Why 2012 election looks a lot like 1860

It was a different time, and projecting modern sensibilities upon people dead over a century ago is going to always lead you to bizarre conclusions. Human bondage, offensive as it is to those same modern sensibilities, has been part of practically every culture on every continent for practically all of world history.

Human bondage can not be justified. Your attempt to rehabilitate such disgusting practice is to be rejected by any sensible and warm bloodied human being. I am shocked that any living and insightful free person can maintain such a empathetic view of this clearly barbaric practice. That the US legal system tolerated, and gave legal shelter to same for so long is awful. And the fowl defenders of such a system, who must have known better, having a pulse at the time, were, are, and ever will be, scum.

Why would anyone rise to defend these creeps? Do you think that human sensibilities have been drastically altered in 150 years? The evil scum knew, invited and caused the war. Dummy, dummy, dummy. How great the honor to such people who killed hundreds of thousands to keep their slaves. Yuck!

Our modern battle is with communists who would enslave us all - where do you stand on that?

I like you to emphatically refute that your euphemistic "human bondage" practice can be defended by any free man. That any soul so inclined is a foul and condemned man. And these facts have been evident for many hundreds of years. The South was clearly wrong and its knowledgeable defenders, high or low, disgusting and condemned. Now and evermore.

That's not to say that States don't have rights - they are clearly acknowledged in the Constitution, and perhaps they (meaning their citizens) may have to fight, and have that right, to assert and/or retain them; but God damn it, fight for freedom and human liberty, not slavery (what were these people thinking of?)!...

I like that, but clearly you made that up!

And “nobody goes there anymore, because it is too busy!”

Oh, quite agreed. Lincoln was God’s tool.

Stupid palp. If a state(s) secedes it becomes a country where presumably every citizen would STILL be able to vote or LEAVE and live next to you in your state and suck your welfare.

What if 40% of the state doesn't want to secede, are you going to impose your will on them?

The difference in presidential approval rates between Democrats and Republicans over the course of the Obama presidency and the last few years of the Bush presidency has been in the neighborhood of 70 points. This is the most polarized the nation has been in modern times.

This deep division is driven, as was the case in the 1850′s, by fundamental differences in world-view regarding what this country is about.

There's something to that, but it's not quite the whole story.

Political parties are internally more homogenous and more polarized against each other than they were in the past. Conservative Southern Democrats and socially conservative Depression-era Democrats aren't really much of a factor. Nor are the socially liberal East Coast Establishment Republicans that prominent.

So partisan opinion about presidents of the other party is bound to be more negative than it was in the days where a large portion of each party was likely to be at least in part in sympathy with much of the worldview of the other party.

All the more so, since the "narrowcasting" brought about by the Internet and cable TV have altered our manners and behavior so much. Thinking the worst of the other party is the "new normal" and that is certainly different from how things were in the days of Ike and JFK.

But given that it is the new normal it's more chronic than acute, more a function of how things are than a sign of immanent breakup or breakdown. Given that enmity is an ongoing feature of the political scene, it's not necessarily true that people are angrier or more filled with rage, it may just be that we are more forceful in expressing differences that have been around for some time.

Of course a chronic ailment can worsen, become acute distress, and kill the patient. Something like that happened in the 1850s and may happen again. I'm not sure that 2012 will be the new 1860, though.

For one thing we know the main actors involved and know what to expect of them. In 1860, the first Republican president was something of a mystery and the uncertainty drove public fears to the panic stage, particularly in the South.

Also, we know that under usual circumstances what government can do it limited. We understand the checks and balances in the system prevent too much from changing too quickly. If Obama in 2009 and Bush in 2001 and Clinton in 1993, all with control of both Houses of Congress were only able to achieve limited results, it's not likely that whoever wins in 2012 will be able to radically change how things are.

Of course after long strain and tension, the ties that link us together could eventually snap, but 2012 isn't likely to be another 1860.

Plenty of Christians throughout history owned slaves.

And Christians and Jews used to only get their haircuts a certain way, and not mix fabrics, used to not get divorced, used to not touch or eat pork and shellfish, used to not mix seeds in a field, used to not get tattoos, used to not wear gold. There are many other examples.

Outside of a few Jewish and Christian groups, as a whole we recognized those things as foolish or based on a lack of knowledge, such as knowing how to prepare pork so you don't get sick. Back before they understood food preparation, it made sense to ban things like the eating of pork since improperly prepared pork could kill you or cripple you.

It's the same thing with slavery - just because somebody owned slaved 2000 years ago or didn't eat pork doesn't mean that carried over to modern times.

If Yankees are so warm and fuzzy and welcoming to black folks then why is that? Explain that to me...only about 20% of blacks ever moved up north and then only when more industrialization opened up more work up north...as late as 1900 90% of blacks were still down South...automobile industry brought them north..

You answered your own question - economics. These were ex-slaves. They didn't have the money to just up and move to the north and many didn't have the education/skills/jobs to put aside enough money to move to the north and look for jobs. The Democrats did a fine job of keeping them down, and it wasn't hard since 1900 was only 35 years after the Civil War.

