The Civil War: ‘A conspiracy of amnesia’

[mfdeacs99]

I did say, even then (post WWII) they were mostly egregious. Don't shoot your friends.

 

[MBDeac08]

I did say, even then (post WWII) they were mostly egregious. Don't shoot your friends.

Probably should have added the "post WWII" to start with. No big deal, I get what you are saying now.

 

[Shorty]

Agree with an earlier post expressing thanks that Lincoln was president. Lincoln is absolutely the greatest president and greatest leader this country has ever known. The best book on leadership I've ever read is "Lincoln on Leadership" by Donald T. Phillips. It is a fascinating read and gives great insight into how and why Lincoln made the difficult decisions he had to make.

 

[pourdeac]

Rethinking the issue today while writing a paper for my Soutehrn history class, I feel that to say the war was about slavery is too simplified. As stated earlier, the North didn't care about the moral implications.

It was the politics and economics of slavery that led to the war.

I agree, and because of that there is no "conspiracy of amnesia" about the conflict, people today just label it differently. Heck, people at the time had different rationales for the conflict The way some of these critics of Civil War opinion act, they'd be calling the people who fought in the thing idiots for not knowing why they were fighting and part of a conspiracy. A lot of southerners were defending their farms and lives and didn't give a hoot about slavery. Did they not know?????

It's really immaterial, a lot of this recent journalistic crap is meant to equate Reps with slave owners, and to equate states rights with the right to enslave. It's pathetic...really. The New Deal dogma isn't going to go away quietly.

 

[ConnorEl]

An interesting read: Civil War at 150: Are we whitewashing slavery?

 

[Marietta Deac]

Agree with an earlier post expressing thanks that Lincoln was president. Lincoln is absolutely the greatest president and greatest leader this country has ever known. The best book on leadership I've ever read is "Lincoln on Leadership" by Donald T. Phillips. It is a fascinating read and gives great insight into how and why Lincoln made the difficult decisions he had to make.

LOL. Now read the DeLorenzo's The Real Lincoln for the other side of the coin. The cult of Lincoln has sucked you in.

 

[EatLeadCommie]

Some of you are being a bit harsh on Go, i think. I completely understand what he's saying about Yankees who don't have any family ties to the Civil War coming off as sanctimonious douchebags towards Southerners... Southerners, who, by and large, can probably trace back their lineage to both sides of the conflict.

My own family lineage is primarily Southern, but my surname and some other branches of the family actually trace back several generations to places like NY, NH, PA, Mass., etc... There are gobs of now distant relatives with my surname still living up north. My great grandfather was a Yankee who lived in Indiana for a great number of years. It was an academic appointment of all things that took him down south to Oklahoma, where he was a member of the engineering faculty at Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State). While I grew up in a lot of different places as a military brat, I generally consider my roots to be in the South, while still retaining the knowledge that I had relatives fight and die on both sides, and relatives who fought in wars before and after the Civil War, and the hell if I care to have some 3rd generation guido or potatohead from NYC talking smack about the South. I do, however, have the sense to differentiate between that and the debate and discussion of the issue we are having in this thread.

 

[RJKarl]

That sucking sound you hear from the federal budget is the states of the confederacy (with the exception of TX) sucking madly on the government teat taking far more than they provide while bitching about government spending and "personal resonsibility".

 

[WakeForestRanger]

That sucking sound you hear from the federal budget is the states of the confederacy (with the exception of TX) sucking madly on the government teat taking far more than they provide while bitching about government spending and "personal resonsibility".

North Carolina gets back what it pays in.

Why derail the thread with that anyway?

 

[RJKarl]

It was $1.08 or so last year.

The amnesia here is to say that would have bene a Civil War without the issue of slavery.

 

[EatLeadCommie]

North Carolina gets back what it pays in.

Why derail the thread with that anyway?

Because it's the latest talking point among the lefties.

I've always been intrigued by that stat and would love to see it broken down rather than just labeled as "federal payouts compared to tax dollars taken in." I'd be curious to see if things like disaster relief (hurricanes and tornados tend to like the south), government contracts, and industry subsidies are factored in.

 

[Marietta Deac]

That sucking sound you hear from the federal budget is the states of the confederacy (with the exception of TX) sucking madly on the government teat taking far more than they provide while bitching about government spending and "personal resonsibility".

As does GA.

 

[WakeForestRanger]

The amnesia here is to say that would have bene a Civil War without the issue of slavery.

You're ignoring things like the Whiskey Rebellion, the fact that the New England states had a sizable secession movement over the War of 1812 & Andrew Jackson's threat to hang anyone in South Carolina in 1832 that shed blood when they tried to nullify the Federal tariff.

We came close to Civil War several times in our history over issues other than slavery.

 

[PhDeac]

That's backhanded support for his point.

 

[mfdeacs99]

No the amnesia is sanctimonius people who don't acknowledge that the North profited as much from slavery and didn't fight the war to do a damn thing about it.

The South clearly bolted over the issue of slavery.

The North, however, didn't fight the war to end slavery, it fought the war to ensure that it would continue to have access to the raw materials necessary to keep it profitable industry and trade going. Hell, the Mayor of New York proposed becoming an independent city state to stay on terms with both and keep trade flowing.

 

[WakeForestRanger]

We skirted the edge of Civil War a few times. Who's to say 1861 had to turn out any differently than 1832 did? I think the fact that we came close to the abyss over other issues refutes the idea that slavery is the only issue that could have triggered a Civil War.

If Jackson had sent Federal troops into South Carolina after Governor Hayne called up 25,000 SC troops the whole mess might have gotten started 30 years earlier. Read some of Governor Hayne's inaugural address online it's amazing something like tariffs could incite that kind of rhetoric although I guess our first Civil War (the Revolution) had it's roots in taxation issues.

 

[RJKarl]

You're ignoring things like the Whiskey Rebellion, the fact that the New England states had a sizable secession movement over the War of 1812 & Andrew Jackson's threat to hang anyone in South Carolina in 1832 that shed blood when they tried to nullify the Federal tariff.

We came close to Civil War several times in our history over issues other than slavery.

But this one was about slavery.

 

[WakeForestRanger]

Yes it was but you said there would be no civil war without the issue of slavery. I was just pointing out that is not necessarily true.

 

[RJKarl]

Yes it was but you said there would be no civil war without the issue of slavery. I was just pointing out that is not necessarily true.

but none of them came to that.

I made a bet on Breeders Cup Classic when Archangue won and paid $240 and the exacta paid in the thousands. I could have had $2000 to win on him and $1000 eacta but I didn't. My scenario makes more than your as I was there and could have done it.

We've only had one Civil War. Nobody was talking any other civil war. You are extrapolating something that was not being discussed.

 

[WakeForestRanger]

The same state almost plunged the country into civil war over another issue less than 30 years earlier so it is incorrect to say slavery is the only issue that could have triggered it.