← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · JoseyWales
Thread ID: 13110 | Posts: 15 | Started: 2004-04-10
2004-04-10 02:42 | User Profile
[url]http://southernevents.org/why_the_south_was_right.htm?id=2660[/url]
2004-04-11 13:54 | User Profile
Great article, JoseyWales. Thank you!
2004-04-11 15:35 | User Profile
The article states that:
[QUOTE]Slavery, so far from being the cause of the war, was merely the pretext for revolution. [/QUOTE]
While there were many bones of contention between the sections, it cannot be denied that slavery - in particular the issue of its extension to the territories conquered from Mexico - was the proximate cause of the war. It wasn't a "pretext" or some minor side issue, but rather was at the very center of the debate of the 1850's that lead up to the war.
Georgia issued [URL=http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html]this explanation [/URL] for its reasons for withdrawing from the Union, which makes that fact crystal clear.
Here's a passage from the South Carolina [URL=http://alpha.furman.edu/~benson/docs/decl-sc.htm]declaration[/URL]:
[QUOTE]We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection. [/QUOTE]
I don't know where we're getting this idea that slavery wasn't the cause of the Civil War, or at least a very big one. Without regard to any other issue (including whether slavery was a good thing or a bad thing, or whether it was a God-given right of inviolate property) the notion that it was at most a sort of small side issue in the Great Calamity is simply indefensible.
Walter
2004-04-11 16:45 | User Profile
The issue of slavery raised much bigger questions about the theory of our gvt. The net effect of the wars outcome was that the states now are the servants of the federal gvt instead of the other way around. Hundreds of thousands of white folks died and millions of africans were set loose upon our population.
I don't know where we're getting this idea that slavery wasn't the cause of the Civil War, or at least a very big one.
It was one issue, but i hope you dont intend to convince us that Lincoln sent his "volunteers" to invade the Southern states to free the negroes ?
2004-04-11 18:24 | User Profile
The negro problem in this country was caused by the south and its dependents on cheap slave labour to sustain its economy.
The civil war was like any other war. It was focused on the destruction of one economic system and the institution of another. The south always feared the social implications because they had the huge numbers of negros living in their states. I do recall in my history that the federal government was trying to send back as many negros as possible. This is where the country in africa called liberia came from.
As it went the slave issue had been won politically and had extended into almost all the western territories before the civil war. This would have ment the complete solidification of slavery as the main economic driver in the Union of the United States. Just think of the economics this country would have if this were the case today. What jobs would not be a slave job and what jobs would be for the whites. I think the proper outcome was achieved in the end.
At this time in history the southron whites should be thinking more of having as many children as possible and educating them to the highest level possible. If not they will be lost to the negros and the mexicans. You see the south has a terrible weekness that is pervasive throughout its entire society and that is " How can I take advantage of this person to better myself ". I know this from the experience of working up north and working down south. I love the south but I can see the weekness of its society and the reasons why It cries so hard about the negros and now the mexicans.
They import these people into there states to take advantage of them for their labour and then they cry about what is happening to dixie when these people bring their own social customes. There is also the fact of them having sex with their woman and creating mixed breed children for them to deal with socially. The mexican problem that is being created in the south is almost completly being caused by the white southron managers and owners of big companies. Not by the negro or the northern yankee.
It's like a drug addict complaining about drug dealers as its shooting itsself full of heroin.
The only reason there are so many blacks in this country is because of the southern states and their failed slavery economic system. The north didn't import negros by the millions to do the work of the white man or woman, for this the north imported more poor whites frome europe. I think the south should be happy the rest of the country has not thought of this and gave the south retaliation for it.
Tell me maybe I am wrong but isn't the negro population of missisippi and alabama about 1/3 of the state. I guess the negro's in those states all just appered there from magic. The next question is why hasn't the whites of these states made a serious effort to increase their white populations and over come the negros with numerical supieriority. I guess that would take more selflessness than the southron whites can muster.
Such simple remedies for such complicated problems. I guess thats why the south lost the war, it's good to talk the talk but in the end you must walk the walk.
bbblitzz
2004-04-11 18:43 | User Profile
[QUOTE=JoseyWales]The issue of slavery raised much bigger questions about the theory of our gvt. The net effect of the wars outcome was that the states now are the servants of the federal gvt instead of the other way around. Hundreds of thousands of white folks died and millions of africans were set loose upon our population.
