The idea that the Civil War was over ‘states’ rights’ is revisionist history

[2aguy]

Ninety-six to ninety-seven percent of Southerners did not have slaves and far from benefiting from slavery.

And yet they were dumb enough to risk their lives for those who did.

And the vast majority of Germans did not belong to the nazi party.....and still rampaged around Europe for the few who did.......your point?

 

[2aguy]

The country was three years into the civil war before it became about slavery. Slavery was abolished in the south with the Emancipation Proclaimation. Under that same proclaimation, slavery was legal in the north for years.

The Emancipation Proclamation could only effect those states currently in a state of insurrection since the President did not have the power to single handedly end slavery in peace time...that requires a law, and that means congress had to make that law.

I know, I know, the education wing of the democrat party wants to distort the truth on that to to smear the Republicans....

 

[2aguy]

Of course it was states rights. However, the only states right that was at issue was the right to own another person. Calling it a states rights issue is just a way to pretend it wasn't about slavery.

Let's say that, yes, the war was about the State's right to slavery.

I think the thing most folks forget, is that this right was written into the Constitution. It was an institution that was not only in the South, but one that had been in the North, nor was it expressly illegal in the north, but was being phased out.

The problem with public education and mass media is that people today make the assumption that WAR and violence were the only way to get rid of the institution. They don't realize that many in the South were already looking to end the institution. The war did more harm to race relations and the cause of liberty than it did to help. Every other Western nation dealt with the problem peacefully.


Federal apologists just can never admit that the Jack booted thugs of the federal government were in the wrong for not respecting the Constitution of the United States. Was slavery part of the Constitution or was it not? Could this issue have been dealt with peacefully or not? The answer to both of these questions is a resounding yes. But international interests were afraid of how powerful the US was becoming, their agents agitated the States and provoked the war.

How the West (Except for the U.S.) Ended Slavery
How the West Ended Slavery LewRockwell.com
"Some people have objected that the United States couldn’t have bought the freedom of all the slaves, because this would have cost too much. But buying the freedom of slaves was not more expensive than war. Nothing is more costly than war! The costs include people killed or disabled, destroyed property, high taxes, inflation, military expenditures, shortages, war-related famines and epidemics . . . . The billions of dollars of Union military expenditures during the Civil War would have been better spent reducing the number of slaveholders and slaves, accelerating progress toward total emancipation."


Perhaps the one single passage that is Powell’s most incendiary is this one on page 241: "Slavery was being eroded throughout the West by political trends and relentless agitation. The process would have continued and perhaps accelerated without the Civil War."

To back up this statement, Powell argues that peaceful secession would have neutered the federal Fugitive Slave Act (which Lincoln strongly supported), creating a flood of runaway slaves that could not have been stopped and would have broken the back of the slave system. Echoing Spooner’s arguments, he also says that the Confederacy would have been politically isolated by the rest of the world so that "there would have come a time, much sooner than most people might expect, when the combined effects of multiple antislavery strategies would have brought about the fairly peaceful collapse of Confederate slavery. If this seems doubtful, just recall how a combination of pressures led the mighty Soviet Union to collapse and vanish from the map — without a (nuclear) war."

Powell concludes that blacks in America would have achieved freedom and justice much sooner had emancipation been peaceful, as it had been in most of the rest of the world in the nineteenth century.

And the south wanted to start importing slaves from Africa again, after the constititution ended it...and they wanted to spread slavery into the new states, giving the slave states more political power in the federal government......and of course the "South was going to end slavery" is a theory....just like "The Soviet Union would have simply collapsed without Reagan."

 

[BULLDOG]

Of course it was states rights. However, the only states right that was at issue was the right to own another person. Calling it a states rights issue is just a way to pretend it wasn't about slavery.

Yes....the lesson that this thread teaches.....democrats and other leftists lie....they have to....their past is horrible and in order to get people to go along with their stupid ideas, they have to hide their past anyway possible....

What states rights, other than that of slavery, was the reason for the civil war. I've searched for that information, but haven't been able to find it. Perhaps you can educate me.

 

[Katzndogz]

Of course it was states rights. However, the only states right that was at issue was the right to own another person. Calling it a states rights issue is just a way to pretend it wasn't about slavery.

Yes....the lesson that this thread teaches.....democrats and other leftists lie....they have to....their past is horrible and in order to get people to go along with their stupid ideas, they have to hide their past anyway possible....

