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GOP candidate: Civil war wasn’t about slavery
The Hill ^ | June 25th, 2018 | Lisa Hagen

Posted on 06/25/2018 3:28:41 PM PDT by Mariner

Republican Senate nominee Corey Stewart said that he doesn’t believe that the Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery, arguing that it was mostly about states’ rights.

In a Monday interview with Hill.TV’s “Rising,” Stewart, who recently won the GOP nomination in the Virginia Senate race, said that not all parts of Virginia’s history are “pretty.”

But he said he doesn’t associate slavery with the war.

“I don’t at all. If you look at the history, that’s not what it meant at all, and I don’t believe that the Civil War was ultimately fought over the issue of slavery,” Stewart said.

When “Rising” co-host Krystal Ball pressed him again if the Civil War was “significantly” fought over slavery, Stewart said some of them talked about slavery, but added that most soldiers never owned slaves and “they didn’t fight to preserve the institution of slavery.”

“We have to put ourselves in the shoes of the people who were fighting at that time and from their perspective, they saw it as a federal intrusion of the state,” he said.

Stewart also said he doesn’t support a Richmond elementary school named after a Confederate general deciding to rename it after former President Obama.

(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: 2018midterms; coreystewart; dixie; va2018; virginia
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To: FLT-bird
FLT-bird: "The Northwest Frontier was a backwater rather than one of the nation’s principal harbors.
Also the British did not send a heavily armed flotilla to reinforce the garrison. Lincoln did."

Despite its promoters' loud claims, Charleston was also a backwater port, of no particular consequence to the South's economic life.
At most it handled 10% to 15% of the Deep South's trade.

By contrast, the Northwest Territory was the focus of westward migration from states like Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland and Massachusetts.
British support for Indians there put thousands of Americans in danger and cost many their lives.

And the Brits certainly did resupply & reinforce their many forts & posts in the US Northwest Territory, routinely, daily, whenever necessary and without interference from US forces, regardless of how many or what size ships Brits used.

701 posted on 07/02/2018 5:12:11 AM PDT by BroJoeK ((a little historical perspective...))
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To: jeffersondem; DoodleDawg
jeffersondem: "Didn’t Grant’s wife claim to own slaves? Until when?"

Grant like Lee was a Democrat in 1856 and 1860.
Many Democrats or their families owned slaves in those days.
D'Souze argues that no Republicans did, and I've yet to see where he is certainly wrong.

But perhaps you know of examples I don't?

702 posted on 07/02/2018 5:27:08 AM PDT by BroJoeK ((a little historical perspective...))
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To: jeffersondem; DoodleDawg; gandalftb; Bull Snipe; DiogenesLamp; central_va; rustbucket; ...
jeffersondem to DoodleDawg: "We have not always seen eye-to-eye but you have been unflinching about your research on this matter. I like that. "

Sadly, and most unusually, in this particular case DoodleDawg unwittingly succumbed to Lost Causer deceptions.
I doubt if that will happen again.

703 posted on 07/02/2018 5:31:00 AM PDT by BroJoeK ((a little historical perspective...))
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To: DoodleDawg; jeffersondem
DoodleDawg: "And while we're on the subject, there's a considerable amount of evidence that the Forrest quote if apocryphal."

Forrest has long been my favorite Confederate, and the alleged Pole Bearers quote is one reason.
It puts a nice cap on a life that was otherwise devoted to slavery and white supremacy.
If it, or something quite similar, is not genuine, then Forrest's standing, in my mind at least, is hugely diminished.

704 posted on 07/02/2018 5:37:49 AM PDT by BroJoeK ((a little historical perspective...))
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To: DoodleDawg; BroJoeK; gandalftb; Bull Snipe; DiogenesLamp; central_va; rustbucket; OIFVeteran; ...

“And while we’re on the subject, there’s a considerable amount of evidence that the Forrest quote if apocryphal.”

Let’s see it.


705 posted on 07/02/2018 6:00:24 AM PDT by jeffersondem
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To: DoodleDawg

Actually she intimated the slaves belonged to her. In her letters to General Grant and to others that she corresponded with, she often referred to them as “her girls”, or “my slaves”. While she was undoubtedly their master in the household, her father never transferred legal ownership to either Julia or General Grant. When Julia would travel outside of Missouri, Fredrick Dent forbade her taking any of the slaves with her.