It was one issue, but i hope you dont intend to convince us that Lincoln sent his "volunteers" to invade the Southern states to free the negroes ?[/QUOTE] Exactly.
It's amazing to me how after all we have seen of US usurption of states' powers, that anyone can doubt there was a hell of a lot more involved in the Civil War other than the right to own slaves. That's like saying the paleoconservatives here are only part of a tax revolt.
The North had slaves and sweatshops(still have known sweatshops with illegals)that none of those wonderful yankee do-gooders seemed to have any problem with. The current federally sanctioned use of cheap immigrant labor is more proof, that human rights are the least of US.gov concerns.
Despite lies from the north, most folks didn't like having slaves over here, because we saw what it was leading to, mass immigration of a culture contrary to our own. And, I suppose we are in Iraq to fight terrorists and not for Israel? Sheesh, whatever happened to fooled me once, fooled me twice...fooled me 100 times?
2004-04-11 19:55 | User Profile
You see the south has a terrible weekness that is pervasive throughout its entire society and that is " How can I take advantage of this person to better myself ". I know this from the experience of working up north and working down south.
Yea, and all the managers of those textile mills that moved south from from new england in the early part of the last century did this out of the pure altruism and it had nothing to do with taking advantage of rampant poverty with cheap wages; poverty caused by the willful denial of capital by Wall Street Bankster Yankees. The fact is there are unscrupulous people everywhere, and in every culture, but Southerners have the least guile and ruthlessness of any people I have ever known, and I have spent considerable amounts of time in many parts of this country, and the world for that matter.
The north didn't import negros by the millions to do the work of the white man or woman
This is a total lie. Almost all the slave traders were New Englanders of means, along with the Brits and Jews. In fact slavery was just fine with them until about the time that importation of slaves was outlawed by mainly Southern legislators. There was no more money to be made from slavery for them, so they were against anyone else making money off of it.
The mexican problem that is being created in the south is almost completly being caused by the white southron managers and owners of big companies. Not by the negro or the northern yankee.
What "white southron managers and owners????" They are non existant pal. Affirmative action laws created by your Yankee and Jew congressmen and senators have seen to that.
2004-04-11 21:59 | User Profile
I try not to honor the current crop of mouthy northerners and jews with the term Yankee. Many of their families weren't even in the US until decades after the Civil War. They're just come-heres for the money/resources after someone else's ancestors spilled blood for it, like Haitians, Mexicans and others.
2004-04-12 04:07 | User Profile
Lots of good points, y'all, all the way around. I hope we see where the real problem is--its coming from FedGov, and it's Humanist worldview which has been shoved down our throats for the last 2 centuries or so. But, we have bitten into the rotten apple and can't get enough either. Scalawags, White Liberals who are running the South, along with their colored allies (increasingly mexican) suck up to FedGov and drag us into their egalitarian morass. We must look to our own People. We need more Sothron babies for sure, but we also need Revival These 2 things would take care of the numbers game and a Scripture based society would call the 'world' to it, and not the other way round as now. Our Lord said the love of Money is the root of all evil, and greed is a terrible thing. We must reject yankee materialism and put Faith & Family first!
:king:
2004-04-12 05:35 | User Profile
[QUOTE=confederate_commando] We must reject yankee materialism and put Faith & Family first! :king:[/QUOTE]
I agree with that, but we must also keep in mind that the Southern aristocrats also had their own imperial designs on their neighbors.
To repeat: the war was about most directly the issue of whether Congress could regulate slavery in the territories, or whether the decision to institute slavery in the territories belonged to the residents of the territory. Naturally this involved troubling questions that laid bare some fundamental disagreements about the nature of the Union that I think were there from the beginning. The question of the proper relationship of the States to the Union was in a sense larger than the issue of slavery, but slavery was the thing that made this disagreement manifest and provided the emotional fuel at the heart of the war. Note that there was no question, however, as to slavery in the slave states, where all were agreed that it should be left undisturbed.
