The Philosophy of Coercion

bill_torrens said:
Dear Neil & Ole,
So it did seem that colonization was being put forward as a means of resolving the hideous race relations issues of the mid-19th century. Which implicitly elevated it to a policy applicable to millions of people. Which, inevitably, introduced the notion of compulsion and hence the use of the word “expulsion.” Bill

My point was that "expulsion" was not a given. That it might have gone there, if the idea took hold, is also a given. But you didn't say that. To characterize the idea of colonization as expulsion does a disservice to the members seeking to learn. You did, in effect, say that colonization was expulsion, and that is far from accurate.

And I am also unaware of any serious work on the problem of maintaining a pure society after emancipation. I gather that no one thought about that very much with the exception of colonization proposals. Everyone was concerned about what to do with emancipated slaves except the rabid abolitionists. I can understand their motivation, but I get lost when I try to determine what they wanted for the 4mm free negroes.

The abolitionists, in one form or another, have always been and always will be with us. The same spirit exists in PETA and assorted tree-huggers: humane treatment of chickens meant for slaughter; of trees, endangered snails, fish, condemned criminals, pro-life, pro-choice ... I suspect you have the same on your side. Just a loud freak show interrupting the flow that sometimes has an impact.

OK. Preaching again. Very few, north or south, wanted the negro next door. As far as the north was concerned, it was a southern problem. Abolitionists wanted the practice ended; I haven't seen where they had any concern for the result of it.

I'll try to get back to the point. No one wanted free negroes as part of their population. Some abolitionists may have been willing, but the focus of their agitation was biblical. Colonization was an attempt, however feeble and impractical, to resolve the problem. Nothing more needs to be read into it.
Ole
 
Cash,

Welcome back to the boards.

I freely admit John Brown's methods were wrong, but in Kansas he was reacting to the proslavery Missouri Border Ruffians and their tactics. They had hacked an antislavery man to death and thrown his body onto the porch of his house. They had sacked the town of Lawrence, Kansas just before the Pottawatomie Massacre.

I don’t think we’re going to agree on this (just for a change!). Brown operated in an environment of widespread criminality, perpetrated by men from both sections, but that doesn’t change the fact that his personal motivation was psychopathic. The assistance and support given to him by members of the Northern establishment was, therefore, reckless to the point of lunacy. As Henry Kyd Douglas, a Confederate veteran, opined, “if ‘his soul is marching on’ it is to be hoped it will confine its wanderings to the people who exalt and glorify it.”

I am not as resistant as you might think to the argument that slavery was a crucial factor in the creation of the Confederacy, but I can’t accept Alec Stephens’s opinion as evidence of anything.
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Then where is Davis publicly repudiating what Stephens said publicly not once but twice? Where does Davis say "This confederacy was not built on slavery and ****?" That silence you hear is the dog not barking.

As I just said, “I am not as resistant as you might think to the argument that slavery was a crucial factor in the creation of the Confederacy.” As for ****, there isn’t the slightest doubt that both the U.S.A. and the C.S.A. were built on that platform.

Where I differ from you is that I can’t accept the simple formula that because slavery was "evil" the Confederacy was, therefore, evil as well. This pat rationalisation enables Northerners to avoid thinking too hard about their own region’s entirely equivocal attitude toward the Negro; instead, they can indulge in complacent self-congratulation about being so much more sophisticated in their racial attitudes. If those attitudes were more liberal forty or fifty years ago they certainly weren’t 150 years ago.

The Confederacy was created – at least in part – as a means of removing the slavery question from the hands of people in the North who knew that, for reasons which were partially honourable but mainly self-interested, they wanted to see an end to the institution. The insuperable problem was that, while they knew they wanted to get rid of it, they had absolutely no idea how to replace it with a new social system which would still be compatible with the near universal belief in ****. There appears to be absolutely no historical evidence to suggest that they cared a fig about whatever disruption or chaos might ensue in the South as a consequence.

This irresponsible attitude, in itself, ignoring all other tensions and grievances between the sections, provided the South with an absolute moral case for secession.

You quoted lynching statistics from 1882 to 1968. But these belong to a different era of history altogether. You are not comparing like with like. It may be that you see the story of race relations in the South as forming a seamless narrative from the ante-bellum era to the Civil Rights movement. I don’t. I see 1865 as an absolute watershed. The relationship between the two races was clearly poisoned by the bitterness engendered by military defeat, scalawag government and the ensuing decades of poverty which enveloped the region. Race relations, as they would have developed in an independent Confederacy, remain an imponderable, a complete unknown.

Actually, it was religion that was the single strongest element in shaping Yankee abolitionism. After that was resentment of the "slave power" as embodied in the Fugitive Slave Act. See Louis Filler's The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860.

Well, that is entirely a matter of opinion and is incapable of objective measurement. Call me cynical, but most opposition to anything is motivated by self-interest. I refer you again to Chase’s letter:

Let, therefore, the South be opened to negro emigration by emancipation along the Gulf, and it is easy to see that the blacks of the North will slide southward, and leave no question to quarrel about as far as they are concerned.

How do you begin to shift several millions of people – almost certainly against their will, so they can be expected to resist – away from their places of birth, onto a fleet of ships and then dump them on the African shore?
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Lincoln, for one, believed that it would be a voluntary process.

If he believed he could persuade millions of Americans to move to either Latin America or Africa I think he was mistaken. Where is the evidence of widespread (and I stress the word “widespread”) desire amongst Negroes to leave the land of their birth?

Bill
 
bill_torrens said:
Cash,

Welcome back to the boards.

Thank you, sir.



bill_torrens said:
I don’t think we’re going to agree on this (just for a change!). Brown operated in an environment of widespread criminality, perpetrated by men from both sections, but that doesn’t change the fact that his personal motivation was psychopathic. The assistance and support given to him by members of the Northern establishment was, therefore, reckless to the point of lunacy. As Henry Kyd Douglas, a Confederate veteran, opined, “if ‘his soul is marching on’ it is to be hoped it will confine its wanderings to the people who exalt and glorify it.”

His personal motivation was to fight against slavery, the greatest evil of his time. His method was wrong, but his goal of ending slavery was just. With all due respect to Mr. Douglas, his view is tarnished by the loss of an institution he was trying to protect.

Since you gave us Henry Kyd Douglas' view, let's take a look at Frederick Douglass' view:

"But the question is, Did John Brown fail? He certainly did fail to get out of Harpers Ferry before being beaten down by United States soldiers; he did fail to save his own life, and to lead a liberating army into the mountains of Virginia. But he did not go to Harpers Ferry to save his life.

"The true question is, Did John Brown draw his sword against slavery and thereby lose his life in vain? And to this I answer ten thousand times, No! No man fails, or can fail, who so grandly gives himself and all he has to a righteous cause. No man, who in his hour of extremest need, when on his way to meet an ignominious death, could so forget himself as to stop and kiss a little child, one of the hated race for whom he was about to die, could by any possibility fail.

"Did John Brown fail? Ask Henry A. Wise in whose house less than two years after, a school for the emancipated slaves was taught.

"Did John Brown fail? Ask James M. Mason, the author of the inhuman fugitive slave bill, who was cooped up in Fort Warren, as a traitor less than two years from the time that he stood over the prostrate body of John Brown.

"Did John Brown fail? Ask Clement C. Vallandingham, one other of the inquisitorial party; for he too went down in the tremendous whirlpool created by the powerful hand of this bold invader. If John Brown did not end the war that ended slavery, he did at least begin the war that ended slavery. If we look over the dates, places and men for which this honor is claimed, we shall find that not Carolina, but Virginia, not Fort Sumter, but Harpers Ferry, and the arsenal, not Col. Anderson, but John Brown, began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic. Until this blow was struck, the prospect for freedom was dim, shadowy and uncertain. The irrepressible conflict was one of words, votes and compromises.

"When John Brown stretched forth his arm the sky was cleared. The time for compromises was gone – the armed hosts of freedom stood face to face over the chasm of a broken Union – and the clash of arms was at hand. The South staked all upon getting possession of the Federal Government, and failing to do that, drew the sword of rebellion and thus made her own, and not Brown's, the lost cause of the century." [Frederick Douglass, Harpers Ferry, 30 May 1881]




bill_torrens said:
As I just said, “I am not as resistant as you might think to the argument that slavery was a crucial factor in the creation of the Confederacy.” As for ****, there isn’t the slightest doubt that both the U.S.A. and the C.S.A. were built on that platform.

The CSA was built specifically to preserve ****. The same cannot be said for the USA.




bill_torrens said:
Where I differ from you is that I can’t accept the simple formula that because slavery was "evil" the Confederacy was, therefore, evil as well. This pat rationalisation enables Northerners to avoid thinking too hard about their own region’s entirely equivocal attitude toward the Negro; instead, they can indulge in complacent self-congratulation about being so much more sophisticated in their racial attitudes. If those attitudes were more liberal forty or fifty years ago they certainly weren’t 150 years ago.

The formula is not as simple as you postulated. You left out a crucial factor.

Because slavery was evil *and because the confederacy was formed to perpetuate slavery,* the confederacy was, therefore, evil as well.

Northerners can indulge in self-congratulation that they ended slavery in their own states on their own, whereas it took a war to end it in the southern states. Racism was indeed rampant in all sections of the country, but slavery itself was not.


bill_torrens said:
The Confederacy was created – at least in part – as a means of removing the slavery question from the hands of people in the North who knew that, for reasons which were partially honourable but mainly self-interested, they wanted to see an end to the institution. The insuperable problem was that, while they knew they wanted to get rid of it, they had absolutely no idea how to replace it with a new social system which would still be compatible with the near universal belief in ****. There appears to be absolutely no historical evidence to suggest that they cared a fig about whatever disruption or chaos might ensue in the South as a consequence.

You claim there was self-interest on the part of Northerners to favor the end of slavery as though it were an established fact. I don't recall seeing that established as a fact. A moderate on slavery like Lincoln wanted to colonize blacks after emancipation, believing they would jump at the chance to get away from a country that would not treat them as equals. Therefore there would be no new social system necessary. Radical abolitionists like Garrison wanted to get rid of both slavery and unequal treatment of blacks. His new social system would not need to be compatible with belief in **** because it would do away with ****.



bill_torrens said:
This irresponsible attitude, in itself, ignoring all other tensions and grievances between the sections, provided the South with an absolute moral case for secession.