What states rights, other than that of slavery, was the reason for the civil war. I've searched for that information, but haven't been able to find it. Perhaps you can educate me.

You must have a liberal computer that censors facts.

 

[Skylar]

Robert E. Lee who pointed out that slavery had no part of his motivation, Abraham Lincoln himself said again and again that the war was not fought about slavery, but about his concept of the Union. Ironically, Lincoln himself in the 1850s wrote extensively that the South and that any people, just as the American people always have the right to form their own government if they so chose, it is the essence of freedom.

I think it's fair to say that Confederates were more motivated to preserve slavery than Unionists were to abolish it.

The former, yes. The latter, not so much.

The South's motivation was clearly the preservation of slavery. Read North Carolina's secession declatation. They make no less than a dozen references to slavery.

Lincoln's motivation was the preservation of the Union. He said, straight up, that if he could preserve the union without freeing a single slave, he would do it.

 

[Skylar]

The country was three years into the civil war before it became about slavery. Slavery was abolished in the south with the Emancipation Proclaimation. Under that same proclaimation, slavery was legal in the north for years.

And by 'years', you mean 2.

As that was the time between the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th amendment.

 

[BULLDOG]

Of course it was states rights. However, the only states right that was at issue was the right to own another person. Calling it a states rights issue is just a way to pretend it wasn't about slavery.

Yes....the lesson that this thread teaches.....democrats and other leftists lie....they have to....their past is horrible and in order to get people to go along with their stupid ideas, they have to hide their past anyway possible....

What states rights, other than that of slavery, was the reason for the civil war. I've searched for that information, but haven't been able to find it. Perhaps you can educate me.

You must have a liberal computer that censors facts.

That could be the problem. That's why I asked the wise conservatives to educate me. Perhaps your computer will produce different information.

 

[2aguy]

Robert E. Lee who pointed out that slavery had no part of his motivation, Abraham Lincoln himself said again and again that the war was not fought about slavery, but about his concept of the Union. Ironically, Lincoln himself in the 1850s wrote extensively that the South and that any people, just as the American people always have the right to form their own government if they so chose, it is the essence of freedom.

I think it's fair to say that Confederates were more motivated to preserve slavery than Unionists were to abolish it.

The former, yes. The latter, not so much.

The South's motivation was clearly the preservation of slavery. Read North Carolina's secession declatation. They make no less than a dozen references to slavery.

Lincoln's motivation was the preservation of the Union. He said, straight up, that if he could preserve the union without freeing a single slave, he would do it.

As did Frederich Douglas, former slave and good friend to Lincoln.

 

[2aguy]

And here it is...

Emancipation Proclamation - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

It proclaimed the freedom of slaves in the ten states that were still in rebellion.[2] Because it was issued under the President's war powers, it necessarily excluded areas not in rebellion - it applied to more than 3 million of the 4 million slaves in the U.S. at the time. The Proclamation was based on the president's constitutional authority as commander in chief of the armed forces;[3] it was not a law passed by Congress.

The Proclamation did not compensate the owners, did not outlaw slavery, and did not grant citizenship to the ex-slaves (called freedmen). It made the eradication of slavery an explicit war goal, in addition to the goal of reuniting the Union.[4] Around 20,000 to 50,000 slaves in regions where rebellion had already been subdued were immediately emancipated.

 

[2aguy]

Of course it was states rights. However, the only states right that was at issue was the right to own another person. Calling it a states rights issue is just a way to pretend it wasn't about slavery.

Yes....the lesson that this thread teaches.....democrats and other leftists lie....they have to....their past is horrible and in order to get people to go along with their stupid ideas, they have to hide their past anyway possible....

What states rights, other than that of slavery, was the reason for the civil war. I've searched for that information, but haven't been able to find it. Perhaps you can educate me.

You must have a liberal computer that censors facts.

That could be the problem. That's why I asked the wise conservatives to educate me. Perhaps your computer will produce different information.

The democrats want to say that it was only about states rights.....that way they can take the credit away from the republicans for freeing the slaves......that is what the democrats want to hide.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

“The idea that the Civil War was over ‘states’ rights’ is revisionist history”

Correct.

In fact, the notion is nothing but a lie:

‘The [United States] constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”

Our new [confederate] government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.’

Corner Stone Speech Teaching American History

 

[Marianne]

The idea that the Civil War was over ‘states’ rights’ is revisionist history


It was over a states right to secede from the union once it joined. Do you really think Lincoln would have started the war if the South had not seceded? The Idea that it was totally over slavery is the "revisionist history".

