Louisiana Carry
Member
For reference, and simply because it is good info, please read my last two posts in the thread that got me thinking about this topic. Find them here: The Consent of the Governed and here: http://www.thehighroad.org/showpost.php?p=3051442&postcount=56
Not to beat a dead horse, but I am still surprised by how many people, even on gun boards- (even among supporters of the South!) still believe that the war had anything to do with slavery. Please- I can take all the time in the world and have you not believe me- please read Abe Lincoln's Inaugural Address and Jefferson Davis' Inaugural Address. Don't you think that if the war was about slavery someone would have at least brought the topic up?? I mean, slavery was not a taboo topic. It was an accepted institution (albeit not one that was approved of by all). No, I am not a proponent of slavery, but it was common throughout the world a couple hundred years ago. No country on earth has ever fought a war to end it, yet it has died (virtually) everywhere. It should not take any historical proof to realize this, my friends. A few thoughts to consider:
You are welcome to attempt to refute that, I know that history vindicates me and I welcome the (sincere) naysayers. (Please allow for my busy schedule as to response times.)
Dio Vindice!
Not to beat a dead horse, but I am still surprised by how many people, even on gun boards- (even among supporters of the South!) still believe that the war had anything to do with slavery. Please- I can take all the time in the world and have you not believe me- please read Abe Lincoln's Inaugural Address and Jefferson Davis' Inaugural Address. Don't you think that if the war was about slavery someone would have at least brought the topic up?? I mean, slavery was not a taboo topic. It was an accepted institution (albeit not one that was approved of by all). No, I am not a proponent of slavery, but it was common throughout the world a couple hundred years ago. No country on earth has ever fought a war to end it, yet it has died (virtually) everywhere. It should not take any historical proof to realize this, my friends. A few thoughts to consider:
- A mere 20th of land owners had slaves. Slaves and their care were expensive. Most farm were hand-to-mouth, just as most households are today.
- The War to Prevent Southern Independence killed TWENTY-FIVE percent of the fighting-age men in the South, not to mention 59,000 civilians purposely butchered by the Northern War-mongers. Why on earth would all those people have died so their neighbor could keep getting richer? Bear in mind that the citizenry at the time was not prone to blindly marching off to war just because some politician had an agenda. These (especially Southerners) were a fiercely independent people. Conscription was still understood to be wholly unconstitutional. People fought for what they believed in- there wasn't even such a thing as standing armies (as indeed their should not be, constitutionally and morally). According to the Founding Fathers- the entire military as we know it is the product of a despotic regime, not the efforts of a free people.
- The original 13th amendment was an amendment to forever enshrine slavery in the annuls of law. THIS HAD ALREADY PASSED BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS AND WAS READY FOR THE STATES TO BEGIN RATIFICATION. From the Dred Scott decision to many other constitutionally-based precedents- SLAVERY WAS NOT IN ANY DANGER!! There was no need to fight to preserve it. The only thing that was being talked about in any regular fashion was limiting slavery to the areas it was already being practiced. NEWSFLASH! No one wanted to grow cotton up north or out west, anyway. The Old South is where the cotton-climate is. Furthermore, before you think that the proponents of that idea were on any moral high ground- they were open about the fact that the idea was to KEEP BLACKS OUT PERIOD. These were people who wanted to reserve new states for White People- not institute a "freer America."
- Abe Lincoln was not, and never had been, an abolitionist or even accepting of Blacks as a whole. He was actually active in a program that sought to deport them to Liberia (created for this purpose), Jamaica, and other countries overseas. Translation- we want them out of our country. He had spoken freely in public debates that the White race was superior to the Colored one. This man was never a champion of justice. He was a Henry Clay Whig for his entire career that became a part of the new Republican party (read Whigs who took on a new name and kept going [not to be confused with the early-American Whigs who were pro-liberty]) whose platform was PLUNDER. The whole premise of their platform was protectionist tariffs and "internal improvements" (read taking your money and giving it to their friends to construct inefficient and poorly managed roads, canals and railways- all of which went bankrupt from corruption). They never gave a damn about slavery until after the war, when they saw its abolition as a tool to further destroy the South during reconstruction.