And I disagree completely with this. As I showed above, the attitudes were not irresponsible and thus the confederacy had no moral case whatsoever to secede in order to protect slavery.



bill_torrens said:
You quoted lynching statistics from 1882 to 1968. But these belong to a different era of history altogether. You are not comparing like with like. It may be that you see the story of race relations in the South as forming a seamless narrative from the ante-bellum era to the Civil Rights movement. I don’t. I see 1865 as an absolute watershed. The relationship between the two races was clearly poisoned by the bitterness engendered by military defeat, scalawag government and the ensuing decades of poverty which enveloped the region. Race relations, as they would have developed in an independent Confederacy, remain an imponderable, a complete unknown.


The lynching statistics are what we have available. Is there some factor that somehow moderated lynching of blacks in the North after the Civil War?

As to the story of race relations in the Civil War forming a seamless narrative, I'm supported on this by C. Vann Woodward in his study, The Burden of Southern History and by U. B. Phillips in his essay, "The Central Theme of Southern History."

If we can extrapolate race relations in an independent confederacy from the desires of the confederates themselves, blacks would have remained slaves forever, and free blacks would have remained without rights forever.





bill_torrens said:
Well, that is entirely a matter of opinion and is incapable of objective measurement. Call me cynical, but most opposition to anything is motivated by self-interest. I refer you again to Chase’s letter:

Let, therefore, the South be opened to negro emigration by emancipation along the Gulf, and it is easy to see that the blacks of the North will slide southward, and leave no question to quarrel about as far as they are concerned.

Okay, you're cynical. :smile:

Be that as it may, the central role of religion and morality in the antislavery movement is not a matter of opinion but is an established fact, as Prof. Filler's book shows. You can choose to deny it if you like, but you're going against the clear historical record.





bill_torrens said:
If he believed he could persuade millions of Americans to move to either Latin America or Africa I think he was mistaken. Where is the evidence of widespread (and I stress the word “widespread”) desire amongst Negroes to leave the land of their birth?

There was the acknowledged fact that whites in the mid-19th Century did not, by and large, wish for blacks to have equal rights. Lincoln's view was that the vast majority of blacks would not want to live in such a country. He eventually found out he was wrong and dropped the idea of colonization, but until he found out he was wrong that was the belief he sincerely held.


Regards,
Cash
 
Cash,

His personal motivation was to fight against slavery, the greatest evil of his time. His method was wrong, but his goal of ending slavery was just. With all due respect to Mr. Douglas, his view is tarnished by the loss of an institution he was trying to protect.

I think you’re jumping to conclusions about Henry Kyd Douglas’s motivation in fighting for the South.

There is nothing in all the history of fanaticism, its crimes and follies, so strange and inexplicable as that the people of New England, with all their shrewdness and general sense of justice, should have attempted to lift up the sordid name of that old wretch [i.e. Brown] and, by a political apotheosis, to exalt him among the heroes and benefactors of this land….why they should have sent him money and arms to encourage him to murder the white people of Virginia is beyond my comprehension.

Personally I had no feeling of resentment against the people of the North because of their desire for the emancipation of the slave, for I believed Negro slavery was a curse to the people of the Middle States. As a boy I had determined never to own one. Whether I would have followed the example of shrewd New Englanders in compromising with philanthropy by selling my slaves for a valuable consideration before I became an abolitionist, I will not pretend to say.

[Douglas, I Rode With Stonewall, pp.14-15.]

As for Frederick Douglass, I am aware that he is regarded with hushed reverence in America. But one of the privileges of being a foreigner is that I am not obliged to worship the sacred cows of American political correctness. So I take Douglass as I find him. And what I find is a man of reasonable but not exceptional intelligence, whose talents appear to have been exaggerated because of the colour of his skin. His writing is sentimental, even by the standards of the time, and the passage you kindly quoted strikes me as nothing more than windy rhetoric.

The CSA was built specifically to preserve ****. The same cannot be said for the USA.

That’s an interesting assertion, and I should be even more interested to discover if you can back it up. My own view is that nations, like people, should be judged by what they do rather than by what they say. Viewing the track record of the United States from 1776 until at least the end of the 19th century I see nothing but the elevation of the white man over his Negro & Native American neighbours.

Northerners can indulge in self-congratulation that they ended slavery in their own states on their own, whereas it took a war to end it in the southern states. Racism was indeed rampant in all sections of the country, but slavery itself was not.

I think Kyd Douglas has already answered this for me. But, to spell it out, slavery ended in the North for reasons which had everything to do with economic pragmatism and absolutely nothing to do with moral revulsion. Devotion to self-interest is no reason for self-congratulation and posturing. But, my goodness, hasn’t it gone on ever since.

The formula is not as simple as you postulated. You left out a crucial factor.

Because slavery was evil *and because the confederacy was formed to perpetuate slavery,* the confederacy was, therefore, evil as well.

In a simple world, where the good guys always wear white hats, this facile logic might hold true. But if we can break away from the Hollywood view of human nature for a moment, we both know that life is more complex and involves many more shades of grey than you admit. If you are going to insist on labelling something as evil, it would surely have to be the belief that Whites were intrinsically superior to people with black or red skins. And that “evil” lived in the hearts and heads of Northerners every bit as much as Southerners. Personally, I would fight shy of the use of a word like “evil” in judging the attitudes and beliefs of our ancestors. Who knows what offences you and I commit on a daily basis against the moral standards of some future generation? Does that make us “evil”?

Nothing in connection with American slavery makes any sense unless we accept that belief in the superiority of the White Man was as ingrained in 19th century people as a belief in the world being round (well, spherical) is ingrained in us. The matter wasn’t open for debate: it was seen as simple, objective fact. Uncomfortable as the notion is to people living in 2005, the regulation of what was seen as an inferior and always potentially violent race by enslavement was a strictly logical way of dealing with the situation. That didn’t make it “right”, and until Garrisonian abolitionism forced them into ever more irrational defensive postures on the issue, many Southerners admitted as much. But it was a practical solution to what almost all Americans then believed to be a hideous problem: how two quite incompatible races could live together.

Radical abolitionists like Garrison wanted to get rid of both slavery and unequal treatment of blacks. His new social system would not need to be compatible with belief in **** because it would do away with ****.

“Do away with ****.” How? By waving a wand? Garrison took a long, hard look at the world around him and decided that it would have to change to fit in with his own beliefs. Such has been the approach of the zealot throughout history. It has never worked and, for reasons that should be clear to a child, never will.

You claim there was self-interest on the part of Northerners to favor the end of slavery as though it were an established fact. I don't recall seeing that established as a fact.

I can think of a number of reasons why Northerners should favour agitating for an ending to slavery. In no particular order these are:

1. philanthropic concern for the Negro and moral revulsion at slavery

2. a desire to see the economic and social disruption of a rival region

3. a desire to see the Negro population of the North drawn southwards into emancipated Dixie

4. a desire to “hype up” the slavery issue as a means to unify the disparate strands of the emerging Republican party

One of these motives can be depicted as selfless; the other three plainly cannot.

Be that as it may, the central role of religion and morality in the antislavery movement is not a matter of opinion but is an established fact, as Prof. Filler's book shows. You can choose to deny it if you like, but you're going against the clear historical record.

First of all, only a small proportion of the Northerners who wanted to see an end to slavery would have described themselves as members of the “anti-slavery movement”. Secondly, humans have always displayed a talent, bordering on genius, for combining self-interest (and malice) with rampant, tub-thumping religion.

Regards,

Bill
 
bill_torrens said:
I think you’re jumping to conclusions about Henry Kyd Douglas’s motivation in fighting for the South.

There is nothing in all the history of fanaticism, its crimes and follies, so strange and inexplicable as that the people of New England, with all their shrewdness and general sense of justice, should have attempted to lift up the sordid name of that old wretch [i.e. Brown] and, by a political apotheosis, to exalt him among the heroes and benefactors of this land….why they should have sent him money and arms to encourage him to murder the white people of Virginia is beyond my comprehension.

Personally I had no feeling of resentment against the people of the North because of their desire for the emancipation of the slave, for I believed Negro slavery was a curse to the people of the Middle States. As a boy I had determined never to own one. Whether I would have followed the example of shrewd New Englanders in compromising with philanthropy by selling my slaves for a valuable consideration before I became an abolitionist, I will not pretend to say.

[Douglas, I Rode With Stonewall, pp.14-15.]
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Easy for him to say after the fact. I refer you to the remarks James I. Robertson makes in his book, Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend concerning the unreliability of Kyd Douglas. His statement about New Englanders selling their slaves is one indication. Massachusetts freed its slaves immediately by judicial interpretation, meaning there was no opportunity for slaveholders in Massachusetts to sell their slaves away. Vermont and Maine never allowed slaves. Connecticut, if I recall correctly, had a state law that forbade slave owners from selling their slaves out of state. I'll have to check on that later. The fact is, though, he fought for an entity whose express purpose was the protection of slavery, knowing the victory of that entity meant the continuation of slavery on this continent for as far as the eye could see. Brown's goal, as the historical record shows, was to free slaves. His method was wrong, but that was his goal. Douglas fails to mention this, further impeaching his credibility.



bill_torrens said:
As for Frederick Douglass, I am aware that he is regarded with hushed reverence in America. But one of the privileges of being a foreigner is that I am not obliged to worship the sacred cows of American political correctness. So I take Douglass as I find him. And what I find is a man of reasonable but not exceptional intelligence, whose talents appear to have been exaggerated because of the colour of his skin. His writing is sentimental, even by the standards of the time, and the passage you kindly quoted strikes me as nothing more than windy rhetoric.

--
Do you always simply dismiss the testimony of historical figures who contradict you? It does no good for your case, and Mr. Douglass' comments stand.

I hope you will reconsider your remark about his talents appearing to have been exaggerated because of his skin color.







bill_torrens said:
That’s an interesting assertion, and I should be even more interested to discover if you can back it up. My own view is that nations, like people, should be judged by what they do rather than by what they say. Viewing the track record of the United States from 1776 until at least the end of the 19th century I see nothing but the elevation of the white man over his Negro & Native American neighbours.

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I've already backed it up with Alexander Stephens' words. You may dismiss him because he contradicts your belief, but the fact remains he was a founding father of the confederacy and told us exactly why the confederacy was founded.

Regarding the US, the track record is one of improvement for blacks from 1776 onward. First came the abolition of slavery in the North, then came the emancipation of blacks in the south, then the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments sealing the doom of slavery, providing for the equality, at least on paper, for blacks, and providing voting rights, at least on paper, for blacks. Blacks were elected to state and national office in the Nineteenth Century.



bill_torrens said:
I think Kyd Douglas has already answered this for me. But, to spell it out, slavery ended in the North for reasons which had everything to do with economic pragmatism and absolutely nothing to do with moral revulsion. Devotion to self-interest is no reason for self-congratulation and posturing. But, my goodness, hasn’t it gone on ever since.
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Your statement is utterly and completely wrong.

