Sesquicentennial Of The Conspiracy To Destroy The United States To Preserve Slavery

Sesquicentennial Of The Conspiracy To Destroy The United States To Preserve Slavery

By oleeb on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 5:00pm |

FILE - In this 1865 photograph made available ...

150 years ago today, because of the desire to maintain the practice of human slavery for profit, a powerful and determined minority initiated a treasonous uprising in an attempt to destroy the United States government. The traitors' efforts, doomed to failure from the very start, led to countless scenes like this and the needless deaths of 300,000 patriots and more who defended our country against this treachery, saved the union and freed 4 million slaves.

We should never forget how many patriots fought, died, were wounded, maimed and disabled while putting down that rebellion so that all of us might live in a united, free republic and one in which slavery is forever outlawed.

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I always loved that word:

Sesquicentennial!

Kind of rolls off the tongue.

May Jefferson Davis rot in hell to this day!

by Richard Day on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 5:12pm

The great leader of the southern cause was caught dressed in his wife's garments, and with a shawl over his head as he tried to escape after Lee surrendered. The man who sent tens of thousands of landless southern peasants to fight for the rich slave owners was too cowardly to meet his victorious foes like a man.

If you read about the march of Sherman through Georgia, you find that the rich southern slave owners were so 'afraid' of Sherman they left their wives and children at home on the plantations on Sherman's approach, while they, the men, hightailed it away to hiding.

The women were left alone along with their houses intact by Sherman, except in the case of known southern political blowhards, whose homes were burnt to the ground. In Southern Storm, the author relates how the rich landowners were (all too typically) complaining about Georgia tax rates in the hours before Sherman arrived in Milledgeville, the capitol of the rebel state of Georgia. They quit their tax bellyaching just in time to hightail it to a safer locale.

by NCD on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 6:03pm

DAMN!! i forgot about that.

Just before Lee met with Grant, the sonofabitch was planning to go to Texas to raise an army.

Ahhhhh, cowardice!

great link!

by Richard Day on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 6:38pm

Jefferson Davis may well be rotting in hell as we breathe. As a non practicing Apathist, I haven't the foggiest. What I do know is his life after the Civil War wasn't too bad. But I'm sure you know that. Sure, he did a couple years in the can (without charges), but was never prosecuted. Instead, he enjoyed twenty more prosperous years -- a nice corporate gig, a world tour and the sort of celebrated fanfare any American war criminal might come to expect. It seems our tradition of "turning the page" is way deeper than Gerry Ford and Barack Obama.

by kyle flynn on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 2:27am

Oh, and too bad Jon Stewart was around back then. He could have had ol' JD over for a nice "we can disagree without being disagreeable" chat to help him out with the book peddling. "I accept your apology, Mr. Davis." ha ha ha

by kyle flynn on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 2:54am

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I just caught this!

Wonderful!

CNN would have pondered:

YOU DECIDE!

hahahahah

by Richard Day on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 4:25am

And of course Fox would just go ahead and give the guy his own damn show.

by kyle flynn on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 5:53am

Wow; is this the 150th anniversary of the start of that war? Who knew? I thought everyone was just celebratin' my wedding anniversary!

by we are stardust on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 5:30pm

You've been married 150 years? Damn, that's impressive. Congratulations!

by Verified Atheist on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 6:34pm

And you always say I don't look a day over 140! ;o)

by we are stardust on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 6:41pm

I find your conspicuous omission of the the more than 250,000 confederate soldiers who perished, and the tens of thousands more who were injured and maimed, unfortunate. It strikes me as quite inconsistent with your other posts, which marvelously speak for the plight of the proletariat everywhere.

by kyle flynn on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 6:29pm

Ouch; good point, kyle flynn.

by we are stardust on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 6:37pm

Ooooh. Lousy point, kyle.

How is willingly, eagerly even, going to war to keep four million people in bondage someone's "plight," exactly?

by brewmn on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 6:41pm

Some of us aren't still fighting that war, brew, and can afford to recognize how many of both sides died. I think it's what a Human Being should do, silently acknowledging that war is almost never the answer, and many die for reasons that might have been avoided.

Your angry rejoinder made me think about the testimonies I listened to at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission meetings, and how mind-boggling it was to hear admissions from Afrikaners admitting committing atrocities to the families of their victims, and hearing their apologies accepted. I believe that they and many others through history have somehow understood that holding on to unforgiven rage will eat a person from the inside.

We've been blessed, IMO, to have people like MLK and Desmond Tutu and others try to teach us that.

But no; I'm not going to fight with you over this. You have a right to your rage, I have a right to imagine the tragic loss of life on both sides and regret it.

by we are stardust on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 7:19pm

I think the most important thing we can do to honor the dead, mourn the fallen and celebrate the heroes of that war, is to continue having inane fights on Civil War Threads across the internet.

Virtual Civil War Reenactment, as it were...

by Obey on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 7:23pm

And you, my Obi-wan, can have the concession for Hats! Grey ones, blue ones, private ones, general ones...maybe medals....we can adorn ourselves and really gin up some EMO!

But can we somehow manage to jettison the word 'heroes' from our language? Damn; I hate that word. ;o)

by we are stardust on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 8:18pm

Generally I agree with what you've written but the fact is that the only reason the civl war was fought was because of the willingness of those who fought against the United States to take up arms against it. Not one life need have been lost but for the treason of the slave power and those that supported them. The war was entirely unnecessary and deliberately brought on by those who conspired to destroy the United States in order to preserve slavery.

by oleeb on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 8:59pm

Far be it from me to to try to talk you off your perch, Oleeb. But I'll answer this a bit, and your reply to kyle flynn a bit.

Given that the Emancipation came not before the war, but midway and at the insistence of the wonderful Abolishonists and their grand movement, you might want to think of a more nuanced view of the causes; but if not, then of the effects.

One of the effects of not only the war, but especially Reconstruction of the South, served to concentrate the wealth, power, militarization and land-ownership to the industrial North. Some historians believe it was the birth of the modern MIC. I dunno about that, per se, but the trend seems worth questioning. Sorta one step in the 'if you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail' idea.

Scholars will debate the wisdom or folly of preserving the Union at such cost, but no one will ever win the argument, IMO. It's impossible to preserve negatives, as in 'Slavery would have fallen anyway', but those who discredit that sicken me when they look at slaves in terms of financial assets.

I think that given Lincoln giving in and announcing the end to slavery in most states, it was in the end a worthy war; but one that may not have been necessary.

I've been a Southern bigot in my life plenty; I'm just kinda tired of it, and looking to understand more fully what forces were at play. I've read more opinions and 'histories' on this war over the past week than in my entire life, I swear. (I may be exaggerating slightly for effect, but...)

So keep your position; it's fine and noble and Liberal, and may be 'right' in the end. Thank God slavery ended in time; it was an evil that needed to be stopped.

by we are stardust on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 9:42pm

The South would have "survived" but slavery wouldn't. Even in Brazil where slavery was much bigger, foreign trafficking was outlawed in 1850, sons of slaves freed in 1871 and slavery ended in 1888.

You can follow the timeline of abolition here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline#1800.E2.80.93...

Most of the Americas along with Russia and India had abolished slavery by 1861.

We were the only ones who seemed to need an exceedingly violent civil war to abolish it.

by Desider on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 10:16pm

I'd guess, though, that many would find that Cold Comfort and forces us into an academic discussion that isn't provable; i.e., waiting longer is a very harsh notion from our vantage point NOW, especailly if one is descended from slaves. Which is of course, why we are still fighting the Civil War.

Shoot; all the Armenians wants is that the Turks acknowledge that their forebears were killed in a genocide. Not much to ask, but no....

by we are stardust on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 10:31pm

Well slavery was sunsetted in Jamaica and still the slaves rose up to push the waiting period forward. Obviously 5 more years of prison is worse than 0 more years. But 600,000 dead is also a pretty hefty cost in the equation, as the destruction of a civilization and animosities for 100 years. For an Academic question - would the black community have been better off over the period to say 1990 if slavery had been allowed to die out over 10-20 years? That's an outrageously difficult question to analyze, much less answer, but then flippant assumptions that such a bloody conflagration was the only/best way to deal with it dont really help just because they're what happened in fact, de facto "proof"

by Desider on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 11:48pm

No rage here, darlin'. Just bafflement that so many ostensibly liberal people in the blogosphere go out of their way to defend the right to own other, um, Human Beings.

by brewmn on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 10:57pm

Brew. There is certainly a lot of shit flying here, but I haven't read a single word in defense of slavery.

It's reasonable to suggest that moneyed interests in the North could want to abolish slavery without giving one god damned for the enslaved.

by kyle flynn on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 11:22pm

Well, I find your insistence on making moral equivalencies, and on sympathy for those who fought on behalf pf preserving slavery, leads me to that conclusion. To successfully make the moral equivalancy case, you'd have to argue that the death and destruction caused by the decision to go to war was equivalent to the decision to continue to hold four million people as slaves until the slaveholders no longer found it profitable, or otherwise advantageous, to do so.

I can't go there with you. I'm sorry whenever innocent (or coerced, or whatever) people suffer, and whenever war is chosen as a solution to problems between groups of people, but the Civil War was probably the most morally justified war in American history. That some of you insist on trying to make the opposite case, that this was simply a "land grab" by "Northern moneyed interests," makes me wonder how your moral compass got so skewed.

by brewmn on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 9:33am

Bad entrenched positions can't be reversed immediately in most cases. Figuring out what's the least painful way out - as a whole and for the most victimized - is part of a relevant solution. A solution that leaves 600,000 dead is likely not the best of all solutions.

by Desider on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 10:25am

Name one person who has "defended the right to own other Human Beings".

But note - if there's a *law* that says people can own other Human Beings, then that *law* has to be changed.

by Desider on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 11:18pm

You argument is that the south's secession was well within their rights, and that the North ahd no options to prevent it. Even though you've managed to spin almost every other aspect of this discussion in your attempt to make this point, surely you won't deny that the main, exclusive really, reason that the south seceded was to preserve their rights to own slaves? I mean, that's what that the leaders of the secessionist states said at the time, and they minced no words in doing so.

Furthermore, your argument that secession was a legitmiate act of sovereignity is highly dubious. Slaveholders made up 90% of the votes for secession in the rebel states, even though they were a small minority of the population. If Steve Jobs bought the CA legislature, and paid them to vote for its secession, would you also consider that a legitimate act?

So, you are making claims that are based on a suspect reading of history, and are making political/legal arguments that are at least debatable, all in support of the right of the south to own slaves without challenge from the North.

If that isn't on some level a defense slavery, what is it?

by brewmn on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 9:20am

That first bit sounds about right. I don't think one can hive off the question of the legitimacy of secession from the question of the illegitimacy of slavery. You can't just compare the south slaveholder society to other secessionist movements. This isn't Slovakia, or some oppressed baltic states or east Timor, or what have you. The political entity declaring secession has to have some legitimacy in speaking for the people it represents. And the south failed in that regard, the seceding states' governments clearly did not speak for their slave population. To assume any political entity, however oppressive, can legitimately secede from any larger political entity that stands against that oppression, is indirectly - not a defence - but clearly a marked indifference to the less technical and more moral aspects to sovereignty. You have to take at face value their contention that slaves weren't ... people, in order to compare them to other less morally dubious secessionist movements.

That said, there is the separate issue as to whether war was a judicious response to the secession (which is the other part of what the anti-civil war contingent here is arguing). I think that question can quite easily be hived off from the issue of the immorality of slavery. No comparisons are perfect, but I don't think the right response to Apartheid was to go to war over it: invade South Africa. The sanctions and ostracization from international society sufficed. And though prodded from outside, the country's autonomous decision to end apartheid made the transition less dysfunctional and a point of national pride. Whereas the American South still wallows in loathing, resentment and victimhood. Sure, you can just put that down to southern whites and their evil souls. But, it's also just human nature to react thusly when such decisions are imposed from without. You can see the same dysfunctional reaction in Serbia and Kosovo.

Now is that also a defense of slavery? Is thinking that invasion and butchering a third of the white population was the wrong answer - and sub-optimal from a utilitarian perspective - also just based in bigotry?

