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.

Yes, it doesn't follow that secession had to equal war. There was no reason for the war, except for northern economic interests.

And Lincoln's ego

does arguing semantics on the interweb soothe 150 years of butthurt?

Native Southerner- FYI.

True, the Virginia's Secession Ordinance does not mention slavery, but Virginia (and the rest of the South) did not want the Federal Government to meddle in (what they considered) local issues, regardless of the morality of these issues (e.g., slavery).

Dance about it all day long but no slavery. No War.

That isn't true.

Look at election maps today and over the last century. With the exception of a few national landslide elections the patterns are the same as they were in the last election before the Civil War. The South goes one way and the Northeasst goes another.

Look at polls about gun control, abortion, and any other issue like that you can think of. The pattern is the same.

Slavery still causing all those differences?

Welcome to the Hands-Up-Don't-Shoot School of Thought, Logic and Reason where truth, facts, documentary evidence, and things undeniable have no place. Highly recommended by lieberals, African-American Professional Victims and Son's of the Confederacy.

Mike..... you would have us believe that the ones who fought on the Union side were motivated by "saving the Union their Grandfathers fought to establish".

Why can't you accept that those who fought on the Southern side had just as much claim to that Union as the Yankees, and that they were fighting to protect the States THEIR grandfathers had established PRIOR TO THE UNION?

And that the Southern States were the ones invaded by a foreign power and exercised the right of defense.

And that they likely viewed Abolitionists with the same contempt most of us feel toward Obama and his minions.

You appear to be so blinded by the fact that slavery is wrong and has always been wrong that you can't grasp another, older fact; People have the right to defend themselves against aggression.

A textbook example of the genre....

Note the writing of slavery pretty much out of the script, this despite the fact that National Politics had been dominated for decades by the need to appease those whose whole economy was based upon slavery. Hence the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the issue of the annexation of Texas in 1836 and again in 1845, the Wilmot Proviso of 1847, the Compromise of 1850, the controversies surrounding the Gasden Purchase of 1852, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and the subsequent intercine wareware ("Bleeding Kansas"), and the Presidential elections of both 1856 and 1860.

Note also the complete ignoring of the moral force that was the Abolition Movement and the fact that one could be absolutely repulsed by slavery without having to believe that Blacks were equal or even belonged here.

In so far as Lincoln was concerned in "reaching out to the South", he was even prepared to sign into law in 1861 a Thirteenth Amendment GUARANTEEING slavery where it already existed if this would only preserve the Union and avert war, the sticking point, as clearly elucidated by the collective South in their writings, being the extension of slavery into the new territories.

"The North", an actual two-thirds majority of the United States, felt that the integrity of the Union was worth dying for and that secession meant the end of the country they were born into. Even if we accept the notion that Lincoln was an evil and manipulative man and that his speeches were written only to delude the masses, his Gettysburg Address of '63 clearly states the position for which the Union rank and file were bleeding and dying for.

When Lincoln called for troops subsequent to the South Carolina Declaration of Secession every other State was free to respond to this as they wished.

EVERY STATE subsequently declaring for Secession was a Slave State and collectively identified themselves by that very same term, the other two-thirds of the States declaring for the Union and willing to die for its preservation were all Free States.

There were citizens in every state, North and South, of course who disagreed with the majority in their own state, although the percentage of dissenters, the geographic areas in which they were the majority, and the subsequent bloody suppression of the same was greatest in the Confederacy. Likewise Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri where slavery was legal but not so widely practiced, were effectively split on the secession issue.

Birdwatcher

What state do we have to blame for this? Then again, I doubt the "native" part. It's akin to a cat giving birth in the oven; we don't call them "biscuits" no matter what.

The federal government, per the Constitution, was there for a very limited role in law and not morality.

Figure those parts out. You've been led to water (though, had your mother drowned you at birth we'd all be better off).

There's that pesky little thing called the Constitution that keeps getting in your way. But, hey, that nor any law at all mattered to Lincoln so why should it matter to you (or djs, or Obama...

I have never questioned those motives, the tragedy of that war being that the rank and file on both sides, literate and free Americans all, were firmly convinced they were in the right.

However the fact that the Southern Leadership, all from the wealthy slave-owning Planter Class, apparently could not imagine a South without slavery cannot be written out of the script. Neither can the appalling prospect for the South of four million suddenly freed slaves in their midst in the event of a Free State-imposed Abolition be ignored. Same thing with the fact that by 1860 the South had collectively placed most all its economic eggs in the slave-grown cotton business, along with making the enormous societal and social adjustments for the same.

Birdwatcher

Which was their legal and Constitutional right.

The North could not economical survive without the de facto colony of the South continuing to be forced to pay unconstitutional and illegal tariffs to Northern industries. Ergo, the invaded outside of the Constitution and law in order to force states to remain in a Union even though those states had the Constitutional and legal right to leave.

The giant pink elephant in the room is that you Southerners are still so pizzed off about being subjugated by the North, yet you don't think blacks have any cause to be pizzed because they were enslaved. Hypocritcal azzholes x 1,000,000.

I don't recall reading that...... Post a quote if you don't mind.

George

And yet Lincoln himself faced removal from office by the power of the popular vote in 1864, an unusual predicament for a putative Despot to be in. Also you'll note that as early as 1863 total abolition and emancipation everywhere, both North and South, was made a prominent part of Lincoln's election platform.

The motive for this not being welfare of Black folks, but a publically stated recognition of the fact that slavery had been the force behind secession and would continue to be such if it were allowed to persist.

The Constitution was a moot point if secession had destroyed the Union, and note that its forms and confirmation to it were restored subsequent to the war, a process which most agree would have happened much faster if Lincoln had not been shot.

Birdwatcher

"The North", an actual two-thirds majority of the United States, felt that the integrity of the Union was worth dying for and that secession meant the end of the country they were born into. Even if we accept the notion that Lincoln was an evil and manipulative man and that his speeches were written only to delude the masses, his Gettysburg Address of '63 clearly states the position for which the Union rank and file were bleeding and dying for."

THIS idea is the ONE I commented on. And the ONE you still have not responded to.

You give the "rank and file" Yankees TWO noble motives for fighting; Preservation of the Union,Freeing the slaves.

You dismiss the Rebel soldiers as "useful idiots of the Rich Planters".

Whether you intend it, or even realize it, this idea of "right and wrong" permeates every discussion of the War you engage in on this forum.

Ah, so we return to the "ends justify the means" excuse. Stalin would be proud. In the end, that's all you have as the Constitution and law supported secession and stand in opposition to everything Lincoln did.

As for despotic acts, see his actions against the elected legislatures of MD and DE, and the turning of cannons against the civilian population of Baltimore, among others.

By a ratio of two to one, most Americans at the time disagreed.

But the issue was never put to a popular vote before all Americans, or even put before the Supreme Court.