"Those who maintain that slavery was unprofitable or less profitable than white labor base their arguments on the mental incapacity or ignorance of Negroes and their inability to do the skilled work required in a diversified economy. It is clear, however, that northern Negroes received the requisite training and eventually became highly skilled in a great number of divers trades. Although it is true that newly imported Negroes suffered in their first
northern winter, once they became acclimated, they could tolerate the rigors of a northern climate." [Arthur Zilversmit, The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North, p. 52]

Economics did not cause the end of slavery in the North, but they made it possible to end Northern slavery and extremely difficult to end slavery in the South.

Slavery in the North ended because of the spirit of the Revolution. It's no coincidence that Northern emancipation began at the tail end of the Revolutionary War and was complete by the early 1800s. Slavery didn't all of a sudden become unprofitable overnight. What happened was the citizens saw that they had won their freedom and were being hypocritical by denying it to blacks.

Economics allowed the Northern emancipation to take place because Northern slavery was not as ingrained in the society as it was in the South and because there wasn't as heavy a capital investment in the institution as there was in the South. In the South, though, slavery was an underpinning of society and was not only an economic system but also a system of racial subordination to ensure **** was maintained even in areas where blacks outnumbered whites. With many fewer blacks, the North didn't need slavery to maintain ****. They could do it through sheer force of numbers alone.

"By 1772, as the revolutionary crisis deepened and the Rights of Man became the subject of increased study, [Anthony] Benezet [a Philadelphia Quaker schoolmaster and abolitionist] noted a gradual change in the colonists' attitude towards slavery. His correspondents had told him that Massachusetts was considering a bill to end the slave trade." [Arthur Zilversmit, The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North, p. 88]

"An anonymous Tory (probably Richard Wells) turned the arguments of the patriots against them. After quoting numerous Revolutionary resolutions, he asked Americans whether they could 'reconcile the exercise of SLAVERY with our professions of freedom.' Could the colonists expect the English to believe the sincerity of their love of liberty when the whole world knew that there were slaves in every colony? 'In vain shall we contend for liberty . . . 'till this barbarous inhuman custom is driven from our borders.' He challenged those who claimed 'an exemption from the controul of Parliamentary power' to show by right they held their slaves. If, as the patriots maintained, the colonists had all the rights of Englishmen, then, since a Negro was held to be free the instant he landed on English soil (this was an interpretation of the decision in Somerset's case), all slaves could claim they were free when they landed on American soil." [Ibid., p. 97]

"The First Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia in the fall of 1774, took up this challenge. The Continental Association adopted by the delegates required the cessation of all slave imports and authorized a boycott of merchants who refused to cooperate. Anthony Benezet, seeing a magnificent opportunity to strike a blow for liberty, had worked tirelessly to secure the adoption of this policy, relentlessly pursuing individual delegates to argue in support of the plan. Congressional approval of a ban on the slave trade clearly tied the fight against Negro slavery to the struggle against British tyranny in the manner that many antislavery writers had long been urging." [Ibid., pp. 97-98]

"Men who opposed the continued slavery of the Negroes could argue convincingly that American liberty and the freedom of Negro slaves were not only compatible but were inseparable goals.

"The War of Independence brought with it a direct challenge to the patriot party on the slavery issue. All the talk of liberty and the Rights of Man, designed to bring a hesitant population to join in the fight against Great Britain, could be applied with equal force to the plight of the slaves." [Ibid., p. 109]

So as we can see, it was the Spirit of the Revolution that led to the spread of antislavery feeling throughout the North, and this same Spirit of the Revolution led to their abolition of slavery and their denunciations of slavery in the south.





bill_torrens said:
In a simple world, where the good guys always wear white hats, this facile logic might hold true. But if we can break away from the Hollywood view of human nature for a moment, we both know that life is more complex and involves many more shades of grey than you admit. If you are going to insist on labelling something as evil, it would surely have to be the belief that Whites were intrinsically superior to people with black or red skins. And that “evil” lived in the hearts and heads of Northerners every bit as much as Southerners. Personally, I would fight shy of the use of a word like “evil” in judging the attitudes and beliefs of our ancestors. Who knows what offences you and I commit on a daily basis against the moral standards of some future generation? Does that make us “evil”?

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Actually, I find this response rather disingenuous. Believing one is superior to others of a different race is not in and of itself evil. Acting on it, though, can be evil. Slavery was regarded as an evil from the 18th Century. Even Robert E. Lee called it a "moral and political evil." So I'm not viewing it as an evil based on 21st Century morality, but rather from the morality of the time. And an entity whose sole purpose was to perpetuate something recognized as an evil is nothing more than evil itself. That doesn't mean others were saints. But it does speak to that entity itself.




bill_torrens said:
“Do away with ****.” How? By waving a wand?

By giving equal rights to blacks.

"If the policy of the Republicans is carried out, according to the programme indicated by the leaders of the party, and the South submits, degradation and ruin must overwhelm alike all classes of citizens in the Southern States. The slave-holder and non-slave-holder must ultimately share the same fate-- all be degraded to a position of equality with free negroes, stand side by side with them at the polls, and fraternize in all the social relations of life; or else there will be an eternal war of races, desolating the land with blood, and utterly wasting and destroying all the resources of the country.

"Who can look upon such a picture without a shudder? What Southern man, be he slave-holder or non-slave-holder, can without indignation and horror contemplate the triumph of negro equality, and see his own sons and daughters, in the not distant future, associating with free negroes upon terms of political and social equality, and the white man stripped, by the Heaven-daring hand of fanaticism of that title to superiority over the black race which God himself has bestowed?" [Stephen F. Hale, Secession Commissioner from Alabama, to Gov. Beriah Magoffin of Kentucky, 27 Dec 1860, OR Ser. IV, Vol. 1, pp. 4-11.]



bill_torrens said:
I can think of a number of reasons why Northerners should favour agitating for an ending to slavery. In no particular order these are:

1. philanthropic concern for the Negro and moral revulsion at slavery

2. a desire to see the economic and social disruption of a rival region

3. a desire to see the Negro population of the North drawn southwards into emancipated Dixie

4. a desire to “hype up” the slavery issue as a means to unify the disparate strands of the emerging Republican party

One of these motives can be depicted as selfless; the other three plainly cannot.

-----------
Now all you have to do is supply the support for those three. I've already supported the first one.



bill_torrens said:
First of all, only a small proportion of the Northerners who wanted to see an end to slavery would have described themselves as members of the “anti-slavery movement”. Secondly, humans have always displayed a talent, bordering on genius, for combining self-interest (and malice) with rampant, tub-thumping religion.
----

That's no refutation at all. You confuse the "antislavery movement" with radical abolitionists. Only a small portion of Northerners were radical abolitionists. A very large number were antislavery and supported antislavery measures through their votes and through making their opinions known.

Regards,
Cash
 
Cash,

Easy for him to say after the fact. I refer you to the remarks James I. Robertson makes in his book, Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend concerning the unreliability of Kyd Douglas.

It is perfectly true that Douglas’s memoirs are unreliable on matters of precise fact. That has no bearing on his truthfulness when describing his own feelings about slavery.

I’m going to presume that my knowledge of the junior officer corps of the A.N.V. is greater than yours. I base this presumption on the fact that I have compiled biographical data on nearly 25,000 of these men. Douglas’s expressed views on slavery are entirely representative of a substantial proportion of the educated members of that corps. I’m not going to try to exaggerate the proportion; I’m not claiming that they constituted a majority, or anything like it; but I am going to insist that their numbers were significant.


Do you always simply dismiss the testimony of historical figures who contradict you? It does no good for your case, and Mr. Douglass' comments stand.

I hope you will reconsider your remark about his talents appearing to have been exaggerated because of his skin color.

Douglass’s comments certainly stand, but they don’t constitute a reasoned argument. They are just a stream of consciousness, a flow of rhetoric. As for reconsidering my remark about his talents being exaggerated because of his skin colour, I’m afraid I can’t. Tell me, are you shocked by the very suggestion that someone's talents might be overestimated for this reason? Or do you take exception purely in the case of Douglass? Common sense should tell you that, just as it is sadly possible to denigrate someone because of something as absurd as their skin pigmentation, it is also possible to give them undeserved praise for the same reason.

(One of the difficulties I have in continuing this generally enjoyable conversation with you is that I have only an imperfect idea of how far the well of American free thought has been poisoned by political correctness. I have no wish to offend you, or anyone else, but I’m going to quietly insist that I am not actually obliged to be impressed by Frederick Douglass. If Americans are obliged to be, I find that slightly sad.)

Regarding the US, the track record is one of improvement for blacks from 1776 onward.

Improvements happened. But none which threatened **** in any way at all. What improvements would have happened in the C.S.A. will never be known.

With many fewer blacks, the North didn't need slavery to maintain ****. They could do it through sheer force of numbers alone.

Here, at last, I can agree with you. And enthusiastically at that. You have identified the only meaningful distinction between Southern and Northern attitudes to the Negro which has ever existed.

So as we can see, it was the Spirit of the Revolution that led to the spread of antislavery feeling throughout the North, and this same Spirit of the Revolution led to their abolition of slavery and their denunciations of slavery in the south.

You’re going to have to talk me through this slowly. Bear with me, please. Northern colonists were so imbued with the revolutionary concepts of equality and fraternity that they became enthusiastic opponents of slavery? Well, okay. But if emancipation of the Northern slaves happened in such a relatively short timespan after independence, and it was all motivated by a love of equality and fraternity, how was it that by the time of the Civil War Northern Negroes were not enjoying absolute equality with their white neighbours? How come it hadn’t happened by the end of the 19th century? How come it hadn’t happened by the time of WW2? How did the noble project come to hit the buffers so quickly?

Believing one is superior to others of a different race is not in and of itself evil.

Thank you. You’ve just answered the question posed in my previous paragraph. I see now that the focus has always been on slavery rather than racial animosity. On the mere institution rather than the belief which underpinned it.

Believing oneself to be superior to people of other races forms the tree; slavery is just one of the tainted fruit which grow on that tree. You express outrage at the existence of the fruit, but seem complacent about the existence of the tree. I’m afraid I do not understand you. The only sense I can make of this is that, because the tree grows as strongly in Northern as Southern ground, you cannot condemn it without admitting that your own region is less than perfect. And that would never do since – as you said yourself in a previous post – you and your compatriots live on a higher plane than other nationalities.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bill_torrens
I can think of a number of reasons why Northerners should favour agitating for an ending to slavery. In no particular order these are:

1. philanthropic concern for the Negro and moral revulsion at slavery

2. a desire to see the economic and social disruption of a rival region

3. a desire to see the Negro population of the North drawn southwards into emancipated Dixie

4. a desire to “hype up” the slavery issue as a means to unify the disparate strands of the emerging Republican party

One of these motives can be depicted as selfless; the other three plainly cannot.


