Posted on 01/06/2005 8:00:30 AM PST by cougar_mccxxi
It's very gray. So gray in fact that I have a hard time if I had had to choose sides. Since I am from a state that didn't exist back then, and since my family was still in England at the time, who knows.
How many years passed after the CW before child-labor laws were finally put in place?
Technically, this is incorrect since Washington was certainly THE military objective of the South. It might be better to say that the South had no intent to conquer the North except in such a way as to dissuade aggression. But even that statement is meaningless since conquering the North was as out of the question for the South as conquering London was out of the question for Washington.
I remember Williams arguing this nonsense on Rush's radio show and it was either John Podoretz or Rich Lowry arguing that since the Civil War, freedom has expanded since blacks and women got the right to vote. Williams was caught off gaurd. The problem with him is that he has is own little box in which he can't free himself sometimes.
Total nonsense. Slavery was dying. The advent of machinery was speeding up the obsolescence.
The cotton gin introduced an artificial bump in the need for manpower, but after a time, even that became redundant.
Bleeding hearts just can't see that slavery was not that important an issue.
My #42 is for you, too.
"...Lincoln certainly did intend to free southern slaves when he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation."
Yes - Lincoln's intent was to cause uprisings in the South to undermine the Southern commanders' abilities to fight the war. He cared practically ZERO about the slaves. He made that abundantly clear when he told a delegation of freed slaves in Washington, DC (paraphrasing) "I do not consider you to be my equal, nor will I ever."
Lincoln gained a great deal of his wealth from the toil of slaves. Mary Todd's father used to own slaves.
Ever seen any of THAT written in a history book about "The Great Emancipator"?
Didn't think so...
And your point is?
You seem to forget that there was no 14th amendment at the time.
I'm all for that.
And I can't improve on what Non-Sequitor said: "Slavery was very profitable for southerners."
Slavery was the lifeblood of the southern economy in 1860, much more so than in 1830 or 1790. Destroying that institution meant more than challenging the racist views of southerners or disrupting their society. It meant destroying the livelihood of many - for even if only a small minority owned slaves, that minority was the political and social leadership, and many more were directly dependent on slave-based cotton and tobacco export crops.
You'll no doubt say that northerners had their own selfish economic interests in play and you'd be correct. But the difference is that those interests weren't directly tied to a morally repugnant institution. They also never unilaterally pulled out of the union, even in spite of three decades (1828-1859) of losing political battle after political battle to Southern Democrats.
All evidence to the contrary notwithstanding?
The advent of machinery was speeding up the obsolescence.
What machinery was that?
The cotton gin introduced an artificial bump in the need for manpower, but after a time, even that became redundant.
The cotton gin made slavery profitable by automating the removal of the seeds from the cotton boll. However, harvesting the cotton was a manual process and remained so till the 1940's.
Bleeding hearts just can't see that slavery was not that important an issue.
The southern leadership of the time would disagree with you.
"Which is the worst of two evils...the Federal Government usurping the States rights endowed by their Legistatures, or the State Government usurping the self evident rights endowed by the Creator?"
First of all you should really go back and read Dr. Williams entire article.
Secondly it doesn't matter what I think is the "worst of two evils"
The constitution as it was originally established was a voluntary union between sovereign nations known as "states"
The fruit of Lincolns ideas is born out in your thinking.
If the federal government had the right to interfere with tha laws of a sovereign nation in 1861 then obviously that same federal government has the right to do the same today.
So which nation do you suggest we invade next to prevent the usurpation of the rights of that nations citizens?
Take your time, there are plenty to choose from.
But Mary Lincoln did not own a slave, nor did Mary Todd Lincoln. I read that somewhere.
The Jim Crow laws lasted two years, while the Northern States racist anti-black laws stayed on their books for around a century, from before the civil war to the 1960's.
The hypocrisy on the issue sets my BS meter into the red.
Machinery which was only in use in the North.
In fact, the southern economy was doing quite well in 1860, even if it weas more fragile than southern leaders suspected. They had passed largely unaffected by the Crash of 1857, for example. French and British mills were ever hungrier for southern cotton - replaceable by Egyptian and Indian cotton as it turned out, but only because necessity forced the issue.
Ultimately, yes, the southern slave-based economy would have been difficult to sustain. But there is no reason to believe it could not have been sustained for at least another full generation.
I could not disagree more with your suggestion that "slavery was not that important an issue." It was the issue that couldn't be compromised. That got men to kill each other in Bleeding Kansas or beat each other on the Senate floor or hijack US arsenals. I would agree that it was not the ONLY issue. But it was the one that finally pushed the country over the abyss.
BTTT
That was certainly the view of many southern leaders in the mid 19th century. I wouldn't argue that.
It was also no doubt a real coloring of the view of some southern and perhaps a few northern Founding Fathers.
But I don't think most Founders would have understood the states in 1789 as "sovereign nations."
"But Mary Lincoln did not own a slave, nor did Mary Todd Lincoln. I read that somewhere."
Inheritance.
Yeah - I also read somewhere that Bush stole the last two elections. Of course, I take many things with a grain of salt and exercise critical thinking....
Obviously, many northerners operated under just that assumption.
I think many reconciled Confederate generals operated under it as well after the war. For example: Robert E. Lee.
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