Just wondering how you feel about these things, Brew...

by Obey on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 10:06am

You have to hive off the cases from each other, or else you end up with an Obey or Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Obama or Mr. Putin making arbitrary decisions on someone else's fate, based on their own selfish interests and myopic worldview.

So 1) what are the rules for a legal secession, 2) what are the rules for annexing property during a secession, and 3) what are the rules for humanitarian intervention in a) a foreign sovereign, and b) a former partner/breakway region.

by Desider on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 10:21am

Well, I think there is room for something between having a list of necessary and sufficient conditions for all possible cases that might arise, on the one hand, and acting totally arbitrarily, on the other. You can, say, have a loosely principles based approach. Which makes sense when you have considerations that should play in - like degree of oppression, urgency of intervention, likelyhood of success with minimal harm, etc, that do not admit of easy quantification or generalization.(if we're thinking of Libya)

Just spitballing here, but I think a secession ceases to be legitimate if and when the political entity declaring the secession is neither a government by nor for nor of the people. At least one of those conditions have to be met.

by Obey on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 10:39am

Not sure this works Obey, though i see where you're going. When you say, "The political entity declaring secession has to have some legitimacy in speaking for the people it represents," and, "I think a secession ceases to be legitimate if and when the political entity declaring the secession is neither a government by nor for nor of the people. At least one of those conditions have to be met." then I think you basically rule out almost any secession in a state with slavery.

Which would rule out the US War of Independence in 1776.

So, most states at that point in history score very weakly measured against full democratic participation, of all races, sexes, ages, etc.

If you're then saying, it has to have as much or more legitimacy as the state it is leaving, again... tough call.Sometimes people who are backward or less legitimate have a right to leave too.

In my books, they had the right to secede. Full stop on that front. But then, as a straight-up response to slavery and wishing to end it - the same as a nation might feel it has the right to enter against a genocide - this other right can come into play and justify the War.

Not every right has to fall when we want something good done, or something evil stopped... and not every right is straightforwardly weighed against others on a single scoreboard. Secession can be a right, and it can rightfully be followed by intervention.

by quinn esq on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 6:47pm

I think where this goes off the tracks is that the secessionist movement was based on popular sentiment and expressed through government channels - the state legislatures that ratified secession.

This is a million miles more official than the typical Benghazi or Chechnyan uprising.

Of course representative government isn't all-complete, and a referendum might have turned out differently, but them's the stakes.

As for the South not being able to secede because they had black slaves, name something the North was doing that would change that situation aside from limiting slavery in Kansas. Bet the slave hands down in Bammy care a lot about that, right?

So I agree with your idea about some loose rules on determining what's a valid revolution or secession, but I think you still have to separate "valid secession" from "acts against humanity". If you're going to attack or do sanctions because of acts against humanity, you really don't need to or want to wait because of any issues about secession - you intervene with moral authority.

But if you're not planning on fixing the issue with acts against humanity, then you might as well treat the secession like it basically is - an expression of human freedom (which has that expression of human slavery that was already being swept under the rug again, but again, irrelevant - the north blew it)

by Desider on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 7:07pm

You arguing with me, or Obey? If me, then as follows:

1. I believe the state legislatures that seceded did so legitimately - that is, in terms of the democratic legitimacy of the time. In short, if the Federal Government and Northern states recognized these Southern states as being democratically constituted in 1859, I'm not sure they could rule them out as being "undemocratic" in 1860/61. [In our eyes, they weren't so legitimate, as they definitely did not permit slaves to vote - or other groups, such as women.]

2. There were things the North could perhaps have done, though it's uncertain how well they would have worked. The South was dependent on Cotton, and in fact, thought the world would bow to their wishes come secession because of it. Turns out, the world could substitute to other suppliers, who expanded their crops, etc.

In my mind, this means the North may have actually had some leverage - with abolitionists worldwide - if they'd declared some sort of trade embargo or boycott on slave-produced goods like cotton. After all, abolitionists had already used sugar to help leverage change in Britain. If the North had wanted to, they probably could have shut down other forms of cooperation with the South, from supply lines to finance to export etc. Interesting to me that they didn't like these measures - bad for business and all. But I'm not 100% convinced this would have worked.

3. So, yes, the North should have acted earlier and harder against slavery. That they waited for secession before moving more strongly against slavery is, to me, a bit of a sadness about the North. And in my books, one of the reasons so much is told about how the fight was over the Union - and the South as the clear breakers of that Union - is precisely the fact that the North was so deeply complicit in slavery, had continued to permit and enable it for so long.

Still, I get that people often try to avoid the last rites on a union. However, once push really really came to shove, and the whole situation was seen for what it is - that the slavers were not only planning to continue, but were this deeply committed to their ways - then... well, I suspect that this pushed at least some Northerners into a position where their morality got forced into decision mode. It happens.

4. Just because I agree there's a right of secession, and that the South was probably legitimate in claiming it, doesn't mean I in any way agree that their motivations and rationale were in any way moral, enlightened, human, just, soulful or worth a damn. I don't. Such an empty shell is no more valuable expression of human freedom than people turning out to vote for a party of the Hard Right. That is, I might agree they have the right to vote, I might agree they won the vote, but I might also feel I have the right, and perhaps even the moral duty, to pick up a gun the next morning and shoot them dead.

"They won the vote, good for them, but life's tough, I'm mean and fuck the slavers if they can't take it a bit of the rough end of things."

I'm just so sorry so many poor ignorant kids on both sides got fed into the grave by the damned fools who run these shows.

by quinn esq on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 9:32pm

Arguing with Obey. I can't find a thing in your analysis I disagree with, which is rather incredible considering its length - kept waiting for a place to add a "yes, but..." or put in something interesting.

I might touch it up with a bit more sympathy for the average Northerner, probably having no real thought of their complicity with slavery and how much it was bringing to the table each day.

I'm curious whether Lincoln's "have to keep the Union together" polled better - that Northerners wouldn't have suported a war to end slavery, but one to keep the South from splitting off they could rally behind.

by Desider on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 1:00am

Hm. yes. My spitballing wasn't fully thought through. These things don't admit of too much generalization anyway, like I said. So take the US case. You have the union which grows out of a contract amongst political entities - the signatory states. So that lowers, imo, the bar to secession - it's like joining a club, so even if there are no procedures envisaged for seceding, that still suggests that these political entities as such cede their independence by consent and cannot be kept dependent against their consent. So far so good for your side of the argument.

But then those states themselves have signed on to a document - the declaration of independence - and signed on to the self-evident values laid out therein. And those values involve things like the right of people to dissolve the political bands, yadayada, and also things like governments deriving their just powers from the consent of the [people] governed. So over and above the rights of the states to do what the hell they want you have the principles regarding legitimacy of state action that those states have signed on to. (Over and above? dunno, at least there is a conflict there, an obstacle to the freedom of states to associate or disassociate from other states)

So sure, in the beginning you have an agreement that the hierarchy of rights goes from the sovereign people who delegate authority to states who delegate it to the Union. Everyone agrees on that. Then eventually you get a disagreement on who gets to count as a person. If it is eventually determined that blacks are ... people as well, then that is not the kind of question that is left up to states to determine; it is not a question that is an issue of contractual agreement. It isn't a matter of stipulation but of fact. So then when the state, whose just powers - eg. the power of secession - are derived from the consent of the people, then decides to secede, the legitimacy of that act depends on whether (i) it to a sufficient extent has the consent of the people, or (ii) the system through which state actions are determined has the implicit or explicit consent of the people. A government whose 'authority' is purely based on the threat of violence, and which does not even see its role as involving concern for the welfare of half its constituent population, cannot act with legitimacy. And a fortiori cannot secede legitimately in order to deny those fundamental rights to half its people.

That's my slightly more fully-baked version. So yes, my more general principle wouldn't apply to an Afghan province seceding to maintain oppression of women, for instance. But the historical context and the internally recognized principles of legitimacy in a society matter. And the consent issue applies more clearly in the US case.

by Obey on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 9:26pm

Look, as I've said, I believe there's a higher moral issue here (slavery) that trumps the right of secession.

But.

The North can't call what the Southern legislatures did "illegitimate" on the grounds that they didn't let blacks vote. Because both the Federal Government and the Northern states fully recognized Southern Senators and Congressmen and Governors and Southern state legislatures as being democratically constituted in 1859/60, for the purposes of all law-making and war-making and so on. So it's tough for the North to suddenly then rule them out as being "undemocratic" for not letting blacks vote in 1860/61. Hell, the North didn't insist on the full personhood of slaves even at the start of the War.

by quinn esq on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 9:40pm

I didn't say anything about voting (???) My most general point was that the questions of (the legitimacy of) secession and (the immorality of) slavery can't be nicely separated. A government - however widely recognized precedingly - that takes explicit acts against its population - bombing them, genocide, ... seceding to deny them rights they would otherwise end up getting - takes a knock against its legitimacy. I don't find that controversial.

by Obey on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 10:27pm

Ok, I can see how in some cases, the legitimacy of secession and the morality of slavery can be tied up. Easiest case is where voters are declassified as being citizens, made into "slaves," and then, a decision to secede made without their consent. I wouldn't find that remarkably legitimate, and yes, the two factors intertwine.

Problem. At the time of the South's secession, and even at the outbreak of war, the US Federal Government had not given full rights to slaves within its boundaries - thus, the Emancipation Proclamation. In short, a nation which says slavery is LEGAL then has the region with the most slaves secede. It then decides to fight the secession, and once the war is underway does it "free the slaves." Except that even once it has proclaimed them free, it left many unfreed, and does not even make slavery illegal.

In fact, this is argued by Unionists again and again - that the Federal Government and Lincoln had made NO STEPS to "threaten" slavery.

Sorry, secession still legitimate. Just morally repulsive. The war? Worth having, of you believe you're serving a greater moral good in fighting to free the slaves, or even free them earlier than they would otherwise achieve.

by quinn esq on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 11:25pm

Prior to the Civil War African-Americans had voting Rights in New York and several New England States, so some Blacks did have voting Rights.

The initial Union response to the newly fred slaves was slow. However relief societies did form in New England. The Union did form the Freedman's Bureau. The supplies may have been meager but, if one considers the treatment of Blacks in the South after the Union troops left, one sees no silver linings.

So was the Union's Freedman's bureau better than the Nathan Bedford Forrest KKK and the racist Southern Democrats of the time?

http://www.civilwarhome.com/freedmen.htm

by rmrd0000 on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 12:37am

That blacks had voting rights in some states gives credence to the fact that States' Rights did indeed exist, to institute different rules. The revisionist theory that there was no individual power for the states is a rather foolish argument.

What's not so foolish is the idea that slowly we've moved to a federal system where the states devolve their power in the interest of a more efficient and less flawed federal government.

In principle that could work. And it could easily backfire, in which case the option and threat of secession should be always there to back out of a federal government gone haywire.

Imagine a federal government that just turns your paycheck over to bank execs to spend in the Bahamas - who would sign on to a system like that? Oh, I guess we did.

by Desider on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 1:27am

On a separtate topic, I note that those who are vigorously defending secession while acknowledging the evil of slavery are upset that others continue to align the secession advocates with slavery. I can tell you from my perspective there has been some blurring of lines here.

The argument is being made tht a "new" and more scholarly review of the facts is being performed in the analysis of secession. The problem here is that the secession analysis is not new. Years ago, I read a book entitled "Was Jefferson Davis Right?" by James and Walter Kennedy. The Kennedys were members of the Sons of the Confederacy. The book gives a vigorous defense of Davis and the principles he fought for. The Kennedys also wrote "The South Was Right" and the "Myths of Slavery". I also read the myth book, but the one on the South. The books all stated with some statement about the fact that slavery was not being defended, just the principles underlying secession.

Many of the arguments being made here on the right of secessation, I have read before from the Kennedys. The Kennedys also made the same attacks on the North and Lincoln that are being made here in support of secession. I suspect that others on Dag have heard the arguments being made by those who are defending the right of secession from other authors. Many of the secession supporting authors are likely associated more with wingnuts than with the mainstream. I am not calling you or the others who are supporting secession winguts, I am giving you background on where people have heard secession support before. Secession support has it's own baggage.

