Posted on 08/09/2002 3:38:13 AM PDT by GOPcapitalist
Find an anecdote that refutes Davis' opinion of Lincoln.
Walt
No true southerner would say that.
Walt
To the contrary, as any such incident violates the just waging of a war. My concern however is with persons such as yourself who attempt to dismiss the far more extensive atrocities of one side by claiming "both sides did it." Such an argument simply doesn't fly.
Fibbing about the history of this thread won't get you anywhere, Walter. What's truly baffling is that you think you can get away with it when the opposite of what you purport as truth may be seen as clear as day.
Come now, pull your head out of your backside, remove the cotton from your ears, take off that blindfold, and try reading the thread.
You will find a fully documented step by step refutation of McPherson's sloppily written article on the "causes of the war" that he wrote for the History Channel website. As always, I invite you to debate the record and defend your hero. But first you must take the time to actually read before you shoot your mouth off.
Dr. McPherson: "Using three per capita indices--railroad mileage, cotton textile production and pig iron production [two econometric historians] found that the south ranked just behind the north in railroads, but ahead of every other country. In textile production the South ranked sxth and in pig iron eighth. But the railroad index...is specious, for railroads connect places as well as people. By an index that combines population and square miles of territory, the South's railroad capacity was not only less than half the North's, but also less than that of several European countries in 1860. Combining the two measures of industrial capacity [textiles and pig iron]...the South produced only one-nineteenth as much per capita as Britain, one-seventh as much as Belgium, one-fifth as much as the North and one-fourth as much as Sweden..."
And as I said in an earlier post rebutting that which you similarly ignored, McPherson's economic analysis is fraudulent and sloppy. He carefully adopts as his standard a carefully selected and narrowly defined set of economic strengths for the north, applies that standard to the south, and declares the south the "loser" because of it. It's a sham argument from which the outcome is determined before the statistics are even considered because it is designed to promote the north while simultaneously, and I dare say willfully, ignoring southern economic strengths in agriculture among other things.
In short, you have provided a perfect example of McPherson's radically slanted, biased, and outright fraudulent version of history - he presents a carefully selected set of "evidence" to promote the northern side while simultaneously neglecting everything that makes his argument look bad. No wonder you like the guy so much, Walt!
GOPcap, you are the poor man's McCarthy. Have you no shame?
You should consider looking in the mirror, Walt, before shooting your mouth off like that.
I am interested however in knowing what grounds you make the above accusation upon. Are you attempting to accuse me of McCarthyism for outing McPherson as an avowed left wing south hater with openly Marxist political activism? If so, you fail to meet the burden of establishing McCarthyism as, unlike McCarthy's often made-up charges, every one of these facts about McPherson has been thoroughly documented in great detail. You have had more than one opportunity to refute any one of them and to defend your oft-stated claim that McPherson is "fair and balanced" and all that other debunked nonsense about objectivity. You have refused every one of them and continue to spread the LIE that McPherson is fair and balanced. As long as you continue to fib about him I will continue to reveal the truth about his marxist political affiliations, left wing activism, and extensive public record of south hating.
Address the data, not the person who presents it.
I find it much more applicable to address both as I have done here and elsewhere with thorough documentation refuting the man's historical writings and similarly thorough documentation of his anti-southern and far left wing political activism.
This is important especially when persons such as yourself regularly build your arguments not only on McPherson's data but also his supposed "authority."
But in the end you cannot escape the facts about your "historian" of choice - his arguments are fraudulent and his objective authority is suspect.
Militarily no, but in the manner of conduction yes. Sherman willfully directed his army out of its way to extract unneccessary destruction on civilian populations. Why all the burnt cities and homes? Why all the looting and all the rapes? None was a necessary action and none was a legitimate military exercise.
Whine all you want about Lee in Maryland or Pennsyvania as well, but the facts are clear - nothing Lee did in either places compares anywhere near in scale to Sherman's actions, therefore the two situations are incomparable. While it is perfectly right to condemn the small number of southern incidents against civilians in the north, to use them for excusing Sherman as you do is intellectually fraudulent. Two wrongs simply do not make a right, especially when the party with the overwhelmingly greater guilt is trying to excuse himself on incomparable lesser acts of guilt by his opponent's side.