The South, after participating in the election of '60, did not like the results and collectively decided to destroy the country as most Americans at the time understood it.

Birdwatcher

Neither "noble cause" he invents was then Constitutional or legal. He runs from that fact like it was the plague.

Yet, Mike is passively supportive of the Tejas secession from Mexico, even though it was based in part on an economy based on slavery and the desire of the Tejas secessionists to continue slavery.

As has been stated, and proven, over a myriad of threads, Mike lacks the consistency and intellectual honesty for anyone to engage in a legitimate discussion.

When were YOU freed, Blackheart? Are YOU allowed to vote?

My State, Texas, was still being singled out by the Courts, as recently as the last election, for non-existent voting rights violations that trace directly to Reconstruction.

Ya. Assuming that Stalin would have been proud and thankful that there was a powerful and united United States of America willing to die to preserve freedom in Europe, forming an effective counterweight to his brutal ambitions.

Stalin also would have been proud if he would have been happy to see Russian Communism broken upon the rock of Ronald Reagan's United States of America.

Birdwatcher

Gene,

Black heart has admitted time and again he's only here to troll. He's a NYS unionista damnyankee troll and worth less in a conversation than Birdwatcher.

Applying retrospective justification would then have you opposing the break up of the British colonial system in Africa because of the genocide, internal warfare, disease, and economic ruin that has befallen those people since the Brits left. Surely they would have been better off to remain under British rule seeing what has happened to them now as compared to their plight before.

You're grasping at straws because you lack consistency and intellectual honesty, your positions are counterposed to one another regarding Tejas and the South, and you have no Constitutional or legal leg to stand on. All you have is an "end justifies the means" excuse for a despotic regime and retrospective justification based upon supposition.

Even in HS, that line of reasoning fails and miserably so.

2 to 1 what poll did those number come from? 2 to 1 has nothing to do with constitutional.

Are you actually suggesting that notions of "right and wrong" did not permeate every discussion of the War among those folks who were actually engaged in it?

Both sides believed they were right, that being the tragedy of the thing.



Where did I do this?

Although the question of 'dying to preserve the rich man's slaves' did often crop up as an issue across the South, especially after the application of the Confederate Draft Laws in '62.

There were many personal reasons on both side why a guy on either side would choose repeatedly to brave a storm of Minie balls and the awful consequences thereof.

I did suggest that if one accepts the notion that the Union soldier was merely Lincoln's stooge, this certainly applies in spades to the Southern soldier re: the uniformly wealthy Planter CLass leadership.

In fact if slavery was a poison that blighted everything it touched, the same might be said of the whole Southern Planter class. Look at the effect they had on the collective Antebellum South.

Birdwatcher

One wonders what other tyranny of the majority Mike would support under that BS rationale...

Odd (well, not really) how Mike keeps harping on the "wealthy planter class" of the South - who FOUGHT - and yet he says nothing about the wealthy industrial class in the North who bought themselves and their sons out of service by contribution to the Union coffers and payment of an Irish, Italian, or German immigrant to die in their place.

He is now accusing the "wealthy white planter class" of being a blight on the South/society. Not a peep about the Yankee industrialists, though. Hypocrisy at its finest, to say the least, and certainly trying to force "white guilt" upon any son of the South.

More of that intellectual dishonesty from the HS "teacher".

Don't know why you bother to put yourself out there to be the target of vile personal attacks. What purpose does it serve? The American Civil War ended over 150 years ago. The outcome was decided on the field of battle. Nothing done, felt, or said today can change history. Nothing.

shouldn't you be in church?

Mike just "has" to be right; facts, law, history, Constitution be damned. Any means justify the ends he desires, and more of his real world view becomes apparent as he grasps for straw after straw.

As for "vile personal attacks"; the truth is only vile to those who refuse to acknowledge it. Truth is often harsh, though.

Free population of the whole US 1860 ~ 28 million.

Free population of the future Confederate States 1860 ~ 9 million.

28 million total - 9 million free Southerners = 15 million in the Free States plus 4 million Southern Slaves.

19 million/9 million is pretty much 2 to 1.

15 million Yankees vs. 9 million Rebs is a 63%/37% split, a landslide vote under any circumstances.



The large majority clearly disagreed.

IMHO The most Constitutionally correct way of doing this would have been to muster the votes to get an Amendment on the issue of secession, one way or the other.

Birdwatcher

Factual history will show the wealthy northern industrialist in a far worse light than any southern.

You're intellectually dishonest idiot.

The states had/have the Constitutional right of secession. The South seceded. You might not like their rationale for secession (doubt the Brits liked the Colonial rationales or the Mexicans those of Tejas), but they had the right and even more so under the Constitution.

Lincoln invaded, in violation of the Constitution and law.

If you had a clue wtf you were talking about, you'd never have lobbed out that BS 2:1 argument. It only confirms you as intellectually dishonest and a fool.

Facts have never mattered to Mike. He is only interested in an agenda (now, what does that sound like to you?).

You only assume that the 19 million all felt and thought exactly alike. Now that is taking a huge liberty that has little to no justification in facts.

You never get anything right. Dumbfugg.

Truth.

Sounds like justifying an agenda without supporting facts.
Constitutionally that military is to never be used against the citizens of the United States.

You've proven time and again that you have no use for truth and likely wouldn't know it if it bit you in the ass.

The same applies IN SPADES to those nine million Free Southerners....



The generalizations I made re: relative populations most likely give the most credit to the Secession side of the issue.

Birdwatcher

Never. I've been a subject of an intrusive, overbearing, tyrannical govt. and it's paid, armed enforcers from the day I was born. Voting has had no effect on that whatsoever. They continue to steal more and more of my money and my liberty on a linear scale and I expect that will continue till the day I die.

Except blacks weren't free prior to the Northern invasion, weren't the reason for the Northern invasion, and then there's still that pesky issue of the Constitution and of law.

You lack any hint of intellectual honesty. I truly feel for the parents and the students subjected to your inconsistent agenda-driven HS.

In retrospect, most, if not all, of the African colonies of Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain, and the U.K. would have been better off today if there had been a lengthy, planned, transition from colony to independent country. But you've got to remember that, except for Portugal, those European countries were in the process of recovering from Civil War in Spain and WW2. They didn't have the resources to invest in their African colonies and it was easier just to let them go.

Even today, a lot of the aid that is provided to them is wasted because there still isn't a foundation of educated/skilled people to build and maintain an infrastructure to provide the services to the majority of the people. A consolidated continental rail system would be a good thing, but where is the money going to come from?

When analyzing anything if one is willing to absorb what is important and meaningful one can always live closer to reality than make believe.

I'd venture to cite that the most important objective lesson one can learn about the Civil war is to take a close look and ask......................................................Why is it, Christian Brother were fighting and killing one another? The nation was 98% Devout Christian yet less than 1% stood in opposition. Perhaps it was because True Christianity had deviated from the faith as is shown to be a cycle many times in the old testament.

