US Civil War Myths and Facts

[Bob Hubbard]

To wrap up some tangents here, I provided 4 threads for civil war discussion, We can also spin that off into a new one if anyone would care to discuss that more. Please start a thread is so.

Regarding the Crusades, it's an interesting topic, and again, I would love the chance to really dig into that topic, so if anyone else does, please feel free to start a new thread.

We can then return this one to the headstone topic.

 

[Tez3]

A Civil War thread would be good, I'd like to learn more about the history and also how it has affected people today. I imagine apart from slavery it changed a great many things.
A Crusades thread would be useful because it is very much in modern Muslims minds and I know many fear a modern crusade, a discussion could be constructive. I don't have enough knowledge of either to start them though.

 

[arnisador]

And by the way, the point of his post is absolutely ridiculous. There is nothing in Christianity, or in our holy book that justifies lynching blacks. It was Christians who formed the abolitionist movement that led to the formation of the Republican party and the Civil war faught to end slavery.

It was Christians who effectuated New World slavery and Christianity that was used to justify it. Robert E. Lee states the position that what was being done to the Africans was for their good, as the Jews' time in Egypt ultimately was for them:

"The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence."

Christianity was the means of identifying the Africans as heathens in need of Christian help, for their own good. Intolerance of non-Christians a fundamental tenet of Christianity, and saving others forcibly from the Christians' view of hell is certainly ensconced in the Christian tradition.

Edited to add: Your history is wrong mate. The Civil War fallacies were debunked here by Kaith and a few others way back when.

A few conspiracy theorists here--actually, it was mostly just Kaith--convinced themselves that up was down. The rest of the world hasn't yet accepted the Great MartialTalk Debunking.

 

[arnisador]

Actually the entire world doesn't know, I didn't learn anything about the American Civil War whilst at school and only have a hazy idea of what it was about so I'd bow happily to Bob's knowledge of the whys and wherefores.

Please, please, please don't do that. Wikipedia would be a much better source.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Jeff, all my sources were cited, are verifiable and are accessible. Sources included documents by reliable witnesses to Lincoln's own words.

The fact that they wrongly teach in school that Lincoln freed the slaves doesn't make it right. He didn't. He was dead before they were freed. No Loyal State Slave was freed until the Constitutional Amendment was passed. (verified, documented)

The fact that they wrongly teach about the US Civil War being all about slavery, when it was about tariffs, trade balance and power (verified, documented).

The fact that they teach in school about poor honest Abe who tried so many times to become President when he was in fact (verified, documented) a highly paid, quite wealthy (by the days standards) -corporate- lawyer. (verified, documented)

The fact that many of the Confederate States such as Virginia fought to preserve the Union (verified, documented) until Lincoln demanded an armed conflict (verified, documented) despite his own advisors recommending peaceful parting (verified, documented).

There's also the fact that the Southern States wanted to end slave importation in the 1700's but were prevented by the New England states. (verified, documented).

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Civil War
Revisiting the Past - The Road to War : Causes
Researching the Past - An examination of the concept of Secession
Revisiting the Past : Part 3 - An re-examination of the concept of Secession
Revisiting the Past : Pt 4 - The Institution of Slavery as a cause for war. By Bob Hubbard



Edited to add:
Please note that each of these 4 articles have numerous references cited, a short list is below:

Slavery and States Rights
Great Speech of Hon. Joseph Wheeler, of Alabama.
From the Richmond, Va., Dispatch, July 31, 1894​

http://www.civilwarhome.com/wheelercauses.htm

"Reminiscences Of The Civil War", (Chapter I)
- John B. Gordon, Maj. Gen. CSA

Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley August 22, 1862
http://www.civilwarhome.com/lincolngreeley.htm

The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War
- Thomas Dilorenzo

U.S. Department of Interior, National Park Service
http://www.nps.gov/archive/gett/gett...03-lesson1.htm
http://www.civilwarhistory.com/slavetrade/causes.htm

Wedges of Separation In The Civil War
http://www.civilwarhome.com/sectionalism.htm

33 Questions about American History
-Thomas E. Woods Jr.

Politically Incorrect guide to American history
- Thomas E. Woods Jr

Lincoln Unmasked
- Thomas Dilorenzo

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Additional Reference:

Myths of the American Civil War
Politics Articles | September 10, 2005

The Civil War (1861-5) has spawned numerous myths and falsities.

