Why The War Was Not About Slavery

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org ^ | March 9, 2016 | Clyde Wilson

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "There has been no twisting on my part."

It's all twisting on your part.

jeffersondem: "The vagaries of war across a wide battle scape - and Lincoln's propensity to lockup opponents when he could and to kill when he could not - is a better explanation of the early distribution of casualties; killed, wounded, captured, and missing."

Complete nonsensical non-sequitur.
The facts remain that in 1861 2.5 battles were fought in Union states & territories for every battle in a Confederate state, and more Confederate soldiers died in the Union than Confederacy.

So Civil War began as a Confederate War of Aggression against the United States, period.

[bert]

Manassas

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: "The port certainly wasn't paying.
The owner of the goods was paying.
Do you think the port of Long Beach is paying for those tariffs we've slapped on Chinese goods?"

No, but does FLT-bird think the US exporters of soy beans & corn somehow "paid" the new tariffs on Chinese goods landing at Long Beach?

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "The views of Thomas Jefferson and Elizabeth Warren are different."

But Democrats have always been the same in this respect: they are rebellious when out of power, authoritarian when in power.

jeffersondem: "The views of Nelson Rockefeller and Ronald Reagan were different too."

Rockefeller was certainly more "moderate" than his 1964 rival, Barry Goldwater, but he was still vastly more conservative than their Democrat opponent, Lyndon Johnson.

jeffersondem: "Political parties are not as monolithic as some image."

Sure, but there are distinct differences which go back to Day One of the Republic: Federalists-Whigs-Republicans consistently support the Constitution, while anti-Federalists-Democrats consistently oppose it.

[FLT-bird]

blah blah blah more of your crap which I will no read.

[BroJoeK]

bert: "Manassas"

Right, even including Bull Run/Manassas.
Remove that battle from the calculations and the numbers become even more lop-sided for Union state battles.

The fact remains that Civil War in 1861 was fought mostly in the Union and some battles were still in Union states as late as the fall of 1864.

It began as a War of Confederate Aggression against the United States.

[Pelham]

“No, the root cause was the decision of the German government to pay its war reparations with printed, inflated money only.”

That’s probably what the politicians of the time thought, but then politicians aren’t required to have any economic literacy.

Had they listened, a delegate from the British Treasury was warning the Paris Peace Conference that the reparations were unworkable. He even wrote a book about his concerns, “The Economic Consequences of the Peace”.

https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/keynes-the-economic-consequences-of-the-peace

“for reasons already elucidated, the exactions in this case are not yet determinate, and the sum when fixed will prove in excess of what can be paid in cash and in excess also of what can be paid at all”

Germany would have had to become an extreme export model economy in order to earn the money to pay reparations, and yet the exports available to Germany were ones that were in direct competition with industries in the countries receiving reparations. So much for economic logic.

Further evidence of the folly of reparations is the fact that none were demanded of defeated Germany and Japan after WWII. The Bretton Woods Conference didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of Versailles. Not only did we not demand reparations of the defeated, we rebuilt their economies.

“So Germans quit paying reparations to Brits & France, whose markets collapsed — it was then October 1929.”

The Hatry group financial fraud crashed the London market. And I’ve yet to see any account linking the Wall Street crash with German reparations.

And while popular literature thinks that the 1929 Wall Street Crash caused the Great Depression economic historians don’t. Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz provide one of the best accounts in their “Economic History of the United States”.

[bert]

Drivel
Lincoln’s army invaded virginia an got it’s ass kicked. That precipitated the sourthern defensiive advance northward to destroy the enemy army.

[mrsmith]

Look at my link above.
The South’s rr’s were built for slave owners.
The slave-owners controlled the capital.

[mrsmith]

China paid the tariffs through currency control.

[mrsmith]

Bull Connor is the typical Dem today.;

[jeffersondem]

“It's all twisting on your part . . . Complete nonsensical non-sequitur.”

Welcome back.

I leap to the conclusion your charisma-bypass surgery was successful.

[BroJoeK]

Pelham: "...a delegate from the British Treasury was warning the Paris Peace Conference that the reparations were unworkable."

Sure, I agree reparations were unworkable under the circumstances, the most basic of which was Germans themselves did not think they'd been defeated and so didn't deserve to pay such high reparations.
In fact, they paid only one year's reparations for real.
After that, they paid by printing money, hence hyperinflation.
Hyperinflation ended when Americans began loaning Germans money to pay their reparations -- the Dawes Plan.

