Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Slavery Was Not the Cause of War Between States; Gene Kizer Jr

Interesting book with quite a bit of text online. Wondering if it is worth a read. Do the excerpts shown hold water?

http://www.bonniebluepublishing.com/index.htm

Couldn't be a Birdwatcher reply; it's FAR too short and doesn't quote (without citation or link) someone else in bold in a juvenile attempt to make it unassailable.

The war was about enforcing the Washington establishment's notion that the union was indivisible, thus the Southern states weren't permitted to escape the slavery being imposed on them by the North. Making it about freeing the slaves was a propaganda strategy designed to prevent Great Britain or France from coming in on the side of the South. Once it became about slavery, coming in on the side of the South became a political hot potato, and that was the purpose of the Emancipation Proclamation.

From Walter William's latest column:

Lincoln did articulate a view of secession that would have been heartily endorsed by the Confederacy: “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. ... Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.” Lincoln expressed that view in an 1848 speech in the U.S. House of Representatives, supporting the war with Mexico and the secession of Texas.

Why didn’t Lincoln share the same feelings about Southern secession? Following the money might help with an answer. Throughout most of our nation’s history, the only sources of federal revenue were excise taxes and tariffs. During the 1850s, tariffs amounted to 90 percent of federal revenue. Southern ports paid 75 percent of tariffs in 1859. What “responsible” politician would let that much revenue go?

http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/15/HistoricalIgnoranceII

Rush always says if you want to figure out what is up, follow the money....

It's documented, that Lincoln answered, when asked, "why not just let the South go peacefully?", well who would pay for our Government then?

I can't remember, but I want to say he said that to Horace Greeley

great. let's suck up a bunch more bandwidth on this yet again...

quan·da·ry ˈkwänd(ə)rē/ noun - the hatred of blacks versus our adoration of our first Republican president.

Who sings the intro song? My Google fu is week today.

According to Jefferson Davis, the Confederate President, it was. But then, maybe he was not aware of the other reasons, if so .... why was he elected the President of the Confederacy?

see: http://www.thehypertexts.com/What%20caused%20the%20Civil%20War%20Slavery.htm

You live in VA, I have no idea if you are a native or transplant. I suggest you read Virginia's Secession Ordinance before spouting off your crap.

Ya, but stay away from the declaration of causes of secession of South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas....

...AND that part where the Confederate Veep explains the Confederate Constitution.

...but in fairness, Jeff Davis in that link provided just goes on and on about how great slavery was for the slaves that he just so happened to be bleeding his fortune off of, not how it caused a split.

Birdwatcher

Well, here we go again (insert eyeroll icon here).

Not really having a dog in this "what caused the Civil War" fight, I'd read ALL sources and draw my own conclusions.

Birdwatcher

The fact that the author in the link closes with this is NOT encouraging....

The idea that the good North was so outraged over slavery that they marched armies into the South to free the slaves is an absurdity of biblical proportions and this book proves it.

This seems to be a basic straw man argument of the genre, point of fact even a cursory scan of events will show that the North in general, and Lincoln in particular, didn't go into it to free the slaves. No mystery here, all parties were quite outspoken, years in advance.

The other false tenet of the genre is that a diabolical Lincoln somehow did it all by himself, as if the half million taking up arms and marching into massed Confederate rifle fire had nothing to do with it. Heck, the Union rank and file that fell in droves to preserve the Union we were all born into today have been called on this very board as being "useful idiots".

In their own words, pro-Union people, both Northern and Southern, felt a reverence for the Union that their grandfathers had sacrificed so much to bring about. There seems to have been a general belief that Secession meant the end of the United States, indeed of ANY Union. Many went so far as to call Secessionists "traitors" to their country.

The Lost Causers do not commonly acknowledge that any such sincere convictions existed.

Neither to they acknowledge that 1) ONE THIRD of the South was slave, such that the South even defined themselves as "Slave States". 2)the Southern economy was inextricably bound to slavery through cotton. 3) ALL of the Southern leadership was comprised of wealthy Planters whose fortunes were based on slaves' unremitting toil and 4) a major fear of the South was that with slavery being banned in the new territories, an eventual coalition of Free States would force abolition upon them.

Their version is that, because the North did not go to war primarily to free the slaves, therefore the war couldn't have been caused by slavery

Birdwatcher

Please post another 10,000 words but you're still wrong.

djs is a transplant, and worse yet he's a DC-Beltway sewer rat that has never seen a .gov program or expense he didn't approve of.

He might "live" in VA the way cancer "lives" in someone's stomach, and to the same degree and effect.

Have you ever known a HS (so appropriately accurate) teacher to admit they were wrong?

lolol

You keep stating the causes for secession in defense of your theory on the cause of the war. By any standard, the North was the aggressor. The North insisted on occupying southern territory after the South had peacefully seceded from the former government. Lincoln rebuffed attempts at peaceful negotiations from President Davis and other Confederate emissaries. The North wanted the former southern states back in their government and they raised an army and forcefully coerced them back in. Thus, the "cause" of the war begins and ends with the North's motivations for it, NOT with the South's motives for leaving the union of states. The North used slavery as a pretext for getting many people and entities on the bandwagon and attempting to deny the South aid. Over and over again though, economics and the union itself are mentioned as motives for attacking the South, not enslavement of people there.

That explains plenty.