The Civil War is penned down in Gods history book as a war in which Christians had deviated from the faith so far that they found it fitting to bare arms and kill there brother.


Mans book describes the civil war from an unrealistic perspective and considering many of the false Christians whom penned down much of it is riddled with both lies and half truths.

It would be amazing to acquire a Book on the Civil war that was penned from God himself and only then would this subject begin to warrant looking into.

Shod

This is the interpretation I most like, as expressed by the University Club of Springfield, MO ca. 1928, as seen last week on the Wilson's Creek Battlefield.

In honor of.... the hundreds of brave men, North and South, who, on this field, died for the right as God gave them to see the right.



Birdwatcher

But your "truth" is different from 4ager's "truth" and neither of you is likely to change the other's mind, so why bother trying? Sisyphus had his rock and you guys have the American Civil War. It may give your life meaning, but I'm not seeing the value and am equally sure that you have better things to do than argue about something that happened long ago and which you have no ability to change in any way.

History is an abiding interest of mine, do you have any idea how much I have learned on these threads during the last month?

I like to think some other folks have too.

Like I responded to a query on another thread. No one is SUPPOSED to think anything, but going back an examining events and sources before forming one's own opinion is never a bad thing

Birdwatcher

Perhaps.

But someone suggesting that your mother should have drowned you at birth seems like vile, uncalled for, behavior to me.

That's typical run of the mill stuff here on this board.

Actually, having been, the Brits allowed those people to vote themselves independent and neither is there any significant impulse on the Africans' part to vote themselves back in despite their suffering, at least where I was.



My position on the South has been clearly stated, if forced to choose, I would have fought for the Union.

In Tejas I have stated I would have probably sat it out, but really, even in 1835, the collective Indian population of Texas may have still narrowly edged the collective population of both Anglos and Tejanos.

And the 10 to 20 thousand independent Comanches alone had SURELY outnumbered the 7,000 Tejanos in Texas at the time of Mexican Independence in '21, even more so when Spain originally claimed the area.

So maybe we should start with the Indians; weren't it Southerners who were most responsible for the plainly unconstitutional Indian Removals of the 1830's and '40's ?



OK, what the collective North (referring constantly to "LIncoln" is incorrect, he had the support and willing participation of millions of others who wished to preserve the Union) was unconstitutional.

OTOH the consitutionality of secession was never put to a legal test either.

And ya, like all those Yankees who gave their lives to give us the United States we have today, I believe the specific end in this case justified the means.

YMMV,

Birdwatcher

That remark was made toward the government fascist djs, not Birdwatcher. Just to make sure that part of the record is straight.

Oh.

That was aimed at someone else, I actually forget all the stuff that was applied to me.....

Business as usual, I teach in High School after all...

Read the statements of the states that ratified the Constitution as their views on secession, in their own ratification documents. Read the words of Jefferson in his letters after being President and as President. Read the words of the Founders as to the reason for the 9th and 10th Amendment. The secession of the South was Constitutional and legal; invasion by the North was not. Hell, read the "Secession" thread; it's there.

All you have is "ends justify the means", which is the counter-opposite of freedom. By your "logic", any atrocity, any war, any subjugation of any people, any unconstitutional act is legitimate if in retrospect it can be justified by those that then rule and write the history books. Stalin would have loved your "logic", and Obama certainly does. Hell, he even likes your "math", as it fits right in with his illegal immigration strategy and having the UN govern us.

All I know is that I'm happy we got out from under those stupid Brits.

Unfortunately, as children deserve far better.

I doubt like hell you can teach anything or change the opinions of the majority here. Stupid, closed minded, prejudiced, sanctimonious, hypocrites just aren't capable.

Edited for truth.

Try this on for size...On March 21, 1861, new southern Confederate, Vice President Alexander Stephens, delivered the Cornerstone Speech. The speech explained the differences between the constitution of the Confederate Republic and that of the United States, and laid out the cause for the American Civil War, and a defense of slavery.

The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization.
This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact.

But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away... 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 idea of a Government built upon it—when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell."

Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone 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 moral condition.

The "Country we have today" may very well be far inferior to the Country we might have had if the South had been allowed to secede peacefully.

For one thing, the Constitution would likely be stronger if it had been followed rather than abrogated by applying military force against a Sovereign State. Time would have revealed the wisdom of adhering to it.

When the Southern States rejoined the Union peacefully, they could have been REQUIRED to denounce the right of secession as a requirement for readmission.

The Federal Government would have stayed as the Founders envisioned and would not be the threat to liberty that it is today.

Quit thinking of the Constitution, Gene; Mike doesn't, can't, and won't ever get it.

All good points, except it is arguable just how far future secessions would have been allowed to proceed. Smithwick points out that the Mormons he knew supported the South in principle for that every reason.

Mostly I'm glad that this is all history, I'm pretty sure that you are a better shot than I am.

Birdwatcher

??

28 million total in 1860 minus 9 million free Whites in the Confederate States = 19 million Yankees and slaves.

19 million Yankees and slaves minus 4 million slaves = 15 million Yankees.

Hey, I used a calculator and everything.

Actually, if you'd care to we could move on to the Constitutionality of Indian Removal in the 1830's and 40's and just who exactly on the ground was responsible for that anyway.

Birdwatcher

Without a doubt.

We covered the Indian removal when you started citing Andrew Jackson as a worthwhile source of information. That genocide was unconstitutional for a myriad of reasons and ruled so. Jackson was a despot, and I've been consistent on that point (though you've cited him as backing your position(s), whatever they happen to be at the time).

Notice how Mike ignored that? No surprise, though.

Aside from being spot on, it was intentional on my part. Just remember, the WHEEL, arguably man's greatest invention, was unknown in sub-saharan Africa until (surprise!) Europeans introduced it in the 16th century, not to mention the absence of a written language...

The Constitution is being handled as it was originally intended. Had they wanted it to act as a deterrent there would have been penalties listed for violations.

Which state?

jorgeI,

Do a search on why there are no two story building in Africa, except where non-blacks live. Very surprising.

Not to start another argument, but here is a list of the tallest buildings in Africa(some white/Arab and some black nations). see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_Africa

Note the buildings in Tanzania, Kenya, Cameroon, Sudan, Mauritius, etc.

And yet Indian Removal was enormously popular in those Southern states it affected, so much so that Jackson merely had to do nothing to see the Indians forcibly dispossessed, primarily by the actions of the inhabitants of six future Confederate States.

In Tennessee, no less a personage than Davy Crockett sacrificed his political career by being one of the few to oppose Removal, taking this unpopular stance on principle.

The Union soldier at least could claim he was fighting to save the Union.

Birdwatcher

African emancipation from Brit rule? Specifically addressed, go check.

Going for 20,000 words of Sanctimonious BS.