But terms Allies imposed on Germany were no worse, relatively, than those Germans had imposed on countries they defeated, notably Belgium and Russia.
The difference was, those countries well understood they'd been thoroughly defeated.
Germans didn't, thank President Wilson among others.

Pelham: "Germany would have had to become an extreme export model economy in order to earn the money to pay reparations, and yet the exports available to Germany were ones that were in direct competition with industries in the countries receiving reparations.
So much for economic logic."

Clearly, what Germans needed, asked for and received was renegotiation of terms.
Iirc, there were a number over the years, the earliest of which (Dawes) brought in American loans.
That kept Germans afloat economically until they p*ssed off Americans by beginning to remilitarize, at which time Brits & French also refused to extend terms.
It was 1929.

Pelham: "Further evidence of the folly of reparations is the fact that none were demanded of defeated Germany and Japan after WWII.
The Bretton Woods Conference didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of Versailles."

Right, after WWII the Allies wanted to make d*mn certain we didn't have to do it ever again, so they belt-&-suspendered everything, including reversing the historical practice of demanding reparations.
Actually, German territory was reduced, much of Germany was stripped of its industrial assets, and the Marshall Plan began years after 1945 -- after the Cold War was well under way.
So Germans did not get off scot-free after WWII.

Regardless, still in the First World War substantial reparations were standard for defeated nations, but Germans did not feel defeated and so balked at paying.
And Allies had no way to force them.

Pelham: "The Hatry group financial fraud crashed the London market.
And I’ve yet to see any account linking the Wall Street crash with German reparations."

Possibly the ultimate in conspiracy books:

I disagree with a lot of it, but the economic analysis seems solid to me.

Pelham: "And while popular literature thinks that the 1929 Wall Street Crash caused the Great Depression economic historians don’t."

The Great Depression affected every country differently, beginning and ending at different times & ways for each.

[BroJoeK]

bert: "Drivel
Lincoln’s army invaded virginia an got it’s ass kicked.
That precipitated the sourthern defensiive advance northward to destroy the enemy army."

Drivel.
The fact is long before Bull Run/Manassas, Confederates fought Union forces in Union Maryland, West Virginia and Missouri.
By early 1862 Confederates also invaded Union Kentucky, Oklahoma & New Mexico.

In the beginning Confederates were just as aggressive as they could be, with no regard to whether a state/territory was Union or Confederate.

[BroJoeK]

mrsmith: "The South’s rr’s were built for slave owners. The slave-owners controlled the capital."

Sure, no doubt, 1860 Southern railroads were built to move cotton to ports, but at least according to the maps, they were all connected together such that a ship's cargo delivered in, say, Jacksonville, Florida, could in a week be transported pretty much anywhere in the South.

Some posters here have even claimed the average Southerner in 1860 lived closer to a railroad than the average Northerner did.
I can't verify that, but it emphasizes the point: Southern railroads were built to support the Southern population.

Anyway, my only real point here is, in 1860 the South's railroads were a great asset which could have changed the war's outcome had they been effectively operated & maintained.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "I leap to the conclusion your charisma-bypass surgery was successful."

Unnecessary because in high school I scored pretty high on my S.A.T.'s, but on those C.A.T.'s (charisma aptitude test), not so much.
Back in those days you never heard the word "nerd" as we use it today, but suffice it to say, "charisma" was not my strong point.

Nothing much there to bypass. ;-)

[Pelham]

“Sure, I agree reparations were unworkable under the circumstances, the most basic of which was Germans themselves did not think they’d been defeated and so didn’t deserve to pay such high reparations.”

It wasn’t a question of German unwillingness, it was a question of math. The Reparations were numerically unworkable- the crux of Keynes’ book. It’s somewhat similar to the Triffin Dilemma that the dollar was caught in after WWII, and which ultimately led to both abandoning the dollar’s gold peg and to inflation.

“Hyperinflation ended when Americans began loaning Germans money to pay their reparations — the Dawes Plan.”

Economic historians usually credit the policies of currency commissioner Hjalmar Schacht for ending the Weimar hyperinflation. Schacht created the Rentenmark to replace the Papiermark. The Rentenmark was based upon a mortgage of all German properties, an improvement upon the rye-backed proposal of Karl Helfferich. Schacht prohibited the Reichsbank from purchasing government Treasury paper, which vastly slowed expansion of the money supply. Only commercial paper could be discounted. This occurred months before Dawes was even agreed upon.