Slavery also was the ultimate cause of the differences between the two economic systems - both of which tended toward exploitation of poor whites and grandiose dreams of empire on the part of the ruling classes. But these dreams of empire differed fundamentally and were ultimately irreconcialable, and thus the war came.
I think most of us agree on that. My only concern is that we look the truth of slavery and its central role in our common tragedy squarely in the eye, lest we fail to grasp that our worst troubles are caused by the presence of alien elements among us, and that this presence - then and now - is caused by the a few plutocrats who want cheap labor at the expense of working whites.
Walter
2004-04-12 23:58 | User Profile
I've often pondered, would there have been a war if there was no slavery??
No doubt that is a very tough question. There is also no doubt in my mind that the big three causes of the war were; MONEY, STATES RIGHTS, AND SLAVERY.
Which one was the central issue? hmmm, folks will argue till the end of time about it, but in my mind it was money. Folks had to make a living and survive.
Regardless of the debate, I'm a die hard Southerner and Confederate till the end. Slavery was a horrible mistake, and we are paying dearly for it till this very day. If I could go back in time and turn those slavey ships around, I'd do it. The South got the raw end of the stick, no matter how you look at.
Nothing we can do about the past gents....
We have a future to forge . . .
CSA
2004-04-13 02:36 | User Profile
CSA writes:
I've often pondered, would there have been a war if there was no slavery??
No doubt that is a very tough question. There is also no doubt in my mind that the big three causes of the war were; MONEY, STATES RIGHTS, AND SLAVERY.
Which one was the central issue? hmmm, folks will argue till the end of time about it, but in my mind it was money. Folks had to make a living and survive.
Regardless of the debate, I'm a die hard Southerner and Confederate till the end. Slavery was a horrible mistake, and we are paying dearly for it till this very day. If I could go back in time and turn those slavey ships around, I'd do it. The South got the raw end of the stick, no matter how you look at.
Nothing we can do about the past gents....
We have a future to forge . . ."
Start from where you leave it: "Nothing we can do about the past...We have a future to forge."
Problem: Unless dealt with, present problems that derive from past conflicts will be repeated, more unconsciously and deviously. That is because communications about the present arouse group-memories (memories in individuals of their group identity as absorbed from childhood), which bring with them buried fantasies, forbidden and perverse wishes, etc., and -- most importantly, Freud came to realize as his psychological system developed -- the dynamics of repetition-compulsion. The compulsion-to-repeat (content: original birth, in ritual acts of re-birth) is imprinted under trauma, and released by trauma (terror, stress) anxiety. Psychologically, at the deepest unconscious levels, this means "War": the life-and-death struggle to survive in the birth canal, and final Cosmic Battle (imprint) with the Poisonous Placenta (as the once-beneficent blood/oxygen given organ had become, by end of term of pregnancy). Wars are ritual group-rebirth rituals staged by adults using the youth's sacrificial blood to re-invigorate fading libido (impotence, helplessness)
This relates to slavery, banking, and constitutional re-interpretation leading to the war of southern independence as follows.
A nation -- America -- had just been born 50 years ago (1800: the climax of creative impulse, under text: Jefferson = the textualist, par excellence). The antebellum stage represented its super-dynamic just-born youthful vigor. But there was a problem. Three contradictions were latent in the historical application of its constitution: (1) "qualified voter", specified under "person" deemed "created equal" and "endowned with inalienable rights"' (2) Gender specification; (3) what "God" means, in the tradition, tacit in the background of the document. (3) was in the foreground of their creative bond, due such factors as religious freedom motivating immigration; the Rhode Island Baptists, natural piety and the McGuffee reader.
There are the determining (=controlling) dynamic bonds of group-communication. The source of the energy ritual and symbols draw upon. The theological level of consciousness (according to the gradient of inclusiveness of experienced reality under sign-use, acquired in the process of language acquisition after birth) is the most powerful because it is simultaneously the deepest in each individual (primary-process memory of birth trauma, and involuntary muscle-contractions manifest in compulsive, anxiety-driven actions), and broadest (evoked by signs and symbols of the group's historical situation, under the fantasy of siblings in the common fantasy-womb surround. "God" is the evocation of the nurturant placenta, "from whom all blessings flow", to which the group "prays" (often assuming a fetal position, acting out regression to the womb state of consciousness).