- If Lincoln had ANY- repeat ANY- true desire to free slaves- why wouldn't he have done it ANYWHERE he had the legal right to do so? In regards to the Emancipation Proclamation (which incidentally did not "free" a single slave not already "free" as a result of other "laws"- it was purely a political ploy to hopefully foster "uprisings" among slaves, which moreover never materialized)- it specifically EXCLUDED EACH AND EVERY AREA OF THE COUNTRY UNDER UNION CONTROL- even listing specific parishes here in Louisiana that were under successful occupation. If the Federal government really wanted to free slaves, don't you think they would have freed AT LEAST ONE slave in an area where they had a legal right to do so?? Think about it.
- You will not find any wide-spread support for the "War to End Slavery" myth until many MANY years after the war. That is an idea specifically perpetuated after the fact to justify atrocious encroachments on the rights of every American. Just as the feds today are taking your guns and saying "it's for the children," and quoting all kinds of "fact" that you and I know to be ludicrous- they are throwing out reasons why the war was "necessary," because if they admitted that they simply wanted to keep the South in their economy so they could keep plundering it with 50% tariffs that robbed from the South to subsidise Northern industry (which the Republican party still stands for today- one of W's first acts was to institute a 50% steel tariff), there would be ALOT less public support for it. Lincoln's war may have preserved the nation geographically, but it destroyed it ideologically. A nation that was built on the "consent of the governed" was now built on the "might of the central government"- the diametric opposite. Of course the Lincoln cult wants to shield that reality from view, so they obscure it with non-issues. It is a fact that it was not in any Slave-owners fiduciary interests to secede. Again- the law of the land protected them! They had no reason to risk that by plunging into new legal territory.
- You can look not only to the Inaugural addresses listed above, but to our Confederate constitution to find one of the main reasons for our outrage- protectionist tariffs. Just as Americans had fought a war to free themselves from exploitative English taxes a few decades earlier, we were ready to fight again (though we should have been allowed to legally leave peacefully) to free ourselves from the same Northern exploitative policies. The North at the time had double-digit tariffs (which were raised to 50% once Lincoln came into power) that were designed, ostensibly to "protect infant industries." How it worked was that goods shipped into the US were HEAVILY taxed, in order to deter foreign trade and artificially inflate the prices charged by domestic producers of items (such as steel). The money, in turn, was given to the politically connected men in those industries (after the Federal fat cats got their cut). Thus- immorally- "protecting" those industries so they could "develop" (never mind that the free market ensures the success of needed industries). Our Confederate constitution SPECIFCALLY OUTLAWED such practices because THEY ARE IMMORAL. (Don't tell your dyed-in-the-wool neocon GOP friends that- they still stand for that today.) What was happening was that THE FEDS WERE GETTING 80% OF THEIR REVENUE DIRECTLY FROM THE SOUTH AND THEN KEEPING ALL THE MONEY UP NORTH TO FEED THEIR BUDDIES. We were not stupid and refused to keep playing, so we took our jacks and went home. That is why they blockaded all our ports as soon as they could muster ships. We were not charging the world 50% tariffs to trade with us. Why would the rest of the world keep trading with the North when our tariffs were single-digit "revenue" tariffs? They WOULDN'T. The North saw that they were losing all their plunder- so they beat us back into submission- at the cost of 620,000 lives (adjusted for current population, we would be talking 5 million Americans dead by today's percentages!) Why? So the federal government could keep plundering. The war was a repeat of the war that gave us our independence from Britain, and it's loss was a reversal of what we had won not but a few short decades earlier. Lincoln said as much OUT LOUD when he was inaugurated. He said "in as much as I am able to collect the tariffs- there will be no invasion." Think about that one, folks. That says- pay up or die. THAT is what the war was all about. Slavery had NOTHING and I mean NOTHING to do with it. Granted, abolitionists rightly used it to forward their cause, and I applaud them for it. But for us to believe the same lies from the same federal government that our rights were usurped "for the greater good" is be blind jingoists who continue to accept the constant and continual usurpations going on today without resulting to arms as we should.
You are welcome to attempt to refute that, I know that history vindicates me and I welcome the (sincere) naysayers. (Please allow for my busy schedule as to response times.)
Dio Vindice!
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