Trump indicted: Espionage Act
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Yes. So don't believe what people were saying about the motivation for the North AFTER the war was done and hundreds of thousands were dead, and the South lay in ruins. The very clear promises by Lincoln, the Corwin amendment, the plain economic plundering by the North of the South right before the war and then 100% after the war show the "wE aRe fiGhTiNg sLaVeRYz" argument is mainly a post-war justification.
I can find ten guys who saying anything I want about any claim I want about every war ever fought.
I am citing documented tariffs that would transfer massive wealth from the South to the North, repeated statements by Lincoln, the commander-in-chief, and an actual proposed Constitutional amendment, not some claim by a nobody general ten years after the war.
I think some of the disconnect we have here is you may think I believe the North was noble and the South was wicked. That is not what I am saying.
I have danced around this now and I will lay it out there. This is my belief about that war. I believe God is sovereign. I believe as this country was being formed, our founding fathers had an opportunity to eradicate slavery and they did not. I believe the Constitution is inspired by God, but being flawed men, they laid up on this very important issue. I think this is why many of them were troubled, as is revealed in some of their writings concerning the Constitution.
That being said, whether or not they believed it, or whether or not you and I believe it, the dye was cast for that war in 1787, and it was about the issue of slavery. Since the issue was not addressed there, it was going to be addressed later. There was no way to avoid that war. I believe because the men in 1787 laid up on the issue, God allowed that war to cleanse the country of the sin of slavery. I believe God allowed that trial and suffering of the Civil War to make us a better country.
That is a quick summary as the why I believe the war was about slavery. All the plans of men didn't matter. It was going to happen. It is a lesson we could use today. All this angst over who might be the next President...it doesn't matter. God is sovereign. Read Daniel 11. The Bible refers to various kings that will come up. We can reasonably deduce that one of those kings is Alexander the Great. To us he is Alexander the Great. To God...he's just another king.
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Slavery was already a dying institution. Mechanized farming was coming and a steam powered tractor and implements could plow, plant and cultivate cotton way cheaper than slaves. Economic warfare of the north against the southern states had already happened, the treat of forced abolition was simply what pushed the southern states farther than they were willing to be pushed.
Here's my take, it was 160 years ago, it doesn't matter one way or the other, and holds absolutely zero relevance today.
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No it matters. The struggle sessions attempting to make Huwhyte southerners hate themselves, their heritage and ancestors extends to the founding fathers.
Hope Neil Young will remember......................
That is a very good and well-presented argument. The professor moves me closer to Diver's position. However, I must note that the professor is overtly dishonest in two respects.
First, the Emancipation Proclamation most certainly did NOT "end slavery" as he claims. Quite the opposite. As I noted above, the proclamation purportedly "ended" slavery only in areas the proclamation did not affect (the states that had seceded and no longer answered to the Federal government) and continued to allow slavery in areas the North actually controlled and where it could end slavery (Kentucky, Missouri, Delaware and Maryland).
Second, Lincoln absolutely did NOT seek to end slavery in 1860 or 1861 or 1862 or 1863. He just didn't. He said at least 10x on the campaign trail in 1860 that he did not wish to end slavery, would not end slavery, and did not seek to end slavery. He then said the following in his inaugural address:
Read that again. He promised to recognize the right of states to slavery, promised to enforce the fugitive slave act, and then authored the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 that continued to ALLOW slavery in four states and the freaking District of Columbia then under his actual control, vociferously SUPPORTED the Corwin Amendment to make slavery a CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED right. Saying otherwise is just a lie.
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Ardent beliefs amongst fundamentalists sometimes spark ill will and skirmishes; hope all here can accommodate the broad spectrum of viewpoints.
No ill will in this debate. However, I do hope to underscore that there are in fact just two viewpoints: my viewpoint or the wrong viewpoint.
Yeah found some holes in the good professors take as well but being the devils advocate that I am I posted it.
Lincoln abhorred slavery. Being outspoken as he was against it sure does give you the impression that slavery was the main cause of the war.
Agree that Lincoln's main objective was to secure the Union, not to free the slaves.
I found this regarding the Corwin Amendment:
Lincoln did not believe that he had the power to eliminate slavery where it already existed. However, Southerners feared that a Republican administration would take direct aim at the institution of slavery. By tacitly supporting Corwin's amendment, Lincoln hoped to convince the South that he would not move to abolish slavery and, at the minimum, keep the border states of Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina from seceding.
In contrast to the Corwin Amendment and the stipulations in the Emancipation Proclamation:
Lincoln vigorously supported the 13th Amendment which abolished slavery throughout the United States, and, in the last speech of his life, he recommended extending the vote to African Americans.
Slavery was at the core. Everything stemmed from it..states rights, economics, threat of succession
For me to reach the conclusion that slavery - not economic plundering - was the primary reason for the Civil War, I must also conclude that the Southern states simply did not believe Lincoln and the Northern politicians. Lincoln promised he was not going to end slavery, pushed to make slavery protected under the Constitution in 1860, and repeatedly underscored he was going to enforce the fugitive slave act.