This is worth looking at, the long-term effects of the ruling Planter Class on the collective South...

http://www.civilwarhome.com/slavery.html

One half of all Southerners in 1860 were either slaves themselves or members of slaveholding families. These elite families shaped the mores and political stance of the South, which reflected their common concerns. Foremost among these were controlling slaves and assuring an adequate supply of slave labor....

The rural nature of antebellum slavery had unintended negative effects on the Southern economy. The investment of so much capital in land and slaves discouraged the growth of cities and diverted funds from factories. This meant that the South lacked the industrial base it needed to counter the North when the Civil War began. Indeed, in 1860, the South had approximately the same number of industrial workers (110,000), as the North had industrial plants.

Other detrimental effects arose from the South's devotion to rural slavery. Wealthy planters liked to claim they were living out the Jeffersonian ideal of an agrarian democracy. In truth, the South was agrarian because slave owners found that the best way to maintain their wealth and contain their slaves.

Moreover, its "democracy" was very limited because the planters had enormous influence over how white yeomen cast their votes. Except in remote areas of the South with few slaves or plantations, it was the needs and beliefs of the planter class that shaped Southern politics on the local, state, and national levels.

The consequences of this planter dominance was seen in many aspects of the society. The South failed to develop a varied economy even within the agricultural realm. All the most fertile land in the South was owned by slaveholders who chose to grow high-profit staple crops--cotton, tobacco, sugar. That left only marginal land for the vast majority of white farmers....

The antebellum South neglected to provide for the education of its people. Planters controlled the governmental revenues that could have financed public education, but they saw no need to do so. Their slaves were forbidden to learn; their own children were educated by private tutors or in exclusive and expensive private academies.

As a result, most white yeomen were left without access to education. A few lucky ones near towns or cities could sometimes send their children to fee schools or charity schools, but many were too poor or too proud to use either option.

In a similar vein, the dominating slaveholding class saw no need to create the means to produce inexpensive consumer goods for ordinary whites or to build an infrastructure by which such goods could be moved from production sites to markets in the countryside. Wealthy planters acquired what they wanted by importing expensive European or Northern goods. Thus poor whites were left to their own minimal resources and were deprived of goods they might have bought, had they been available.

This lack of consumer production and markets also retarded the growth of Southern transportation. Highways, canals, and railroads were constructed to move crops to ports and bring in luxury items for the planter class. The need of yeomen farmers to transport their crops to local markets was ignored. As a consequence, it was usually cheaper for plantation owners to import food from the North or upper South than to purchase it from white farmers in the same region. This deficiency in the Southern transportation system proved a serious liability for the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Slavery in the antebellum South, then, made a minority of white Southerners--owners of large slaveholdings--enormously wealthy. At the same time, it demeaned and exploited Southerners of African descent, left the majority of white Southerners impoverished and uneducated, and retarded the overall economic, cultural, and social growth of the region.


If we grant the North with 110,000 of those evil "wealthy industrialists", those wealthy industrialists, much as they do today, created jobs. Their profits also created the infrastructure that allowed further growth and diversification of the economy.

On average a Northerner of the period was better educated and had more opportunities for upward mobility than did his Southern counterpart. He also had much better access to actual physical mobility, for himself and any goods he might want to buy or sell.

Slavery was a curse that blighted everything it touched.

Birdwatcher

Amazing to me the extent people, who claim to support limited government and liberty, will go to support a political movement and ideology that was premised on a natural right to own other human beings as if they were cattle.

Blow it out your ass Rob, no one here is supporting slavery.

I'm sure you'll be back later with more of your BS.

The South instituted that most Federal of measures; a forced draft of manpower into military service, in 1862, a whole year before the Union adopted a similar measure.

For the first year of the Confederate draft one could indeed buy a replacement, how often this happened we don't know, we do know that forced draftees comprised roughly one in ten of the manpower of the Confederate Armies, roughly twice by proportion of draftees or their paid replacements in the Union Armies.

One thing about the Confederate draft that might be considered most egregious was the fact that the ruling Planter Class itself, those that owned at least 30 slaves, were exempt throughout the duration of the war. I'm gonna say though that given that they were the major producers of the South's most vital export, being a Planter could legitimately be labelled an essential occupation.

A higher proportion of the Union Army (~95%) in the field were serving voluntarily than was the case in the South (~90%). In the North one could indeed buy a substitute throughout, and three-quarters of "conscripts", tho less than one in twenty of the whole Union Army (IIRC about 10,000 men all told) were actually paid substitutes.

The interesting thing about the Northern paid substitute system is that most who took advantage of this were definitely Middle Class rather than some sort of "wealthy industrialist". The Union draft extended to men up to age 45 (as opposed to age 35 for the Confederate draft) and the prospect to a community of losing all these family men in the prime of their careers was catastrophic.

Whole towns in the North would collectively raise the money for substitutes to cover most of their men,or at least to afford them a say in exactly WHO went.

I am not aware how many "wealthy industrialists" in particular paid their way out of service, certainly there were about ten times as many (110,000) "wealthy industrialists" in the North as there were paid substitutes in the whole Union Army, so the fraction cannot have been all that great.

Birdwatcher

Fly the CBF if you must and most will see you as some antiquated, ignorant hillbilly. The Civil War was about preserving slavery as an institution. Fight a losing battle, again, 150 years later is [bleep] dumb. Move on.

Then why are you defending secession, when the reason the South seceded is because the North elected a president whose only offense was to commit the nation to the principle of not allowing slavery to expand into the territories? The entire political debate in the run-up to Lincoln's election was about expanding (or not expanding, or not allowing to expand) slavery into the territories. 6 southern states seceded before Lincoln even took office simply because he had been elected. They simply refused to be bound by the result of an election held according to the rules of the Constitution. Lincoln repeatedly said he had no power whatsoever to end slavery where it existed (show me where he ever said otherwise). The platform of the Republican Party (and Lincoln's platform) was simply to prevent its spread. The South, which was fanatical about slavery, seceded because they saw that if slavery could not grow, it would ultimately contract and they could not tolerate that result. The intellectual fathers of Southern secession were very explicit that in transmuting slavery into positive moral good, that they were breaking with the philosophy of Jefferson and the Founders and were equally explicit in denouncing Jefferson (and the Founders) for holding to the idea that white men and black men were equally men and that under the laws of nature no man had the right to govern another man without his consent. The entire Southern position was ultimately grounded in the argument that some men (white ones) did have the right to govern other men (black ones) without their consent. They even concocted a "scientific" justification for their position. In this they simply anticipated Nazism with its own "scientific" justification for the extermination of Jews. That's right: the Southern argument for slavery as a positive moral good, was the philosophic forerunner of Nazi genocide as a positive moral good. this is irrefutable. Which, again, makes reason stare when folks who supposedly stand for liberty and limited government are constantly trying to justify the greatest expansion of unlimited government power in the service of despotism in human history. It is mind boggling.