-----------
Now all you have to do is supply the support for those three. I've already supported the first one.

Okay. As far as point 2 is concerned, I take it that you do not dispute the fact that the two regions were economic and political rivals during the first 85 years of the nation’s history? I’ve noticed your rigid adherence to American historical orthodoxies, and this one is as orthodox as you can get. So…if rivalry exists, it follows that a desire to see one’s rival disadvantaged also exists. QED.

Re point 3, I refer you to Salmon P. Chase’s letter which I cited in my last two posts to you, and which you have so far ignored.

Re point 4, I defend the use of the word “hype” by quoting another of Chase’s letters, this one to Hannibal Hamlin on 21st November 1854:

"Anti-slavery men should be constantly warned of the importance of keeping the anti-slavery idea paramount. There is danger of its being shoved aside. They must see that it is not lost sight of. Now more than ever it is essential that an earnest anti-slavery tone should be maintained by our men & that the fire should be sustained." [the bold type is mine]

Also re point 4:

"If one thing is evident after analyzing the various elements which made up the party, it is that anti-slavery was one of the few policies which united all Republican factions. For political reasons, if for no other, the Republicans were virtually obliged to make anti-slavery the main focus of their political appeal."

[Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology Of The Republican Party Before The Civil War, p.304.]



Regards,

Bill
 
bill_torrens said:
It is perfectly true that Douglas’s memoirs are unreliable on matters of precise fact. That has no bearing on his truthfulness when describing his own feelings about slavery.

So he's a proven liar in several areas, but we must take his word on this as gospel? I don't think so. Unless one can show me where he wrote prior to 1865 that he was opposed to slavery, I will have a great deal of trouble believing it.





bill_torrens said:
I’m going to presume that my knowledge of the junior officer corps of the A.N.V. is greater than yours. I base this presumption on the fact that I have compiled biographical data on nearly 25,000 of these men. Douglas’s expressed views on slavery are entirely representative of a substantial proportion of the educated members of that corps. I’m not going to try to exaggerate the proportion; I’m not claiming that they constituted a majority, or anything like it; but I am going to insist that their numbers were significant.

I'll have no trouble believing that after the war they claimed they had been antislavery all along. I will have a great deal of trouble believing that was the truth, though, without evidence dating prior to 1865.




bill_torrens said:
Douglass’s comments certainly stand, but they don’t constitute a reasoned argument. They are just a stream of consciousness, a flow of rhetoric.

He makes a far more reasoned argument than the Douglas quote you provided. I think you have to be conversant with the history of what happened to understand his points. On 18 Oct, after Brown had been captured, Henry Wise, James Mason, and Clement Vallandigham arrived in Harpers Ferry. Wise, the governor of Virginia at the time, was a secessionist who ensured Brown would be tried by Virginia for treason against that state, even though he was not a citizen of Virginia, thus ensuring he would be executed. Mason, a senator from Virginia, was the author of the Fugitive Slave Law and he led the 3-hour interrogation of Brown. Vallandigham, although a senator from Ohio and not Virginia, was a friend of slavery and participated in the questioning of Brown.

Douglass' point is that these three men were there for what they thought was Brown's defeat, but within a few years they themselves had been defeated by forces given impetus by Brown's actions--Wise's home was used as a school for emancipated slaves, Mason was imprisoned, and Vallandigham was out of power. And he explains this by claiming that the true beginning of the war which ended slavery was not Fort Sumter in South Carolina but rather Harpers Ferry in Virginia, not in 1861 but rather in 1859. And there are a number of secessionists who would have agreed with him about that.

To call his speech a stream of consciousness shows a complete misunderstanding of everything the man said in that speech. It was no accidental combination of those names, but rather a deliberate, calculated, historically literate move to link John Brown at Harpers Ferry and the aftermath of his raid to the war that ended slavery and its aftermath.





bill_torrens said:
As for reconsidering my remark about his talents being exaggerated because of his skin colour, I’m afraid I can’t. Tell me, are you shocked by the very suggestion that someone's talents might be overestimated for this reason? Or do you take exception purely in the case of Douglass? Common sense should tell you that, just as it is sadly possible to denigrate someone because of something as absurd as their skin pigmentation, it is also possible to give them undeserved praise for the same reason.

Frederick Douglass' talents are well documented, and your disparaging them this way reflects poorly on you, not on him, which is not something I would like to see happen.



bill_torrens said:
(One of the difficulties I have in continuing this generally enjoyable conversation with you is that I have only an imperfect idea of how far the well of American free thought has been poisoned by political correctness. I have no wish to offend you, or anyone else, but I’m going to quietly insist that I am not actually obliged to be impressed by Frederick Douglass. If Americans are obliged to be, I find that slightly sad.)

I'm not offended at all, Bill, but rather I'm saddened for what it makes you look like. You should know that I personally regard references to "political correctness" as also reflecting on the person making those references. Too often, "political correctness" is used as a code word for "doesn't agree with me." I've also seen it used in worse contexts, which I'd rather not go into. You're not in any way obliged to be impressed by Douglass, but I would submit that it's probably due to a relative unfamiliarity with the man or with his subject.



bill_torrens said:
Improvements happened. But none which threatened **** in any way at all. What improvements would have happened in the C.S.A. will never be known.

Slavery was abolished in the North and diminished in the border states. Blacks were given the right to vote in most of the New England states.
A black middle class arose in the North.

Without these events, there would be no threat at all to ****. These were necessary steps along the way.



bill_torrens said:
Here, at last, I can agree with you. And enthusiastically at that. You have identified the only meaningful distinction between Southern and Northern attitudes to the Negro which has ever existed.

You mean other than the desire to keep blacks in bondage forever, which was something southerners wanted to do?



bill_torrens said:
You’re going to have to talk me through this slowly. Bear with me, please. Northern colonists were so imbued with the revolutionary concepts of equality and fraternity that they became enthusiastic opponents of slavery? Well, okay. But if emancipation of the Northern slaves happened in such a relatively short timespan after independence, and it was all motivated by a love of equality and fraternity, how was it that by the time of the Civil War Northern Negroes were not enjoying absolute equality with their white neighbours? How come it hadn’t happened by the end of the 19th century? How come it hadn’t happened by the time of WW2? How did the noble project come to hit the buffers so quickly?

You are confusing abolishing slavery with establishing political equality. The two are not the same. One can recognize that blacks have the same natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that whites have, can recognize they were created equal to whites in the right to enjoy the bread they earned with their hands, but also recognize that political rights are different from natural rights and while one may have equal natural rights one may not be granted equal political rights. Northern blacks were indeed enjoying absolute equality with their white neighbors, if one is referring to natural rights.



bill_torrens said:
Thank you. You’ve just answered the question posed in my previous paragraph. I see now that the focus has always been on slavery rather than racial animosity. On the mere institution rather than the belief which underpinned it.

Actions not attitudes. Slavery was one action. Whipping blacks because they were black people trying to achieve equal rights would be another action. Burning blacks alive in New York during the Draft Riot would be another reprehensible action. So an entity that was built for the purpose of continuing that evil action is itself an evil.




bill_torrens said:
Believing oneself to be superior to people of other races forms the tree; slavery is just one of the tainted fruit which grow on that tree. You express outrage at the existence of the fruit, but seem complacent about the existence of the tree. I’m afraid I do not understand you.

I reject your metaphor. Believing oneself to be superior to people of other races is an attitude. One can choose to act on that attitude or not. I condemn actions, not thoughts.




bill_torrens said:
Okay. As far as point 2 is concerned, I take it that you do not dispute the fact that the two regions were economic and political rivals during the first 85 years of the nation’s history?

I most certainly do dispute it vociferously. They were in no way economic rivals. How could they possibly be economic rivals, since they produced different products and made different contributions to the same economy?




bill_torrens said:
Re point 3, I refer you to Salmon P. Chase’s letter which I cited in my last two posts to you, and which you have so far ignored.

You gave no context to this quotation, so it's next to worthless on its own. When did Chase say that? What position of influence did he occupy at the time? What did the full letter say?

I think if you investigate you'll find he wrote that when he was Secretary of the Treasury, not someone making policy for emancipation. You'll also find that in the full letter he says he has no objections at all to blacks living in the North or in his home state of Ohio, but he thought that if emancipated they would prefer to live in the south. So what we have is merely the personal opinion of someone who was writing about something he had no participation in, unlike my citation of Stephens, who was talking about a constitution he had a hand in producing.



bill_torrens said:
Re point 4, I defend the use of the word “hype” by quoting another of Chase’s letters, this one to Hannibal Hamlin on 21st November 1854:

"Anti-slavery men should be constantly warned of the importance of keeping the anti-slavery idea paramount. There is danger of its being shoved aside. They must see that it is not lost sight of. Now more than ever it is essential that an earnest anti-slavery tone should be maintained by our men & that the fire should be sustained." [the bold type is mine]

Also re point 4:

"If one thing is evident after analyzing the various elements which made up the party, it is that anti-slavery was one of the few policies which united all Republican factions. For political reasons, if for no other, the Republicans were virtually obliged to make anti-slavery the main focus of their political appeal."

[Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology Of The Republican Party Before The Civil War, p.304.]

If that were really the reason for emancipation, Bill, then how would one keep the Republicans united after the emancipation? Once emancipation is gained, slavery is no longer an issue. So if that was the way to keep Republicans united, the best thing for Republicans to do would be to keep the issue alive and not emancipate the slaves. Point 4 makes no sense whatsoever.


Regards,
Cash
 
Blue,
I remember something you said about walking a mile in your shoes, or you, mine?
...................................................................................................................

"Never judge a man till you have walked a mile in his shoes, 'cuz by then, he's a mile away, you've got his shoes, and you can say whatever the hell you want to."

..................................................................................................................

I think this anwers your question. So, with this said, sure, I'll walk a mile in your shoes. However, I go first. That way, I'll get the last word.

With respect,
SgtCSA
 
Cash,

So he's a proven liar in several areas, but we must take his word on this as gospel? I don't think so.

Calm down! You’re only in the first sentence of your post and you’re already throwing your toys out of the pram. Did Robertson really call Douglas a proven liar? I doubt it. If every veteran whose memoirs contained factual errors was to be labelled a liar there would be an awful lot of them.

I'll have no trouble believing that after the war they claimed they had been antislavery all along. I will have a great deal of trouble believing that was the truth, though, without evidence dating prior to 1865.

What, you won’t believe that a single Confederate was opposed to slavery? That is so doctrinaire as to be profoundly silly. To what extent have you delved into the Confederate bibliography? How many Confederate letters and diaries have you actually read?