The Republicans did not intend to abolish slavery - just to "contain" it, i.e., limit it to the 15 states where it had already existed. Most of the Democrats accepted this solution.

This led to a schism in the Democratic party. The "fire eaters" left it and established their own pro-secession political organization. Growing constituencies in the south - such as urban immigrants and mountain farmers - opposed slavery as a form of unfair competition. Less than one quarter of southern families owned slaves in 1861. Slave-based, mainly cotton raising, enterprises, were so profitable that slave prices almost doubled in the 1850s. This rendered slaves - as well as land - out of the reach of everyone but the wealthiest citizens.

Cotton represented three fifths of all United States exports in 1860. Southerners, dependent on industrial imports as they were, supported free trade. Northerners were vehement trade protectionists. The federal government derived most of its income from custom duties. Income tax and corporate profit tax were yet to be invented.

The states seceded one by one, following secession conventions and state-wide votes. The Confederacy (Confederate States of America) was born only later. Not all the constituents of the Confederacy seceded at once. Seven - the "core" - seceded between December 20, 1860 and February 1, 1861. They were: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.

Another four - Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas - joined them only after the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861. Two - Kentucky and Missouri - seceded but were controlled by the Union's army throughout the war. Maryland and Delaware were slave states but did not secede.

President James Buchanan who preceded Abraham Lincoln, made clear that the federal government would not use force to prevent secession. Secession was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court only in 1869 (in Texas vs. White) - four years after the Civil War ended. New England almost seceded in 1812, during the Anglo-American conflict, in order to protect its trade with Britain.

The constitution of the Confederacy prohibited African slave trade (buying slaves from Africa), though it allowed interstate trade in slaves. The first Confederate capital was in Montgomery, Alabama - not in Richmond, Virginia. The term of office of the Confederate president - Jefferson Davis was the first elected - was six years, not four as was the case in the Union.

Fort Sumter was not the first attack of the Confederacy on the Union. It was preceded by attacks on 11 forts and military installations on Confederate territory.

Lincoln won only 40 percent of the popular vote in 1860. Hence the South's fierce resistance to his abolitionist agenda. In 1864, the Republicans became so unpopular, they had to change their name to the Union Party. Lincoln's vice-president, Johnson, actually was a Democrat and hailed from Tennessee, a seceding state.

He was the only senator from a seceded state to remain in the Senate.

Reconstruction started long before the war ended, in Union-occupied Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Slave tax was an important source of state revenue in the South (up to 60 percent in South Carolina). Emancipation led to near bankruptcy.

The Union states of Connecticut, Minnesota, and Wisconsin refused to pass constitutional amendments to confer suffrage on black males. The Union army consigned black labor gangs to work on the plantations of loyal Southerners and forcibly separated the black workers from their families.

Contrary to myth, nearly two thirds of black families were headed by both parents. Slave marriages were legally meaningless in the antebellum South, though. But nearly 90 percent of slave households remained intact till death or forced separation. The average age of childbirth for women was 20.

Segregation was initiated by blacks. The freedmen lobbied hard and long for separate black churches and educational facilities. Nor was lynching confined to blacks. For instance, a white mob lynched, in September 1862, forty four Union supporters in Gainesville, Texas. Similar events took place in Shelton Laurel, North Carolina. The Ku Klux Klan was the paramilitary arm of the Democratic party in the SouthFree Reprint Articles, though never officially endorsed by it. It was used to "discipline" the workforce in the plantations - but also targeted Republicans.

The Democrats changed their name after the war to the Conservative Party. By 1877 they have regained power in all formerly Confederate states.

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Central Europe Review, Global Politician, PopMatters, and eBookWeb , and Bellaonline, and as a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent. He is the the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

 

[arnisador]

Jeff, all my sources were cited, are verifiable and are accessible.