Now let's couple that secession baggage with how the debate here at Dag has gone. In the midst of defending secession, you made reference to a trip to the Hamptons. In discussing the trip, you found the idea that other states did not suport the personal property argument for a slave-owner traveling to the North. We won't go into the vacation discussion details again. What impression do you think is left by treating the slaves as property in the secession argument. You cannot believe that it doesn't sidetrack the focus on secession and leaves an impression that you have a callous view of the slaves. I'm not talking about how you feel personally, I'm talking about the impression you leave. If slavery and secession are separate issues then you might ex-nay on the slavery-a.

In another discussion on secession, another poster stated that her son had no problem wearing a Confederate uniform. The statement implied that the poster had a definite opinion about secessionand was not an unbiased observer. It was later learned that her son had played a Confederate in a computer role-playing game. There is a big difference between the actual wearing of the Confederate uniform and a role-playing game on a computer. The poster was willing the leave the initial impression. It seems to me that there was some pleasure gained from being provocative. But someone reading the Confedrate uniform statement might interpret as an indication of underlying bias. People are free to wear Confederate uniforms, but the practice is probably not the norm for the majority in the North or in the South. I think that for some the poster left a negative impression with the statement about the Confederate uniform.

The other thing I have noted, being a broken record is a reluctance to address the 2011 situation of secessionist balls and the roles that African-Americans would be reduced to play. You honestly said tat you didn't have a good answer, others have remained mute. It seems that there is no defense of honoring secession as it is currently being done. Secession gets a negative view (I really want to say black eye) when one looks at the spectacle of the Confederates in uniforms and ball gowns and Blacks in tatters. I'd avoid the celebration too.

Summarizing, I don't think you're offering new way of looking at secession. It's new only from the aspect of cominf from Progressives/Liberals, but it has been tainted by it's previous presentation by the winguts. I think if you polled Dag posters, they may tell that they have seen these arguments before. When you mention delaying the end of slavery as an intellectal agument, your discussion of secession loses power.

I think some of you may be overlooking what has gone before in discussing secessation and how that impacts current views.

by rmrd0000 on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 6:15am

Slaves were property in 1860.

Any argument ignoring property rights is flawed. It was part of the problem, a huge investment.

I can't help it if you combine past arguments that combine secession with slavery.

Secession was a right. Rights can be invoked for bad reasons but are still rights.

Slavery was a wrong codified in the Constitution from the beginning.

This comment will be barely readable.

by Desider on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 7:32am

missed this before

Ok. not sure what you're driving at. If you're suggesting the north's rationalization for rejecting secession was that ... the South had no reasonable grounds for seceding (i.e "we haven't even threatened to abolish slavery, so they can't take that particular threat as a reason to secede"), then I agree that this rationalization in invalid (not to mention, disingenious). But I still stand by the idea that the north had no obligation to recognize the south's right to secede, given the south's stated motive for seceding (safeguarding the institution of slavery over the long term).The north could however only do so by invoking the duty of government to respect the rights of slaves. Which they didn't. soooo

Dunno - sounds somewhat convoluted/hairsplitting when I reread it. I'll think on it.

by Obey on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 1:14pm

You don't get it - the North is not the one to judge if it's a "valid" reason to secede.

The South wants to secede, it secedes.

Issue with division of property, but this fort shouldn't have been a problem.

by Desider on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 1:43pm

Well, overall, I think we're getting closer to agreeing. It's the timelines.

Then eventually you get a disagreement on who gets to count as a person. If it is eventually determined that blacks are ... people as well, then that is not the kind of question that is left up to states to determine; it is not a question that is an issue of contractual agreement. It isn't a matter of stipulation but of fact. So then when the state, whose just powers - eg. the power of secession - are derived from the consent of the people, then decides to secede, the legitimacy of that act depends on whether (i) it to a sufficient extent has the consent of the people, or (ii) the system through which state actions are determined has the implicit or explicit consent of the people.

That is also not the question that is left up to the federal government to determine. Why? Because it's codified in the constitution, from the very beginning - an agreement every state north and south signed onto from the beginning, not something waiting for a surprise change of Supreme Court heart. Even the Supreme Court had no authority to overrule slavery in the original states - it would have to be done by Constitutional Amendment. There is no suddenly discovering that 3/5 value for representation is immoral - it's in the play book - the play book would have to be amended.

Regarding the legitimacy of secession based only on the new rules, what if new Northern majority decides that only landowners could vote? That no Jews could vote? That even children can vote? That God forbid, women can vote? (/snark) That foreigners who own property can vote? That only those over 25 can vote because the northern population is by happy coincidence older than the southern population? That anyone who's been convicted of a misdemeanor can't vote? (say a few million blacks with drug arrests and more)

In each of those changes, you've radically changed the rules of the game, and in most of them in a way the two of us are likely to find wrong and corrupt. But your original formulation is that it "has the consent of the people". Well, the potential tyranny of the majority is well established. From district gerrymandering to immoral war in Iraq that had overwhelming public support. That's why the right of secession is important in the first place.

A government whose 'authority' is purely based on the threat of violence, and which does not even see its role as involving concern for the welfare of half its constituent population, cannot act with legitimacy.

I'm glad you finally see why Lincoln's war was immoral. Took 600,000 dead and still Americans just took away a "might is right" lesson from it.

by Desider on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 1:22am

This has turned into a meaty, thoughtful thread. Was secession legal? Was it moral? Was the war legal? Was it moral? I probably know less early American history than anyone else here, but let me offer my humble opinion: Yes. No. No. Yes.

North and South should probably have gone their separate ways after their ad-hoc coalition threw off the British yoke. But huddled together in a dangerous world, they cobbled together a constitution that sought to make them one nation, and papered over the one thing that would tear them apart, and continues to do so. The constitution recognizes slavery without speaking its name: In weighting congressional representation, a state is credited with three-fifths for "all other persons," inter-state extradition is ordered for persons "owing a duty of service" in some other state. That's it! Not one word of the text would have to change if slavery had been abolished the very next day.

Maybe the founders actually hoped it would simply fade away. Instead, the number of slaves doubled, then tripled again. And the addition of each non-voting non-citizen increased the clout of those who gained from their forced labor. Ironic, eh? As the North grew more populous, wealthy and liberal, the South grew more conservative and entrenched. And the crude equality of power the constitution aimed for became elusive. Expansion to the West Coast was the final straw: If the new states created there were "free," the South would have to secede. In the dreadful Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court tried to placate the slavers: Not only could those new states not bar slavery, it ruled, black Americans simply could not be U.S. citizens. Even though thousands of them already were! At that point, lots of people realized that -- constitution or no -- one side was going to have to impose its views on the other.

That's my history of the U.S., 1770s-1860s. I probably left some stuff out. Sorry.

Anyway, did the South have the right to secede, just because Lincoln got elected? Well, there is a precedent. The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, the first, flawed, weak U.S. constitution, which got the country through the war of infependence. Despite the claim of permanence in the title, 11 of the 13 signatory states simply walked away when they decided they needed "a more perfect union." They were right, so no one accused them of treason, but they did break a solemn bond. The constitution, by contrast, never asserts a claim of perpetualness; it also never addresses the question of secession. The supreme court would eventually rule 5-3 there is no constitutional right of secession, but that came after the Civil War, when the issue had been bloodily decided on the battlefield.

Could Lincoln have decided to let the Confederacy peacefully secede? Legally, yes. Politically, no. North and South were going to go to war one way or the other.The Confederacy could not afford to let itself be circumscribed. It had already claimed the right to expand west to the Pacific. Once it was independent, how could it abandon that goal? Geographically, its claim was at least as good as the North's.

It's fascinating that at the start of the war, Lincoln argued his sole goal was to preserve the union, not free the slaves, and the South openly admitted its goal was to preserve slavery. Afterward, the North boasted of having fought to end slavery, and the South talked of a principled fight to preserve states' rights. I don't know how to parse that, but I'm sure it means something.

To wrap up, slavery is totally unconscionable, and couldn't end a moment too soon. That the U.S. constitution accepted and codified that practice disqualifies it as a standard of legitimacy. Too bad hundreds of thousands died in battle. Also too bad that millions lived their lives (and died) as less than full human beings. Happy sesquicentennial, folks.

by acanuck on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 4:59am

Without northern or English spinning mills, they couldn't have processed all that cotton, so the problem would have been moot, or mute as I started to write.

Personally, I'd blame it all on the English - no one stands up for them anyway, and they have crap programming like Mr. Bean.

by Desider on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 7:35am

Great comment. And you seem to know your early American history just fine.

by brewmn on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 8:56am

Brew - Canuck holds the same position as Q and Desi - secession was legal. Has your view on that perspective now switched from 'slavery apologists' to 'awesome'...?

by Obey on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 11:32am

Maybe because the polite canuck offered that his opinion was 'humble'?

by we are stardust on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 11:58am

Canuck's just a better person, let's face it.

Or something. I donno.

by quinn esq on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 12:01pm

Hell, I'm apparently a slave-apologist and I don't even think secession was legal.

I must be the worst person ever...

by Obey on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 12:31pm

Nah, it's cuz you use words like 'IANACAL' and $3 words that send a person runnin' for a dictionary...

by we are stardust on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 12:54pm

(shh. I'm just trying to put desi and Q to sleep out of sheer boredom I. think. it's. working.)

by Obey on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 12:58pm

Shhh...it won't work; none of the three of you ever sleep; not even in caskets...

by we are stardust on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 1:03pm

Sounds of Des awaking:

Creaaaaaaak.... Yawwwwwwwwwn.... Slobbbbber Slobbbbber..... Mmmmmm.... Flesh......

by quinn esq on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 1:50pm

Wuh, no kidneys?

by Desider on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 2:05pm

Why does that sound like Des awake? Whassup with 'flesh'? Nah; skip it...LOL! And he's downthread in that pigeonhole thingie, anyhoo.

by we are stardust on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 2:06pm

Response at the bottom of this thread.

by brewmn on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 7:22pm

on the last point - I've from the beginning (on Atrope's thread) said I find the war immoral because there were other better options that should have been tried first - sanctions and such. So somehow we two end up in the same place - whereas Quinn seems in favor of the war. Just clearing up the big picture disputes here...

On the rest - by "consent of the people" I wasn't refering strictly to voting rights. I had in mind something looser where consent may be implicit (non-resistance), admit of degrees, and can also involve something more than election and referendum results (as when the people are misled or the mechanisms of public choice are horribly dysfunctional).Therein included some idea that mere majority tyranny is a dysfunctional mechanism of public choice - there is nothing that says majority rule is the default standard of 'consent of the people'. So I don't know quite what to do with those comments of yours there.

So let me try again, though I may be missing something:

IANACL, but my poorly expressed idea was (i) that the 'self-evident truths' of the declaration of independence about the fundamental rights of people perhaps trump the imperfect awkward contractual agreements in the Constitution, and more modestly, (ii) that there seems to be a conflict between legal principles (a general statement of human rights and a particular statement of how to count voting rights) here which needs to be resolved - by legislative vote - and (iii) that the South seceded specifically in order to avoid having to face the consequences of such a vote. I don't know how historically accurate that last point is, but seems plausible to me.

So when the south secedes, you have a Union government with duties to safeguard the interests and rights of the people - including slaves - of the south, in accordance with those self-evident truths engraved in the founding document of the union. And that Union government starts to threaten to meet those duties. On the other hand you have southern state governments which seek to subvert the safeguarding of the rights and interests of those people. On the looser sense of 'consent' I don't see how the south can be seen as acting in this way with such consent. The legitimacy of agents acting on behalf of principles is not merely a matter of what mechanisms have been set in place, nor what representative agents have been previously recognized by other parties, it is also a matter of the very nature of their actions, and seeking to take certain actions can ipso facto render the agent illegitimate, and the actions void.

Now, who knows if that is sound jurisprudence, I sure don't, but I don't think legal questions can be strictly separated from moral questions, especially when you have conflicting heuristic principles involved, like I think is the case here.

by Obey on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 12:26pm

I'm lost.

Quinn's against the war.

I can't thread all these different versions of "consent of the people", whether through voting, thumbs knicked till bleeding, etc.

Where the Union got its duty to safeguard Southern blacks only *after* the South seceded is a major sleight of hand. Of course the Union didn't say "give up slavery or we'll attack". It said, "we want that fort".