You're not in any way obliged to be impressed by Douglass, but I would submit that it's probably due to a relative unfamiliarity with the man or with his subject.

Here is my last comment on the subject of John Brown and Frederick Douglass. Being the brainchild of a palpable lunatic, the raid on Harper’s Ferry turned out to be a fiasco. But it is easy, for that very reason, to forget the intent behind it. Those ridiculous pikes were meant to end up in the throats of Virginian women. They were meant to disembowel Virginian children. That is what Brown wanted to happen and, unless they were terminally gullible, one must assume that that was what his supporters, like Frederick Douglass, wanted to happen as well. If you choose to admire Douglass it is entirely your business. I respect your right to that point of view and I’m not impertinent enough to suggest that your holding it “reflects poorly on you.”

I'm not offended at all, Bill, but rather I'm saddened for what it makes you look like. You should know that I personally regard references to "political correctness" as also reflecting on the person making those references. Too often, "political correctness" is used as a code word for "doesn't agree with me." I've also seen it used in worse contexts, which I'd rather not go into.

No, you had better not go into them since they are utterly irrelevant. Naughty Cash, trying to introduce a slur by innuendo. Trying to suggest, oh so obliquely, that a person who is hostile to political correctness must be connected in some way to matters of dubious ideology. You’re wasting your time trying that tactic with me: I am squeaky clean. On the issues of race, religion and politics I sit firmly in the middle of the mainstream. You, on the other hand, have gone on record here as stating your belief that your nation exists on a higher plane to others and you have expressed the view that there is nothing inherently wrong with a belief in racial superiority. Has it ever occurred to you to wonder what that belief “makes you look like”?

You mean other than the desire to keep blacks in bondage forever, which was something southerners wanted to do?

I see you are a fully paid up member of the Northern Church of Double Standards. You are hypersensitive to gentle criticism of a Union icon like Douglass, but in the next breath feel happy to libel an entire region. How is any Southern member of CWT supposed to feel about this statement? Southerners wanted to keep blacks in bondage forever. Which Southerners? All the ones who have ever lived? Tommy? Thea? Might I suggest that you mean “some Southerners” who were alive at “a certain time”? And the word “forever” is meaningless in this context. Most Confederates wanted to see the perpetuation of slavery, but people were only Confederate citizens for four years. You are taking the attitudes of one generation and projecting them indefinitely into the future. That is intellectually indefensible.

Northern blacks were indeed enjoying absolute equality with their white neighbors, if one is referring to natural rights.

A distinction which might impress a philosophy graduate but which probably didn’t bring much cheer to the slums. Your complacency on this issue is hilarious. It reminds me of the very wonderful Randy Newman, who once wrote a song called “Rednecks”. It included these words:

Now your northern ******'s a Negro
You see he's got his dignity
Down here we're too ignorant to realize
That the North has set the ****** free

Yes he's free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City
And he's free to be put in a cage on the South-Side of Chicago
And the West-Side
And he's free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland
And he's free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis
And he's free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco
And he's free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston
They're gatherin' 'em up from miles around
Keepin' the ******s down


Believing oneself to be superior to people of other races is an attitude. One can choose to act on that attitude or not. I condemn actions, not thoughts.

And there I was thinking that actions spring from thoughts. Can you give me a single example from history of a people who thought themselves superior to others and didn’t act on it? Your entire rationale seems to be that Northern Americans can do anything they like to anyone else and, as long as chattel slavery isn’t involved, nobody can reasonably object.

They were in no way economic rivals. How could they possibly be economic rivals, since they produced different products and made different contributions to the same economy?

They were rival aspirants for the economic benefits of federal policy. But the key issue here is the existence of the rivalry, not the minute details thereof. As well you know.

Chase’s letter on the subject of Negro migration to the South is but one example of a sophisticated political mind acknowledging the likelihood of such migration following on from emancipation. If people thought this was likely to happen it follows that some people might favour abolition for reasons which were entirely racist.

If that were really the reason for emancipation, Bill, then how would one keep the Republicans united after the emancipation? Once emancipation is gained, slavery is no longer an issue. So if that was the way to keep Republicans united, the best thing for Republicans to do would be to keep the issue alive and not emancipate the slaves. Point 4 makes no sense whatsoever.

Pure gibberish. Political parties are organic. Weak bones become strong with age. It was essential to have a unifying issue in the early days but that need would naturally become less with the passing of time. This isn’t rocket science, you know. Do keep up.

Regards,

Bill
 
bill_torrens said:
Did Robertson really call Douglas a proven liar? I doubt it. If every veteran whose memoirs contained factual errors was to be labelled a liar there would be an awful lot of them.


My recollection is that while he may not have used the specific word "liar," he did make the case that Douglas was a liar. For example, he showed that Douglas claimed he was present for meetings or conferences between Lee and Jackson when in fact Douglas wasn't anywhere close. That's more than a simple error in fact. That's an out-and-out lie by Douglas.



bill_torrens said:
What, you won’t believe that a single Confederate was opposed to slavery?

I will if shown credible, verifiable evidence. But I'm not going to believe it on faith just because you make the claim. For southern society, slavery was too ingrained for them not to know what they were fighting for.




bill_torrens said:
Those ridiculous pikes were meant to end up in the throats of Virginian women. They were meant to disembowel Virginian children.

They were meant for slaves to fight for their freedom. Perhaps you don't think that's important.

Do you have any evidence that Brown specifically meant for Virginia women's throats to be slit and for Virginia children to be disembowed?




bill_torrens said:
I see you are a fully paid up member of the Northern Church of Double Standards.

Such a church does not exist. But there is a church of confederate dissembling.



bill_torrens said:
How is any Southern member of CWT supposed to feel about this statement?

Not a concern of mine. The statement is true.



bill_torrens said:
Southerners wanted to keep blacks in bondage forever. Which Southerners? All the ones who have ever lived? Tommy? Thea?

Don't be silly. We are talking about a specific period of history. If you want to descend into sarcasm I'm afraid you'll have to take that voyage on your own.



bill_torrens said:
And the word “forever” is meaningless in this context.

Wrong again. It means exactly what it means. Forever. The southerners of 1860 wanted to keep slavery intact forever.

Senator Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia: "There is not a respectable system of civilization known to history whose foundations were not laid in the institution of domestic slavery." [Quoted in James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 56.]

Richmond Enquirer, 1856: "Democratic liberty exists solely because we have slaves . . . freedom is not possible without slavery."

Atlanta Confederacy, 1860: "We regard every man in our midst an enemy to the institutions of the South, who does not boldly declare that he believes African slavery to be a social, moral, and political blessing."

Lawrence Keitt, Congressman from South Carolina, in a speech to the House on January 25, 1860: "African slavery is the corner-stone of the industrial, social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of African slavery and you reduce the South to depopulation and barbarism." Later in the same speech he said, "The anti-slavery party contend that slavery is wrong in itself, and the Government is a consolidated national democracy. We of the South contend that slavery is right, and that this is a confederate Republic of sovereign States."



bill_torrens said:
And there I was thinking that actions spring from thoughts.

Actions are the important things. That's why we don't lock people up for "wrong thinking."



bill_torrens said:
Can you give me a single example from history of a people who thought themselves superior to others and didn’t act on it?

Sure. We Americans know for a fact that on our worst day we're five times better than you pansy Brits on your best day, yet we have restrained ourselves from coming over there and kicking your sorry butts. :smile:


bill_torrens said:
They were rival aspirants for the economic benefits of federal policy.

Hogwash. The most vocal southern politicians didn't want internal improvements or other Federal benefits. Every state had its own representatives in Congress who voted on all appropriations so they all got to have their say.


bill_torrens said:
But the key issue here is the existence of the rivalry, not the minute details thereof. As well you know.

There was no rivalry. Your claiming it doesn't make it so.



bill_torrens said:
Chase’s letter on the subject of Negro migration to the South is but one example of a sophisticated political mind acknowledging the likelihood of such migration following on from emancipation.

Then I patiently await your evidence that racist reasons for emancipation were views widely held among Northerners.




bill_torrens said:
Pure gibberish.

That's what your claim was. If the unifying issue for Republicans is emancipation, and if emancipation were ONLY being pursued because it was the unifying issue, then it makes no political sense to actually achieve it, since it removes the unifying issue from the table.

bill_torrens said:
Political parties are organic. Weak bones become strong with age. It was essential to have a unifying issue in the early days but that need would naturally become less with the passing of time.

You make an awful lot of claims, but I notice you have next to zip in the way of substantiation for those claims. Sorry, but I just don't believe you.


bill_torrens said:
This isn’t rocket science, you know. Do keep up.

Tough to do since you appear to be making it up as you go along.

Regards,
Cash
 
Believing oneself to be superior to people of other races is an attitude. One can choose to act on that attitude or not. I condemn actions, not thoughts.

I find this a rather interesting rationalization. One might believe in racial superiority and do no more than smile and wave to the SS guards as they go to work in the ‘‘sausage factories’’ each day and thereby remain beyond condemnation with you?

Bill stated "And there I was thinking that actions spring from thoughts. Can you give me a single example from history of a people who thought themselves superior to others and didn’t act on it? Your entire rationale seems to be that Northern Americans can do anything they like to anyone else and, as long as chattel slavery isn’’t involved, nobody can reasonably object"

This is indeed a dangerous rationale. It is those with the thought that the indians were sub-human and no more than naked savages that did not own property as recognized by White standards that give tacit endorsement to their murder. What is more, this ‘‘attitude’’ as you call it is what governs actions in national policy. If your attitude is the Indians do not own property, it is God’’s will we take their land and we are on a different plane than others so any infamies we commit can be blithely overlooked, then you have just allowed the government to act upon it. Nay, you have encouraged them do so because with this attitude you will not oppose it. Kitty Genovese is one thing. National policy another. What one thinks and what attitude one has are two entirely different things. Or can you not wrap your mind around that? The lack of action, choosing not to do anything....is doing something.



I recall an Indian once said something to the effect that if a white man commits murder, you arrest him and punish him. But if an Indian commits murder, you try to rub out an entire village. Or worse.

This is clearly evident with Sherman, under the Grant administration. The strategic design for the conduct of the Indian wars was ultimately the product of one man, General William T. Sherman.
Sheridan reported to General Sherman, "In taking the offensive, I have to select that season when I can catch the fiends; and if a village is attacked and women and children killed, the responsibility is not with the soldiers but with the people whose crimes necessitated the attack. During the war did any one hesitate to attack a village or town occupied by the enemy because women and children were within its limits? Did we cease to throw shells into Vicksburg or Atlanta because women and children were there?"
Sheridan’s 'the only good Indian I ever saw was dead' philosophy was no more than the one held by Sherman during the CW towards the South.
 
aphillbilly said:
Believing oneself to be superior to people of other races is an attitude. One can choose to act on that attitude or not. I condemn actions, not thoughts.

