Posted on 10/31/2017 8:17:25 AM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
The abolitionists compromised from 1789 to 1861.
As a historical fact, Kelly is right. The Republican John Brown abolitionists beating Democrat white slave owners made compromise impossible.
Then who would do the work?
People in the South seemed to think it was.
Thank you. I also sent it as a letter to about 40 papers and commentators.
I am just finishing Jon Meacham’s excellent book on Andrew Jackson and was surprised to learn that the seeds of the Civil War were really planted in the late 1820s, and in 1833 South Carolina was storing munitions and forming a volunteer army in preparation of war...this all over the South’s nullification of the tariff imposed on them.
Several southern states and a few northern states being sympathetic to the concept of nullification and openly discussing and advocating secession.
Anyone in any position of influence & control, whether it politics or business, whether an American or European, understood at least by the 1850s, if not earlier, the promise a unified US held in terms of world power. Any nominal projection of immigration and birth rates could easily predict the sum total population and economic power the US would exert in a relatively short amount of time. (Which was proven 50 years later in 1917.)
Banking, finance and commercial interests all had a stake in this outcome. It was inevitable - as long as the Union held. So, what occurred in 1861 is essentially the same thing that happened in Catalonia last weekend. There is no way on earth that a separation was going to be allowed. One side can advocate abolishing slavery, the other self-determination or whatever cause du jour floats their boat.
It was always about preserving the Union, and not exactly the noble reasons espoused by Lincoln, et al. Rather, it was simply a raw exercise in power, no different than GBs attempt at defeating the Revolution. If you think you can pull it off, go ahead and try, but that doesn't mean the controlling power is going to let you escape without a fight.
Lack of compromise led to the creation of the United States.
The North went to war to preserve the Union and won. The South went to war to preserve slavery and lost everything.
And the Crucifixion.
To determine the historical nobility of any particular war, the circumstances and justifications must be looked through a SJW prism of 2017.
Does anyone still think slavery would have survived if the Civil War had never been fought? Was it worth sending 620,000 men to their death to end an abominable practice a little early? It’s a valid question.
Funny how we now have communists on the west coast trying to secede from a union because the states they’re proud to have forced remain in the union 150 years ago elected Trump president.
Great post and very true.
ping
Protecting slavery was the central reason, indeed the virtually only reason, expressed by the first secessionists themselves for declaring their secessions.
trebb: "Lincoln might do well in Europe today - 'Want to exit the European Union?
We'll destroy you, your cities and your families.' "
No, Lincoln told secessionists that he wanted peace and they could not have war unless they themselves started it.
Remember, Confederates could have ended their war on any day before April 1865 on much better terms than the Unconditional Surrender they fought so hard to accept.
Nonsense.
In fact, in March 1861 Lincoln offered to maintain peaceful relations and told secessionists they could not have war unless they themselves started it.
Lincoln was fully prepared to keep military "hands-off" the Confederacy.
But he was not going to let them grab whatever they wanted without consequences.
Jefferson Davis & company took Lincoln's words & actions as acts of war and so started (Fort Sumter) & formally declared war on the United States, May 6, 1861.
semantic: "It was always about preserving the Union, and not exactly the noble reasons espoused by Lincoln, et al.
Rather, it was simply a raw exercise in power, no different than GBs attempt at defeating the Revolution."
Of course it was about protecting the Union from Confederates' aggressive actions to destroy it.
But protecting slavery (Confederates) and freedom for slaves (Unionists) were never far from the top of the list of reasons for war.
To suggest otherwise is simply disingenuous.
And yet people really believed in the country, the flag, the union, and fought and died nobly for that cause.
By your logic, idealism is only possible in conflicts in a country that would never have much materially and would never matter much in the world.
In fact, richer and more successful countries are very good at arousing idealism and emotion in their citizens.
Turn you argument around. Are all of our feelings of patriotism today based on greed and materialism?
If that's not true for us today, why would it be true for people and their leaders in the past?
Of course Twitter hates him- since he’s right.
Factually though, attempts to compromise were ongoing from before the Revolutionary War. Notably, during negotiations over Virginia handing over it’s NW Territories to the feds a deal was reached which would have ended slavery- only to be vetoed by South Carolina which was totally dependent on slavery.
Then the states of the NW Territories were bound to the North by the Erie Canal and the slave states were doomed- these descendants of Virginia fought on the North’s side. The side they were economically bound to.
Of course compromises which are, today, commonplace were never even thought of: such as federal money to reimburse the slave owners for their losses.
That turned into a good deal for the North since they got everything of value in the South in the end.
Yes, if there had been a compromise there wouldn't have been a war. No, the country probably wasn't going to be able to compromise over slavery forever.
Yes, the civil war generation -- or its politicians -- failed at something that earlier generations had been able to manage (compromise), but they failed because it was getting harder to compromise.
Whether we should have been compromising or not doesn't affect the practical side of the matter. I don't have a problem with what Kelly said.
Slavery was far to important to the Deep South's cotton economy to free the slaves who made it happen, compensated or otherwise.
Beginning with Thomas Jefferson, plans were drawn up for compensated emancipation, always rejected by slave-holders themselves.
Remember, in 1860 there were about 4 million African Americans, 400,000 of whom were freedmen.
Of those 400,000 freed, about half lived in the North the other half in slave-states, the vast majority in Maryland, Virginia & North Carolina.
Cotton prices and profits were rising in the 1850s. Cotton planters thought the boom would last forever. Elites in the slave states convinced themselves that slavery was a good thing, the foundation of civilization. They weren't going to take federal money to give up their slaves. Given their expectations, it didn't make economic sense.
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