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Community Organizer Elected President of the United States
- Thread starter Joe Dressner
- Start date
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
That would make everybody comfortable but it lessens the chance for greatness. Imagine the wastefulness of fifty little armies, ~thirty little navies, etc etc.originally posted by VLM:
Let's break it up and let the states go their separate ways.
Lessens the chance for foreign adventures.
The key is that I'm not really that interested anymore in trying to get people to think rationally. I just give up. If they want to teach their kids that Jesus rode dinosaurs, be my fucking guest. Outlaw abortion, deal with the increased crime rate. Outlaw stem cell research, we'll move our company to the next state and our former R1 university will become Bob Jones.
Let's face it, without an enemy to bind us together, Americans are a useless rabble.
And, isn't that an opening for the UK to reclaim their lost colonies?
I'm OK with that. Anything to bring the EPL to Durham!
originally posted by SFJoe:
By coincidence, I just finished US Grant's autobiography. Boy did he disagree with you.originally posted by VLM:
Let's break it up and let the states go their separate ways. People can choose to live in a state that reflects their belief system and social outlook.
He drank bourbon and was always a lesser man than Lee.
Kay Bixler
Kay Bixler
originally posted by VLM:
Let's break it up and let the states go their separate ways. People can choose to live in a state that reflects their belief system and social outlook.
Yeah! That will solve everything! And it will be totally belief based segregation too, not at all related to wealth. I call the coasts for my team! Nathan, you get Kansas.
Better choice of cause, perhaps, than maintaining slavery.originally posted by VLM:
He drank bourbon and was always a lesser man than Lee.
originally posted by Kay Bixler:
originally posted by VLM:
Let's break it up and let the states go their separate ways. People can choose to live in a state that reflects their belief system and social outlook.
Yeah! That will solve everything! And it will be totally belief based segregation too, not at all related to wealth. I call the coasts for my team! Nathan, you get Kansas.
No way! I've got a PhD, I get to live on the coasts. That is, if I can find a job.
Frankly, my belief is that if the states played a bigger role then we'd have less of this fringe element to the politics. People get much more reasonable when the results are proximate.
originally posted by SFJoe:
Better choice of cause, perhaps, than maintaining slavery.originally posted by VLM:
He drank bourbon and was always a lesser man than Lee.
For your information the War of Northern Aggression was about states rights.
You grew up in VA, didn't you learn anything?
Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
originally posted by VLM:
originally posted by SFJoe:
Better choice of cause, perhaps, than maintaining slavery.originally posted by VLM:
He drank bourbon and was always a lesser man than Lee.
For your information the War of Northern Aggression was about states rights.
You grew up in VA, didn't you learn anything?
Yeah, but states rights to do what? I think it was to have slaves.
Jeff Grossman
Jeff Grossman
And yet Lee himself stated that his interest in the war had nothing to do with slavery or with federalism. He went wherever Virginia went.originally posted by VLM:
For your information the War of Northern Aggression was about states rights.
I much prefer the thinking man, T. J. Jackson, no matter how noble (Lee) or dutiful (Grant) the others were.
originally posted by VLM:
Let's face it, without an enemy to bind us together, Americans are a useless rabble.
That doesn't just apply to Americans.
And we have plenty of enemies.
originally posted by Rahsaan:
originally posted by VLM:
Let's face it, without an enemy to bind us together, Americans are a useless rabble.
That doesn't just apply to Americans.
And we have plenty of enemies.
What's this "we" you refer to? Have I seen your birth certificate, Rahsaan?
Mark Lipton
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Yeah, but states rights to do what? I think it was to have slaves.
It all depends on whether you look at proximate or ultimate causation. The war began at Fort Sumter in a conflict over whether South Carolina could secede from the Union. There is no doubt that events reached that stage because of simmering, decades-long dispute over slavery, but slavery didn't become the central issue until the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862/63 (which, it should be noted, did nothing to free the slaves not in the ten Confederate states named). It has been frequently argued by historians that the Emancipation Proclamation was a canny political move by Lincoln to prevent England entering the war on the side of the Confederacy, with which it had stronge economic ties.
Mark Lipton
originally posted by MLipton:
Have I seen your birth certificate, Rahsaan?
Mark Lipton
I don't know. Have you?
I've sent it to so many different administrative offices in the past few years for various certifications, who knows what Panels of Eminence have viewed my details.
Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Yeah, but states rights to do what? I think it was to have slaves.
It all depends on whether you look at proximate or ultimate causation. The war began at Fort Sumter in a conflict over whether South Carolina could secede from the Union. There is no doubt that events reached that stage because of simmering, decades-long dispute over slavery, but slavery didn't become the central issue until the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862/63 (which, it should be noted, did nothing to free the slaves not in the ten Confederate states named). It has been frequently argued by historians that the Emancipation Proclamation was a canny political move by Lincoln to prevent England entering the war on the side of the Confederacy, with which it had stronge economic ties.
Mark Lipton
South Carolina didn't fire on Fort Sumter for the abstract right to secede. They decided to secede because Lincoln was elected President on a platform not to allow slavery in any new territory, which the South rightly perceived as a tacit recognition that slavery was an evil. Statements by the political leaders of the Confederacy document pretty well document, I think, that they thought they were fighting for the continuance of slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation was no doubt a wartime political move, but it was still a wartime political move about slavery, not about secession as an abstract principle.