The south held legislative votes in its own legislatures. By that time they'd left the Union and didn't need Congress anymore. But Abe needed them. Okay, this is my last post on this.

by Desider on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 1:56pm

I support the right to secession. And I think the North should have moved for an economic boycott/embargo, but done it sooner. But if - come 1861 - people turn their beady eyes upon me and say, "Well whoopdeedoo with your big ideas and all, but which side are you on NOW?" Well, at that point, in this particular case, I'm not abstaining. I'm rushing off, half-cocked, and getting shot dead by some Southern sniper before I even manage to break wind, much less free a slave.

Still, I'd have Oleeb's perpetual thanks. Which would be a comfort.

Here I stand/lie. I can do no other.

Amen.

by quinn esq on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 2:10pm

Obey, I can see where the Declaration's "truths" lead us expand the scope of people and equality over time (which is why I love it), and that it thus, slowly but surely, comes into conflict with the previous legislative compromises (i.e.immoral crap.) But I believe you are soaking more of this morality into the North's real-world political and legal actions than is historically warranted.

To start with 1776 and the Decl. itself (you know this), I find it hard to see their "all men" as genuinely meaning "all" people at the time, when criticism of the slave trade was removed from the draft; when TJ and Washington were slavers; and with phrases such as "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."

Even by 1860, when we look at what stage in its development the Union had reached, you assert that we "have a Union government with duties to safeguard the interests and rights of the people - including slaves - of the south." Except that, it precisely hadn't - and wasn't - moving to do so. Them's the facts on the ground. Congress made that clear and Lincoln's Inauguration says that he has "...no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Emancipation itself came later, and even then, was geographically limited to ensure its use as a weapon of war. The previous Congress had taken actions to extend slavery in ways, as had the SCourt, and the Corwin amendment (had to look up the name of that bugger) of Feb 1861 was backed by Lincoln - and this is a Constitutional amendment - which "would have forbidden attempts to subsequently amend the Constitution to empower the Congress to "abolish or interfere" with the "domestic institutions" of the states, including "persons held to labor or service" (i.e. slavery.)

So, it's hard for me to see the Union government acting "in accordance with those self-evident truths engraved in the founding document of the union." They hadn't, and weren't. The moral high ground from which they could have declared the South's secession illegitimate, was formally, legally, and politically vacant.

Even if I look for some wider "consent" that the NORTH might have had to undertake the task of undoing slavery in the South, yes, I see the abolitionists. But the vote of 1860 - which you claim set the cat amongst the pigeons in the South - isn't as morally bright as I think you'd like. A lot of Lincoln voters wanted other things, not so much strong action against slavery. And he (only) got 39% in, and wasn't even on the ticket in the South (probably the South's fault, but no way to spin this as good for consent.)

So, from voters to Congress to the President, it was a fairly weak hand, if you only considered it in terms of actions - legal and political - to oppose or reverse slavery in the South.

It still feels to me like it as only the active breaking of the Union, and the dynamics set in play after that, with war and blood and excitement and peer and family pressure to make up your mind and choose sides, that a whole lot of mixed moral feelings crystalized into a more clear-cut fight against slavery.

In sum, I don't see a 1776 reading of the legal situation which delegitimizes a right to secession because of slavery, nor an 1860 political or legal reality which delegitimized secession because of slavery. The North was still not only complicit, but actively, legally and politically, trading with slavery, offering to keep it safe and sometimes even looking for ways to expand it, "agreeably" of course.

What I see, however, is a moral force coming up through, not yet embodied in legislation, and not promised by the new President. But yes, I agree with you that the South wanted to avoid that, the morals of these Northerners someday getting translated into law. And as the Southern leaders pondered/muddled that, and turned away, yes, I do think that counts as a loss of moral legitimacy. But this is not so much a loss of facts-on-the-ground Spring 1860 political/legal legitimacy.

[Can't follow it here, but a similar curve had been followed in Britain, on the Slave Trade. I wonder when I would feel that their moral imperatives had crossed over, stuck themselves into their pro-slave trade opponents... and how long from there, to abolition of the trade? And was Parliament in some sense "illegitimate" because of that?]

by quinn esq on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 2:04pm

Awesome. Thanks.

I'm conflicted - this obviously deserves a long and thoughtful answer, but on the other hand I don't have enough interesting further thoughts to make any full answer worth your while reading. So i'll just leave it there. I'm not too far from that position I guess.

Thanks. Very useful.

by Obey on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 2:43pm

Totally agree, quinn. By 1860, 350,000 slaveowners were holding 30 million hostages (four million of them slaves). To keep the South in the union, compromise after amoral compromise had been made, and now those compromises were all failing. Dred Scott was a horrible, overreaching decision, but it finally cut to the chase: the U.S. could only exist either all-free or all-slave.

Could a peaceful secession have resolved the issue? I'd guess no. All the existing disputes would have just become international ones: trade, tariffs, alliances and most crucially westward expansion. By themselves, the forced exchanges of populations and the spike in fugitive slaves might have been enough to start a war. So I take some solace that the North and South were probably going to fight each other one way or the other. By making it a war to preserve the union, the victors at least extracted some good -- formal abolition of slavery -- from the carnage.

That the mindset underpinning slavery still exists 150 years later reminds us how evil an institution it was.

by acanuck on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 5:11pm

Black South Africans were not idle in the Apartheid era. Many lost their lives in confrontation with South african police and military. Those Blacks who acted as informers or wore South african poice uniforms were targeted by the Black general population. I note that many Black Confederates were Black Union soldiers by the end of the Civil War, thus their probably wasn't widespread retribution for fighting on the wrong side. White South African leaders realized that the majority Black po[pulation was just not going to take their second class lives anymore. De Klerk really didn't have a choice other than to free Mandela.

Black South Africans got Truth and Reconciliation. Blacks here in the states are getting modern day apologists for secession celebrations. The tone of the debates is therefore different.

by rmrd0000 on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 2:04pm

Slovakia and Czech Republic split because of decisions mostly by their prime ministers, not a referendum.

It's a bit late in the day to claim the South's secession was illegal because they didn't hold a referendum, rather they used their representatives in the legislature. Even in all the Mideast uprisings, they're not even holding legislative or public referendums - it's based on street action. Should we deny them secession?

Again, split the issues - slavery wrong, secession right/legal/free choice.

by Desider on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 10:27am

One facet in the Slovakia and Czech case that does need to be mentioned is that both the Slovaks and the Czechs saw themselves as unique nations. This was a result of the long movement of nationalism that had swept the region. When we look at Libya we tend to use the term tribes. This brings up the questions of when is a tribe a nation? and is the term "tribe" when applied to many countries a form elitism by those in Western institutions?

When this is applied to the Civil War it brings up the question of the legal entity of the state versus the sense of identity that makes up the nation of the U.S. This facet is still at play today when, for example, someone in the South tends to identify themselves first as a "Southerner" and second as a citizen of the United States. This doesn't make them a traitor, etc. Growing up in Seattle, I used to enjoy going to Ballard district and partaking in the celebrations of those that identified themselves first as Norweigen or Swede first. There were parades where those flags were flowing in celebration. (One didn't see the outrage from the other people in the community that one saw when the Mexican flag was displayed with pride in recent parades in the Southwest)

The point being is that Civil War represents a split or possible split in what some wanted to believe was a unified nation. And this is entirely different, especially in terms of emotions, from a split in the legal structure of a state.

by Elusive Trope on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 10:59am

For the 50th time, you can defend the right of secession and not defend the right of slavery.

The fact that you can't grasp this, after so many times around, just says to me that you just like to strike a high moral pose, as do some others here. Because intellectually, it is just not that hard to get. e.g. Quebec has the right to secede. And the United States had the right to secede. I can agree or not with the reasons why, I can find them moral or immoral, I can even find them so powerfully repugnant that I will wish to go to war with them. BUT. They are not the same thing.

And if you'd like me to turn the obvious back on you, what the hell kind of a "moral nation" not only has slaves but then enables its own partner to keep slaves, decades past when it itself decided this was immoral, and only when the partner turns to leave and fully participate in their immoral activity, decides it's time to grab the moral high ground and GO TO WAR?

I mean, is that pathetic, or what?

And it is that same Northern nation that PERMITTED AND IN FACT CONSTITUTIONALLY ENSHRINED THE NON-VOTING OF SLAVES, then how in the hell can you claim those leaving are illegitimate for not asking the slaves, while your guys are the great noble moral saviours?

You guys are entering the territory of farce, with your grand claims to morality. You and your lot are peddlers, and high blown at that.

And then, best of all, you seem to feel you have the right to accuse other people of supporting slavery. What a big mouth.

by quinn esq on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 7:01pm

Of course I grasp the distinction between right to secession and right to own slaves. My issue with many of the pro-secession commenters here seem so eager to make that case at the expense of noting that the reason behind the secession was the abominable practice of slavery. And some have gone so far as to characterize the war as a "land grab" by the North. This is a reading that has no support in the historical record, but it makes you contrarians feel good. To extend your argument, if I declare my self no longer a citizen of the United States, do I then have the right to molest my children, and the state has no right to do anything but stand helplessly by? You, to your credit, continually emphasize the morality of the war, whatever you think of its legitimacy under international law. Others don't add that emphasis. Don't you yourself wonder why some are so eager to make the case for the South, in the light of the monstrous reasons they chose secession?

And, it's fine that you and Des and Obey and whoever else think that the right to secede is a given. But that doesn't make it true. As I've noted before, Andrew Jackson, himself a slaveowner and no friend to northern "moneyed interests," was ready to go to war when South Carolina threatened secession in the 1830's, so the understanding that secession was a right states retained after ratifying the constitution is one that was not widely held in the years preceding the Civil War. And what's missing from the repeated use of both the Revolutionary War and the fight against apartheid as analogies for southern secession is that constitutional ratification. The colonies did not have a ratified, legal relationship with Britain, nor did the US have one with apartheid South Africa. That seems to this lawyer an important distinction, and one that get short shrift in the arguments of the pro-secession crowd.

Oh, and I never said the North was a "moral nation." That's a cheap attempt to make me look naive. I said the Civil War was, as wars go, more "morally justified" than most, an opinion you seem to agree with. So I'm not sure why you're getting all hot and bothered; it seems to me if people insist on focusing on one aspect of the debate surrounding the causes of the Civil War, and to consistently ignore many of the key aspects of the historical record and many of the opposing arguments, then it's fair to remind people that there's a moral component to the debate that is being de-emphasized by that focus.

by brewmn on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 12:02am

brew. It strikes me as a bit unfair to include me as a pro-secessionist, which I think you've done.

"My issue with many of the pro-secession commenters here...some hav(ing) gone so far to characterize the war as a 'land grab'..."

I'm pretty sure I'm the only one here in the past few days to characterize the war that way, so you must mean me. Let me be clear now. I haven't staked out a position on that particular controversy. Haven't even mentioned the word "secession" until this reply. So for the record: count me out as "pro-secession." And to further clarify, having stated this doesn't automatically make me "anti-secession." I'm persuaded by many of the arguments on this subject that have been offered here. None of them, however, change the way I fundamentally think about the Civil War. I wish the southern states didn't secede. And I wish Confederate troops didn't fire on Ft Sumter. Whether or not there was any legal foundation seems immaterial to me, but there are clearly reasonable arguments worthy of discussion.

by kyle flynn on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 2:37am

brew. My moral compass is fine. I'm pretty sure it's pointing in the general direction of yours. Thanks for asking.

One of the dimensions of this debate that strikes me as odd is a lack of latitudegranted by some here to fellow commenters who just maybe hold more than one idea at a time, even when those ideas seem contradictory. For instance, I think it's possible to oppose slavery while at the same time express sympathy for the soldiers who fought for the Confederacy. I think you've been unfair to me in your responses to my comments on these couple of threads, but I'll try to clarify my point of view.

I condemn slavery. I don't know a word to deliver that more emphatically. It's a point of view I took for granted. I didn't in my wildest dreams imagine it was necessary to declare.

I do not think the Civil War was a moral war. If who I am right now could be delivered to that time, to the run up to that war, I would oppose it.

I recognize the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments as important, historical and progressive acts which I support without reservation.