That doesn't make your conclusions accurate. For the most part you cherry-picked isolated quotes and used them to buttress your own obsessive points. The people whose work is taught in colleges--high schools teach nonsense in every field due to the control of locally-elected school boards; look at the constant efforts to have creationism taught in biology--have written extensive analyses, published in books and checked by peer review and constant use.

Any attempt to boil an entire war down to one single issue--slavery, tariffs, states' rights, what-have-you--is oversimplifying, but that's what the academic study of past events is: making a history that allows one to grasp the times without having lived them.

Incidentally, lots of crazy theories are well-documented in works by their proponents (e.g., once again, Intelligent Design).

There's also the fact that the Southern States wanted to end slave importation in the 1700's but were prevented by the New England states. (verified, documented).

Can you be more specific here? If this came up previously, I don't recall it.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Please, please, please don't do that. Wikipedia would be a much better source.

Emancipation Fraud

The proclamation did not name the border states of Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, or Delaware, which had never declared a secession, and so it did not free any slaves there. The state of Tennessee had already mostly returned to Union control, so it also was not named and was exempted. Virginia was named, but exemptions were specified for the 48 counties that were in the process of forming West Virginia, as well as seven other named counties and two cities. Also specifically exempted were New Orleans and thirteen named parishes of Louisiana, all of which were also already mostly under Federal control at the time of the Proclamation.

13th Amendment? Which one?

Earlier proposed Thirteenth Amendments

Each of two amendments proposed by the Congress would have become the Thirteenth Amendment if it had been ratified when originally proposed.

* Titles of Nobility Amendment, proposed by the Congress in 1810, would have revoked the citizenship of anyone either (1) accepting a foreign title of nobility or (2) accepting any foreign payment without Congressional authorization.

* Corwin Amendment, proposed by the Congress in 1861, would have forbidden any constitutional amendment that would interfere with slavery or any "domestic institutions" of a state.

The Corwin Amendment was passed by both the House and the Senate, endorsed by outgoing President James Buchanan publicly and Abraham Lincoln said he did not oppose the Corwin Amendment. It was in the process of being ratified when war broke out and is technically still pending. It may still be, however that is highly unlikely. The current 13th was only ratified by Mississippi March 16, 1995.

 

[Cryozombie]

Incidentally, lots of crazy theories are well-documented in works by their proponents (e.g., once again, Intelligent Design).

Why is it every other post an excuse for you to bash Christianity with broad strokes? Intellegent Design doesn't even apply to the discussion at hand but you had to get the dig in didn't you? I love watching you post about intollerence to other groups whilst you go on endlessly about Christians and Christianity.

Perhaps Its time I start in on how stupid most "educated" people are in every other post and use a handful of wacko examples to uphold that viewpoint. I wonder how quickly you'd find that **** getting old?

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Can you be more specific here? If this came up previously, I don't recall it.

Virginia attempted to ban the importation of slaves prior the American Revolution - the British government overruled them. Virginia's reasoning was economic - imported slaves lowered the prices for domestic (locally-bred) slaves on the public market. It was protectionism, not a desire to end slavery.

All states eventually created laws banning the importation of slaves. Georgia was the last to do so, not the first.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Can you be more specific here? If this came up previously, I don't recall it.

"three-fifths compromise."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-fifths_compromise

Founding Fathers wanted to free slaves from the start.

John Jay, who was the president of a similar society in New York, believed:
the honour of the states, as well as justice and humanity, in my opinion, loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people. To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused.


John Adams opposed slavery his entire life as a "foul contagion in the human character" and "an evil of colossal magnitude."



James Madison called it "the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man."
...



In 1786, Washington wrote of slavery, "there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it." He devised a plan to rent his lands and turn his slaves into paid laborers, and at the end of his presidency he quietly freed several of his own household slaves. In the end, he could take it no more and decreed in his will that his slaves would become free upon the death of his wife. The old and infirm were to be cared for while they lived, and the children were to be taught to read and write and trained in a useful skill until they were age 25. Washington's estate paid for this care until 1833.




