On the eve of the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln and a civil war that would claim upwards of half a million American lives, Czar Alexander II of Russia issued an imperial decree abolishing slavery (serfdom) with a stroke of a pen.
Posted on 03/03/2017 2:26:55 PM PST by NRx
On the eve of the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln and a civil war that would claim upwards of half a million American lives, Czar Alexander II of Russia issued an imperial decree abolishing slavery (serfdom) with a stroke of a pen.
His exact words were: “Stroke of the pen! Law of the land! Pretty cool!”
Sadly, Alexander was later assassinated by radical leftists.
Emperor Maximilian I shot
Not defending any position. And I have been a Republican all my voting life.
BUT
The Civil War Was Not fought only because of Slavery.
It was fought to preserve the union. Don’t let anyone say it was states rights.... the right they sought was to continue to treat other human beings as chattel. Laws had been passed that would have phased out slave ownership but the elites decided to go to war
Catherine the Great tried to free the serfs in the 18th Century, but the nobles were too strong and blocked the effort. The serfs in Western Europe were freed during the Middle Ages. IMHO, this issue really hobbled the development of a modern Russia.
It was a regional dispute above all of that.
At the time the Federal Government was financed by tariffs. Protective tariffs on manufactured goods in the north caused tariffs to be place on agriculture exports.
It was an element.
How did they get away with that when Article I, Section 9 says, "No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state?"
That did not apply to Foreign Exports. The taxes were not applied the Federal Government on the South. The foreign countries placed a duty on Agriculture Products. The US placed an import duty on Manufactured goods.
That is an often forgotten but important factor among many others for the war. It really was a conflict of cultures in many ways.
Yes.
That makes no sense at all. You're blaming the North on tariffs other countries placed on imported cotton?
What would you say was the primary difference in culture between antebellum north and south?
It makes perfect sense. They retaliated against his tariffs on what England & other exported by taxing whey they imported which in this case was agriculture products. Largely cotton.
It was fought for economic control of the South. The South accounted for 3/4ths of all European trade with the United States. Had the South became independent, Almost all of the Trade with Europe would have moved to the Southern States leaving New York with drastically reduced business.
Here is an example of what European Trade looked like before the Civil War. (and Remember, 3/4ths of that money pile on New York was earned by Southern products.)
Worse still for the North was the fact that all the extra profit and capital that would be created by Independent trade with Europe would have produced new Industries in the South that would have competed head to head with Northern Industries, further weakening the North economically.
Over time, all the Midwestern states would have been supplied from businesses in the South through usage of the Mississippi river, and the New York/Chicago industries would have lost heavily in those markets too.
The Union went to war with the South because an independent South was a grave financial threat to the economic interests of the North. Corporate Lawyer Abraham Lincoln and his Wealthy New York backers fully realized this, and that is why a war was absolutely necessary.
Of course the very first thing Lincoln did was to throw up an economic blockade around the South, because if Low duty trade with Europe had ever gotten started, there would be no way to put that genie back into the bottle.
The Civil war was a war for economic control of the South. That is why Lincoln was still willing to let them keep slavery in his letter to Horace Greeley in August of 1862.
What he wasn't willing to let them do is trade goods and services with Europe unless Northern economic interests could take a cut.
That the war was about "Slavery" was just propaganda to hide the fact that he had just gotten 750,000 people killed to maintain economic control of the South.
Ag Commodities markets are still a snake pit.
So they were interfering in our Civil War? The bastards!!
Another con. It was fought to make sure New York and North Eastern wealth controlled the Huge trade income from the South. It was fought to make sure competing industries weren't allowed to develop in the South.
It was fought because an independent South would have wrecked the North's economy and the Federal Government's revenues, 75% of which were paid for by the South.
Don’t let anyone say it was states rights.... the right they sought was to continue to treat other human beings as chattel.
Which Lincoln and the North fully intended to accommodate so long as they kept getting that sweet sweet money from Slave Labor. (See Corwin Amendment, which Lincoln supported.)
What clever Lincoln did was put the con on gullible people who are unaware that he supported the continuation of slavery in the South, just so long as the South stayed under the Control of the Washington D.C./New York cartel of influence. (Same people we are still fighting today, in case you haven't noticed.)
Laws had been passed that would have phased out slave ownership but the elites decided to go to war
But not to free the Slaves. They went to war to keep that slave produced money flowing into New York.
Look at this chart again. 75% of all that money pile on New York was created by Southern Slaves.
New York and Washington wanted that money to keep flowing. If the South went independent, that money flow stopped, and suddenly factories started getting built in the South, financed by all that additional money that would soon be heading there.
Southern independence was a serious economic threat to the interests of the Wealthy New York/Washington D.C. influence group. (Again, same people who mostly control the nation today.)
They didn't care about the suffering of slaves, they cared about making sure their pockets kept getting stuffed with Southern Produced European trade money.
But it sounds better to claim they killed 750,000 people for moral reasons. That's why they have been pushing this meme for the last 156 years.
And all of the slaves that the Tzar freed were wbite.
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