I tend to see criminal capitalist conspirasies in all things. It's one of the few good habits I have. I'm persuaded the primary forces in conflict in the Civil War were industrial capitalists in the north and the plantation aristocracy in the south. It has plenty of support in the historical record. Trust me, I didn't make it up. What it doesn't have are many thinkers pointing out those connections. It isn't popular, clearly. And thoughtfully arriving at that conclusion doesn't put me on shaky moral ground or make me a secessionist. It might make me wrong, that's all.

Anyway, just a couple of things I thought you should consider.

by kyle flynn on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 4:28am

As I noted above, the discussion of secession has been tainted by the wingnuts. The rationales for secession are the same. The attack on the North is the same. You are uncomfortable when people point out that the consequences of delaying the war would be prolonged enslavement. I am sorry that it makes you uncomfortable, but it is a valid point.

How is it valid for Desider to be able to argue that slave-owners should have been allowed to take their slaves into the northeast because the slaves were property and others not to point out the humanity of those enslaved? Lastly, I would think that you have called many of us mass-murderers responsible for 600K deaths for supporting the Civil War.

by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 9:00am

For some reason, I got blocked the response is from rmrd0000

by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 9:05am

Fairly irrelevant to point out the humanity of those enslaved if you don't change the law.

by Desider on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 10:54am

Fairly irrelevant to consider them human if secession would have kept them enslaved.

I noted flawed as it was, the Freedman's Bureau was the eventual result of ex-slaves coming to the Union camps. When the Union troops left the South, Southerners brought hell down on the ex-slaves.

by rmrd0000 on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 12:11pm

One of the more distasteful aspect of these exchanges is your reflex need to bash the North. It comes across as a defense of the South. The result of secession would have been continued slavery.

I have to admit that in reviewing your arguments and the vigor you use, I really don't see a difference between your position and those of the brothers Kennedy who wrote the Jefferson Davis book. The brothers were members of the Sons of the Confederacy. They stated that slavery was wrong, but vigorously defended secession. I really don't see a great deal of space between your views.

Help me out here. I am not calling you racist. I am pointing out that your views coincide with the Kennedy brothers. How do I tell one Southerner from another here? {a feeble attempt at humor}

by rmrd0000 on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 12:35pm

Ya just pick one up, aim and Throw 'em; see where it lands. (In aid of your attempt at humor...)

'A need for pigeonholes'

by we are stardust on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 1:01pm

As noted, even in Brazil all slaves were freed by 1888 and most everywhere else had done it by 1861, so my guess is it would have to give much earlier due to pressure from both the North and Britain.

But again, if the North didn't attack over slavery, but only over "no states' rights", then what's to praise? I was driving drunk and accidentally ran over a murderer - what a swell guy I am.

by Desider on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 1:50pm

We could also imagine that the Klan and Jim crow would still have occurred to keep the ex-slaves in line

by rmrd0000 on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 2:09pm

It seemed to me that there must be some underlying emotion that causes you to make such unfound and insutling charges. I take deep offense at them.

by we are stardust on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 9:44am

Not to speak for brewmn, but the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission brought together tormentors and tormented face to face. The combatants of the Civil War are long dead. When there are battles over placement of Confederate flags on overnment property or Governors signing proclamations to allow celebrations of secession, things have not been put to rest.

To some of us lamenting the Confederate dead is like mourning the "freedom fighters" who flew planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and crashed in a Pennsylvania field. We are just not as enlightened as you.

The south has a chance to develop celebrations that everyone can enjoy, but they focus on just one group, excluding others. It is hard to feel sympathy for Confedrates lost in the war given that circumstance. It is the way the South approaches the Civil War today that keeps the blood boiling. I guess you are not aware of these events.

by rmrd0000 on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 11:53am

Alive or dead, the process is still the same; the thing is getting healed in absentia if your issue is with someone/s not available. Crap that you pretend to think that I think I'm more enlightened; I do admit I have had to work hard in my life to overcome boogey-men/women who have run me over. Frickit if you want to mock me for it, or mocak the others who have been forced into giving up their rage.

You must be kidding about 'The South' and celebrations being limited to CW stuff. Have you spent much time in the South?

Peruse some these festivals if you like:

http://southfest.com/

Te general query gets thousands of hits. You want to think all or most Southerners are bigots? I am losing interest.

by we are stardust on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 3:14pm

We are talking about the Civil War. Secession celebrations are a part of the Civil War celebrations going on this year. You avoid dealing with these celebrations. So to be specific I am talking about those Governors who agreed to these celebrations and the participants in these celebrations. I focus on the secession celebrations because in 2011, the way that African-Americans would be participating in these events is 1) by potraying slaves or 2) as storytellers. In both instances the actors and story-tellers would be presenting a more festive view of plantation life and not the more brutal apects which might spoil the dinner.

I also focus on the secession celebrations because it points out 1) that only one group, White Southerners are able to participate without being entetainers or servants and 2) how difficult it is on a practical and intellectual level to attempt to separate the Southern secession from slavery.

by rmrd0000 on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 4:06pm

Thousands upon thousands of young men from the South, mostly poor, had absolutely nothing to gain from a Confederate victory. They were lied to.

Hundreds of thousands of young men volunteered to fight in Viet Nam. They had nothing to gain from that unjust war. They were lied to. Thousands of them died. Tens of thousands of them were injured and maimed. Tens of thousands of them returned from the battlefield to experience a multitude of suffering.

Iraq, Afghanistan. Nothing to gain. They were lied to.

Some go willingly, eagerly even. I don't hold it against them.

by kyle flynn on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 7:51pm

Don't forget the southerners who fought for the Union.

The 2,000 Union volunteers of the Alabama 1st Cavalry accompanied General Sherman on his march to the sea. Alabama and other southern states had forces who fought and died for the United States, in the blue uniform of the Union forces.

by NCD on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 10:28pm

Brother against brother, as has been noted ever since. A lot noted in Virginia, but happened elsewhere as well.

But like all wars, the amount of information the average joe had about why they were fighting and the real goals were limited. I'd like to see an analysis on what the bankers were betting on at the time - probably would give a new face to it.

by Desider on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 10:34pm

What were the bankers betting on? Railroads. Thousands of miles of new railroads.

by kyle flynn on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 12:31am

And the Silver Screen.

by Desider on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 12:55am

Seriously? Why does this comment remind me of a song?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa6O0yFv1bE

by brewmn on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 6:39pm

Well, we do not see eye to eye on this point.

I really don't care from what class they came: they took up arms against the nation to defend slavery and thus have no sympathy from me. This post was to remember the vile nature of the confederacy, it's purpose for existence. Those who perished on behalf of slavery died trying to destroy our country. This post is not meant by any means to honor them but to remind people that because of their disloyalty... their treason, hundreds of thousands of true patriots were forced to come to the defense of the nation and they paid very dearly for it and all to our benefit. Nothing the traitors did (other than surrendering) ever benefited anyone. We can and should be grateful for those who defended the republic and secured liberty for all. I can think of nothing anyone would be grateful for that arose out of the criminal conspiracy known as the Confederacy.

by oleeb on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 8:56pm

That "criminal conspiracy" fought in the Revolutionary War and signed the Declaration of Independence and ratified the Constitution. I.e. they were always that way, the cotton gin and the northern textile mills/spinning machines just allowed them to get worse.

So "arms against the nation" is a lot of nostalgic tripe. The Confederacy didn't raise the arms - they seceded. They were immoral, but they were always immoral from the time northern states got in bed with them.

But they did secede peacefully until the North sent a warship to resupply Sumter. If you approve of forced union, then you should be sending congrats to Putin for keeping Chechnya under control and Qaddafi for reining in the Benghazi rebels and China for quieting down those pesky students in Tiananmen and monks in Tibet - shouldn't let these "traitors" get out of hand. Just a matter of time before we bring back Taiwan into the fold, no?

by Desider on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 10:26pm

When Bangladesh split off from Pakistan - an even better example. And the Pakistanis did send in troops to try to keep the "traitors" in line. Finally, someone shows some sense.

by Desider on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 10:28pm

Pardon me but that is not only bullshit but bad history as well. No, not just bad history but false, revisionist and made up history. They had no right to secede and didn't proceed peacefully by any measure. Not only that, they never intended to go peacefully and they made that quite clear for decades prior to making good on their threats to violently defend slavery. Where the hell did you cook up that idea? Or was it the weed you were smoking was so good you got mixed up? They opened artillery fire on Fort Sumter exactly 150 years ago today without the slightest provocation. In common parlance that means they willfully took up arms against the lawful government and attacked a US military installation. Nobody, not even an apologist for the rotten, stinking treason of the slave power could call that peaceful.

Your attempt to make the criminal treason of the Confederacy in the defense of slavery on a par with the American Revolution demonstrates your willful ignorance regarding the subject in general, the truth and the facts in particular.

by oleeb on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 11:14pm

If you're going to spout nonsense and lies, at least play along and throw some good ammo out.

The South had repossessed all federal property in the South upon secession (I think the Chinese took back all land when they took back over Hong Kong, no?). The military officer in Charleston Harbor moved to Fort Sumter because it was more defensible - a provocative act. The north had sent one battleship to resupply Sumter that was turned back. When Lincoln came into office, he sent another battleship to break the embargo. "Without the slightest provocation" - you're insane.

And when those noble Yankees got through kicking rebel ass in "defense of slavery", they went out west and kicked some injun ass. In defense of sumthin'.

Of course this military way of getting what we wanted was part of the package - from when the British kicked the French out of the Adirondacks/Midwest (and by default the Lousiana territory) to when we kicked the British out to when we stole Florida and Texas and 1/3 of Mexico, and then by de facto proclaimed all of the Americas as our swimming pool via the Monroe Doctrine.

So forcing the South to stay and cleaning out the Indians fit in the mold of an Imperialist aggressor masquerading as an enlightened democracy. Not that the South is any way innocent in either slavery or aggression - Jackson was spearheading Indian attacks in the Southeast and the Mexican Wars. All partners in crime - some with slightly greater or lesser roles but the same pack.

by Desider on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 11:30pm

Stardust added a link on another thread that pointed out that we were the only country to end slavery at the barrel of a gun, destroying its own society to do it.

The words Oleeb uses are just disingenuous - the Southerners were not "traitors" and did not try to "destroy" the Union, just like a person who gives up US citizenship to go live in France is not a "traitor" - just someone who wants a different system.

The South did not attack Washington DC. They voted peacefully to secede, and claimed federal property in their territory. The North chose to make a stand in this property and use it as causus belli.

If you read the Declaration of Independence, which was the "four score and seven years ago" Lincoln referred to, the forefathers declared:

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

You might note the paradox further here, that *abolitionists* found support for dissolving the governement to create a truly equal government:

For radical abolitionists like Garrison, the most important part of the Declaration was its assertion of the right of revolution: Garrison called for the destruction of the government under the Constitution, and the creation of a new state dedicated to the principles of the Declaration.

If you read the section on Lincoln and the Declaration he makes very good moral points about the Declaration and the immorality of slavery, the paradox and hypocrisy of "all men are created equal" tied to instituted slavery. And then Lincoln throws away that moral high gound and fights the Civil War based on the US right to keep states forcefully in the US because once a member, you can never leave - the right to perpetual and unrevokable self-slavery.

The original marriage was consummated warts and all. Imagine a man marrying a woman who's a bit promiscuous, but he thinks he can keep her in check, that it'll get better over time. Well it doesn't. It gets worse. And he wants her to stay in the house and she won't. And finally she says she's leaving, and packs her bag and is out on the street hailing a cab. And he comes out to the street and beats her bloody and drags her back to the house, and by God she never leaves again, because he gets the sheriff to put a restraining order on her leaving and she signs over all her possessions.

Now a more complete example would mix this broken home scenario with child abuse. But the man's not fighting the child abuse here - he's fighting the right of the woman to leave.

Lincoln got his war on over the inviolability of the Union, the sacredness of marriage, and it stinks now just as much as it stank then. He picked the wrong reason, and the "traitor" bit just sounds like a self-righteous "harlot" thrown in as spite. The North "won" but at the price of a mixed heritage, a dubious victory based on "might makes right" vs. the eternal truths espoused in the Declaration - the eternal truths that exposed the immoral clauses of the Constitution.

And just as we tried to "save" Vietnam by dousing it with Agent Orange and carpet bombing, we tried to "save" the Union through full attack. It's our legacy, seen in Iraq and elsewhere, our modus operandi you can see in Tom and Jerry - the righteous patient cat who waits and is provoked and then has to retaliate in full furce. It's a myth,of course - we're always provoking while pretending to be above the fray.