Natrional (all-inclusive) group symbols are bound by bonds of blood. That is the past legacy. It was shed for something.
Bonds of blood also bind family and racial groups. These are the earliest "we"/"our" language groups of the individual. The institution of slavery in the Old South which flourished 1800-1850, was working itself out, under the spirit the US constitution was signed under, within the framework of states existing, first, and, reserving sovereignty over such matters as the evolution of slavery within its borders. That was what the representatives of those who, in 1850, still remembered the people's past as signing. It was a combination of bankers and Hebraic-Puritanical mentality originating from opportunistic Northern abolitionist agitators that controlled the communication. Their inflamatory rhetoric boosted out-and-out political power grabs over into the re-birth/theological cant. How the states of the South handled their slavery, and, later, color-line problems, was shoved into fatuously moralizing minds so that, suddenly, they only salvation from national sin there could be was blood -- "newing", for the northruns, what had not existed before -- a "Union"; "the United States" had up to that point been followed by the verb "are", not "is". And thereby hangs the tale of its descent.
This same common-denominator spirit of "Union" is descending, has descended once again, backed by the same mentality and forces. The meaning of the terms the U.S. constitution was signed under have been changed. Those regarding themselves as in charge of our nation have dared to sacrifice the blood of the youth to act out their psychosis of rebirth.
The chief figure of the religion of Christianity is the bi-millenial influence that has stood against these levelling, demonic forces as a spirit freeing humans as individuals, and as groups, from the compulsion to shed the blood of youth in sacrifice for their rebirth. It seems to me to be the only way to come to ters with the unconscious. Too bad it had to be reduced to a sado-maschostic re-birth group ritial for abused childern (=the beating of Jesus = the alter-ego of the 'abused child' in our heads, stoically taking sadistic punishment meted out by "the world - abusive parents - poisonous placenta"
Once the carepetbagging mentality got in the saddle, it poisoned the communicatin between blacks and whites, and between whites and each other in the South. Its spirit was finer, more Christian, in the sense of the God of the constitution, therefoee a judgment on the superficial "Judeo-Christian" blood entrepreneurs. Giving birth on earth to the New Jerusalem.
2004-04-14 01:38 | User Profile
In my house it's blood and soil, God the Father with mother nature. We learn Hi-Tech and Low-Tech. You must teach your loved ones from the youngest age possible to love and respect who and what they are, and what they can really become if shown the right dirrection.
2004-04-14 14:06 | User Profile
"This government subjects everything to the Northern majority. Is there not a settled purpose to the Southern interest? We thus put unbounded power over our own property in hands not having a common interest with us. How can the Southern members prevent the adoption of the most oppressive taxation in the Southern states, as there is a majority in favour in the Northern states?" ~ Patrick Henry (1736-1799) lawyer, statesman, legislator
"All know that permitting the slaves of the South to spread into the West will not add one being to that unfortunate condition, that it will increase the happiness of those existing, and by spreading them over a larger surface, will dilute the evil everywhere and facilitate the means of getting finally rid of it, an event more anxiously wished by those on whom it presses than by the noisy pretenders to exclusive humanity." ~ Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1820. ME 15:301
"Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one State to another would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier, and proportionally facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation by dividing the burden on a greater number of coadjutors." ~ Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, 1820. ME 15:250
"The Northern states might fix a ruinous Monopoly upon the trade and production of the Staple* states that have not Ships or Seamen for the Exportation of their valuable productions. You know, Sir, that the Spirit of Commerce is a spirit of avarice, and that wherever the power is given, the will certainly follows to monopolise, to engross, and to take every possible advantage." ~ Richard Henry Lee (1732-1794) organiser of the Committees of Correspondence to resist British rule, author of the 10th Amendment. In Congress, he agitated to end slavery.
"Is it to be expected that the Southern States will deliver themselves bound hand and foot to the Eastern States? A few rich merchants in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York could thereby monopolise the staples of the Southern States and reduce their value." ~ George Mason (1725-1792) author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. (He refused to sign the Constitution because of its centralisation of power and its failure to limit slavery).