Jordan

Yep, we should let some cat from Colorado dictate how we celebrate our heritage and history. Not likely.

Bowsinger, thank you for posting that. Not only Alexander's Cornerstone speech, but the speeches of Jefferson Davis and the speeches of John Calhoun (the intellectual father of Southern secession) make clear that not only did the South believe in the inferiority of blacks, their belief in that inferiority ultimately and actually comes to sight as the proposition that blacks are actually not even human beings. This is the "self-evident truth" (the equal humanity of blacks and whites) which Southern intellectuals called a self-evident lie, (that black men and white men were equally men, viz., equally human beings). The philosophy which gave rise to and tried to justify southern secession is simply naked nihilism; it stands on identical ground with not merely Nazi genocide but Leftism today, which equally denies any objective basis for knowledge about right and wrong. The homosexual rights movement and John Calhoun, for example, are identical in their denial of the moral authority of nature and the law that is in nature.

The positive good school of pro-slavery thought in ante-bellum America denied that a black man was a human being and the homosexual rights movement in modern America denies that a man is not a woman. Or more precisely, it denies that nature or God intended for the complementarity of male and female to have any moral significance. Although 4ager will never acknowledge it, this is why I have been so incessant in opposing here the political agenda of the homosexual rights movement. In its premises, that movement is identical with the greatest despotisms in human history. Those despotisms may disagree in their conclusions, but in their premises, they are identical as they are identical in their opposition to the novus ordo seclorum that formed the foundation of the glorious revolution upon which this once great nation was founded.

Here is Harry Jaffa on the law of nature and its bearing upon slavery (briefly) and the justification of homosexuality. Philosophically, the argument for each is identical in its rejection of "the laws of nature and of nature's God".

"Man is a social animal, and no one can secure what is desirable for himself except in partnership with others. According to Aristotle, if a man had all the health, wealth, freedom and power that he desired, but lacked friends, he would not even wish to live. But the root of all friendships, as it is the ground of the existence of the species, is that of a man and a woman. As nature is the ground of morality, the distinction of the sexes is the ground of nature. Nature---which forbids us to eat or enslave out own kind---is that which has within it the principle of coming-into-being. Mankind as a whole is recognized by its generations, like a river which is one and the same while the ever-renewed cycles of birth and death flow on. But the generations are constituted---and can only be constituted---by the acts of generation arising from the conjunction of male and female. The root of all human relationships, the root of all morality, is nature, which itself is grounded in the generative distinction of male and female.....Abraham Lincoln once said that if slavery is not unjust, then nothing is unjust. With equal reason it can be said that if homosexuality is not unnatural, nothing is unnatural. And if nothing is unnatural then nothing---including slavery and genocide---is unjust"

Harry V. Jaffa, Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution: A Disputed Question.


Jordan

4ager, you have completely ignored the libertarian law review article I cited over a week ago. Why am I not surprised. It gives the lie to every point you made.

Popularity does not legality or Constitutionality make. Not even 2:1, even with fuzzy math.

Andrew Jackson was YOUR citation about "saving the Union" and secession, not mine. The "doing nothing" involved Federal troops in an unconstitutional unconstitutional action under a despotic president.

A claim of righteousness outside of the Constitution and law does not absolve one of crimes. Thanks for bringing that up and making that point.

Well said, though he has never gotten that point. The retrospective moral justification is the only option available to someone who refuses to concede that Southern secession was Constitutional and that the invasion by the North was unconstitutional.

I didn't ignore it. I called it bullschit and determined you unworthy of continued response for reasons stated. I'm sure you'll get back to us "later", but you still don't and won't merit further discourse. You have been given personal and professional courtesy time and again to take leave and return to a discussion, leave that you requested and wanted, and have abused and disregarded that courtesy each time. You don't merit further discussion or response.

Oh, I see.

A part of the populace felt that they didn't have say in who was elected?

Kind of like why would anyone support secession when the minorities and city folk elected a president that supported illegal immigration, excessive taxes, bloated bureaucracy, protected classes, privileged classes, discretionary enforcement of the law..

oh wait...

Secession doesn't have to pass muster with the nation from whom another is seceding; it must only be the will of those who wish to secede. The Colonists (and Tejas, secessionist slavers themselves) established that on this continent and spread the concept globally.

To now state that secession must pass a retrospective moral justification based upon the history written by a nation that refused to allow a lawful secession is quite something else. I believe Mr. Putin is rather supportive of this concept, as he is applying it rather well to the Ukraine and seeking to do so with the Baltic states.

I see the resident feelings driven HS teacher and the rest of the Liberal Lemmings are still adhering to the Party Narrative and the intellectual dishonesty and inconsistency that is the hallmark of the Hard Left despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary.


Granddaddy Lenin, Poppa Mao, Uncle Joe, Uncle Ho, and Cousin Barack must be so proud of them.

You have zero reading comprehension skills. Now you move on to exterminating Jews??

Blah Blah Blah
Once again blow out your pious ass.

Here's the irony; given that forcible expulsion of a small (relative to the surrounding populations) remaining Indian minority...

(about half the members of all the tribes in question had already removed, by their own accounts the Cherokees for one were already across the Mississippi and clear to the highlands of Northern Mexico by the 1790's, forty years before Removal)

...was already inevitable at the hands of local militia and State Guard groups, Jackson probably saved many lives on both sides by sending in troops.

If the Indians were poorly fed and handled while under Federal supervision, recall how poorly BOTH sides handled prisoners during the War Between the States. Efficiently caring for masses of imprisoned people weren't a skill yet acquired at the time.

And I'm going to take a breathtaking leap into political incorrectness here by suggesting that, completely unjust and tragic as the whole Removal process was, the death toll along the Trail of Tears was not all that much greater than would have been expected for any travelers of that period....

(the average life expectancy of even sedentary populations of Americans at the time was only about 40 years).

...Furthermore their Federal escorts likely saved many Indians from being killed or otherwise waylaid en route.

But the greater point is of course that the collective people of the South (and many in the North for that matter) didn't give a rip about constitutionality or justice in this case when it benefited THEM.



Can you even begin to imagine the penalties that slave owners would have to face for crimes against humanity if standards of twentieth century justice had been applied?

"It was legal under our laws" was not regarded as a viable defense for the Nazis at Nuremberg, nor would it have sufficed for Americans.

Birdwatcher

There's your fatal flaw; applying 20th or 21st Century morality to issues that were done in centuries past.

Glad to see you showing your true colors, though, with the Nazi insinuation. Go figure which flag flew over a slave nation for nigh a century, and which flags flew over ships out of what ports that brought slaves in. Hint: it won't the CBF. What people sold Africans into slavery? Hint: it won't Southerners, and how would history judge them under your retrospective lens?