 

[Unkotare]

The idea that the Civil War was over ‘states’ rights’ is revisionist history


It was over a states right to secede from the union once it joined. Do you really think Lincoln would have started the war if the South had not seceded? The Idea that it was totally over slavery is the "revisionist history".

Lincoln didn't start the war, the traitorous rebels did.

 

[Marianne]

The idea that the Civil War was over ‘states’ rights’ is revisionist history


It was over a states right to secede from the union once it joined. Do you really think Lincoln would have started the war if the South had not seceded? The Idea that it was totally over slavery is the "revisionist history".

Lincoln didn't start the war, the traitorous rebels did.

Yes that's the point, had the South not seceded none of it would have happened. Slavery was an underlying cause but the real issue was wether secession was legal. Had the South not seceded Lincoln would have no doubt chipped away at slavery not allowing it to expand but he also would have most likely left office with slavery intact. It's not like he started the war, although he did finish it. In the end it was over secession not slavery. Most people think the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves but that's wrong too. It only freed slaves in states that had seceded. Slaves in states that stayed loyal were shit out of luck.

 

[danielpalos]

This attack isn’t just on the Confederate Flag, it is a vicious attack on every European American who respects our heritage, traditions and culture.

There is a Marxist, oppressive government coming to the United States, but there are many who are now waking to it, and will stand up legally, and peacefully, honorably and dutifully to defend our people and our precious heritage

I believe y'all should have "harassed a Judge" for your Cause before waging war on the North.

 

[theHawk]

Sane white southerners are getting it and understand it, may their numbers increase as the old south is dying and being prepared by the undertaker


One Southerner’s Thoughts on the Rebel Flag

One Southerner s Thoughts on the Rebel Flag - David LaMotte

There is revisionist history on both sides. The northerners were not fighting to free slaves. The only reason the south even had slaves was because of the industrial revolution and the massive demand for cotton for manufacturing. The north didn't seem to have any problems buying slave picked cotton, so they are guilty of financing slavery.

The war was about control of cotton. Cotton was big money back then, and the South was the world's largest producer of it.

 

[Unkotare]

The war was about control of cotton. ...

Ridiculous generalization.

 

[BULLDOG]

Of course it was states rights. However, the only states right that was at issue was the right to own another person. Calling it a states rights issue is just a way to pretend it wasn't about slavery.

Yes....the lesson that this thread teaches.....democrats and other leftists lie....they have to....their past is horrible and in order to get people to go along with their stupid ideas, they have to hide their past anyway possible....

What states rights, other than that of slavery, was the reason for the civil war. I've searched for that information, but haven't been able to find it. Perhaps you can educate me.

You must have a liberal computer that censors facts.

That could be the problem. That's why I asked the wise conservatives to educate me. Perhaps your computer will produce different information.

The democrats want to say that it was only about states rights.....that way they can take the credit away from the republicans for freeing the slaves......that is what the democrats want to hide.

Nobody is trying to hide anything. What happened more than a century ago is extremely important, but those people , for or against, are long dead, and have little bearing on who stands for what today. If you want a shiny button that says "Republicans freed the slaves", I'll pitch in for a couple of boxes that you can pass out, but like I say, it has no bearing on the parties today.

 

[2aguy]

Yes....the lesson that this thread teaches.....democrats and other leftists lie....they have to....their past is horrible and in order to get people to go along with their stupid ideas, they have to hide their past anyway possible....

What states rights, other than that of slavery, was the reason for the civil war. I've searched for that information, but haven't been able to find it. Perhaps you can educate me.

You must have a liberal computer that censors facts.

That could be the problem. That's why I asked the wise conservatives to educate me. Perhaps your computer will produce different information.

The democrats want to say that it was only about states rights.....that way they can take the credit away from the republicans for freeing the slaves......that is what the democrats want to hide.

Nobody is trying to hide anything. What happened more than a century ago is extremely important, but those people , for or against, are long dead, and have little bearing on who stands for what today. If you want a shiny button that says "Republicans freed the slaves", I'll pitch in for a couple of boxes that you can pass out, but like I say, it has no bearing on the parties today.

Other than the fact that the party of racism, both in the past and today is the democrat party. All of the racists, of all colors have found their home in that party because it seeks to grow government and it's power which they all want to use to attack their enemies.