So get your Sesquicentennial on, and at least scream loudly and have some fun. No use crying over spilled milk or hundreds of thousands slaughtered unnecessarily. Rebel yell, dudes.

by Desider on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 9:23pm

Wow. You really don't know what you're talking about dude.

The definition of treason is taking up arms against one's own country. That is what they did. Plain and simple. It is a very clear and well known fact. It is not a matter of debate and no amount of bullshit written on your part can change that.

None of your inappropriate analogies change the facts about the Civil War. As far as the right of revolution it is indisputable. But, when one asserts that right against a lawful and legitimate government for illegitimate reasons such as private gain as the slave power did you put life, limb and all your property on the line. They did just that and they lost. Not only did they lose but they were flatly in the wrong and completely responsible for the war. There is no legitimate argument over these facts. There never was and never will be.

by oleeb on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 11:21pm

Dude, if they were "taking up arms against one's own country" they would have attacked Washington DC and sacked the White House.

They were simply repossessing all federal land on Confederate territory because *they seceded peacefully". Four months before. After secession, a Union Major occupied Fort Sumter - 500 miles into Southern territory. Not provocative? The first thing Lincoln does taking office is sends a note saying, "I'm sending resupply ships, better let them in". What a fine peaceful negotiator he is.

The battle of Fort Sumter was such a great attack on the Union that *NOBODY DIED*. Wow, what a blow against the north.

The ownership of slaves was part of the US Constitution for over 80 years by the time of secession. If maintaining slavery was illegitimate, then the US was illegitimate from the beginning. And we even went against the principles of our own Declaration of Independence in founding it - as many noted at the time.

Your argument comes down to "slavery was bad so we could do anything to the South we wanted to", and "the Southerners were traitors because they 'took up arms'".

1) if the South had stayed in the Union, slavery would have continued, just likely its expansion would have been limited. so where's your moral superiority in that question? the North was accessory to crime

2) if the South did not have slavery, could it have left the Union and repossessed all Union buildings on its territory? Or would that be "traitors" and require Union gun ships anyway?

Try to respond rationally this time - stick to basic facts, divide up issues into relevant chunks.

by Desider on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 11:43pm

I don't want to write a thesis to argue each of your points, I want to tell you a story:

In 2010 when I returned to the Philippines with my middle son, I want each of my children to see where I was raised, I was excited to take a trip to Corrigodor, and so my mom arranged for us to take a tour. There were many Japanese tourists on our boat. While we were listening to the tour guides they told us the Japanese tourists would be on their own tour and the rest of us would mingle.

When we got to the other side and we boarded our tour jeepney, we were told something interesting, the Japanese take a different tour because in Japanese history books they are told they won WWII.

To me, you are just like those Japanese tourists, you continue to defend secession, where there is no defense. Nullification was discredited long ago. States rights are found in nothing more than dogma, not in actual legality. Certainly no contract was violated, as there is no guarantee of the spread of slavery in the US Constitution, oh and if natural rights were violated, whose natural rights, a slaves or a slave holders?

The so called southern revolution was profoundly a preventative strike, to preclude natural rights violations that had not yet occurred. A state cannot secede just because an election was lost. And if there were natural rights, were slaves never to be included within that framework? The theory falls apart on so many levels.

You seem to be saying there are two different histories, each valid, and this is not the case.

by tmccarthy0 on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 10:40am

A people can secede for whatever reason they want to. As the Declaration of Independence notes, it's nice to say why, but not mandatory.

Note - this does't refer to "nullification". If they stay in the federation, there are various rules that come into play and the Supreme Court can be involved in figuring those out, such as places where state laws trump federal and vice versa. But once they leave, hasta la bye bye, all ties are torn asunder.

Again, this has nothing to do with slavery. It's about the right to free association, it's about freedom.

If the issue of slavery is sufficient for invasion, which can be reasonably argued yes, then Lincoln might have invaded on that principle. But he didn't. He did it based on the sanctity of the union, a sanctity that was only in his head.

Regarding "states rights", it's plainly in the Constitution, the Tenth Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

So much for your empty counter-factual "States rights are found in nothing more than dogma, not in actual legality."

by Desider on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 2:37pm

The Supreme Court doesn't shre your respect for the Tenth Amendment. From Wikipedia:

"The Tenth Amendment, which makes explicit the idea that the federal government is limited only to the powers granted in the Constitution, is often considered to be a truism. In United States v. Sprague (1931) the Supreme Court asserted that the amendment "added nothing to the [Constitution] as originally ratified."

States and local governments have occasionally attempted to assert exemption from various federal regulations, especially in the areas of labor and environmental controls, using the Tenth Amendment as a basis for their claim. An often-repeated quote, from United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100, 124 (1941), reads as follows:

The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment or that its purpose was other than to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers....."

by brewmn on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 12:11am

Dude, there's a big difference between your:

States rights are found in nothing more than dogma, not in actual legality.

and:

The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment or that its purpose was other than to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers.....

So "states rights" exists, it is not "dogma" and if it's in the 10th Amendment and upheld as a truism that already existed in the Constitution, IT IS AN ACTUAL *LEGALITY*.

by Desider on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 5:13am

No, we don't see eye to eye, but thanks for the comprehensive reply. It made things clear. I made an assumption based on your previous entries. I thought your reference to a "determined minority" was limited to the slavocracy. We do agree, however, that the Confederacy offers nothing to be grateful for. I just see a lot more victims, is all.

by kyle flynn on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 3:31am

If other countries were able to resolve slavery without gunfire, doesn't that make the Southerners look even worse? If people who focus on the slavery aspect are told that there were/are many other atrocities in the world that they should notice, doesn't that still mean that slavery was still despicable?

Somehow, I am reminded of the OJ Simpson murder trial. People "knew" Simpson was guilty, a legal term. Simpson got a vigorous defense from Cochran et al. Johnnie Cochran was considered a villian by many for his successful defense. Cochran would argue that he wasn't defending murder, he was just defending the principal of a defendant having a vigorous defense. It would seem that defending secession and stating that it does not represent a defense of slavery creates the same situation.

In another post, I pointed out that if secession was legal despite it being done in support of slavery, than there should be no problem with secession celebrations today. The only way African-Americans would participate in the secession celebration is as an entertainer protraying slave or as a story-teller who might be talking about how the slaves found moments of pleasure on the plantation. I doubt whippings and rape stories would be good dinner fare for the secession celebration.

Cochran is remembered as the guy who let a guilty man go free. Secession is tied to slavery.

by rmrd0000 on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 9:45am

If the Southerners were the ones who insisted on gunfire, that would make them worse. But the North was insistent the South couldn't leave, and sent ships to keep the southern fort occupied, and then responded to a bloodless southern action by declaring war. Well done Mr. Lincoln.

by Desider on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 10:23am

The South was clinging to the right to own slaves, every other country settled the issue peacefully. Wouldn't the fault seem to lie with the slave-holders?

by rmrd0000 on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 10:55am

No, it wouldn't "seem to lie with the slave-holders" unless you can identify why.

It might lie with the North, with the South, with fate or circumstance, with world economic situation, with local conditions, with technology, with whatever.

I don't pretend to say the south was blameless in precipitating hostilities, but the basic issue is they seceded peacefully for 4 months without attacking anyone, and it was only the north trying to hold on to a fort and assert that the south had no right to lead that forced the two into war.

It seems rather obvious that if the North hadn't forced the fight at Ft. Sumter that there easily could have been no war. Now how that would have led to the end of slavery is speculation.

by Desider on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 2:41pm

The North had peacefully remained cloistered in the fort when the South became the aggressor. The Union fort was short on supplies. Confederate batteries opened up on April 12, 1861. If Confederates were SO peaceful, why didn't they just wait the Union out? The North had not been aggressive in the preceding four months. The slave-holders fired first.

The Fort Sumter did not return fire for more than two hours. The slave-holder barrage continued for 34 hours.

by rmrd0000 on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 3:18pm

They had northern ships coming to take over the major fortiments at the center of Charleston harbor.

How stupid would it have been to let an antagonistic Union force take effective military control of your harbor - the main shipping port for the south aside from New Orleans?

Peaceful is one thing. Being stupid is another.

How long have the Israelis kept hold of Syria's Golan Heights? What's the chance they'll give them back any time soon?

by Desider on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 3:31pm

I have to admit that after being immersed in the thread on my own blog on this topic for the past few days, when I first read this one last night I my first thought it was done with a bit of a tounge-in-cheek because of its definitive-stand approach.

The ensuing thread here has continued the on-going "nuance" debate. The whole how do we view the right to secede is along worthy of its own blog. The South's decision to secede is tied with slavery without a doubt which seems to make it an issue of a legitimate right exercised with bad motivations. Of course then we throw in the wrinkle of whether the decision to secede was it itself legitimate because of the manner of who was allow to have a voice in that decision. And so on.

Another thing I have to admit is that although I have degree in history, American history, especially the period surrounding the Civil War, is something I tended to avoid. My interests tended to go toward Europe and I spent most of my focus on the British Empire and southern Africa. OT, one of those little pop-psychology things I find intriguing is what periods and nations attract which people who have an interest in history. I can spend a whole lot of time immersed in the War of the Roses, but the Civil War details just tend to bore me. So I have been learning some things here in the past few days. Given this remembrance is going to go on for years, I expect to learn a few more things.

With that aside, Obey brought up the comparison of the end of Apartheid upthread. I think when we try to understand how people in this country relate to the Civil War and the ensuing discussions, something one of my history professors said during a discussion on the creation of Apartheid in 1948 is relevant: If one looked at the U.S. and South Africa in 1947 and asked the question 'which one of these is going to implement a system like Apartheid?' the conventional wisdom would have been the U.S. It is a wrinkle to keep in mind when one uses such a phrase as "so that all of us might live in a united, free republic."

by Elusive Trope on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 10:38am

There was Jim Crow in the South. There was share-cropping which kept people in debt. The legal system was also used to provide cheap labor via use of prison labor on farms.

by rmrd0000 on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 11:06am

Just some of the reasons why it would be crazy to say that "Apartheid" was just around the corner in this country. When one looks at how the legal/prison system has been used by whites against the black community, the underpinnings of what allowed slavery to exist in the first place are still seen today. Slavery is just one form of oppression. And I would argue that one of the reasons slavery was ended by many countries is that certain powers-to-be found that there were better (i.e. sustainable) approaches to oppression.

by Elusive Trope on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 11:18am

I agree. Slavery was legal. The prison industrial complex is much more efficient even though when one compares the cost of incarceration versus college education, the economic losses are high, but the money is going into someone's pockets.

by rmrd0000 on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 11:27am

One can see what one is up against when one is trying to get money for drug prevention programs when all the evidence shows for every dollar not spent is five to seven dollars spent in the legal/prison system. I think one can safely say that there are difinitely other agendas at play besides what is the interest of the government's accounting books. At least with the prison system approach one gets those pesky abolistionists off their backs.

by Elusive Trope on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 11:37am

Please explain the "sustainable approaches to oppression". I can't even begin to fathom what that means, compared to the advance in freedom in ending feudalism and slavery.

Is Dr. Evil at loose?

by Desider on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 12:05pm

It means that if you looking to exploit a group of people, there are certain approaches that will enable to continue in relative peace compared to others. Rather than have slave labor, which means one is dealing with all those who are morally opposed to this, one switches gears, and pays the same people $1 a day to work the same fields, and then you have them buy all their goods from the general store you own. Suddenly all those people all in a huff about the slaves melt away.

Another way to look at this: a more sustainable form of oppression by the wealthiest in this country is to devise a system in which the people get to choose the individual who gets to go make the policies for the wealthiest as opposed to them just being in control and telling the masses below this is how it is going to be. The people still get oppressed, but they are less likely to revolt because there is a sense they have some control in the matter. Power is derived through a sense of legitimacy to govern rather than through coercion.