During his first term in the House of Burgesses, Thomas Jefferson proposed legislation to emancipate slaves in Virginia, but the motion was soundly defeated. His 1774 draft instructions to the Virginia Delegates for the First Continental Congress, A Summary View of the Rights of British America, called for an end to the slave trade: "The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state." That same year, the First Continental Congress agreed to discontinue the slave trade and boycott other nations that engaged in it. The Second Continental Congress reaffirmed this policy in 1776.


Jefferson's draft constitution for the state of Virginia forbade the importation of slaves, and his draft of the Declaration of Independence-written at a time when he himself had inherited about 200 slaves-included a paragraph condemning the British king for introducing slavery into the colonies and continuing the slave trade:


He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of a CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]

How the West (Except for the U.S.) Ended Slavery[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]by Thomas J. DiLorenzo[/FONT][FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif][FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]
[/FONT][/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Powell then tells the story of how the British navy attempted to stop the international slave trade. Among its major antagonists were New England slave shippers, who continued to deliver slaves from Africa to the Caribbean through the mid 1860s. (The big majority of the slave ships in America were built and sailed from New York, Providence, and Boston harbors.) Although the slave trade in America was banned as of 1808, "an estimated 50,000 slaves were [also] brought into the U.S. between 1807 and 1860," writes Powell. New York City "had been a lively slave trading center." [/FONT]

There's also the fact that the Southern States wanted to end slave importation in the 1700's but were prevented by the New England states. (verified, documented).

Looking for the document now.....

 

[jks9199]

The Emancipation Proclamation is clear in its text that it does not apply to states within the Union:

That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free

The states "in rebellion" are enumerated later as:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

It was a propaganda move, and little more.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Quote:
There's also the fact that the Southern States wanted to end slave importation in the 1700's but were prevented by the New England states. (verified, documented).

I'm currently unable to find several of my reference books where I believe the information is referenced. Going on memory here:

During the Constitutional Convention, Jefferson and others wanted to shut down the importation of new slaves. The NE states balked at this as their income was heavily based on slave importation and transportation. As a compromise, importation was allowed until 1808, after which only domestic slave trade was allowed.

Despite restrictions on importation however, NE shippers continued to import slaves to the US, as well as to brokers in Cuba, Haiti and South America until after the end of the US war.

As slavery was eliminated in the North, the slaves were often not freed, just resold to owners in still legal states.



Slavery in the Confederacy
- The CSA Constitution continued the USA's prohibition of importation of slaves after the year 1808.
- It specified that slavery was legal "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed [by Congress]"
- It forbid the CSA Congress from abolishing or limiting slavery in Confederate territories, leaving that decision to the individual states.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_Constitution

(Sidebar - it also had term limits, limited government, and clauses against 36,000 page unreadable bills.)

 

[arnisador]

Why is it every other post an excuse for you to bash Christianity with broad strokes? Intellegent Design doesn't even apply to the discussion at hand

Wait, I thought that Intelligent Design was a scientific theory with no connection to any particular religion?

I'm currently unable to find several of my reference books where I believe the information is referenced. Going on memory here:

During the Constitutional Convention, Jefferson and others wanted to shut down the importation of new slaves. The NE states balked at this as their income was heavily based on slave importation and transportation.

That shipbuilders opposed the end of the slave trade I can believe...was there organized opposition by the New England states as political entities, though?

 

[KenpoTex]

opcorn:

 

[Tez3]

opcorn:

Nice one! I didn't realise it was going to be this interesting!

 

[KenpoTex]

Nice one! I didn't realise it was going to be this interesting!

Oh, we've had the same thread at least 3 times now over the years (people posting factual info about the War of Northern Aggression, and other people refusing to accept it...)

 

[Bob Hubbard]

That shipbuilders opposed the end of the slave trade I can believe...was there organized opposition by the New England states as political entities, though?

Enough political clout to get the import end extended 20 years out from the signing of the Constitution, with additional threats for the NE states to secede (it was legal until Lincoln's Tariff War, still is for some states technically) twice in the years since.

 

[Tez3]

Are you sure the actual war is ended and not being carried on like our War of the Roses by other means?