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Capt Dizle
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quote: Originally posted by Ned
MtG, Cause and effect. The real question is who crossed the line first. That is easy to tell if the line is who fired the first shot. But if you move the line just a bit, well perhaps Lincoln started it.
But, as I take it, your main contention is the election of Lincoln was the last straw in a haystack of Northern abuse of Southern rights.
Is this closer? |
I'll jump in with my two cents. Please pardon me. The Republican party had just about settled on a policy allowing for the perpetual right of slavery in limited areas but this was not good enough for the agitator Lincoln who declared in his speech at the Republican Party in 1858 that " a house divided cannot stand". Most Americans do not understand the context and think that it refers somehow to the issue of Union. It did not. It was Lincoln's declaration that the country would have to be either all slave or none at all. This created the crisis that led to sucession. It was all Abe's doing. If he had not taken that radical stance there probably would not have been this terrible conflict, but Abe would probably not have been elected. In other words, one million men died due to Abe's political aspirations. Not quite Stalin like numbers but a pretty impressive butcher's bill for this side of the Atlantic.
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Capt Dizle
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Hey, Ned. I'll be willing to cede the point and accept that Abe was acting on his conscience as soon as the Yanks round here are willing to stipulate that Davis and other Southern leaders were doing likewise.
Maybe if the demonizations can end we can someday stop fighting this war.
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Capt Dizle
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quote: Originally posted by Ned
Also, if it is true that the Republican party was about to compromise on the issue of slavery and Lincoln prevented that, I am glad he did. It goes to show just how important one man's stand for the right can be. |
So basically you are willing to swap the blood of a million dead to speed up the end of a dying institution by a few years?
As I have said before, slavery is a moral wrong, almost as bad as abortion. I am not however, willing to see a million of my countymen die to force a stop to that barbaric institution.
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Capt Dizle
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Edwards was born in South Carolina. One of his ancestors probably pissed on the walls of Ft. Sumter.
How do you like it?
Do you hear me now?
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Patroklos
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Back home in good ole Norfolk VA
Dec 2001 time: 05:33
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Not fighting Hitler would not have saved lives.
Not fighting Saddam would not have saved lives.
Not fighting the Civil War would have saved lives.
Speeding up the end of slavery by a decade or two at the cost of a million dead is not an advantage. And what did the freed slaves inherit from the war? How about a devastated economy that forced so many to become economic refugees, who then had to move to the nouth to be despised by poor whites there who now have to compete with them economically. How about an enraged and embittered Southern population who couldn't take out their rage on the Yankee's anymore, but there were alot of ex-slaves around who were, thanks to Lincoln, the ideological heart of their arch eneimes war aims and thus NOW viewed as the cause of their misery.
The Civil War created American racism. Does any of the European countries that participated heavily in the slave trade but ended it voluntarily have the same problems?
Sure Europe was ahead of us on the slave issue, but they were ahead of us at a lot of things. They did have a 1000 year head start. We caught up with them in every other field in 20 more years, slavery would be no different.
Does slavery exist in the world today. Yes. Where is it primarily located except for extrodinary minority exceptions? The undeveloped world. What did America do in from 1850-1880? We developed from an agriculture based economy (that might be able to use slaves profitably) to an industrial based one (that has no need of slaves, at least of that type. Communist rhetoric here). Would that development have been faster had we not had to stop for a decade to fight a war of liberation that in fact just transformed slavery instead of ending it. Yes.
There is no drawback to not fighting the Civil War. At the very least freed slaves suffered just as much for a good period after the war, even more so, than they were before it. Sure they had a taste of freedom. But I would imagine after bieng a slave for a lifetime you became a little more pragmatic about things like not living in burned out cities and ravaged farms, having your more powerful neighbors hating you as the embodiement of their victorious enemies, and having nothing but whatever you can pick from your former masters smoldering foundation of a plantation house to feed your children on in the new "free" world.
Again, applying the ideology of today to explain why people acted like they did 150 years ago is pure folly.
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Ned
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of Aptos, CA
Oct 1999 time: 21:33
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I think the million figure is double the KIA. Here is a table summarizing America's casualties:
quote:
code: <------------Casualties------------>
[-----Deaths---] <-----Percentages-----> Duration
Conflict Enrolled Combat Other Wounded Total Ratio KIA Dead Casualty Months KIA/Month
Revolutionary War 200.0 4,435 * 6,188 10,623 2.4 2.2% 2.2% 5.3% 80 55
War of 1812 286.0 2,260 * 4,505 6,765 3.0 0.8% 0.8% 2.4% 30 75
Mexican War 78.7 1,733 11,550 4,152 17,435 1.3 2.2% 16.9% 22.2% 20 87
Civil War: Union 2,803.3 110,070 249,458 275,175 634,703 1.8 3.9% 12.8% 22.6% 48 2,293
Confederate 1,064.2 74,524 124,000 137,000 + 335,524 1.7 7.0% 18.7% 31.5% 48 1,553
Combined 3,867.5 184,594 373,458 412,175 + 970,227 1.7 4.8% 14.4% 25.1% 48 3,846
Spanish-American War 306.8 385 2,061 1,662 4,108 1.7 0.1% 0.8% 1.3% 4 96 &
World War I 4,743.8 53,513 63,195 204,002 320,710 2.7 1.1% 2.5% 6.8% 19 2,816
World War II 16,353.7 292,131 115,185 670,846 1,078,162 2.6 1.8% 2.5% 6.6% 44 6,639
Korean War 5,764.1 33,651 * 103,284 136,935 4.1 0.6% 0.6% 2.4% 37 909
Vietnam War 8,744.0 47,369 10,799 153,303 211,471 3.6 0.5% 0.7% 2.4% 90 526
Gulf War 2,750.0 148 145 467 ^ 760 2.6 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 1 148
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Dr Strangelove
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quote: Originally posted by jimmytrick
Sure, that right was ratified by cold steel and rifled muskets. |
Precisely.
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Capt Dizle
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quote: Originally posted by Ned
You Southerners who lament the casualties seem to have a hard time understanding who started the war. |
The North started the war. Abe was behind it.
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All times are GMT. The time now is 05:33. Apolyton Time is 00:33. |
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