706 posted on 07/02/2018 6:08:00 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
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To: DoodleDawg; BroJoeK; gandalftb; Bull Snipe; DiogenesLamp; central_va; rustbucket; OIFVeteran; ...
“No (Didn’t Grant’s wife claim to own slaves?).”

According to Julia Grant, “Eliza, Dan, Jule, and John belonged to me up to the time of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.”

Comes presently the Committee for the Protection of General Grant's Legacy to note officially that, as a woman, Julia Grant was too whimsical and ignorant to know whether she did or did not own slaves.

The Committee claims only one of the men responsible for Julia Grant - Mr. Grant or Mr. Dent - can be relied upon to make a trustworthy declaration. The claim will reappear in 3 . . 2. . . 1

707 posted on 07/02/2018 6:29:07 AM PDT by jeffersondem
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To: Bull Snipe; DoodleDawg; BroJoeK; gandalftb; DiogenesLamp; central_va; rustbucket; OIFVeteran; ...

“When Julia would travel outside of Missouri, Fredrick Dent forbade her taking any of the slaves with her.”

Jule, the slave, traveled extensively with Julia Grant in the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi during the early part of the war. Before the emancipation proclamation.


708 posted on 07/02/2018 6:50:37 AM PDT by jeffersondem
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To: DoodleDawg
I did answer it. Coerced economic activity is different from voluntary economic activity. The Union boosted their own economy by forcibly suppressing their competition.

Which is the entire reason for the war.

709 posted on 07/02/2018 7:03:57 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: Bull Snipe
Well, if the previous thirty years are any indication, the application of capital in the South was pretty much limited to buying more acreage to grow cotton, and more slaves to work the expanded acreage.

People do what is easy, but the ability to do that was evaporating. Slaves couldn't plantation farm any of the territories, and so at some point capital would have to be directed elsewhere.

What makes you think that in the bling of an eye, they would all of a sudden start building iron foundries, textile mills, shoe factories, railroads, shipyards etc.

Who said "blink of an eye"? More Capital would spur growth, some would be immediate, but some would be years in coming. The larger industries would take time, but they would happen. Smaller industries would proliferate quickly.

The one thing Capital would not do is sit around doing nothing.

710 posted on 07/02/2018 7:08:51 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: Bull Snipe
European merchants could make an additional 30% or so profit on all their merchandise. Only if the didn’t reduce the price of their goods from what they paid in Tariff to the U.S. Government. If they didn’t the Southerners would have been paying the same price with or without tariffs.

The two competing economic interests would arrive at consensus between them, with both making more money.

711 posted on 07/02/2018 7:11:47 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: DoodleDawg
And where did I say the moral high ground for the North was opposition to slavery?

So what was the "moral high ground" for the North? What cause justified attacking other people?

712 posted on 07/02/2018 7:16:02 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: gandalftb
Truly, the Constitution did establish slaves as property, it was left to war to change. We had a raggedy start.

It was left to constitutional amendment to change. A lot of people in the North didn't like that path. They simply wanted the law to be what they preferred, and not what it actually said. Northern liberals have always wanted a "living constitution" that they could interpret to mean what they wanted, and they have always disliked rigid clear meanings of written law.

War was a means by which they could get around the Constitutional requirement that was out of their reach, (3/4ths of the states) so they took advantage of their economic based war to enact their liberal preferences into law illegally.

The 13th amendment represents the power of force. It does not represent consent as the constitution intended.

713 posted on 07/02/2018 7:21:24 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: FLT-bird
Lincolns big campaign promise and what he really wanted was Henry Clay’s “American system” on steroids. He wanted high tariffs and lots of government largesse which would inevitably be lavished on Northern business interests and Northern infrastructure as it had always been.

Big government Tax and Spend Liberal, with a huge helping of Crony-Capitalism, just as i've been saying.

The era of huge Federal power and super corruption began with Lincoln.

714 posted on 07/02/2018 7:28:17 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: traderrob6

Somebody tell Cory...
Initial secessions were caused by belief that the Lincoln administration would try to abolish slavery. Hot heads in South Carolina ordered the US Army to leave Fort Sumter which they regarded as sovereign SC territory (in Charleston harbor). When the commander refused they were ejected by force (”firing on fort Sumter”). That action was the basis for Lincoln raising an army to force the rebellious states to return to the Union (”preserve the Union”) which, in turn, resulted in the raising of a southern army and the secession of most of the rest of the slave holding states. So the answer is that the penultimate cause was slavery, but the final cause, and the reason for starting the war was states rights (i.e., leaving the union... secession and state versus national sovereignty)


715 posted on 07/02/2018 7:29:47 AM PDT by RedEyeJack (What was the basis for the restriction?)
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To: x
I guess there's also a giant "dog that did not bark" in your argument. If it was really tariffs and expenditures the secessionists were worried about, why didn't they make that clear?

