Posted on 03/31/2010 3:04:35 PM PDT by TitansAFC
Ron Paul: Why didn’t the north just buy the south’s slaves and free them that way?
Getting down to the last two questions here…. Most people consider Abe Lincoln to be one of our greatest presidents, if not the greatest president we’ve ever had. Would you agree with that sentiment and why or why not?
No, I don’t think he was one of our greatest presidents. I mean, he was determined to fight a bloody civil war, which many have argued could have been avoided. For 1/100 the cost of the war, plus 600 thousand lives, enough money would have been available to buy up all the slaves and free them. So, I don’t see that is a good part of our history.....
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Just because it works, doesn’t mean it’s right. Look, I hate Islamic terrorists, and I’m not at all fond of Islam in general, radical or otherwise, but surely there should be some limits as to what is allowed in war? Sherman (and especially the camp followers that he allowed to hang around) hurt a heck of a lot of more people than just enemy combatants. Do we really want to see non-terrorist Middle Easterners attacked and their land destroyed, just so long as actual terrorists are hurt too? What do you really think the end result of that would be? A whole lot more terrorists seeking revenge for their mothers’ deaths and sisters’ rapes coupled with a never-ending occupation, I would imagine.
“Not analogous situations. There were far fewer slaves in Britain, and they still maintained slavery in their colonies for some time, tapering it off.”
That’s how they ended it their colonies (Emancipation Bill of 1833), so yes - it is analagous.
“At least Lincoln wasn’t a Crossdressing coward like Jefferson Davis was...”
Naah. Dishonest abe was a garden variety tyrant who just happens to have started and prosecuted a war that killed 600,000 to 700,000 Americans.
You have the problem. If they wanted to avoid war, why didn’t they outlaw slavery on their own? Same reason there’s human smugglers today. Evil, greedy people.
Yeah. That would have stopped the South if the North was foolish enough to buy all their slaves.
“His understanding is crazy. The South would not even consider selling their slaves.It’s literally an asinine proposition.”
If the price was right? You’ve got to be kidding. That also happens to be the way that Britain ended slavery.
Economics:
#1. The south was able to sell it's goods in northern markets and overseas for lesser costs (no "labor overhead" beyond care and feeding) and therefore was able to substantially undercut northern price ranges for similar products. In this manner, the South was literally strangling the economy of the north.
#2 In the secession the south removed from commerce a number of products that were equally in demand in the north: Tobacco products, cotton, rice etc. Removal of these products forced alternative supplies by obtained from foreign sources. At substantially increased costs.
#3 The Southern secession also removed substantial land mass from the Union and subsequently placed more economic pressure from alliances posed by the south to foreign governments on all fronts: Economic, political and of course military. any inroad in those directions would eventually prove disastrous for the north eventually. So Lincoln knew he had to fight in order to stave off catastrophe.
But is it easy to rally your army to fight, kill and die for the almighty dollar? Well sure. We've been doing it ever since the Whiskey Rebellion, but it's always been couched in much grander terms that presents the struggle and necessary conflict in a more populist strain that always paints us as the good guys and "them" (whomever they are) as the bad guys, with the fate of humanity hanging on the outcome. We never put the necessity for conflict into terms of dollars and cents. Because we know that just makes no sense at all.
Thus enters into the paradigm the motivator of Morality. Americans have always risen to a dire challenge and that is to their credit. It has always been thus. The unfortunate reality has been that since the infestation of liberalism into the classrooms, Americans have become less likely to readily discern true GOOD versus true EVIL. This means they have become dependent on our government for making those definitions and those make the case for war. That's a mistake. The masses have ceased to think for themselves, thanks to public education. It may well prove to be our ultimate undoing. But, thankfully, the jury is still out on that one. The real test may come in November of 2010 and 2012.
>Any opinions on Ron Paul’s idea that we didn’t need to fight the Civil War?
Technically we didn’t. We could have recognized that the 10th Amendment applied to a state’s [un]willingness to be part of the [Constitutional] compact called “The United States” and allowed them to secede peaceably.
If the Civil War hadn’t been fought, then we likely wouldn’t be in the position we are regarding federally mandated [health] insurance because the States could withdraw saying “Nope, that’s overstepping your [constitutional] bounds Federal Government.”
The ever popular "We wuz soooo stoopid we done fell into Lincoln's trap" excuse.
If I am not mistaken, the British place of honor in ending slavery was due in large part to their willingness to use their powerful navy to enforce it, anywhere they encountered it in the world.
Of course, on the other hand, they enslaved sailors of other countries that they impressed on the high seas.
Oh well...nobody is perfect...:)
>>Our “lawful Lord and King George III”?!?!?!?!
>
>By what law was that insipid man our King? By English law alone. We live by American law.
But at that time we WERE English Subjects.
[This isn’t saying that I don’t agree with the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, but to retroactively apply laws in an argument is a VERY grave folly; it is for this reason that I despise the Nurmburg trials where the “War Crime” was invented and retroactively applied... there was enough evidence to convict of [reular] murder those who were complicit.]
I don't believe that Muslims are an inferior people, so I tend to think that they would react like anyone else... Southerns after Sherman, for example.
And considering that your scenario didn't pan out then, why would it pan out now?
War is hell... and as long as civilians are sheltered from that hell, they'll work for and call for war. Expose them to it and all the talk goes out the window.
Furthermore, wars only ever really end when one side is thoroughly shown to be defeated. When the citizenry are made to realize that they really did lose, then there no mistaken belief that the losing side could have really won, for the evidence against it is all around.
Just look at Germany and Japan after WWII. Cities in rubble, starvation, and massive internal displacement. There was no way the German/Japanese citizenry was going to claim that the allies simply used dirty tricks to occupy their country. Unlike what we see with our nice, sanitized, 'precise' wars of today.
“If I am not mistaken, the British place of honor in ending slavery was due in large part to their willingness to use their powerful navy to enforce it, anywhere they encountered it in the world.”
That and they provided both compensation to the former owners and something for the former slaves to start out with. More moral and practical than the “root hog, or die” approach of the North that resulted in so many having to go back to the plantations they’d been “freed” from.
“Of course, on the other hand, they enslaved sailors of other countries that they impressed on the high seas.”
Well, they’d stopped that by the 1830s....
RuPaul is a bonehead but good ole Abe is the original RINO.
How? the Constitution banned the importation of slaves after 1808.
No, I think you’re missing my point. In both cases (by war or purchase), slaves would have been freed. They were freed, but slavery was not reintroduced. It is only logical to assume that if slaves were freed by some other means, the same thing likely would have occurred. The North occupied the South until the early 1870s, but quickly left. The South remained a predominantly agricultural region until at least after World War II. My question still stands, if as you and another poster claim, it would be so easy to illegally purchase and use slaves, then why wasn’t slavery reintroduced in the 1870s?
How are these scenarios different? It is not enough to say one is “before” and one is “after” the war. In both instances slavery would have been illegal; you argue that being illegal doesn’t mean that it isn’t still practiced on a wide-scale basis. Why did one thing happen in the scenario that did occur (i.e., no reintroduction of slavery), but I should believe that something totally different (i.e., the reintroduction of slavery) would have occurred under similar circumstances in the second scenario? Now, I’m not even saying that such a purchasing agreement could have been reached in the first place. However, if it was reached, *why* should I believe that Southerners would have broken the agreement and illegally purchased new (I would assume, kidnapped) slaves?
ROTFLMAO!!!! Ah, there's nothing quite like a stone Lost Causer to provide levity to the evening.
Why not? It worked with the Gulf of Tonkin...
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