You can't justify the Northern invasion under the Constitution. You can't justify it legally then. You can't even justify the "save the Union" BS, and you certainly can't absolve the Federal government in the genocide against the Natives in the 1830s, '40s, or beyond (btw - I'm part Cherokee from some of the very few that escaped those pogroms). All you have is retrospective justification based upon modern/latter day morality. That is the hallmark of intellectual dishonesty when it comes to history, and you're the f'king poster child for that.

You've tried the "it was for the children" socialist mantra, and now you're pulling the "same as the Nazis" BS. You have neither law nor history on your side, but you certainly know the leftist responses when faced with those certainties.

EXACTLY! This is the bane of the study of History and the bell cow for the vast majority of the "professional" educators in our schools.

Disregard him; those aren't even his thoughts. His zealotry is astounding, but unworthy of discourse due to his inability to keep his word. Though, I'll not be surprised if he now returns to issues he left (against his word) long ago in a sad attempt to save face.

It appears he's found his new Crusade; to castigate Southerners as "Nazis" based upon the academic diatribes of retrospective "moral historians". It'll be the windmill to replace his wild-eyed charges, where "Nazi" will replace his old war cry of "sodomite", and all the while he'll continue hold down a .gov position in the PRK funded by extorted tax dollars where he is supposed to represent all equally before the law, and personally hate any that he finds "Biblically/morally offensive" wishing them less freedom (or none) and holding them in contempt of his high-brow world view.

Helluva "libertarian", that...

And these were built prior to the Colonial Era I'm sure...

this cracks me up.

I see your point, and concede it. It is as I stated, and I need to follow through on that.

Damn....... a man enters the fray in support of a right to fly a battle flag and discovers that he is now on the side of homosexuals and Nazis.

At least Rob and Mike haven't equated us to Democrats..... yet.

Although both of them have already been equated to 'liberals' and 'lemmings' here for their particular views on this issue.

Joe Bob- no, but last I looked we are not at war and have not been invaded again - unless you believe the Jade Helm whackos. :-)

The war ended arguments of the day by force but did not put an end to cultural differences.

The centralist Yankee mentality still pervades society via the media. Guessing many might consider that an invasion of sorts.

Reading the opinion of the day, however, the earlier post quoting from the CSA VP clearly indicates slavery at the core of the split with the Union in his mind.

Do I think most Southerners fought to kept the institution of slavery. No.
Do I think Yankees fought so freed slaves could marry their daughters or vote in elections. N0.

Lee fought for Virginia foremost, and the continued autonomy of brother states, but in an inescapable bit of irony did so for the freedom of slaveholders. No getting around it.

Lincolns action can be argued as justified but it seems to me harder to say they were legal.


Lincoln used the issue of slavery to galvanize his cause just as southerners saw it as the litmus infringement to their self rule.

I think a harder question to answer is whether or not Lincoln would have invaded had the south abolished slavery?? I am thinking he still would want to but would be without the moral highground on the one hand while facing the very real probability of a British alliance with the south on the other. So...????


Sound like a contradiction but since these are all "what -ifs" I still find it impossible to imagine the civil War if there were no slaves in the first place. The difference between northern and southern states would be blurred.

Except you support the heritage, cause and, flag that supported slavery.

My family fought for VA and TN against an invading force illegally raised by the POS Lincoln. I am damn proud they did and damn proud of the flag. The cause to be free and independent was as just for the south as it was for the American Colonies and as just as Texas was in securing their freedom from Mexico.

You claim a southern heritage, did your home state leave the union?

From the inception of the Republic to the Civil War didn't your beloved Union also support slavery? Let's see it was legal wasn't it?

Well its my beloved Union too, I feel privileged to even be here, YMMV.

But no, the Free States were repeatedly obliged to compromise with the Slave States, to the point that Jefferson was pressured to remove the immortal phrase heard round the world...

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were created equal."

..such that slavery was outlawed in the Free States during or shortly after the American Revolution.

In the 19th Century, as the country grew, compromising with slave states dominated National politics in repeated attempts to avoid secession and war.

It is beyond doubt that the looming specter of abolition was a major factor in pushing the South to a point they felt they had no alternative but secession.

Leastways that is the viewpoint of the textbook you highly recommended.

Birdwatcher

Where have I framed a single piece of evidence in terms of
"feelings"?

However one might take freely thrown insults as evidence of feelings.

Is there and insult worse than "Liberal"?




The irony being that you haven't provided "mountains of evidence to the contrary". Your main College textbook recommendation with which you opened that other thread confirms exactly what I thought I knew re:the South, that war, and its causes.



Does this also apply to the men who fell fighting to preserve the Union? If not, why not?

Birdwatcher

More Liberal Lemming I see. Go on back to the echo chamber Liberal I am Done with you except for adding you to the Ignore list where all vermin should be.

djs has only ever supported an ever increasing .gov, in true fascist style. His socialist tendencies only reinforce that.

On a positive note, we'll outlive the bastard so he'll never have to worry about his grave being dry. Perhaps he'll live long enough to reap the fruits of his fascist socialism and be devoured (literally) by the monster he did everything possible to create.

As stated before about his claim of heritage; if a cat gives birth in the oven, do ya call them biscuits?

You should feel that way because you're pretty late to game here. Go for 30,000 words now even 100,000 because it's not going to change the fact you're wrong.

Hell of bunch of it going here. I would say stuff "biscuits" like that in a sack and chunk em in the creek.

As he sits in a state that seceded TWICE with slavery among their reasons, one that he supported (implicitly) and one he opposed, whilst married to a woman of Mexican origin - a nation that Tejas seceded from in order for Tejas to continue slavery, and a nation that today has a very large population of slaves for sex, drug running, drug production, industrial, and domestic work (about which he says and does nothing).

I'll take sanctimonious bastards for 1000 Alex.

I think you mean inconsistent, intellectually dishonest, hypocritical sanctimonious bastards for $1000, correct?

That's it

"Well then..." says Birdwatcher in his best John Cleese imitation.... "no point in me replying then is there?"

You'd be far better off posting something of substance, actually doing some research, and getting back to us.

JMHO,

Birdwatcher

This:





is the only thing that should be seen where Birdy is concerned.

His Liberal Lemming Vermin Ass deserves nothing else.

The research has been done long ago. Preach away but you're still wrong.

Considering that the variable position of the inconsistent, intellectually dishonest, hypocritical, sanctimonious Tejican has been systematically and utterly destroyed Constitutionally, legal, factually, and historically by myself and others including hillbillybear, you needn't post any research as it's already been done.

We also have the advantage of stories passed down through our families that lived it.

Asking a rhetorical question hardly amounts to applying modern morality, but neither when looking at history should one forget modern morality.

But a profound revulsion of the evil that was slavery was hardly new by 1861.

Mostly we owe a debt of gratitude to William Wilberforce and his unrelenting moral campaign in England, a thirty-year tour de force of triumphant morality that began nearly sixty years before the War Between the States and ended thirty year before that war with the greatest empire the World has ever known outlawing slavery wherever they were able. So much so that British recognition could never be more than a pipe dream on the part of the Confederacy.