I had thought that the position that the Civil War was only mediately about slavery was abandoned as untenable. Not a historian, I am unable to destroy it myself without going back to a lot of reading any more than I am able myself to establish the reality of global warming, but I am surprised to see this argument still around.
Claude Kolm
Claude Kolm
It was the view put forth by apologist Southern historians who dominated the field in the first half of the 20th century, and then totally demolished by giants like C. Vann Woodward and the recently-deceased Kenneth M. Stampp.originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I had thought that the position that the Civil War was only mediately about slavery was abandoned as untenable.
Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
It was the view put forth by apologist Southern historians who dominated the field in the first half of the 20th century, and then totally demolished by giants like C. Vann Woodward and the recently-deceased Kenneth M. Stampp.originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I had thought that the position that the Civil War was only mediately about slavery was abandoned as untenable.
I was politely avoiding this characterization, but, in a word, yes.
Steve Guattery
Steve Guattery
originally posted by VLM:
Let's break it up and let the states go their separate ways. People can choose to live in a state that reflects their belief system and social outlook.
What makes you think people would be allowed to move? We've got Lou Barletta up in Hazelton and he's got lots of supporters. There are others like him in other states.
David M. Bueker
David M. Bueker
Of course the Civil War was about slavery. The "re-branding" of the war by some historians as a pure case of states' rights was an attempt to pretty it up in some kind of Gone With the Wind fantasy land.
Lee was a better strategic (planning) general than either Grant or his own man Jackson, but he was not nearly so good at getting his subordinates to carry out his plans without delay or quesiton. Much of the outcome at Gettysburg hinged on Longstreet's failure to attack when ordered to do so, thus allowing the Union to reorganize their defense.
Lee was a better strategic (planning) general than either Grant or his own man Jackson, but he was not nearly so good at getting his subordinates to carry out his plans without delay or quesiton. Much of the outcome at Gettysburg hinged on Longstreet's failure to attack when ordered to do so, thus allowing the Union to reorganize their defense.
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
South Carolina didn't fire on Fort Sumter for the abstract right to secede. They decided to secede because Lincoln was elected President on a platform not to allow slavery in any new territory, which the South rightly perceived as a tacit recognition that slavery was an evil.
That is exactly what I meant about proximate and ultimate causes. The subtext to all political moves of that era was the unresolved conflict about slavery, which the Founding Fathers recognized was too hot a political potato for the Constitution and so put off for a later generation. The heated political climate following the Missouri Compromise and the Dred Scott decision, culminating in Lincoln's election in 1860, was what led to secession. It's worth recalling that Lincoln was the Republican candidate in part because he was considered a moderate on the subject of abolition.
Statements by the political leaders of the Confederacy document pretty well document, I think, that they thought they were fighting for the continuance of slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation was no doubt a wartime political move, but it was still a wartime political move about slavery, not about secession as an abstract principle.
I had thought that the position that the Civil War was only mediately about slavery was abandoned as untenable. Not a historian, I am unable to destroy it myself without going back to a lot of reading any more than I am able myself to establish the reality of global warming, but I am surprised to see this argument still around.
My point was not to deny that Lincoln and the Republicans sought an end to slavery as they most demonstrably did. What is an issue is the timing of the Emancipation Proclamation. By forcing his hand with war, the Confederate states essentially removed all obstacles to the abolition of slavery. Yet, as I note, the Emancipation Proclamation didn't end slavery in Missouri or any of the other slave states that weren't part of the Confederacy. Rather, it was still a politically risky subject so, as historians have noted, he free slaves in the states he had no control over (and who had no political retribution).
My overall point is to recognize that the war's underpinnings were a lot more complex than just the issue of slavery. Had the Confederate states not seceded from the Union, would a war have been fought? We'll never know, as secession provided a proximate cause to go to war.
Mark Lipton
Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
Lincoln wasn't a Republican because he was a moderate, he was a moderate among Republicans, which was an anti-slavery party. A nit, I recognize, but a meaningful one given the reality of radical Republicans. Republicans didn't become the party of big business until 15 or 20 years after the Civil War and remained the party of civil rights certainly until the 1950s and arguably until JFK telephoned MLK in 1960 (although there were Civil Rights Northern Democrats since FDR).
Hard to know what would have happened if the South had not seceded. The North would not have had to declare a war to end slavery nor would it have, since there was no support for such a war. If the position of making slavery illegal in all new territories had become the resolved position of the US, it would have spelled the end of slavery everywhere ultimately, although, alas after many more years of that evil no doubt. For the South not to secede, it would have had to accept an uprooting of their own economy, resting in part on unpaid, compelled labor, voluntarily. I guess it could have happened, but it seems unlikely. They were economically tied to the system as well as ideologically tied to it.
Hard to know what would have happened if the South had not seceded. The North would not have had to declare a war to end slavery nor would it have, since there was no support for such a war. If the position of making slavery illegal in all new territories had become the resolved position of the US, it would have spelled the end of slavery everywhere ultimately, although, alas after many more years of that evil no doubt. For the South not to secede, it would have had to accept an uprooting of their own economy, resting in part on unpaid, compelled labor, voluntarily. I guess it could have happened, but it seems unlikely. They were economically tied to the system as well as ideologically tied to it.