So yes what replaced slavery was better than slavery. But it would be wrong to say (and I'm not saying you're saying this) that once slavery ended, life became a bed of roses for everyone who was a slave. It is not a case of they were being oppressed, then slavery ended and the oppression stopped. The oppression took on less abhorent forms, forms that allowed many of those in the oppression class look away and act as if it wasn't happening. Thus less pressure for reform, thus more sustainable.

by Elusive Trope on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 2:18pm

As I noted elsewhere, I doubt if any saving of expenses could make up for lower productivity from having a captive, paid-for forced work population even if there were frequent revolts, etc.

Presumably if that were true, someone in the border states or newly formed states would have figured it out and made a bonanza on this kind of sharecropping.

by Desider on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 2:49pm

One defense used is that The Southerners were people of their time. If other countries ended slavery peacefully and the Southerners were laggards , how long should we have waited? Thomas Jefferson felt that slavery would be a short term condition. He seemed to have been off by a few years.

When some Afgahanistan citizens perform beheadings in response to a nitwit "prophet" burning a Koran, I think on some level that the beheadings are part of a segment of the Afghan culture. Do we wait for these Afghans to become enlightened, or do we condemn the beheadings as evil? It would seem that a culture seen as backwards gets treated very harshly. The Afghans who did the beheadings are men of their time as well.

by rmrd0000 on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 11:37am

Exactly so. If you're a slave or about to beheaded, I doubt you're very interested in the long view.

by Verified Atheist on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 11:56am

Jefferson was mostly right - for England. He didn't anticipate the cotton gin or the powered spinning wheel, and all of the main cotton states entered after his time.

by Desider on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 12:08pm

Jefferson missed it by "that much"

......Maxwell Smart

by rmrd0000 on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 12:28pm

There are patents as early as 1850 for a mechanical cotton picking machine to replace manual labor although its development appears to have been very, very slow compared to other technologies. Wonder how much it was slowed by the economic changes of the Civil War.

Before the war, slaves, like any other livestock (and they were considered livestock by 'owners") were expensive and not just to purchase but to maintain, feed, cloth, house. A harvesting machine may have been a cheaper alternative.

After the war, letting land to sharecroppers was likely cheaper and easier for most large landowners.

What strange twists things sometimes take.

by EmmaZahn on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 12:38pm

Doubtful sharecropping was much cheaper or anywhere near as productive.

As the article notes, it took over 90 years to get from first patent to an actually usable implementation.

by Desider on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 1:42pm

Sharecropping could be dirt cheap because all that really had to be provided was the dirt, er land and the seeds. The sharecropper and his family could do the rest. As for productivit --- compared to what? My point was that the development of mechanical harversters was slowed because it was not as economically incentivized after and it may have been before the war. You know, like how electric or steam-driven cars were economically disincentized by cheap, abundant and powerful petroleum.

by EmmaZahn on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 2:06pm

It's really all about incentives tied to productivity. It's pretty hard to imagine anyone would want to work as hard as slaves did for any kind of money. And until I see some evidence of truly successful sharecropping vs. quite successful plantations, I'll hold that position. If there were an economically profitable way out of slavery, I'm sure a good percentage of slave owners would have chose it. But cotton picking was horrid work.

Regarding cotton picking machinery, I don't think it was an issue of economics - there just wasn't the technology available at any price to pick cotton without destroying the field. Cotton was still a valuable crop, so could have been justified if available, but that it didn't happen successfully until 1943 should give you an idea it was quite difficult. A mobile picker carefully going through the fields working on stalks vs. a cotton gin just removing seeds from cotton tufts.

by Desider on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 2:55pm

Mid-1940s. About the time sharecroppers began organizing and becoming troublesome. Oh, and soon after agricultural subsidies incentivized ever larger farms.

Sharecropping:.

Sharecroppers formed unions in the 1930s, beginning in Tallapoosa County, Alabama in 1931, and Arkansas in 1934. Membership in the Southern Tenant Farmers Union included both blacks and poor whites. As leadership strengthened, meetings became more successful, and protest became more vigorous, landlords responded with a wave of terror.^[23]
Sharecroppers' strikes in Arkansas and the Bootheel of Missouri, the 1939 Missouri Sharecroppers' Strike, were documented in "Oh Freedom After While".^[24]
In the 1930s and 1940s, increasing mechanization virtually brought the institution of sharecropping to an end in the United States.^[18]^[25] The sharecropping system in the U.S. increased during the Great Depression with the creation of tenant farmers following the failure of many small farms throughout the Dustbowl. Traditional sharecropping declined after mechanization of farm work became economical in the mid-20th century As a result, many sharecroppers were forced off the farms, and migrated to the industrialized North to work in factories, or become migrant workers in the Western United States duringWorld War II.

by EmmaZahn on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 3:49pm

But that "increased mechanization" is what brought affordability of cars, trucks and tractors. Really not very much related to labor agitation, I don't think - better gas-powered machines were getting built anyway.

by Desider on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 3:54pm

And note the advances from assembly lines during WWII, tanks, etc., more flexible steel production and so on.

by Desider on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 4:01pm

Of course the technology was getting built anyway.

I thought this little discussion was about economic incentives.

Cost of machinery going down + labor costs going up + agricultural subsidies = greater incentivies to purchase mechanical harvesters = more rapid development of harvester technology.

My comment was about economic incentives not whether slavery was better or worse than sharecropping because both were just wrong. I just like to try to understand why people do the things they do and economic incentives are a huge factor, just behind power.

And that is all I have to say about that.

by EmmaZahn on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 4:37pm

But I'm not sure "labor costs going up" was really the issue during the Depression years - quite the opposite. The labor movements were trying to fight the increased gouging of the business owners during bad times when people willing to work for next to nothing were easy to find.

Similarly, my arguments against Reconstruction sharecropping are simply that it seems a poor second output-wise to having a captive workforce. (at least for manual labor). If someone has evidence against, happy to hear it.

by Desider on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 4:49pm

@ by rmrd0000 4/14/2011 (I’m pasting in your comment to be more readable and so I can answer some of it).

I think some of you may be overlooking what has gone before in discussing secessation and how that impacts current views.

by rmrd0000 4/14/2011

Reply:

Wow. What a load of codswallop you assume here. You say I didn’t correct my error about my son not wearing a Confederate uniform, but playing for the South in the Civil War computer game because I was willing to leave the impression and gained ‘some pleasure’ by being ‘provocative’. No; it was just easier to let stand after it was sitting there for a hundred hours on the boards incorrectly, and also I didn’t see such a huge difference. He did wear a Union uniform. I think it’s all idiocy, but his history professor loved it all, and God knows plenty of young men and women love to don uniforms and get down with some militarism. What? You think he’s some sort of self-loathing black or something to be able to compartmentalize it? I don’t. As soon as he makes enough money fire-fighting, he wants to get his Masters in history, and will likey choose a quirky Civil War issue.

I will say that when the recruiters came to his high school and schmoozed him and he was considering enlisting after graduation, I begged him not to, and went into long diatribes about the immorality of our foreign military misadventures. I even swore that if it would help to dissuade him, I’d support him for the rest of his life; way over the top, but it did serve to show him how ardent I was that he not become willing cannon fodder for the MIC.

I’m not even sure I’d so hugely differentiate playing for the South in a reenactment or a computer game; at best it shows that the subject is somewhat academic to him, or at least that he can separate the emotional from the academic. As I said, he read books whose authors speculated about alternative versions of the Civil War, as well as World War II. It’s conventional wisdom that those who ignore history do so at the risk of repeating it. Silly in a way, because we DO keep repeating it because most people don’t learn from it, but to me it would imply we should learn fully from it, which is what these discussions about secession and slavery and the degree to which they were entwined could serve a useful purpose.

Oh—and it case you didn’t get it, I’m agnostic on the subject of secession. I’m a little embarrassed to admit I haven’t been quite able to follow some the legal, moral constitutional, Articles of Confederation arguments too very well. But I have learned a lot more than the fairly-tale, black and white version I was taught, especially including the North’s de facto complicity in it.

The other thing about your codswallop about me wanting to be ‘provocative’ is this: It’s clear you are sniffing around like a hound for evidence of racism and bigotry, so the fuck did I know or care you would get all ginned up about my error?

You say some (made up?) category of ‘us’ are mute on the secession celebrations ‘use’ of blacks. I’d ask if they mind, why they participate at all; maybe those who do, don’t mind, you present no theories or evidence either way. But I do remember some big flap a few years ago involving some Southern black women who held their own cotillion, white formals, long white gloves and all. The ‘librul left’ went crazy over it. Were they emulating their ‘oppressors’ or just doing what was denied their forebears for generations? You want to decide? I can have some heart for them. I can have some heart for blacks at Stone Mountain in Georgia and other antebellum tourist attractions taking jobs acting slave roles; I hate it, but it’s not for me to say.

So maybe people who loathe the secessionist celebrations make some different ones, or boycott those anyway. What answers could we have that would be terribly relevant, understanding that there are likely a plethora of motives, submissions, and opinions across the spectrum of Southern blacks.

I’m tempted to go into some of the coping skills my son had to go through to not be so bothered by racist bullshit, but it’s complex and would take to much typing and recounting. But the one thing I did my best to do is help him find humor and irony in it all; bought him books and films of black comedians who could feel things, but turn them on their heads or sides in order to poke sticks into the absurdity of racism and bigotry, and even insulate himself from the sting of the word ‘nigger’ by using it some. And yes, I really have heard every argument about that subject pro and con, and I say it was his right to do.

Taking a cue from kyle flynn and Quinn: Slavery was Evil, Apartheid is Evil; Slavery was Evil, Slavery was Evil; Apartheid is Evil, Apartheid is Evil; Slavery was Evil, Apartheid is Evil. And who the fuck knew we needed to say it over and over and over for you and brewmn?

by we are stardust on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 10:51am

I've never been codswalloped before

by rmrd0000 on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 2:11pm

by we are stardust on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 2:19pm

Actually, it does get pretty tiresome responding to the observations that I make as being the only biased one here . I had to defend wanting diversity in history telling as not meaning I didn't want Whites to write about Black history, for example. I posted a CNN poll review and got attacked as if I were the author and ,horrors, was responding in a BLACK fashion.

For me secession comes with, Confederate flags and uniforms. There is no question that it was wingnuts who were carry the secession was right banner for a majority of the time.The attacks on the behavior of the North by secession supporters is similar to what is seen here.

I have been labeled a racist and have to repeatedly clarify my positions. I do my best to qualify and move on. If I differentiate between a Confedeate and a Union uniform, I'll say so. I try to make my stance clear, popular or not. If you read the review of the CNN poll on views about the Civil War in Another Trope's blog several days ago, you might get the idea that I'm not the only one that would be posing the questions that I ask here. The poll review came from a majority Black wevsite that sometimes takes a markedly different view on some discussions than the denizens of Dag. The review was by one of the site's authors, not a commenter. The comments are often more heated than the authors.

The website does also has Black Conservative authors as well.

by rmrd0000 on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 2:40pm

I think you left out... slavery was evil.

And Johnnie Cochrane.

by quinn esq on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 2:13pm

I have to sell my Johnnie Cochrane now, too??? Gaaagggghhhhh!

by we are stardust on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 2:21pm

Cochran

No "e"

White folks :)

by rmrd0000 on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 3:00pm

Coltran? Take the "A" Tran?

by Desider on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 3:16pm

I'm white???? Arrrrrrrgggghghhhhhhhh! Nooooooooo!

by we are stardust on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 4:42pm

Slavery was evil. The right to own slaves, however, shouldn't be messed with. Got it.

by brewmn on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 4:09pm

Ya know, brew; about now you can just kiss my grits.

by we are stardust on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 4:43pm

First off, if you can't tell the difference between this comment by acanuck and many of the comments by Desider ("slaves were property," a "huge investment;" Lincoln's immoral war,") then I would venture that you are not quite the nuanced thinker you claim to be. No matter how many of you and your regular cohort and assorted hangers on want to boil discussion of the issues and history surrounding the Civil War down to the sole question of whether succession was illegal, that's not where any of these posts started. And for you to refuse to recognize the offensiveness of your desire to take slavery out of the conversation is, again, baffling to me. It once again reinforces the suspicion that you've got no other purpose on these boards but to tweak those you perceive to be "mainstream" or "conventional" liberals, and to reinforce your own sense of your intellectual superiority, and avant garde take on politics.

