BoatBanter.com - View Single Post - Civil war

Califbill

Keyser Söze wrote:
On 9/14/15 7:46 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 9/14/2015 7:23 PM, Califbill wrote:
Keyser Söze wrote:
On 9/14/15 6:28 PM, Califbill wrote:
wrote:
On Mon, 14 Sep 2015 13:20:07 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Mon, 14 Sep 2015 12:01:26 -0400, wrote:

On Mon, 14 Sep 2015 05:00:54 -0700 (PDT), Tim
wrote:

It is a great program Greg. I took interest in it when it came
out. I
had 3 2xgreat grandfathers that fought in the bloody thing. A
2xgreat uncle too!

I was surprised at how much anti-war activities there were in the
north. According to Burns, most of them also were not really
believing
this war was over slavery. They sounded like the soldiers the US has
sent off to fight in other people's civil wars. They were not
sure why
they were there, they just went because they were told to go by the
government.
The most common given by the southerners for why they were fighting
was because the union soldiers had invaded them. Again, that could
have been written today of some of our misadventures.

It really sounded like three quarters of a million people may have
died for a war that didn't have to be fought. I think slavery would
have fallen from it's own weight and the union would have come back
together ... but I have always had that opinion.

===

One of the guys that I go target shooting with is the official
historian for the local Sons of the Confederacy group. Nice guy but
definitely has strong red neck roots. He claims that the primary
cause for the "War of Northern Agression" was economic. Apparently
the federal government imposed tariffs on cotton which impacted the
southern agriculture business. After the south refused to pay, the
north threatened to blockade the ports. This may be revisionist
history for all I know but that's the official party line in some
circles.

Even if the goal was to end slavery, I always had to ask, wouldn't a
system of economic sanctions work better than a war that killed 2.5%
of the entire US population?
After all, sanctions ended apartheid in South Africa in a little over
30 years and if you listen to people like Al Sharpton, Michael Eric
Dyson or Cornel West, it still hasn't ended here over 150 years later.
The war certainly never ended the conflict between north and south.
If anything it only made the divisions stronger.

Was economic in that slavery was almost dead. And the Eli Whitney
invented
the cotton gin, which meant there could be huge cotton farms, which
were
labor intensive to pick. At the same time, the Northern controlled
Federal
government wanted a higher tax on cotton. We were supplying most of
the
worlds cotton at the time. So between the taxes on the main money
maker
for the south, Lincoln, who,was anti slavery, was elected. The
south now
worried about excess taxes and killing off the labor supply.
Therefore a
war. South would probably been better off without slavery, as no
jobs, you
could get labor for less cost then maintaining slaves. Plus the States
Rights issues, and the fact the rich were figuring the war would
last only
a couple months, and be won by the south. And he rich politicians
went to
war, and probably made an extra fortune off the poor *******s
fighting the
war.

Whew. Thank goodness you fellas were never allowed to teach in the
public's schools, at least not in the non-civil war revisionist part
of the country.

What is revisionist? Even Lincoln would have left slavery if it had kept
the Union together. Emancipation proclamation was late in the war, and
only covered secessionist states. Did not ban slavery.

Based on my very cursory reading on the Civil War, Lincoln wanted to ban
slavery in territories not yet states but was not necessarily pushing to
ban slavery in the south. As you mentioned, he was willing to accept
slavery in the south if it would save the union.

Lincoln wanted to ban slavery, period, but, as a compromise, agreed to
only push to ban it in the western territories. This was not acceptable
to what became "the South," and the southern states began seceding even
before Lincoln was inaugurated. The central issue was the abolition of slavery.

It is interesting that where talk of secession arise these days, it is
almost entirely in "the South."

But Lincoln had been elected. Was financial. Rich wanting cheap labor.
Something you seem to push these days.