In recognition of its evil both Robert E. Lee AND Ulysses H. Grant both freed their own slaves, so forgoing a considerable financial windfall to themselves. Indeed, the in the words of Mary Boykin Chesnut, who moved in the highest Confederate circles and owed here wealth and comfort to the forced labor of slaves.... God forgive us, but ours is a monstrous system and wrong and iniquity.



How have I not? I would have thought the goal of saving the Union was self-evident.



Cherokee Removal was willful genocide? How so?

In fact feel free to give examples of Indian genocide on the part of the Federal Government.

I have correctly labelled Removal as being the great moral stain on our history that it was (I'm applying a modern sense of morality here I know).

I have correctly pointed out that the Southerners did not let the Constitution stand in their way when it came to so venal a purpose as stealing another man's land and possessions, let alone for so lofty a cause as preserving the Union.

I have also pointed out that the involvement of Federal forces in Removal saved a great many lives. How else would 500 armed Black people (Black Seminoles) who had recently been actively bearing arms in active and costly warfare against the United States Government in general and against Southerners in particular have survived the trip to the Indian Territories WHILE STILL BEARING ARMS (that fact always amazes me, Spike Lee oughtta be all over it).



Congrats, tho to add sad perspective I do believe more Cherokees died at the hands of other Cherokees in the Indian Territory during the War Between the States than escaped Removal thirty years earlier by going up high.

In the decades leading up to Removal, MOST Cherokees who were killed by other humans were killed by Southern civilians who clearly were willing to commit such an unconstitutional act as murder, not the Federal Government.

It has been quite a few years since I went, it being so hard to get there through Gatlinbug/Pigeon Forge, but the Cherokee Museum in Cherokee NC is well worth the time and trouble to get there.

In particular the silent exhibit that just lists the names of those who died during epidemics is absolutely chilling.

And hey, preserving the Union, how was that NOT "for the children"?

Birdwatcher

Ya, a clumsy rhetorical question on my part, but a valid one in context.

It was not my intention to cause offense.

Birdwatcher

I get to reply to this because it refers to me (in "emotion-driven" terms yet) and somehow I expect you'll get to read it anyway.


I'll note that once again you have failed to contribute a shred of the "mountains of evidence" that you have stated support your interpretation of events.

Birdwatcher

WHAT....!!!!


WHAT....!!!!



Here I was thinking I was posting from "the Barrio" I had slunk back to as per HBB's instructions....


You silly twerp, I have often posted about where I live and work.

Birdwatcher

does this mean you aren't going to come to Mason on the 7th, Birdie?? My wife is giving me 2:1 you won't show. If you don't it's gonna cost me $50 !!!!

PM sent.

Exactly. You sit in a state that seceded TWICE and both times in part over slavery. The rest is accurate as well, you inconsistent, intellectually dishonest, hypocritical sanctimonious son of a bitch.

Deuteronomy 30:19 I take the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you today that I have put life and death before you, the blessing and the curse,and you must choose life so that you may live.

1 John 3:10-12 The children of God and the children of the Devil are EVIDENT by this FACT!!!!! The children of God love there brother and are not like Cain who slaughtered his brother and for what!!!

It is true all men have the freedom to choose and it is there God Given Right!

We are free as men to choose the blessing or the curse.....life or death. Those Christian men certainly exercised there God given Right to kill there own brother.

The choice was not life....the choice was not the blessing.

1 John 4:20 if anyone says I love God and yet is hating his brother he is a liar.

Shod

Some live in the past, some live in a past of of the "good ole days". The past of oppression, KKK, church bombing, cross burning, Jim Crow, etc. A vile past of racism, lynching, a past better remembered than forgotten and celebrated by a flag of that era. Remembered for the evil of of that era. And best buried. But not forgotten. For forgetting slights history, heritage- is an excuse and a blind eye. It's 2015 .
"Get out a new road if you can't lend a hand your old road is rapidly ending"
-Bob Dylan

Well since you did bring up my wife.....

My wife's father's roots go back in Tejas since before the 19th Century, vaqueros y Indios both, so I dunno its correct to call her "Mexican" in the sense you are using it here. Worth mentioning too that her dad was career Military.

Her mother witnessed the Bataan Death March as a little girl, before spending the rest of the war hiding in the jungle while her father fought with the guerrillas. So that part certainly ain't Mexican neither.

I am confused how drug dealing and prostitution in present day Texas relate at all to the contents of this thread.

But hey, I have reason to be proud of my efforts here over the last thirty years, or so many others have told me. I have been exceedingly fortunate that way.

Birdwatcher

My folks have never been in the KKK or a lynch mob. We have never bombed a church.

Go smoke a CO joint and STFU

I doubt you're willing to spend the time, but in what ways does anything I said here conflict with those stories?

Birdwatcher

My folks either. My grandfather and several of his neighbors did help dismantle and run the Klan out of his home county in SW VA back in the early 50's.


As Marc said, just STFU and toddle back off to the weed patch.

You are way off in your view of the South. Like it or not we are not going to turn our backs on our history and heritage. You are so full of crap that it isn't even worth arguing with you about it. Southerners are and have been among the best of all people. Their generosity and hospitality speaks for itself. We will not deny our symbols or our heritage, and we are not going to allow outsiders to define who we are. 2015 is a great time to celebrate our history, as will 2016. Get over it.

You are completely fixated upon slavery and saving the union we were just in leaving. I can't say anything that will change your mind or you mine. My family didn't own slaves and answered VA's call to arms in response to Lincoln's planned invasion of the South. The stories of our sacrifices will be kept among friends and family. Only one in my family got through war unscarred. 4 dead, 3 POWs, a leg blown off at Chicamauga on another.

Here is a link on the 54th VA
http://54th.va.inf.8m.com/

It is simply amazing how many here get offended when they are painted with a broad brush by generalization yet have absolutely no problem doing so to others because of their race, religion, country of origin, etc.

Perhaps now that the proverbial shoe is on the other foot and you see how it feels it will prompt more discretion. I doubt it, but if it opens the eyes of just a single member here then it is progress.

This is not directed at any particular member but if you feel that this is you, well it probably is because you have self affirmed.

Thank you for your reply.

It is non less than amazing at the number of, excuse me if you will, ignorant, educated, and lettered men whom consider the slaughter of brothers and the pronouncement of fellow Christians to be enemies both heroic and honorable.

I fear deeply that there is less than even a degree of worthiness or decency in this line of thinking.

Cowards is the fitting word to describe Christians killing Christians.



Shod

Its been going on since Christ left and will continue until he returns.

I find it amazing that you struggle to see the forest for the trees in the way. There was nothing cowardly about the overall conduct of the men on either side of the conflict. To imply that they were cowards is wrong and very disrespectful. That is some off the chart arm chair quarterbacking.