I find this a rather interesting rationalization. One might believe in racial superiority and do no more than smile and wave to the SS guards as they go to work in the ‘‘sausage factories’’ each day and thereby remain beyond condemnation with you?

What am I to condemn that person for? Not getting himself and his family killed because he didn't shoot those guards?

If you find the idea of a thought police a good thing, then fine for you. I suppose you can write your congressman and ask for concentration camps to be set up for anyone not thinking the approved thoughts.

Personally, I would rather stick with dealing with actions rather than thoughts.

Regards,
Cash
 
Cash,
You're stooping pretty low there buddy, I believe you would do better to refrain from name calling. The sarcasm you show, shouldn't be done here. I don't care if you call me names, however, I do take offense at calling someone who has been more than a credible contributer to this board, some, almost racially toned epithet, and it has absolutely no place here, even if it were done in jest. You're bordering on flaming.............so stop and think about what you are saying, and to whom. The more this goes on, the more I see where this 'war' will never die. I believe Bill has struck a nerve, and there is not a whole lot of stuff that's hurts more than an exposed nerve, especially in ..............your teeth. If you're half the man you think you are, then take a closer look at, not only what you say, but how you say it. There are times in our lives, when the old saying bears some truth, and that being,.......discretion is the better part of valor. I would suggest sir, that perhaps you might try it, for the betterment of us all.

Say what you will to me, but it would be much better if you proved to be a better example of our own county, than to belittle or name call someone from another country who sees things a little differently than you, and perhaps, therein lies the rub, in that, not only does he espouse the Southern view, but he is from across the pond, maybe that's the difference. I probably will hear about this, but I care about my friends, so thus I couldn't help but speak out.
...................................................................................................................
Here is a statement that I totally disagree with, that all Southeners believed in slavey. Your answer:

I will if shown credible, verifiable evidence. But I'm not going to believe it on faith just because you make the claim. For southern society, slavery was too ingrained for them not to know what they were fighting for.
....................................................................................................................

I can tell you this, My ancestors did NOT fight that conflict to protect slavery. I know in my heart, and mind, and from my own ancestors, that slavery was the last thing that my gg-grandfather went into battle, looking down the barrels of those weapons they faced, wanted to protect. They didn't die on those fields and woodlands to keep some black man in bondage. I KNOW, that they didn't, and you cannot tell me, that every Southerner was for slavery, that, my friend, must be the Yankee version of history. If you believe that, than you're from another planet. Faith? My friend, let me tell you this, I have faith. Perhaps you don't, but I will tell you this...........Mine is unshakeable.

So, I have spoken what I believe in, I leave you to discuss this with anyone who will delve into this realm with you. I must now depart, but take heed my friend, the road you tread, is in need of repair.

There may be those who might not want me back here after this, but sometimes, one has to defend his 'homeland', or his friends, from needless attacks. This has been one of those times.

For any of those who might have been offended by my remarks, I offer my sincerest apologies. I didn't intend for this to play out the way that it did. If I am to be reprimanded for my actions, then I take full responsibility for them. However, I will, at all times, stand up for my friends, and not stand idley by and let anyone knowingly belittle them.


With deep respect,
SgtCSA
 
sgtcsa said:
You're stooping pretty low there buddy, I believe you would do better to refrain from name calling.

Please show me where I have called anyone names.




sgtcsa said:
The sarcasm you show, shouldn't be done here. I don't care if you call me names, however, I do take offense at calling someone who has been more than a credible contributer to this board, some, almost racially toned epithet,

What in the wide world of sports are you talking about? Please show me.



sgtcsa said:
Say what you will to me, but it would be much better if you proved to be a better example of our own county, than to belittle or name call someone from another country who sees things a little differently than you, and perhaps, therein lies the rub, in that, not only does he espouse the Southern view, but he is from across the pond, maybe that's the difference. I probably will hear about this, but I care about my friends, so thus I couldn't help but speak out.

Are you talking about me saying we Americans were superior to those pansy Brits and we've refrained from kicking their butts? Isn't it plain to see that was a joke? Good grief, get a sense of humor, go outside and walk in the woods, do something, but most of all get real. Nothing about that was inappropriate in any way. I'm not going to refrain from joking with Bill even if some humorless soul goes off on a silly rant about it. As to being oh so upset about imagined name-calling, perhaps you ought to look at your own glass house before you start throwing stones.



...................................................................................................................
Here is a statement that I totally disagree with, that all Southeners believed in slavey. Your answer:

I will if shown credible, verifiable evidence. But I'm not going to believe it on faith just because you make the claim. For southern society, slavery was too ingrained for them not to know what they were fighting for.
....................................................................................................................

I can tell you this, My ancestors did NOT fight that conflict to protect slavery. I know in my heart, and mind, and from my own ancestors, that slavery was the last thing that my gg-grandfather went into battle, looking down the barrels of those weapons they faced, wanted to protect.
------------------
Sorry to break the news to you, but gg-grandpappy accepted the idea of slavery as the natural order of things and knew that if the confederacy won slavery would be perpetuated. He didn't want blacks taken out of slavery because it was the first step in giving them equality with whites. When he said he was fighting for southern rights, he knew darn well that slavery was the big southern right he was fighting for.

"It would be wrong, however, to assume that Confederate soldiers were constantly preoccupied with this matter. In fact, only 20 percent of the sample of 429 Southern soldiers explicitly voiced proslavery convictions in their letters or diaries. As one might expect, a much higher percentage of soldiers from slaveholding families than from nonslaveholding families expressed such a purpose: 33 percent, compared with 12 percent. Ironically, the proportion of Union soldiers who wrote about the slavery question was greater, as the next chapter will show. There is a ready explanation for this apparent paradox. Emancipation was a salient issue for Union soldiers because it was controversial. Slavery was less salient for most Confederate soldiers because it was not controversial. They took slavery for granted as one of the Southern 'rights' and institutions for which they fought, and did not feel compelled to discuss it. Although only 20 percent of the soldiers avowed explicit proslavery purposes in their letters and diaries, NONE AT ALL [emphasis in original] dissented from that view. But even those who owned slaves and fought consciously to defend the institution preferred to discourse upon liberty, rights, and the horrors of subjugation." [James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, pp. 109-110]

"The vandals of the North . . . are determined to destroy slavery . . . We must all fight, and I choose to fight for southern rights and southern liberty." [Lunsford Yandell, Jr. to Sally Yandell, April 22, 1861 in James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, p. 20]

"A stand must be made for African slavery or it is forever lost." [William Grimball to Elizabeth Grimball, Nov. 20, 1860, Ibid.]

"This country without slave labor would be completely worthless. We can only live & exist by that species of labor; and hence I am willing to fight for the last." [William Nugent to Eleanor Nugent, Sept 7, 1863, Ibid., p. 107]

"Better, far better! endure all the horrors of civil war than to see the dusky sons of Ham leading the fair daughters of the South to the altar." [William M. Thomson to Warner A. Thomson, Feb. 2, 1861, Ibid., p. 19]

"A captain in the 8th Alabama also vowed 'to fight forever, rather than submit to freeing negroes among us. . . . [We are fighting for] rights and property bequeathed to us by our ancestors.' " [Elias Davis to Mrs. R. L. Lathan, Dec. 10, 1863 Ibid., p. 107]

"Even though he was tired of the war, wrote a Louisiana artilleryman in 1862, ' I never want to see the day when a negro is put on an equality with a white person. There is too many free n-i-g-g-e-r-s. . . now to suit me, let alone having four millions.' " [George Hamill Diary, March, 1862, Ibid., p. 109]

"A private in the 38th North Carolina, a yeoman farmer, vowed to show the Yankees ' that a white man is better than a n-i-g-g-e-r.' " [Jonas Bradshaw to Nancy Bradshaw, April 29, 1862 Ibid.]

"A farmer from the Shenandoah Valley informed his fiancée that he fought to assure 'a free white man's government instead of living under a black republican government.' " [John G. Keyton to Mary Hilbert, Nov. 30, 1861, Ibid.]

"The son of another North Carolina dirt farmer said he would never stop fighting the Yankees, who were 'trying to force us to live as the colored race.' " [Samuel Walsh to Louisa Proffitt, April 11, 1864, Ibid.]

"Some of the boys asked them what they were fighting for, and they answered, 'You Yanks want us to marry our daughters to the n-i-g-g-e-r-s.' " [Chauncey Cook to parents, May 10, 1864, Ibid.]

"An Arkansas captain was enraged by the idea that if the Yankees won, his 'sister, wife, and mother are to be given up to the embraces of their present dusky male servitors.' " [Thomas Key, diary entry April 10, 1864, Ibid.]

"Another Arkansas soldier, a planter, wrote his wife that Lincoln not only wanted to free the slaves but also 'declares them entitled to all the rights and privileges as American citizens. So imagine your sweet little girls in the school room with a black wooly headed negro and have to treat them as their equal.' " [William Wakefield Garner to Henrietta Garner, Jan 2, 1864, Ibid.]

"[If Atlanta and Richmond fell] we are irrevocably lost and not only will the negroes be free but . . . we will all be on a common level. . . . The negro who now waits on you will then be as free as you are & as insolent as she is ignorant.' " [Allen D. Chandler to wife, July 7, 1864, Ibid.]

"The South had always been solid for slavery and when the quarrel about it resulted in a conflict of arms, those who had approved the policy of disunion took the pro-slavery side. It was perfectly logical to fight for slavery, if it was right to own slaves." [John S. Mosby, Mosby's Memoirs, p. 20]




They didn't die on those fields and woodlands to keep some black man in bondage.
-------------------
Yes, in fact they did. See the above.

If GG-Grandpappy was a thinking man, and I suspect he was, then he knew exactly what secession was all about and what he was fighting for--the preservation of slavery.

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery." [Mississippi Declaration of Causes for Secession]

"For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery." [Georgia Declaration of Causes for Secession]

"We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

"That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states." [Texas Declaration of Causes for Secession]

Perhaps it's time to take GG-Grandpappy down off the altar and see him as a real, flesh-and-blood human being with all the attitudes and beliefs of everyone else living in his region in his time period.


Regards,
Cash
 
SgtCSA:

Please don't start another dust-up. Consider what is being said, not how it is said. Bill has a sense of humor many of us don't get and another many of us resent. But taking what he says instead of how he said it is the key. The same goes for Cash. He's direct and says exactly what is on his mind without *****footing (beat the robotic censor on that one). I suspect there's some humor in there somewhere.