So what incentive did the Southern states have as of December, 1860 to secede? They already were slave states; no law was in the works to end slavery; in fact, a Constitutional amendment was in the works to guarantee the right to slavery; the government promised to enforce a law returning fugitive slaves to the slave states. Look, I guess the Southern states could have simply disbelieved these promises, but the position that the Southern states seceded to protect slavery just does not make sense here.
Would the war have happened even if the Corwin amendment were adopted and slavery was a guaranteed right? I say yes. The other factors - the shift of wealth from the South to the North, the tariffs which badly harmed Southern citizens and made Northern manufacturers rich, the population growth in the North making the Southern states subject to the whims of the North - would have triggered the conflict even if slavery were a guaranteed right in the United States.
I posit that my argument has substantial support since at the time the Civil War began, slavery WAS protected, a Constitutional amendment WAS in the works to guarantee the right of slavery, the fugitive slave act WAS being enforced, at least by the Federal government, and the President-elect HAD guaranteed he would do nothing to end slavery in the Southern states and in fact specifically stated he had NO POWER to do so even if he was so inclined.
I do chuckle a little. Please don't take this the wrong way...it is not intended as such. But the South is cool now!!! I like a lot of the mountain music...Tyler Childers for example. When I put it in Spotify, a lot of other singers come up. So many songs are about how growing up in the South is so great, and we Northerners don't know anything.
I chuckle because the songs seem to say that no one north of the Mason-Dixon line ever butchered out a hog, hunted deer or gutted fish. Growing for me there were guts all over the place...deer, fish, pigs. PA Dutch country. The women were canning it seemed like all of August. The kitchen got so hot. The stuff my Mother put up with. I remember one time I read somewhere that the new hot bait for trout was these maggots that were dyed different colors. I got hold of some and put them my Mom's fridge. I found at that that was her limit...maggots in the fridge.
The point is...we are rednecks too. We ain't judging anybody. But slavery not only hurt slaves, obviously, it hurt poor white folks and kept them in their station. I hate that about it.
Many have a redneck connection, I know that I do. Here is where I may disagree though, if you're a poor white, or black, brown, red or yellow for that matter, it seems to me that you have 2 choices, as follows. Stay focused and gain as much knowledge as you can and become the man, or at least raise yourself up. The other alternative is to remain happy, but poor and ignore the world around you. But you can't remain poor then blame others for your plight, which granted, life isn't fair, but much of that is on the individual to control and correct. My family south of the Mason-Dixon scratched the dirt as well or worked the mines, but I have no evidence that they blamed slavery for their situation in life, perhaps your family's historical letters differ from mine. I realize that both of our opinions are based on anecdotal documentation, and as I said before it was 160 years ago.
What I mean by hurting poor white people is that it kept wages down. Much like illegal immigration now keeps wages down. Jobs that poor whites may have done to earn a little extra money where done by slaves. Perhaps that extra money could have improved their lot in life some. A lot of my family followed the path from PA down through Virginia and into other parts of the South like a lot of Scots-Irish did. My branch stayed...they liked the German cooking I guess. I don't have any evidence that the ones that went down through blamed slavery, either. Probably didn't really understand the impact like we do today. Again, we have a modern example to draw from.
Great song. But it did make me think. You know, we try to understand the point of view of the Southern soldier and the fact that the poor farm kid wasn't fighting for slavery. We understand that. We talk about their bravery and dash, rightfully so.
But what about the Northern soldier, the poor farm kid from the North, or miner or millworker for example? What about him? When we reduce the Northern reason for fighting the war to just plunder, it diminishes their sacrifice...their bravery and dash. Shelby Foote, the noted Civil War historian and writer, stated he knew of no braver troops than the Union soldiers who attacked Marye's Heights at Fredricksburg in December 1862. They kept charging up the hill...I think it may have been 14 attempts in all, and they were all failures. But they kept charging.
Has anyone considered why the average Union soldier fought? Could it be that some of them at least felt slavery was evil and they were doing their part to eradicate it?
I agree. That was meant in no way to diminish what the Union solider had to endure.
I believe that in the hearts and minds of many... from the common Northerner to the abolitionists to the Union soldier that the eradication of an evil institution was at the forefront of this war, the wars main priority....but to Lincoln and the powers that be, most likely not.
To end slavery, much like it is viewed today.
Unitil the history revisionists started rearing their heads.
You know who you are Steeltime. lol
J/k
Great song written by Canadian Robbie Robertson. Reminds me of John Fogerty being Born on a Bayou.
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Have you ever been told you are an obvious racist because you are white and speak with a southern accent? Have you had every type of media portray you and every aspect of your heritage and culture as evil, backward, racist and low IQ? Nope you haven't because your side won and wrote the history books. So our people are NOT the same. So stick that "Chuckle" of yours right up your booty hole.
When did Southerners get so sensitive? Wah, wah.
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FOAD.