And as I said that is an invalid argument of excusing one wrong with another.
and to date I haven't seen any condemnation from you of the confederate forces
It is tough to see when you willfully blindfold yourself, as I have acknowledged the wrong those who committed the acts you speak of on practically every thread where my position on them has been asked.
for actions no different than those you condemn Sherman's men for.
No different? Are you asserting then that confederate forces participated in atrocities against northern civilians of a comparable size, scale, and degree of what Sherman did to Georgia? Please explain if you believe this to be so.
What's your point? It's not like they're a negligable minor part of the war!
When someone pointed out that the confederates did the same thing at Chambersburg, even making the point that Chambersburg was on a smaller scale, you dismiss it with a 'attempted equivalence is amusing'.
Nonsense. I dismissed another's argument of trying to draw equivalence between the rural town of Chambersburg and, oh, let's say, the city of Atlanta. Somebody else on this thread had rightfully pointed out the horrible acts of Sherman's march. Then a yankee sympathizer came along and did exactly what you fraudulently accuse me of - he tried to dismiss Sherman with the "both sides did it" diversion. I simply pointed out that his diversion was fraudulent as a wrong at Chambersburg does not right what happened at Atlanta, and even if it did the scale of the two are incomparable.
Confederate soldiers looted farms, destroyed property, seized food, livestock, and horses during campaigns in the North.
Sure they did and it's wrong of them to have done so. And it was also wrong of Sherman to have done what he did, which was a wrong carried out on a scale hundreds of times larger than the worst of the confederate acts in the north.
You have not condemned those actions, only dismissed them when people bring them up.
Nonsense. Every time one of you has asked, I've openly condemned them as I just did now. That alone is significantly more than Sherman's actions ever get from your side when they're brought up around here. Your side's typical reaction ammounts to either dismissing it with your own line, "both sides did it," or the even more fraudulent argument employed by Walt - calling the widespread war crimes a "myth" and pretending they never happened. The former fails you as an argument for two wrongs do not make a right. The latter argument, used often by Walt, is disgustingly resemblant of the nazi sympathizers who deny the holocaust. And above all, neither approach shows any degree of remorse, condemnation, or even the most basic recognition of right and wrong. Both of you are guilty of attempting to excuse the inexcusable.
Where are YOUR sources for this statement? Which archives did you visit? Which authorities do you cite?
This whole thread is a joke.
On p. 94 of BCF, Dr . Mcpherson writes:
"The city of Lowell, Massachuetts, operated more spindles in 1860 than all eleven of the soon-to-be Confederate states combined."
For a source he cites:
Stephen J. Goldfarb, "A Note on Limits to the Growth of the Cotton-textile Industry in the Old South." JSH, 48 (1982), 545.
Now, are you going to dispute this statistic, and the other -hard-cold-statistics-- that he provides, or just carp some more?
Walt
I --want-- you to provide sources that refute his research. His politics don't matter. You attack him personally because you cannot gainsay his research.
Walt
Show it in the record. Everything else is just piffle.
What you have to do is say, "McPherson says it was this, when it was really this."
But you can't do that.
Walt
If my memory serves me right there was a case towards the end of the war during a time when Lincoln had called off prisoner exchanges. The confederates had a group of POW's in a region stricken by blockade-induced shortages of medicine and food, among them several sick and wounded. As the situation demanded they needed medical attention the Confederates tried to negotiate their exchange, but with the prisoner exchanges having been called off they had no success. Eventually the confederates simply turned over the ones most desparately in need of medical help out of compassion, getting no exchanges in return. The yankees responded by circulating propaganda pictures of the soldiers as "proof" they had been mistreated by confederates when in fact their wounds had been created by the yankee's own blockade-induced shortage of medicine and refusal to exchange prisoners.
Already did and you can find both at the following links.
Documentation that McPherson's history is erronious: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/730287/posts?page=1,100
Documentation of McPherson's suspect authority as an objective or balanced historian: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/727203/posts?page=160#160
Both have been readily available on FR for some time now having given you plenty of chances to address them. To date you have refused to do so, but as always my invitation extends to you: Refute them - any part of them - if you dare.