However, as in a previous example, I have yet to see where Cash made a personal attack. If Bill takes offense, I'll wait for him to express it.
Ole
 
Ole,

Bill has a sense of humor many of us don't get and another many of us resent.

Does this mean I have two senses of humour? Hey, that's cool. One to baffle you with, and one to irritate you.

English is such a tricky language until you can get to grips with it. :smile:

Bill
 
Cash,

My recollection is that while he may not have used the specific word "liar," he did make the case that Douglas was a liar.

If you have the book to hand I’d be interested in his specific wording. Genuinely interested. A Confederate officer from Maryland offered this opinion of Douglas in his own memoirs: “This officer was a very capable and gallant one, but certainly with a share of vanity.” This seems to suggest that he might not have been averse to talking himself up in his memoirs. But the key issue is how long after the war the memoirs were written…memory plays funny tricks with the passing of the years and I’d hesitate to call any white-haired veteran plugging away at his manuscript “a liar”.

Originally Posted by bill_torrens
What, you won’t believe that a single Confederate was opposed to slavery?


I will if shown credible, verifiable evidence. But I'm not going to believe it on faith just because you make the claim.

Well, here’s one example. In November 1860 McHenry Howard wrote to a Northern friend and explained his political outlook, an outlook which would impel him to join the Confederate army:

I do not believe that a State has the right to secede, but that when every constitutional mode of obtaining redress is exhausted and when the evil is of a sufficent magnitude, there always remains underneath every constitution and every government that last right of revolution….I would to God that a slave had never set his foot on the soil of this country. I hope most earnestly for its ultimate extinction, but I do most earnestly contend that you of the North must leave us to settle it for ourselves, there must be no outside force, it is unjust & it retards the very object which it seeks.

[Ruffner, Maryland’s Blue & Gray: A Border State’s Union And Confederate Junior Officer Corps, p.49.]



Quote:
Originally Posted by bill_torrens
Southerners wanted to keep blacks in bondage forever. Which Southerners? All the ones who have ever lived? Tommy? Thea?


Don't be silly. We are talking about a specific period of history. If you want to descend into sarcasm I'm afraid you'll have to take that voyage on your own.

I’m perfectly capable of descending into sarcasm, but on this occasion I didn’t have to. It’s a case of those Yankee double standards again (have you people taken out a patent on the concept?). You examine other people’s posts with an almost forensic precision, which I rather admire, and you leap on any word or phrase which is misplaced or misjudged. Fair enough. All part of the game, and your intellectual precision tends to come as a relief after the, um, anarchic thought-processes of some of your colleagues in blue. But you must expect to have your own posts treated in a similar fashion, and on this occasion you used uncharacteristically sloppy and ambiguous language.

Your consistent tactic is to cite the racial attitudes of Southerners from the 1860s as evidence that the Confederate States of America was, and would have remained, an “evil” society. One could, of course, cite the racial attitudes of United States citizens in the earliest years of your nation’s history and move to precisely the same conclusion. Such an argument is intellectually untenable because it takes no account of change. What changes would have occurred in the C.S.A. are beyond the knowledge of any of us, but I would suggest to you that change was inevitable. The Confederate States inherited the same Anglo-Saxon political tradition as the United States, and none of the members of this family of nations has a culture of stagnation and repression. It was not in the nature of the Southern people to create a version of Hoxha’s Albania, living in isolation from the rest of the world and preserving its institutions in aspic. Even though some Southerners in 1861 would have liked to see that very thing happen. Therein lies a considerable irony.

Sure. We Americans know for a fact that on our worst day we're five times better than you pansy Brits on your best day, yet we have restrained ourselves from coming over there and kicking your sorry butts.

My thanks go to my good friend Sgt CSA for his gallant defence of me and my fellow pansies. But I take this bit of teasing in the spirit in which I believe it was offered. I’m quite tempted to respond in kind, and I could juxtapose the words “lard arse” and “baseball cap” in a way which would have an almost poetic beauty. :smile: But instead I think we’ll just move on….


There was no rivalry. Your claiming it doesn't make it so.

There was no rivalry between North and South before the Civil War? Are you really certain that you want to stand by this statement?

Then I patiently await your evidence that racist reasons for emancipation were views widely held among Northerners.

It is impossible to measure the relative popularity of the differing motives for abolitionism except by looking at each individual in turn. And we can’t do that. So all we can say is that there were at least four different motives and that three were, at best, tainted with self-interest and, at worst, downright reprehensible. You might also wish to consider the words of the Northern journalist & author George William Curtis:

There is very little moral mixture in the ‘Anti-Slavery’ feeling of this country. A great deal is abstract philanthropy; part is hatred of slaveholders; a great part is jealousy for white labor, very little is consciousness of wrong done and the wish to right it.

[Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology Of The Republican Party Before The Civil War, p.309.]

The phrase “jealousy for white labor” is, of course, little more than a euphemism for hostility to the Negro.


Quote:
Originally Posted by bill_torrens
Political parties are organic. Weak bones become strong with age. It was essential to have a unifying issue in the early days but that need would naturally become less with the passing of time.


You make an awful lot of claims, but I notice you have next to zip in the way of substantiation for those claims. Sorry, but I just don't believe you.

I quoted Eric Foner. You ignored it. Let me repeat the exercise:

If one thing is evident after analyzing the various elements which made up the party, it is that anti-slavery was one of the few policies which united all Republican factions. For political reasons, if for no other, the Republicans were virtually obliged to make anti-slavery the main focus of their political appeal.

[Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology Of The Republican Party Before The Civil War, p.304.]

I don’t mind you disbelieving me, but I am curious to learn why you refuse to consider Mr Foner’s thoughts on the matter.

Regards,

Bill
 
Cash, I too disagree TOTALLY with the comment you made to Bill Torrens. This is totally distasteful whether in good "humor" or not. I would appreciate the Moderator(s) giving an opinion to whether this adds value to the discussion. Good humor is usually (easily) discerninble. I fail to see any humor in the matter, personally. I see only a degradation in your honesty of intention.

Cash, you are totally wrong if you think ALL Confederate soldiers were fighting ONLY for the institution of slavery. Backing your opinion with numerous quotations of Southern soldiers' memoirs concerning their desire to defend slavery is a poor attempt to encompass ALL Southern soldiers with the same ideals. The repeated use of the "N" word (even PER quote) is repulsive. I got your message with clarity the first time; the repetition of this word was most repugnant.

I've read Northern war letters in which Union soldiers stated they were NOT fighting to free the slaves. Should I assume ALL Union soldiers felt this way? I think not. Should I assume all Northerners knew of "white slavery" in Northern factories and "your" grandpappy" accepted it?

If you reconsider your poor & sly "humor" (albeit Bill T. can handle it nicely) I'll accept your posts as genuine dscussion; if not I personally will ignore you.

Moderators: Please...a decision on this before it gets worse.

Regards, Alabaman.
 
bill_torrens said:
If you have the book to hand I’d be interested in his specific wording. Genuinely interested. A Confederate officer from Maryland offered this opinion of Douglas in his own memoirs: “This officer was a very capable and gallant one, but certainly with a share of vanity.” This seems to suggest that he might not have been averse to talking himself up in his memoirs. But the key issue is how long after the war the memoirs were written…memory plays funny tricks with the passing of the years and I’d hesitate to call any white-haired veteran plugging away at his manuscript “a liar”.

I'll try to remember to look through the book tonight.



bill_torrens said:
Well, here’s one example. In November 1860 McHenry Howard wrote to a Northern friend and explained his political outlook, an outlook which would impel him to join the Confederate army:

I do not believe that a State has the right to secede, but that when every constitutional mode of obtaining redress is exhausted and when the evil is of a sufficent magnitude, there always remains underneath every constitution and every government that last right of revolution….I would to God that a slave had never set his foot on the soil of this country. I hope most earnestly for its ultimate extinction, but I do most earnestly contend that you of the North must leave us to settle it for ourselves, there must be no outside force, it is unjust & it retards the very object which it seeks.

[Ruffner, Maryland’s Blue & Gray: A Border State’s Union And Confederate Junior Officer Corps, p.49.]

It shows that he knows the quarrel is about slavery, and it shows he knows which side wants to get rid of slavery, and it shows that he joined up with the side that didn't want to get rid of slavery. And as Maryland never seceded, he went against his home state in order to fight for the side that didn't want to get rid of slavery.

The Howard family appears to have been a slaveholding family.

http://www.mdhs.org/library/Mss/ms000469A.html

He's one of those who claim to favor the elimination of slavery at some point in the far, far distant future, long after he's dead and buried, of course, but at the same time deprecates any and all who would actually work toward eliminating slavery. No, he doesn't appear to be opposed to slavery to me.





bill_torrens said:
I’m perfectly capable of descending into sarcasm, but on this occasion I didn’t have to. It’s a case of those Yankee double standards again (have you people taken out a patent on the concept?). You examine other people’s posts with an almost forensic precision, which I rather admire, and you leap on any word or phrase which is misplaced or misjudged. Fair enough. All part of the game, and your intellectual precision tends to come as a relief after the, um, anarchic thought-processes of some of your colleagues in blue. But you must expect to have your own posts treated in a similar fashion, and on this occasion you used uncharacteristically sloppy and ambiguous language.

I would hope that you would note that when I make such comments they are within the context of the posting to which I am replying. What you did was completely ignore the context of my post. It is the context which gives meaning to the words. So there's no double standard at all out here in the real world. It only exists in your mind.



bill_torrens said:
Your consistent tactic is to cite the racial attitudes of Southerners from the 1860s as evidence that the Confederate States of America was, and would have remained, an “evil” society. One could, of course, cite the racial attitudes of United States citizens in the earliest years of your nation’s history and move to precisely the same conclusion.

Combined with those attitudes was the express purpose of the confederacy, that of preserving slavery and ****. Such was not the express purpose of the United States at any point in its history.


bill_torrens said:
Such an argument is intellectually untenable because it takes no account of change. What changes would have occurred in the C.S.A. are beyond the knowledge of any of us, but I would suggest to you that change was inevitable. The Confederate States inherited the same Anglo-Saxon political tradition as the United States, and none of the members of this family of nations has a culture of stagnation and repression.

Except that the institution of slavery did indeed impose a culture of stagnation and repression. I refer you to Clement Eaton's classic study, The Freedom-of-Thought Struggle in the Old South. Expressions of antislavery attitudes were not tolerated in the south in the immediate antebellum years. Postmasters in the south in the antebellum years would not allow the free flow of mail, taking any abolition literature they found out of the mail. The slave states were the most backward states in the Union, as commented on by several foreign travelers at the time. Education for the masses lagged behind the rest of the country. Academic freedom regarding any antislavery thought was nonexistent. It wasn't a defect in the people themselves, but rather the poisoning of freedom caused by the institution of slavery.





bill_torrens said:
My thanks go to my good friend Sgt CSA for his gallant defence of me and my fellow pansies. But I take this bit of teasing in the spirit in which I believe it was offered. I’m quite tempted to respond in kind, and I could juxtapose the words “lard arse” and “baseball cap” in a way which would have an almost poetic beauty. :smile: But instead I think we’ll just move on….

