Well the “truism” that disgusts me is the claim that “ the Civil War settled the issue of whether States could succeed from the union!” This is just the vulgar “Argumentum ad Bacculum” that is, “might makes right!” The legality of secession was never directly addressed. Had South Carolina not made the move of bombarding Ft. Sumter there would have been little pretext for the Northern States to have responded militarily.
The other thing that disgusts me is the senseless adulation of John Brown who was a murderous terrorist who “executed” a slave who refused to fight with him at Harper’s Ferry. Slavery may be a deprivation of liberty but Brown murdered a man and the right of life is more fundamental than the right of liberty. In effect John Brown behaved as if that man were no better than his own chattel.
Back in the 90s I read this book by Robert V. Bruce “Lincoln and the Tools of War” - that cited anecdotal evidence that the Civil War made a plentiful number of very profitable weapons/materiel contracts especially for European armaments makers and vast numbers of middlemen, proving lucrative to Wash DC’s politicos too - really the inception of the Military Industrial Complex in our history. Cheers, Tom
I hold that revolutions and civil wars are always the fault of the government that was it place when they started. That's because that's where the power was, either not to provoke the war or else to prevent it. People do not take up arms against their government unless they are driven to it.
The issue of slavery has been used by the federal government as a pretext to mask the real reasons for the war, which were economic. This propaganda is still extant. Human events are too complex to conclude that a single cause yielded a singly result; that kind of thinking is served up to the indolent mass. There was a lot more going on, particularly with the tariffs the federal government was imposing on the southern states' trading partners.
That isn't exactly true is it? The states listed the issues with the North were due to the disagreements over slavery. In fact, Lincoln was prepared to live with slavery and even suggested shipping African slaves back to Africa. He also freed all the slaves in the Confederate states with the Emancipation Proclamation but did not do the same in the North.
It was about slavery, but not exclusively about slavery, especially as the war dragged on.
I don’t believe the American Civil War was over slavery the way historians have re-written history. Union soldiers were every bit as racist as the Confederate and would have mutinied had they thought they were fighting and dying to free the black man. There were many disagreements between north and south other than slavery, but things such as The Emancipation Proclamation could be used to poke the south in the eye. The Emancipation Proclamation was made 8 months after the start of the war and only freed slaves in the Confederate States. Those in Union slave states were not freed.
One item of contention was that ambassadors used to negotiate trade deals. DC’s ambassadors were negotiating deals for hard goods produced by the north but not cotton from the south. The north wanted cotton for themselves at prices lower than what other countries would pay. Southern states were sending their own trade ambassadors to other countries to work around this, Union was not happy.
For the war to have been avoided one or both sides would have to compromise . Each Confederate State wished to rule itself essentially as a country. The Union States wanted a central federal government. How does one find a compromise?
Soviets used the Gulag for political prisoners and certain "undesirables" the same way the Nazis imprisoned Jews, labor was a secondary goal.
I completely disagree with you, as do several scholars and the idea that slaves were a plentiful in the South ignores the fact that there were reasons for that labor in the South that did not exist in the north.
We will never know the impact of mechanization of agriculture, which by the way, was 10-15 times more efficient than human labor, because we had a war first.
Well the “truism” that disgusts me is the claim that “ the Civil War settled the issue of whether States could succeed from the union!” This is just the vulgar “Argumentum ad Bacculum” that is, “might makes right!” The legality of secession was never directly addressed. Had South Carolina not made the move of bombarding Ft. Sumter there would have been little pretext for the Northern States to have responded militarily.
The other thing that disgusts me is the senseless adulation of John Brown who was a murderous terrorist who “executed” a slave who refused to fight with him at Harper’s Ferry. Slavery may be a deprivation of liberty but Brown murdered a man and the right of life is more fundamental than the right of liberty. In effect John Brown behaved as if that man were no better than his own chattel.
We are of the same mind. This is some of the mythology of which I wrote.
Erratum: “secede” not “succeed”
It was used both ways.
Back in the 90s I read this book by Robert V. Bruce “Lincoln and the Tools of War” - that cited anecdotal evidence that the Civil War made a plentiful number of very profitable weapons/materiel contracts especially for European armaments makers and vast numbers of middlemen, proving lucrative to Wash DC’s politicos too - really the inception of the Military Industrial Complex in our history. Cheers, Tom
I hold that revolutions and civil wars are always the fault of the government that was it place when they started. That's because that's where the power was, either not to provoke the war or else to prevent it. People do not take up arms against their government unless they are driven to it.
The issue of slavery has been used by the federal government as a pretext to mask the real reasons for the war, which were economic. This propaganda is still extant. Human events are too complex to conclude that a single cause yielded a singly result; that kind of thinking is served up to the indolent mass. There was a lot more going on, particularly with the tariffs the federal government was imposing on the southern states' trading partners.
That isn't exactly true is it? The states listed the issues with the North were due to the disagreements over slavery. In fact, Lincoln was prepared to live with slavery and even suggested shipping African slaves back to Africa. He also freed all the slaves in the Confederate states with the Emancipation Proclamation but did not do the same in the North.
It was about slavery, but not exclusively about slavery, especially as the war dragged on.
That's an eye-opener. I'll have to find where I can have a look at those.
I don’t believe the American Civil War was over slavery the way historians have re-written history. Union soldiers were every bit as racist as the Confederate and would have mutinied had they thought they were fighting and dying to free the black man. There were many disagreements between north and south other than slavery, but things such as The Emancipation Proclamation could be used to poke the south in the eye. The Emancipation Proclamation was made 8 months after the start of the war and only freed slaves in the Confederate States. Those in Union slave states were not freed.
One item of contention was that ambassadors used to negotiate trade deals. DC’s ambassadors were negotiating deals for hard goods produced by the north but not cotton from the south. The north wanted cotton for themselves at prices lower than what other countries would pay. Southern states were sending their own trade ambassadors to other countries to work around this, Union was not happy.
For the war to have been avoided one or both sides would have to compromise . Each Confederate State wished to rule itself essentially as a country. The Union States wanted a central federal government. How does one find a compromise?
Did you forget the Confederation of the South?
Soviets used the Gulag for political prisoners and certain "undesirables" the same way the Nazis imprisoned Jews, labor was a secondary goal.
I completely disagree with you, as do several scholars and the idea that slaves were a plentiful in the South ignores the fact that there were reasons for that labor in the South that did not exist in the north.
We will never know the impact of mechanization of agriculture, which by the way, was 10-15 times more efficient than human labor, because we had a war first.