What you have to do is say, "McPherson says it was this, when it was really this." But you can't do that.
To the contrary, as that is exactly what occupies the entirity of my post found at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/730287/posts?page=1,100
You have obviously not bothered to even read that post, hence your fibbing about the record of this thread.
Then look no further than the article I wrote as the subject of this thread. It's a point by point refutation of the claims made by McPherson in his article for the History Channel web site on the causes of the war.
His politics don't matter.
They do when persons such as yourself are constantly misrepresenting those politics of his to be something other than what they are.
You mean the southern agricultural stats? Check the post a few days back. I believe I provided the numerical stats for cotton production and its market price in 1860. I also recall quoting directly from the senate debates on the matter from that same year. You ignored the entire post and have yet to respond to any point raised in it, just as you have failed to respond to the original post in THIS thread.
This whole thread is a joke.
Considering that you have not yet even bothered to read it's article yet, please excuse me when I dismiss your attempted characterization of the thread as nonsense alleged by a person without any familiarity with that which he purports to judge.
Now, are you going to dispute this statistic
Why should I? It bears no relevance to much of anything in this discussion beyond citing a narrowly defined strength of the northern economy. I strongly wonder why you even bothered posting it or what you intend for it to demonstrate.
If you mean it as a matter of economic analysis, I need only to note that judging the entire southern economy by a carefully selected spread of northern economic strengths is little more than an exercise in propagandist futility with no merits or validity in the field of economic analysis.
Why should I?
Because it is the crux of the matter that I have repeatedly asked you about.
I have asked you repeatedly to address this one piece of text from BCF:
"Three times as many people born in slave states had migrated to free states as vice versa...seven-eighths of the immigrants from abroad settled in the North, where jobs were plentiful and cometition from slave-based labor nonexistant. " McPherson, P. 91
Infrastructure? "In 1840, the South had possessed 44 percent of the country's railroad mileage, but by 1850 the more rapid pace of Northern construction had droppped the South's share to 26 percent." McPherson, p. 91.
Industrial capacity? By 1850, "With 42 percent of the population, slave states possessed only 18 percent of the country's manufacturing capacity, a decline of twenty percent from 1840. Most alarming, nearly half this industrial capacity was located in four border states, whose commitment to southern rights was shaky." McPherson p. 91
The world's second ranking industrial power, didnt someone say? Hardly. That sort of leaves out Great Britain, doesn't it? "Using three per capita indices--railroad mileage, cotton textile production and pig iron production [two econometric historians] found that the south ranked just behind the north in railroads, but ahead of every other country. In textile production the South ranked sxth and in pig iron eighth. But the railroad index...is specious, for railroads connect places as well as people. By an index that combines population and square miles of territory, the South's railroad capacity was not only less than half the North's, but also less than that of several European countries in 1860. Combining the two measures of industrial capacity [textiles and pig iron]...the South produced only one-nineteenth as much per capita as Britain, one-seventh as much as Belgium, one-fifth as much as the North and one-fourth as much as Sweden..." An industrial Eden whose slave economy should have been exported to the plains states? "The per capita output of the principal southern food crops actually declined in the 1850's, and this agricultural society was headed toward the status of a food deficit region." McPherson p. 100
McPherson's summary of the statistics: "...like Alice in Wonderland, the faster the South ran, the farther behind it seemed to fall." The South's decades--long struggle to recover from its colonial economic status as an exported of commodity raw materials and an importer of capital manufactured goods is a consequence of the severe distortions of a slave based economy and society."
I want you to address Dr. McPherson's statistics. That is what you hate about the man. He makes the secessionists look like fools.
He doesn't have to call them fools. They clearly are, based on the statistics.
But you don't like his bringing this out, so you attack him personally. I am more talking about that other long piece of text where you call him a Marxist than I am with this half-baked re-imterpretation at the top of this thread.
I do note that the other piece of text I posted that --compliments-- the above text from BCF was written over 40 years ago. You totally ignore it, as you must, because it backs up Dr. McPherson's data.
That is what I want you address is the data.
We don't need Dr. McPherson to interpret the data for us, do we? We can make our own interpretation. But it is hard to avoid thinking that secession was a flight from reality, isn't it?
Walt
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