Second, in your contrarian zeal to make what you consider the key point in the debate (i.e., that the South's secession was legal), you completely ignore history, in favor of an "well, it's legal because I say so, and I'm smarter than you" approach; that is when you're not bringing up bullshit, pathetically weak analogies like the Revolutionary War, India's struggle for independence, or apartheid South Africa. In none of these situations did the party seeking its independence previously ratify its union to the other through anything remotely resembling the states' ratification of the US Constitution. So, not only do you completely ignore or distort the history behind the Civil War (including that the "provocations" of the North consisted almost entirely of their attempts to halt the spread of slavery outside of the Confederacy, rather than an attempt to abolish slavery outright; that, no matter Desider's insistence that the re-supply of Sumter was unquestionably the event that triggered the war, it was nevertheless the Confederacy that fired the first shot), you also ignore any claims that contradict your assertions of legality (and that's all your argument is, really).

So, given that you seem so eager to make the perhaps one case that can be made on behalf of the Confederacy, and that you dismiss or ignore arguments that weaken that case, I for one can't help but sit here wondering just what the hell your game is here exactly. And, if you want to make a case on behalf of slaveowners, then be men and women and own all of the ramifications of that argument.

by brewmn on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 7:26pm

Brew, I've consistently argued throughout that the secession was illegal.

ILLEGAL.

A big fat chunk of this very thread is me having a debate with Desi and Quinn on that very point. And you might notice that the centrality of slavery to the dispute between the north and south and the evil of slavery as an institution is the heart of my argument.

It involves me TAKING ONE OF YOUR ARGUMENTS AND TRYING TO BUILD ON IT.

You basically sling shit around without even looking at who is saying what.

As for what these threads are about, they are about ...the civil war. And some people here think discussing that involves first and foremost remembering the evil of slavery, but also ... more than just repeating how evil slavery is. That would be an incredibly limited thread. The history is complex, the various causal factors are intriguing and being willing to take different perspectives makes that discussion stimulating. And some people - not necessarily me - are coming here with a shitload of historical knowledge and nuanced povs worth hearing about.

If you can point to falsehoods that are being pushed by me, Desi, Quinn, Stardust, please be my guest. But that doesn't seem to be your problem. Your problem is that some people aren't adopting whatever precise line you think everyone should adopt, and so must be morally suspect. Avoiding that kind of cheap smear was, of course, the primary focus of A-trope's thread was the importance of avoiding such knee-jerk reactions to differences of perspective.

You're way out of line here, Brew, imho.

by Obey on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 8:14pm

Go back, 2 blogs ago, and you'll find Brew's first comment on this..... was an attack on other bloggers. Right in Atrope's face, that's how he read its purpose. As he moved forward, it became an explicit attack on other bloggers as defenders of slavery. Which is cool where Stardust is concerned, what with having a black son and all. Brew then decides to look for a friend, and comes in agreeing with acanuck - except that acanuck was largely saying what we were. So now, we're back to random attacks. sorry, but I think you're a secessionist now. Which will also - as you'll see - make you a traitor. It's kinda cool after a bit, the treason thing.

If you should try and make sense of Brew's arguments, you need to learn to argue Brew-style, too. 1st, you have to take any description of the state of affairs and turn it into the commenter PERSONALLY RECOMMENDING said state of affairs. I personally recommend secession. Des - by saying "Slaves were property" - began recommending that. Even though (odd this) Des followed that statement with, "That was the law at the time, that was the backwards legacy of slavery we were stuck with." Clearly, Des is a slaver.

Others are bad for bringing up bullshit pathetically weak analogies to compare to the US. Like... "the Revolutionary War, India's struggle for independence, or apartheid South Africa." Not that Brew has offered up an analogy of his own, nope, he hasn't. He just hates people who do.

Which is getting closer to the key word here. Hate. Brew hates.

And really Obey, you have to admit, by bringing up all this other stuff, what you really want to do is make a case on behalf of slaveowners. Don't you love it when he says that? He's saying YOU actually support the slaveowners. Like Stardust with her son. What she really wants is to recommend slavery. And me, when I spent that time with the Tutus in 1985/86, and in and around Soweto, and Durban and the townships and visiting folks and travelling back and forth to Britain... I think you know what I'm saying.

But it means nothing now that Brew has seen through it all - for I am a slaver.

Either that, or Brew just hates.

Yeah. It's that.

by quinn esq on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 8:23pm

I'm a Slaver; I admit it; and brew and rmrd are probalby peeved some creepy White Woman raised a black son to to be a Confederate-supporting self-loathing black. Kinda like our Ute Mountain Ute daughter: we spent years keeping her in touch with her tribe and culture (and loving it ourselves), and teaching black history and Ute history at the schools, all so we could corrupt the kids and turn them into Slavers and Injun-haters, hoping the Utes would secede from the county so they wouldn't recieive no benefits on acounta the Feds gave them huge chunks of our tax money.

Ya know what our daughter says about Native Americans still upset over genocide and being forced into white boarding schools and being beaten for speaking their native language? "They should get over it", she says. See, we wonder how we indoctrinated her so well while pretending otherwise. Hell, she knew for school Thanksgiving plays she didn't want to be an Indian: Indians were bad and scalped those nice white settlers. The textbooks and teachers had already decided, so our work was easier.

I've been thinking a lot about the bullies and name-callers and crap-slingers on these threads. And I remembered some old lessons that really ring true: at their core, bullies are cowards. Gunslingers are poseurs at heart. And ya can't teach them to see beyond their hatred too very often.

Those black Kwanzaa candles we burned in that little holder we crafted and painted? Sympathy for the Devil, plain and simple.

Oh yeah; and I swear now you know, that I'll let Johnny Cochran(e) outta my closet; he's locked in there with VannaWhite.

by we are stardust on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 9:12pm

Oh, and some of you may get a boot outta this piece by Wm. Hogeland at New Deal 2.0. It seems that 'all men are created equal' stuff didn't extend to economics, for God's sake by the time of the Continental Congress.

http://www.newdeal20.org/2011/04/11/created-equal-founding-era-tensions-...

And Obey: give it up; Brew's got ya dead to rights on your white-slaving thingie...

by we are stardust on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 9:43pm

"I've been thinking a lot about the bullies and name-callers and crap-slingers on these threads. And I remembered some old lessons that really ring true: at their core, bullies are cowards. Gunslingers are poseurs at heart. And ya can't teach them to see beyond their hatred too very often."

Jesus H. Christ. I'm hoping you were looking into a mirror when you wrote this. The lack of self-awareness is positively breathtaking.

by brewmn on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 9:45pm

You say that so often to me that it must be true, brew. I aplogize for bullying you.

by we are stardust on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 10:13pm

since my name was mentioned

.....I'm a Slaver; I admit it; and brew and rmrd are probalby peeved some creepy White Woman raised a black son to to be a Confederate-supporting self-loathing black.

if you recall you said that your son didn't have a problem wearing a Confedrate uniform. In Trope's post, You introduced the Confederate uniform. In reponse, I conducted a "conversation" with a Black Conservative who wore a Confederate uniform. I did not refer to your son.

I focused on secession celebrations occuring today, because it does create a two-tier system for how Blacks and Whites would participate. The underlying point was that if secesson was legal, the celebrations sholud be fine.

Because, legal issues were being discusssed and their were complaints of taking heat for defending secession that was occuring in the setting of slavery, I brought up the OJ case. Cochran defended a legal principle for defending Simpson. Cochran was vilified. The analogy was that supporting a legal principle did not prevent heat.

I also noted that secession defenses are nothing new, they have been laid out by members of the Sons of the Confederacy, for example. It is fascinating to hear of the activities that you and the others have been/ are participants, but that does not mean that you are taking the correct position on the issue of secession.

by rmrd0000 on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 10:54pm

Read the thread; I never said I was in favor of secession, though I did say that it was a highly interesting concept to explore. I still think so. I think you forget what you said about me and my son:

But really, it scarcely matters any longer. You have decided to misintepret a lot here, including thinking Des's remarks about black historians: He said great! More perspectives are valuable, and peer review will decide veracity, or something like that. It makes for a very odd discussion, and brings not much light to it when you twist or confuse things. G' night.

by we are stardust on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 11:10pm

You told the story about your son and the Confederate uniform. I noted my reaction. When you later said that the evnt was a computer role-palying gme, and that you let the impression of your son wearing the uniform go unchallenged, I did feel that you fel there was something to be gained from the statement. Other than referring to your mention the uniform and my reaction to it, your son was not the focus.

When I created the "conversation, I used a theoretic Black Conservative. I did not say "This is the conversation that I would have with your son. I used a Black Conservative because some will put on Confederate uniforms. I did not comment when you brought other aspects of your' sons life (college, etc) into the discussion.

I don't see how to note that you said your son wore the uniform except to say it, but

by rmrd0000 on Fri, 04/15/2011 - 10:00am

Quinn, maybe it wasn't clear from my response (It got shortened as I had to, ahem, clean up the language a couple of times), but this particular rant of Brew's is directed at ME. Check upthread and you see who he's replying to.

Not that I particularly care, but here he's not just doing the whole "you're not talking about what I want to talk about so you're a bigot".

He's just making shit up I never said and flinging it at me.

See, even when I'm agreeing with Brew on the substance of the secession issue, that clearly also shows ... how much of a bigot with a secret agenda I must be.

He can't even be bothered to read anymore. He just sees directly into our souls and knows we're all evil.

by Obey on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 9:29pm

Well, in your case... he may have a bit of a point.

by quinn esq on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 10:21pm

And Des, obviously.

by quinn esq on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 10:22pm

Ditto Stardust.

by quinn esq on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 10:22pm

And Kyle, I think.

by quinn esq on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 10:23pm

Probably acanuck. Though he's probably just drunk after the Habs beat the Bruins tonight.

by quinn esq on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 10:23pm

Even Dick, when you really take a hard cold look at it. Evil.

I mean... Northco. Say no more.

Evil.

by quinn esq on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 10:25pm

Though you're still probably the evilllllest, Obey. I mean, before you "cleaned it up," I'm sure your comment mentioned - in a supportive manner - ferret molestation. And I don't just mean NORMAL ferret molestation. What you were recommending was just plain... ferr-evil.

G'night evildoers!

{G'night John Boy!}

by quinn esq on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 10:28pm

And also.

by quinn esq on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 10:47pm

If a wooden ball falls in the forest and no one's around to hear it, does it still play Bach?

by kyle flynn on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 11:09pm

It was lovely and incredible; just short of awesome. And of course, because plenty of someones are there to hear it, even if you can't see them... ;o)

by we are stardust on Thu, 04/14/2011 - 11:12pm

Mmm mighty perty.

Bet there's some perty ferrets in them woods, too, eh...?

by Obey on Fri, 04/15/2011 - 2:22pm

Hey folks, just back from burning a cop car. Woohoo! Did I miss anything?

by acanuck on Fri, 04/15/2011 - 1:58am

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by Venus (not verified) on Fri, 08/29/2014 - 6:54pm

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‘She got so mad at me’: book on the ‘Squad’ details AOC-...
‘She got so mad at me’: book on the ‘Squad’ details AOC-Pelosi clashes

submitted by artappraiser 1 year ago

By Martinn Pengelly in Washington DC for TheGuardian.com, Nov. 30

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tells Ryan Grim life in Congress ‘completely transformed’ after Democratic leader stepped down

Read the article at https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/30/squad-book-aoc-nancy-pelosi?CMP=share_btn_tw

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US health insurers Humana, Cigna in talks to merge -source
US health insurers Humana, Cigna in talks to merge -source

submitted by artappraiser 1 year ago

@ Reuters, Nov. 29

Read the article at https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/us-health-insurers-humana-cigna-talks-merge-wsj-2023-11-29/

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Central Africa’s dinosaur regimes and the art of coup-...
Central Africa’s dinosaur regimes and the art of coup-proofing

submitted by artappraiser 1 year ago

"Both the AU and the intl community place more weight on whether elections are held than whether they are free and fair. Sanctions/expulsions occur when there is a coup but not necessarily when elections are rigged or if an “institutional coup” occurs." https://t.co/m9dNimJP0D
— Cameron Hudson (@_hudsonc) November 28, 2023

Read the article at https://africanarguments.org/2023/11/central-africas-dinosaur-regimes-and-the-art-of-coup-proofing/

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