And that is also precisely the sequence of priorities followed by Lincoln in 1861 and beyond: Union first, then abolition.
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