Well, Holy schit. Marc might have actually shut the SOB up. Let's continue with a bit more of this; here's my ancestry on the same:

Enlisted in Company E, Virginia 51st Infantry Regiment on 01 Jul 1861.Promoted to Full Corporal on 01 Jan 1863. Promoted to Full Sergeant on 01 Mar 1865.

Enlisted, Private, 2nd Virginia Cavalry, Company H, May 1861; paroled after surrender July 19, 1985

Private, Company H, 36th VA Infantry, enlisted 1 Feb 1862; Discharged from the 24th VA Infantry, April 12, 1865.

Private, Company A, 44th VA Infantry, enlisted 21 Oct 1861; Mustered out 27 Mar 1862 on transfer to 20th VA Heavy Artillery Battalion; Paroled after surrender on 19 July 1865.

Enlisted in Company G, Virginia 19th Infantry Regiment on 01 May 1861.Promoted to Full Corporal on 15 Feb 1862.Promoted to Full 4th Sergeant on 15 Apr 1862.Promoted to Full 3rd Sergeant on 15 Jun 1862.Promoted to Full 2nd Sergeant on 15 Aug 1863. Captured at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, imprisoned at Fort Delaware; diary in the family with a copy in a museum dedicated to the War. The diary is one Hell of a read and has been cited numerous times for PhD dissertations and other scholarly works.

Enlisted, private, Company E, 1st VA Cavalry Regiment, July 24, 1861. Discharged April 12, 1865.

Enlisted, private, Company E, 1st VA Cavalry Regiment, January 4, 1864. Discharged April 12, 1865

Enlisted, private, Company E, 1st VA Cavalry Regiment, July 24, 1861. KIA Spotyslvania Courthouse, May 11, 1864 (served with his two brothers listed directly above him; KIA with them in a battle they both survived).

Enlisted, private, Company G, Virginia 19th Infantry Regiment on 01 May 1861. Mustered out on 18 Nov 1862 due to loss of a leg and illness.

Not a single damned slave owner, and every one of them enlisted after Virginia seceded in order to stave off an invading army.

Oh, and one of those listed above was a "white" Cherokee that had escaped Jackson's pogroms as a child (his family and the family of his later wife came to SW VA and passed themselves off as "white").

19th VA Infantry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_Virginia_Infantry

1st VA Cavalry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Virginia_Cavalry

20th Virginia Heavy Artillery: https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/20th_Battalion,_Virginia_Heavy_Artillery_%28Confederate%29

24th Virginia Infantry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24th_Virginia_Infantry

2nd Virginia Cavalry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_Virginia_Cavalry

51st Virginia Infantry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/51st_Virginia_Infantry



WHAT?!?!?

You mean that all Mexicans can't be painted with a brush of drug running, prostitution, slavery, and violence even though Mexico today damned near defines that? You mean that, perhaps, it isn't accurate? Say it isn't so? Maybe, just maybe, schit's a little "too complicated" for that, eh?

I am quite certain your wife's history of her own family as being Mexican and what that means flies in the face of some idiotic blanket statements that try to simply her history. Facts often do that. Perhaps even you can get the hint, though I doubt it.

Were the "White Cherokees" the group that ended up in the county over by me?

Yep.

And, here's the other kick. The CBF NEVER flew over an army that conducted that genocide. The CBF NEVER flew as a national flag that flew over a slave nation. The CBF NEVER flew from the mast of a slave trading ship. The flag that did that was "Old Glory". Where's the moral outrage at that?

Oh, and as to the "well, the CBF has been used by Neo-Nazis and the KKK", so too has the Stars & Stripes, and far more prevalently and appropriately so. Where's that discussion? Where are the calls to have THAT flag torn down due to the history of oppression and genocide committed under THAT banner?

It amazes me that you fail to look beyond both the forest and the Trees through the impending dessert and to the next mountain.

To stand for Country and to kill a fellow Brother does require a certain bravery.

To stand for God in the midst of Government pressure and threats required Bravery and Integrity.

The threat of treason by a nation is immediate.

The threat of God to not kill your brother is a buck that can be passed down the road and eliminates the immediate threat of death.

Jesus rightfully stated.......Many will save there life to lose it and some will lose there life to save it.

The apostle Paul also rightly stated.

We have a wrestling against the Governmental authorities and wicked spirits. Paul also stated that we must Obey God as ruler rather than Men!

Killing a Christian Brother Brave......I'll concede to that line of thinking. Killing a Brother Heroic......I beg to differ.




Shod

If you're in line, across the board, with being a Conscientious Objector, in the mood or faith of the Mennonites or Quakers, then your position is unassailable.

4Ager,

Not a Mennanite or Quaker. As far as a position being unassailable or assailable do you mean from mans point of view or from Gods.

From the bibles point of veiw as in what is penned down in the book my position is assailable.

If one is agnostic and argues from an agnostic view them my view point is unassailable


If one is Christian yet argues a point based on how they feel rather than what the bible states or Gods point of view than such an argument would be unassailable according to God




Shod

Picking and choosing which battles to fight based upon what your opponent may or may not believe is impossible. A man simply could not know if a Christian were facing him or not. Thus, my statement.

I respect your veiwpoint.

In the case of the Civil war nearly 10 out of 10 people you would have been shooting at were Professed Christian



My point is simply that those men were misled by false Religious teachers and of course many will have an opportunity to acquire true facts on the matter when they are ressurected and given an opportunity at the real life.


For now I'll happily not kill my brother. I remember a friend of mine witnessing to a woman who made the statement. My son was a Christian and died during world war 2 and I do not appreciate you people who refuse to go to war.

My friends answer......your son may have died at the hand of a Catholic or Protestant or perhaps a brother of another faith however I can assure you that you did not lose your son on account of one of us.

I suppose it comes down to questioning if a governmental authority whom Paul stated we have a wrestling against along with wicked spirits is actively fallen from Gods graces when they send brothers to battle one another.

Generally speaking a sure indicator is Sodom and Gamora type behavior such as homosexuality being rampant. Perhaps even legal in all 50 states.


Shod

No disagreement on those odds. They would have been close to that in the Revolution, the Tejas Secession, the Mexican-American war(s), the Spanish-American War, WWI, and in the European theatre (at least) of WWII, just for starters.

I appreciate the discussion this morning friend. Hope you have a great day.


Shod

It's been a good one (try to remember that any day above ground is a good one). The same to you; carpe diem!

Would the Black folks killed in that churchouse have been justified in taking out the shooter with their bare hands rather than submitting like sheep to the slaughter?

If they had done that, would we even be talking about the CBF?

I wish they would have. That little POS would be dead and several of those good people would still be with us.

No, we would have been talking about how those federal gun purchase laws were followed and how well they work.

Nothing I have said contradicts your family history.

Find a single statement where I have painted anyone with anything.