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"Your New-York bankers and merchants are shrewd people, but I never gave them credit for so much sagacity as when they took the Government Loan. It was not merely patriotism, it was a high stroke of policy. It has saved the Government, and what they will regard as equally important, saved them from a great financial disaster."
One must always understand that slavery has been around millenia....thousands of years prior to the civil war, and it has never ended. It is something that will always be an issue, and we must remain vigilant to combat this crime against mankind.
__________________ "The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize." George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796
Guys. Get this straight. No one is arguing that the Union went to war to end slavery. The Northern States went to war to preserve the Union.
That does not mean that slavery was not the cause of the war in that, without slavery, there is no war since absent slavery the South does not have a sufficient cause for which they believed secession was a valid remedy. South Carolina tried to rally the secessionist cause behind tarrifs and it failed. It is only when they felt that their "particular institution" was threatened that the "cotton South" seceded.
Therefore, all this "the war wasn't about slavery because there was white slavery/modern slavery/etc." is a red herring.
Further, all arguments about Union actions after secession are likewise invalid in defending secession, unless you are crediting Southern fire-eaters with clairvoyance (in which case they did a really lousy job of predicting the future).
And I find it deeply disturbing that there are people in America today who have no qualms about defending the practice of slavery and are able, today, to call people "property" without blushing. Are you also going to condemn the laws which gave women property rights and ended the status of women and children as property of the husband/father as "stealing" from him? What's next, a defense of child labor?
__________________ "There must be more historians of the Civil War than there were generals figthing in it... Of the two groups, the historians are the more belligerent." David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (1961)
Therefore, all this "the war wasn't about slavery because there was white slavery/modern slavery/etc." is a red herring.
I think the original post might be a bit more devious than that, but you've about got it.
What Battalion seems to miss is that we mostly agree that the war wasn't about slavery. And that the free-world has shown that it wasn't about slavery because slavery isn't attacked all over the world. A fairly logical conclusion if one still holds onto the idea that the Union cause was anti-slavery.
Unfortunately, modern slavery exists in the forms he so thoughtfully presented -- there was a bit more than I had heard, and more varied types. I don't know if the numbers are right, but the article posted appeared to be carefully prepared.
I would hope our government has adequate resources and commitment to attack the evil here. It might be asking too much to eradicate it all here. Now I've said "here" twice. As for the rest of the Third World and emerging nations, all we can do is mention it now and then or frequently; the rest is up to them. We don't get to walk into China or what was French Indochina or even Africa and the Middle East and tell them they must not do it.
As a prelude to the Civil War, there were those reformers who attempted to shame the slaveowners into giving up the practice. If I recall, their admonishments were so severly resented that fields of death were established. We don't need to repeat that on an international scale. We, and the world, can't afford another.
Unfortunately, there are other things to fix first.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Further, all arguments about Union actions after secession are likewise invalid in defending secession, unless you are crediting Southern fire-eaters with clairvoyance (in which case they did a really lousy job of predicting the future).
Was it Hanny who quoted "hoc, ergo propter hoc"? Butchered, it's roughy "this, therefore before this." So the vengeful attitudes after the war was over are the reasons the war started. Guess maybe it was timewalker or trice that pointed out that logical fallacy.
Quote:
And I find it deeply disturbing that there are people in America today who have no qualms about defending the practice of slavery and are able, today, to call people "property" without blushing. Are you also going to condemn the laws which gave women property rights and ended the status of women and children as property of the husband/father as "stealing" from him? What's next, a defense of child labor?
Me too. That it was legal at the time and ought not be subject to today's thought (when women are more than equal and child-labor is illegal), is well taken. That it was legal is a given. The Constitution recognized that fact, as did Lincoln. That it is used as a primary defense somehow creeps me out.
But this is likely beside the point Battalion was trying to make. See! I can hijack along with the best of them.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Guys. Get this straight. No one is arguing that the Union went to war to end slavery. The Northern States went to war to preserve the Union.
That does not mean that slavery was not the cause of the war in that, without slavery, there is no war since absent slavery the South does not have a sufficient cause for which they believed secession was a valid remedy. South Carolina tried to rally the secessionist cause behind tarrifs and it failed. It is only when they felt that their "particular institution" was threatened that the "cotton South" seceded.
Therefore, all this "the war wasn't about slavery because there was white slavery/modern slavery/etc." is a red herring.
Further, all arguments about Union actions after secession are likewise invalid in defending secession, unless you are crediting Southern fire-eaters with clairvoyance (in which case they did a really lousy job of predicting the future).
And I find it deeply disturbing that there are people in America today who have no qualms about defending the practice of slavery and are able, today, to call people "property" without blushing. Are you also going to condemn the laws which gave women property rights and ended the status of women and children as property of the husband/father as "stealing" from him? What's next, a defense of child labor?
UHHHHH, wait a second.
Without slavery, we would have still had trouble between North and South. At some point, there would have been a war, if the sparks got hot enough... Just like it happened.
This is a fact of undeniable certainty.
It almost happened under Andrew Jackson. Not a word about the Negro, then, was there?
The North wanted to have a consolidated government, with which they could play majority against everyone else.
The South did not want to be bothered by Northern agitators trying to majority their way into everyone else's business...
The South was extremely sorry that the North got short-changed with climate and natural resources, but that's too bad.
The negro was put in the middle by an economic crisis in the South, brought on by the Northern unconcern for anyone but their own voting base...
The war was over the Northern unconcern for the welfare of the South, or anyone else down there.
Now, Ole can rush over here and erase this if he wants to, but it is the God's own truth.
I'll write it again and again for as long as I do this sort of thing...
If the North did a good thing by stealing the Southern slaves, and then covering for it by the 13th 'amendment', (so no one would ever have to be compensated for their property, monetarily), it was purely accidental... and otherwise, unintentional. (Unless, of course, the war was a way to have to keep from compensating Southerners for their property in slaves.... Has anyone ever calculated what the cost of such could have been, ALL AT ONCE, as in knee-jerk abolitionist time-line? Say, $900.00 for a large black male.
$400.00 for a Booker T. Washington, or a slave woman. Pro rate lifespans, and average breeding production rates of other slaves produced, and their average value over the lifetime of that master... and the average productions on those farms... and the cost to replace the slaves with employees).
Battalion? Any idea?
Let's just say that a great chunk of that yankee porkbarrel would have to come out of the Northern roadside flowerbeds, and go back into the Southern farms, where it belonged!
I could see the plan to start such a war to completely destroy all of this bill owed to slave owners everywhere... It is quite possibly the REAL reason for the Civil War.
Behold, the Greatest Conspiracy Theory ever posited!
But the act of owning slaves did not cause the Civil War.
The denial of property rights in those slaves, and the subsequent loss of value in these same slaves, because of this denial of property rights... coupled with the threats to society through abolitionist anarchy... caused the Civil War.
Let's be clear, shall we?
SLAVERY is the BUZZ WORD we all hear, but it is never explained. It translates to RACISM today, and not simple economics, as it was back then...
The fact of Black Tax Paying Slave Masters lets out the racism nonsense, in one fell swoop.
Beowulf
The North PRESERVING a UNION? No. Sectional majority politics destroyed the Union, and it was never rebuilt.
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