Worst thing they could do. They realized how much of their money was going to the North. Many Northerners didn't realize it until it started slowing down, and they they got scared.

When you are about to shift a whole lot of economic activity out of another person's pocket, you really don't want to warn them that this is what you are doing. Distract them with some "Squirrel!" thing, and then quietly move the money.

The Northern Newspapers caught on. They were alarmed. Not about slavery, but of the South wrecking their trade and industry by trading with Europe themselves.

716 posted on 07/02/2018 7:34:27 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: DiogenesLamp; DoodleDawg
DiogenesLamp: "Coerced economic activity is different from voluntary economic activity.
The Union boosted their own economy by forcibly suppressing their competition.
Which is the entire reason for the war."

That's your theory, repeated endlessly, but wrong on so many levels it's hard to count them all.
So let's start here:
First, note my post #674 above where I listed 17 Confederate ocean ports which could do the same work as Charleston, 13 of those in the original 7 Confederate states.
Charleston at most handled 10% to 15% of Southern pre-war trade and was simply not essential to the Confederate economy.

Second, in 1861 the Union did not stop Confederate exports to Europe, Confederates did that to themselves, something called "cotton diplomacy" was supposed to win diplomatic recognition and military aid.
Didn't work.
But like all Democrats, DiogenesLamp just enjoys the heck out of blaming Republicans for their own misdeeds.

Third, the Union economy certainly was "boosted" during the Civil War, multiplied even (from GDP of $4.4 billion in 1860 to ~$10 billion in 1865), but that was entirely in spite of the loss of Confederate state exports, not because of it.

Finally, those New York Northern Democrats who for generations traded with their Southern Democrat economic partners originally supported secession and opposed war, until, until... guess when?
That's right, until Confederates began to renounce their debts to Northern merchants & banks and withheld their cotton from export.
Then New York Democrats were naturally P.O.'d.

Sure, no doubt Lincoln welcomed Northern Democrat support, but there's still no evidence they "pulled his strings."

717 posted on 07/02/2018 7:45:01 AM PDT by BroJoeK ((a little historical perspective...))
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To: FLT-bird
Harper’s Ferry was a band of lunatics backed by a few financiers in the Northeast. There was fighting in Kansas obviously. Of course you haven’t addressed the arguments over the nullification crisis and the tariff of abominations a generation earlier.

I have come to suspect that all the fighting in Kansas was about control of the State's representation, and nobody on either side really gave a crap about slaves. I think Northern power brokers created astro-turf to secure Kansas for their coalition. I now suspect all of it was about Washington power, and "slavery" was merely an excuse to motivate people.

Regarding John Brown. He was a wool farmer who went bankrupt. I wonder what would be the most significant competitor of someone in the wool business in the 1850s?

I think John Brown had more than one reason to hate slaveowners. He certainly appears to have had an economic reason for doing so.

718 posted on 07/02/2018 7:45:18 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: x
The North had a larger population and could import more.

Here I see that cognitive dissonance again. The people with money could import. The people without money, no matter how numerous they were, could not import.

The money to import was created by the South. The South could import 75% of all the merchandise from Europe. The North could import 25% of the merchandise from Europe. The North's population is irrelevant to who owned the money. The South owned the bulk of the money, the North did not.

Now the North was controlling the South's money, and they were taking their vigorish from it, but if things were allowed to seek their natural level instead of the North being propped up by government favor, the South would have ended up with 75% of all the European imports and trade.

This is what the war was about. The war was about the South's money and the European trade. Slavery was just a "SQUIRREL!" issue.

719 posted on 07/02/2018 8:06:20 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: BroJoeK; Bull Snipe; DoodleDawg; gandalftb; DiogenesLamp; central_va; rustbucket; OIFVeteran; ...

“Sadly, and most unusually, in this particular case DoodleDawg unwittingly succumbed to Lost Causer deceptions.”

Reminds me of the allegations against Julia Grant.


720 posted on 07/02/2018 8:16:08 AM PDT by jeffersondem
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