That's been the case throughout history - when you have a group of people who are unable to move up in class because of location or economic issues, or other issues it's going to haunt them for generations. Just look at the Appalachians. Things are much better for that region now, but I can remember going through that area quite a bit in the early 1960s and feeling like I had stepped back in time a good 50 or more years.

And yet the prophets of Israel, beloved of God, told the children of Israel how God wanted them to treat their slaves.

I'm repeating myself, but Christians and Jews used to only get their haircuts a certain way, and not mix fabrics, used to not get divorced, used to not touch or eat pork and shellfish, used to not mix seeds in a field, used to not get tattoos, used to not wear gold, etc. The Old Testament, and even New Testament, is full of all kinds of things that Christians would laugh at these days.

Those things are all foolish in our eyes now, except for a few small Christian and Jewish groups who follow certain of those practices, just as slavery came to be seen as wrong by more and more people.

Yankee animus against Carolinians went back to the 17th century and was already frosty by the 1730's, and I have a quote to prove it.

I'll do you one better than a simple quote and point out that this movement was an extension of what was happening in England. Abolition really gained steam with Christian groups in England in the 1600s, and that movement plus the courts led to the abolition of slavery in England proper in the 1770s. It was carried over here with immigrants in the 1600s and 1700s.

When the Somersett Case was decided in England in the 1770s that initially freed the slaves in England, the founding fathers of this country were very much aware of it. There were even slaves trying to use the Somersett Case in court in Massachusetts to obtain their freedom.

In some ways, the Somersett Case helped contribute to the American Revolution. Some in the Southern colonies were very scared that some form of the Somersett Case would be applied to British colonies, thereby freeing their slaves, and some in the Northern colonies were angry that the Somersett Case wasn't being applied to British colonies and they wanted to speed things up.

Those in the South who were scared the Somersett case or other related cases would have been eventually applied to the American colonies had their fears confirmed when Britain abolished slavery throughout all of its colonies in the early 1830s.

More to the point, if the Civil War was about slavery, why couldn't we abolish it peacefully?

Money. Money can corrupt, and too many rich Democrats in the South were not going to give up their money makers. Their influence on matters of politics was great, hence slavery featuring so prominently in the declarations of secessions in several of the states. They took it one step further by ensuring that Congress could not remove their right to own slaves by enshrining it in the Confederate Constituation

The vast majority of Southerners didn't own slaves, and I would go so far as to say that many in the South felt it was wrong. Unfortunately for them, they were not the ones running their states.

Also, we know that under usual circumstances what government can do it limited. We understand the checks and balances in the system prevent too much from changing too quickly. If Obama in 2009 and Bush in 2001 and Clinton in 1993, all with control of both Houses of Congress were only able to achieve limited results, it's not likely that whoever wins in 2012 will be able to radically change how things are.

I have to disagree. Bush accomplished a lot such as things like the PATRIOT Act and No Child Left Behind, those are things that future politicians will use to do us harm. They will build upon those. If we elect somebody in 2012 who supports things like the PATRIOT Act and NCLB and keep them going, that's going to put us further down the road to socialism, even if it's only baby steps. The tools are being put in place for more and more control. Look at the TSA wanting to search more and more rail/bus riders. How long before they try and get their power extended to our highways? NCLB allows the feds to exert control over local governments, etc.

Maybe 2012 is not a crucial election, but we are not far from one. Too much is in play and the two major parties are working together a little too closely on certain things.

How “bad” do you think slavery was in 1860?

What if 40% of the state doesn't want to secede, are you going to impose your will on them?

What if 11 states wanted to secede are you going to impose YOUR will on them? Oh, wait that already happened.

Clearly you don’t understand. Lincoln the butcher was a racist and had no philosophical problem with slavery up until the point he needed more bodies to throw at the Army of N. Va., they were running out of Irish, we are never allowed to desecrate the asshole with the tall black hat. After the Army of the Potomac got their asses handed to them over and over suddenly “them blackies” were AOK with the Illinois Butcher™.

You’re engagining in a whole lot of adjectives and puffery to totally blow past the meaning and intent of my reply to you. Not impressive.

You’re railing against the facts of the past. That railing does not change them, nor does it change the thoughts and motivations of those who lived in that past. You’re projecting modern sensibilities upon a time when human bondage was not viewed as the abject horror that it is in the present time. You engage in anachronism in order to condemn people who participated in a legal practice that had existed, in sundry forms, for all recorded history, and in fact still does.

Go right ahead and sit smugly on your perch in their unknown future and bloviate away. Maybe you can actually alter the past, but I doubt it. You’re dealing with a people who do not care for your brand of revisionism.

As far as communism, well, your completely unhinged way of dealing with a past you dislike is far more indicative of a totalitarian than it would be of myself and people such as me. We do not forget the past and we do not engage in revisionism. We do not reject our forbears on the basis of modern sensibility that other, more recent arrivals seem to believe to encompass the entirety of our history. Recent arrivals who brought communism with them. Your people, I suspect.