"A balance of power between two combinations of states, and not the existence of slavery, gave rise to this unfortunate, and absurd controversy. Banking, funding, and tariff interests united to beget the Missouri project, and that project begat the idea of using slavery as an instrument for effecting a balance of power." ~ John Taylor of Caroline, 1753-1824 decentralist political thinker, lawyer, planter, legislator
I believe that a loss of independent internal power by our confederated States, and an acquisition of supreme power by the Federal department, or by any branch of it, will substantially establish a consolidated republic over all the territories of the United States, though a federal phraseology might still remain; that this consolidation would introduce a monarchy; and that the monarchy, however limited, checked, or balanced, would finally become a complete tyranny. ~ John Taylor
"If [Northerners]succeed in clutching the lands in all the new States hereafter to be made--which I take to be the whole secret of [their] exuberance and ostensible humanity about our Negroes--who can say how soon we may expect a Crusade against the slaveholding states to divest us of every remaining right which interfere in the smallest degree with their views?" ~ James Mercer Garnett (1770-1843) Virginia senator, agricultural reformer
When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom it's legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and, so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression... ~ THE TEXAS DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, MARCH 2, 1836
"The Federal Government is no longer under the control of the people, but of a combination of active politicians, who are banded together under the name of Democrats and Whigs, and whose exclusive object is to obtain the control of the honors and emoluments of the Government. They have the control of the almost entire press of the country, and constitute a vast majority of Congress, and of all the functionaries of the Federal Government. With them a regard for principle, or this or that line of policy, is a mere pretext. They are perfectly indifferent to either, and their whole effort is to make up on both sides such issues as they may think for the time to be the most popular, regardless of truth or consequences." ~ John C. Calhoun, 1849
ââ¬ÅThe agitation of the slavery question is mischievous and wicked, and proceeds from no patriotic motive by its authors. It is a mere political question on which demagogues and ambitious politicians hope to promote their own prospects for political promotion. And this they seem willing to do even at the hazard of disturbing the harmony if not dissolving the Union itself.ââ¬Â
~ James K. Polk
ââ¬ÅIf the passionate rage of fanaticism and partisan spirit did not force the fact upon our attention, it would be difficult to believe that any considerable portion of the people of this enlightened country could have so surrendered themselves to a fanatical devotion to the supposed interests of the relatively few Africans in the United States to totally abandon and disregard the interests of 25,000,000 Americans.ââ¬Â
~ Franklin Pierce
"As to my own position, I hope to see the Union preserved by granting the South the full measure of her constitutional rights. If this can not be done, I hope to see all the Southern States united in a new confederation and that we can effect a peaceable separation. If both of these are denied us, I am with Arkansas in weal or woe. I have been elected and hold a commission of captain of the Volunteer Rifle Company of this place and I can say for my company that if the Stars and Stripes become the standard of a tyrannical majority, the ensign of a violated league, it will no longer command our love or respect but will command our best efforts to drive them from our state. I am with the South in life or in death, in victory or in defeat...... I believe the North is about to wage a brutal and unholy war on a people who have done them no wrong, in violation of the Constitution and the fundamental principles of government. They no longer acknowledge that all government derives its validity from the consent of the governed. They are about to invade our peaceful homes, destroy our property, and inaugurate a servile insurrection, murder our men and dishonor our women. We propose no invasion of the North, no attack on them, and only ask to be left alone." ~ Major General Patrick R. Cleburne, CSA
"All we ask is to be let alone." ~ Jefferson Davis (1808ââ¬â1889)
"I am not one of those who, clinging to the old superstitions that the will of Heaven is revealed in the immediate results of trial by combat, fancy that right must be on the side of might, and speak of Appomattox as a judgement of God. I do not forget that a Suwaroff triumphed and Kosciusko fell; that Nero wielded the scepter of an empire and a Paul was beheaded; that a Herod was crowned and Christ crucified; instead of accepting the defeat of the South as a divine verdict against her, I regard it as but another instance of 'truth on the scaffold and wrong on the throne'." ~ Rev. Dr. Robert C. Cave, Confederate Memorial Day, 1894
"Every time I look at Atlanta I see what a quarter of a million Confederate soldiers died to prevent." ~ John Shelton Reed
2004-04-14 16:38 | User Profile
Thanks Ruffin !