See? I knew you had a sense of humor. Talk all you want about "lard arse" and "baseball cap." As the most recent study shows, it's the blubber boys south of the Mason-Dixon line who are giving us a bad name. :smile:




bill_torrens said:
There was no rivalry between North and South before the Civil War? Are you really certain that you want to stand by this statement?

At least from the standpoint of the North there was no rivalry. There was a sectional movement among southerners to create the facade of a rivalry in order to stir up support for secession, but there was no real rivalry.



bill_torrens said:
It is impossible to measure the relative popularity of the differing motives for abolitionism except by looking at each individual in turn. And we can’t do that. So all we can say is that there were at least four different motives and that three were, at best, tainted with self-interest and, at worst, downright reprehensible. You might also wish to consider the words of the Northern journalist & author George William Curtis:

There is very little moral mixture in the ‘Anti-Slavery’ feeling of this country. A great deal is abstract philanthropy; part is hatred of slaveholders; a great part is jealousy for white labor, very little is consciousness of wrong done and the wish to right it.

[Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology Of The Republican Party Before The Civil War, p.309.]

The phrase “jealousy for white labor” is, of course, little more than a euphemism for hostility to the Negro.

I found myself wondering what our original points were. I sometimes get lost, so I went back to look at how we got to this point. I think it's useful to do that on occasion.

I found your statement, "And the desire for the ethnic cleansing of the North was probably the single strongest element in shaping Yankee abolitionism" to which I responded, "Actually, it was religion that was the single strongest element in shaping Yankee abolitionism. After that was resentment of the "slave power" as embodied in the Fugitive Slave Act. See Louis Filler's The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860.

http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=4043588"


Your reply: "Call me cynical, but most opposition to anything is motivated by self-interest. I refer you again to Chase’s letter:

Let, therefore, the South be opened to negro emigration by emancipation along the Gulf, and it is easy to see that the blacks of the North will slide southward, and leave no question to quarrel about as far as they are concerned."

And my response: "Be that as it may, the central role of religion and morality in the antislavery movement is not a matter of opinion but is an established fact, as Prof. Filler's book shows. You can choose to deny it if you like, but you're going against the clear historical record."

Speaking of ignoring things, you appear to have completely ignored Prof. Filler's book, and after I even provided a link to take you to the complete book online. He provides ample evidence of the religious and moral underpinnings of the antislavery movement.

The conversation continued:

Me: "You claim there was self-interest on the part of Northerners to favor the end of slavery as though it were an established fact. I don't recall seeing that established as a fact. "

You: "I can think of a number of reasons why Northerners should favour agitating for an ending to slavery. In no particular order these are:

1. philanthropic concern for the Negro and moral revulsion at slavery
2. a desire to see the economic and social disruption of a rival region
3. a desire to see the Negro population of the North drawn southwards into emancipated Dixie
4. a desire to “hype up” the slavery issue as a means to unify the disparate strands of the emerging Republican party

One of these motives can be depicted as selfless; the other three plainly cannot."

The conversation then proceeded and eventually got to this point:

You: "Chase’s letter on the subject of Negro migration to the South is but one example of a sophisticated political mind acknowledging the likelihood of such migration following on from emancipation. "

Me: "Then I patiently await your evidence that racist reasons for emancipation were views widely held among Northerners."

You: "It is impossible to measure the relative popularity of the differing motives for abolitionism except by looking at each individual in turn. And we can’t do that. So all we can say is that there were at least four different motives and that three were, at best, tainted with self-interest and, at worst, downright reprehensible. You might also wish to consider the words of the Northern journalist & author George William Curtis:

There is very little moral mixture in the ‘Anti-Slavery’ feeling of this country. A great deal is abstract philanthropy; part is hatred of slaveholders; a great part is jealousy for white labor, very little is consciousness of wrong done and the wish to right it."


No, we can't say there were at least four different motives. I reject completely motives 2 and 4 and have refuted them. I don't deny there was a segment of antislaveryism that supported antislavery because of racist reasons; however, I deny that it was the strongest element in "shaping Yankee abolitionism." If you read Prof. Filler's book, available free of charge online at the link I provided above, you will see the evidence laid out. The view of one frustrated abolitionist who doesn't himself subscribe to the view he is complaining about doesn't change that.





bill_torrens said:
I quoted Eric Foner. You ignored it. Let me repeat the exercise:

If one thing is evident after analyzing the various elements which made up the party, it is that anti-slavery was one of the few policies which united all Republican factions. For political reasons, if for no other, the Republicans were virtually obliged to make anti-slavery the main focus of their political appeal.

[Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology Of The Republican Party Before The Civil War, p.304.]

I don’t mind you disbelieving me, but I am curious to learn why you refuse to consider Mr Foner’s thoughts on the matter.

I didn't ignore it at all. Prof. Foner does nothing to support your contention that "Political parties are organic. Weak bones become strong with age. It was essential to have a unifying issue in the early days but that need would naturally become less with the passing of time" [which is what I specifically said I didn't believe], nor does he support your contention that emancipation was pursued by Republicans in order to remain unified. He's right that antislavery viewpoints united Republicans. You, however, have extrapolated from that to say that Republican unity was a reason for emancipation. The two are not congruent.


Regards,
Cash
 
Alabaman said:
Cash, I too disagree TOTALLY with the comment you made to Bill Torrens. This is totally distasteful whether in good "humor" or not.

I understand a sense of humor might be found on Ebay for a reasonable sum. I suggest looking into that course of action.



Alabaman said:
Cash, you are totally wrong if you think ALL Confederate soldiers were fighting ONLY for the institution of slavery.

I would be if that's what I said. That's not what I said. As I quoted Prof. McPherson:

"It would be wrong, however, to assume that Confederate soldiers were constantly preoccupied with this matter. In fact, only 20 percent of the sample of 429 Southern soldiers explicitly voiced proslavery convictions in their letters or diaries. As one might expect, a much higher percentage of soldiers from slaveholding families than from nonslaveholding families expressed such a purpose: 33 percent, compared with 12 percent. Ironically, the proportion of Union soldiers who wrote about the slavery question was greater, as the next chapter will show. There is a ready explanation for this apparent paradox. Emancipation was a salient issue for Union soldiers because it was controversial. Slavery was less salient for most Confederate soldiers because it was not controversial. They took slavery for granted as one of the Southern 'rights' and institutions for which they fought, and did not feel compelled to discuss it. Although only 20 percent of the soldiers avowed explicit proslavery purposes in their letters and diaries, NONE AT ALL [emphasis in original] dissented from that view. But even those who owned slaves and fought consciously to defend the institution preferred to discourse upon liberty, rights, and the horrors of subjugation." [James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, pp. 109-110]

Confederate soldiers understood that slavery was part of what they were fighting for and they accepted that because they viewed slavery as one of their rights. That doesn't mean they didn't have other personal motivations for which they fought. It simply means that slavery was part of the package and they understood and accepted that.


Alabaman said:
The repeated use of the "N" word (even PER quote) is repulsive. I got your message with clarity the first time; the repetition of this word was most repugnant.

Sorry if you don't like the way your GG-Grandpappy talked, but those were historically accurate quotations. I'm not going to change the quotation and make it inaccurate.


Alabaman said:
I've read Northern war letters in which Union soldiers stated they were NOT fighting to free the slaves. Should I assume ALL Union soldiers felt this way? I think not. Should I assume all Northerners knew of "white slavery" in Northern factories and "your" grandpappy" accepted it?

Note that Prof. McPherson said that no confederate soldiers at all dissented from the view that slavery was what they were fighting for. Your statement above is fallacious because there are a number of quotations of Union soldiers who said they were fighting against slavery.

"The main purpose of this wicked rebellion was to secure the extension of that blighting curse--slavery--o'er our fair land." [John Q. A. Campbell, Diary entry, 6 Jul 1861]

"The war will not be ended until the subject of slavery is finally and forever settled. It has been a great curse to this country." [Tully McCrea to Belle McCrea, 1 Jun 1861]

"Slavery has brought death into our households already in its wicked rebellion. . . . There is but one way [to win the war] and that is emancipation. . . . I want to sing 'John Brown' in the streets of Charleston, and ram red-hot abolitionism down their unwilling throats at the point of the bayonet." [John W. Ames to his mother, 12 Nov 1861]

"I have no heart in this war if the slaves cannot go free." [Chauncey Cooke to Doe Cooke, 6 Jan 1863]

"Our cause is nobler even than the Revolution for they fought for their own freedom, while we fight for that of another race. . . . If the doom of slavery is not sealed by the war I shall curse the day I entered the Army or lifted a finger in the preservation of the Union." [Walter Poor to George Fox, 1 Mar 1861]

"I believe that Slavery (the worst of all curses) was the sole cause of this Rebellion, and untill [sic] this cause is removed and slavery abolished, the rebellion will continue to exist." [George W. Lowe to Elizabeth Lowe, 18 Jan 1862]

"We are now fighting to destroy the cause of these dangerous diseases, which is slavery and the slave power." [John A. Gillis Diary Entry, 4 July 1862]

"The war will never end until we end slavery." [Edward H. Bassett to Family, 1 Dec 1861]

"The only way to put down this rebellion is to hurt the instigators and abettors of it. Slavery must be cleaned out." [Stephen O. Himoe to wife, 26 Jun 1862]

"Slavery is doomed." [Thomas K. Smith to Eliza Smith, 28 Jul 1863]

"Thank God the contest is now between Slavery & freedom, & every honest man knows what he is fighting for." [Constant Hanks to mother, 20 Apr 1863]

"In all this I can but see the doom of Slavery." [U.S. Grant to Frederick Dent, 19 Apr 1861]

"It became patent in my mind early in the rebellion that the North & South could never live at peace with each other except as one nation, and that without Slavery. As anxious as I am to see peace reestablished I would not therefore be willing to see any settlement until this question is forever settled." [U.S. Grant to Elihu Washburne, 30 Aug 1863]

Your statement is further fallacious because the accusation of "white slavery" in Northern factories is nothing more than pro-confederate fabrication.

And, by the way, I don't know and I don't care what my GG-Grandpappy thought about anything. He lived in his time and was responsible for his actions and I live in my time and am responsible for my actions. I feel no need to worship my ancestors or to find some type of validation for my life by what he may or may not have done.

Regards,
Cash
 
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