So, chew on that for a while and maybe you can come up with some other word you believe to be a hotbutton that will get you out of the ridiculous hole you’ve dug for yourself here, advocating genocide, then trying to come across as some sort of Cold Warrior.

Fool. Begone.

What if 11 states wanted to secede are you going to impose YOUR will on them? Oh, wait that already happened.

If I was around back then and they were going to secede, but they were going to free their slaves in the process, I'd have been okay with secession. I would have voted against it, and I would have thought it was dumb as hell given their economy and lack of serious industrial capacity, and with Mexico on the border, but I would have been okay with it, assuming that the vast majority of the state supported it. I would have even stayed in Texas for a while. I would have been very concerned about England, France, Spain, and then Mexico messing around with the South.

The biggest problem is that the founding fathers were hypocrites when it came to slavery, or too fearful of upsetting southerners and didn't have the balls to carry their "All men are created equal" beliefs from the Declaration of Independence into the Constitution.

Had the slaves been freed when the United States was founded, you wouldn't have had the Democrats pushing the South into secession in order to keep their slaves.

These days, my view on secession is the same as Rick Perry's view on secession: I have never advocated for secession and never will.

It's one of the very few things I agree with Perry on, and I do give him credit for issuing such a strongly worded statement after the MSM tried to portray him as favoring secession.

“The biggest problem is that the founding fathers were hypocrites when it came to slavery, or too fearful of upsetting southerners and didn’t have the balls to carry their “All men are created equal” beliefs from the Declaration of Independence into the Constitution.”

I’ve seen enough of your replies over the years to have thought better of you. This shoots right past ignorance and into willful stupidity. George Mason. Read a little, maybe learn something. The incompatibility of the institution of slavery was well recognized by our Founders. Extricating themselves from it proved far more complicated than recognizing the problem, however. Political wrangling and alliances between northern and southern states guaranteed the perpetuation of it at the Convention.

Mason, brilliant man that he was, predicted war over the matter, and the destruction of the new nation. For all intents and purposes, he was right. He was bitterly opposed to the practice but held slaves all his life, and manumitted none of them in his will. Why was that, do you suppose? Hypocrite? No, you’re nowhere near his moral or intellectual equal, and yet you deign to stand in judgment. Phffft.

As I said, read a little. Here’s a start, since you appear to need a push:

http://www.gunstonhall.org/georgemason/slavery/views_on_slavery.html

The biggest problem is that the founding fathers were hypocrites when it came to slavery, or too fearful of upsetting southerners and didn't have the balls to carry their "All men are created equal" beliefs from the Declaration of Independence into the Constitution.

Talk about Monday morning quarterbacking.

On balance, that might be one of the most ignorant posts ever on Free Republic. Note: I did not say stupid; I said ignorant.

Had you been in the shoes of George Mason or Roger Sherman, there would be no United States of America today.

Please read Miracle In Philadelhia before commenting further on the Founders and the Constitution.

I apologize in advance for any adverse reaction my strong response may garner. But this is a very important issue with regard to our Founders and the founding document.

I’ve read Miracle in Philadelphia and other similar books and the problem they all seem to have is ignorance or a downplaying of the fact that England had abolished slavery within its borders over a decade before the United States was recognized as an independent nation, and England didn’t break out into civil war over slavery. The problem in the colonies was that the slave owners not only gained power over the lives of human beings, they were able to gain political power that they should never have had access to.

You seem to fail to realize that England held colonies wherein numerous forms of human bondage were not just practiced but legally enforced, and that English merchants profited from the slave trade despite the near absence of them in England. How many colonies attempted to halt the importation of African slaves and how were their efforts greeted by England, af_vet_rr? And, what does England’s abolishment of slavery have to do with the price of tea in China when their own colonies were not allowed to do so? You haven’t read a thing on this subject, otherwise you would not be continuing to make such bizarre statements. Please read the George Mason link I provided.

Mason, brilliant man that he was, predicted war over the matter, and the destruction of the new nation.

Yes, please, quote Mason. The man who said slavery was the most disgusting thing to happen to the United States and that slave owners were petty tyrants, and who spoke out against slavery and claimed it would lead to war, but who believed the Constitution should protect slave owners, and who wouldn't even free his own slaves when he died.

I'll jump on your side for a moment and go along with the view that abolition could not have happened in the 1780s in the whole of the US, even as it had happened in the previous decade in England and even as abolition was occurring in the northern states.

Even if they decided to allow people to continue owning slaves, which they did, there was absolutely nothing stopping the founding fathers who owned slaves from freeing every one of their slaves upon the creation of the United States. It wasn't like there wasn't a precedent - men like John Adams refused to own slaves or employ slave labor.

Let people continue to own slaves in those states that allowed it, but set the example by freeing every one of their own slaves, and speak out about how it's the right thing to do.