The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    WE DID NOT NEED A CIVIL WAR?

    By Richard Day on Mon, 04/02/2018 - 3:22pm |

    WE DID NOT NEED A CIVIL WAR?
    I have been viewing the latest C-SPAN essays
    on the American Civil War.
    Just as some examples:
    Stanley Harrold discusses his book entitled:
    LINCOLN AND THE ABOLITIONISTS
    Walter Stahr discusses his book entitled:
    STANTON AND THE ASSASSINATION
    Harrold is discussing the evolution of Lincoln's
    thoughts; the evolution of Lincoln's political
    views; and the evolution of Lincoln's very soul.
    One of the authors indicated that just in 2017 seven thousand
    tomes have been published that concerned Lincoln or the
    US Civil War.
     
    Lincoln at one time believed that the best solution
    to the slavery 'issue' was to exile all African-
    Americans to Africa.
    Lincoln at one time professed that slavery must
    be limited; slavery should never be allowed in
    The Territories; slavery must be contained to
    the Southern States.
    But Harold underlines that Lincoln supported
    the famous Compromises.
    These Compromises would allow slavery into
    The Territories and the last of these, that is the
    Fugitive Slave Act would presage? the Dredd Scott
    Decision. The single worst Supreme Court Decision
    of all time.
    Oh, as if there were not many worst decisions
    over the centuries.
    The reason I write this post has to do with a
    statement made by Walter Stahr.
    Some thought the North should have just handed
    the keys to Ft. Sumpter over to the South and
    simply forgo the Civil War.
    I have also discussed the thoughts of Judge
    Napolitano not so long ago. He wrote some stupid
    book discussing his idea that the Civil War
    should never have happened. I would assume that
    the repub felt that Lincoln was so very, very,
    wrong.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1Xf4v57iTE

    Which is why I bring up the quote of Walter
    Stahr.
     
    I also underline that our Commander in Chief,

    Spanky Trump echoed the thoughts of Napolitano.

    donald trump and the civil war
     
    We shall always have revisionism.
     
    The word means nothing.
     
    We shall always revise; because we shall always receive more information as time goes on.
     
    I decided to write this for several reasons.
     
    First, There were 11 states within the New Confederacy.
     
    Remember, the first 13 colonies were a Confederacy.
     
    There actually were Articles of the Confederation.
     
    John Hancock was really our first President.
     
    These Colonies kind of came together, so to speak.
     
    By 1860, most of the secessionist States proclaimed their
    love for slavery.
     
     
     
    Thirty or forty years prior to this, John Calhoun and others
    had advanced the theory that the Negro was not a person,
    that the Negro was not a human being, that the Negro was
    like that of horses or cattle.
     
    I am obviously not going to write a five thousand page tome
    here.
     
    I HAVE A POINT
     
    If the South had 'won the Civil War' what would have transpired
    following that 'win'?
     
    When I was a kid, Life Magazine wrote a series entitled:
    IF THE SOUTH HAD WON THE CIVIL WAR
     
    So my point is:
    If the South had won, what would have happened to the Fugitive Slave Act?
     
    I mean, if the South were separated from the North, who the fuck
    would enforce the Fugitive Slave Act?
     
    If the South were separated from the North, who the fuck would
    enforce the Supreme Court Case entitled:
     
    Dredd Scott v. Sandford
     
    How in the hell could the Southern slave owners ever hunt
    down their 'fugitive' slaves?
     
    And recall that the New USA was a Union.
     
    The New South would have been a Confederacy for chrissakes.
     
    Now how in the hell could the new south move and take their
    slaves into the Federal Territories?
     
    I submit that there would have been continual war between the
    North and the South regardless.
     
    The :Northern Copperheads certainly were sick of war by 1863.
     
    But remember that 40% of the Virginia Legislature was against
    Secession in 1860.
     
    Look, the war would never have ended.
     
    Thomas Jefferson once told Calhoun that the greatest creator
    of capital and income was the female Negro.
     
    And of course, many of the products of those females would have
    been babies created by the Southern Aristocracy as well as those
    females. 
     
    650,000 soldiers died as a result of our Civil War. Whether those deaths were
    attributed to gunfire or infection or disease; it does not matter.
     
    But 4 million slaves were 'freed'. Sort of.
     
    If there had not been a Civil War (began by SC of course) there would have
    been consequences.
    ;
    I have written about this subject before; on at least two occasions.
     
    It just got to me over the last few weeks.
     
    THE SOUTH IS STILL PISSED ABOUT THE CIVIL WAR AND LOSING
    THAT WAR.
     
    And so the Confederate Flag shall fly forever.
     
    And monuments shall be honored.
     
    And resentments shall survive.
     
    And there is not a goddamn thing we will ever be able to do about this!
     
    Like the limp dick emcees on cable, I have no cure for all of this.
     
    The hate will continue.
     
    Most of the North then and now are racists.
     
    THE FACT IS THIS:
    THE SOUTH WAS WRONG AND THE NORTH WAS RIGHT.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

     

     

     

    Comments

    One feature common to all writers of alternative history is that they always cheat at their own game. It is all very well to point at particular events that set into motion many others and observe that things would have happened differently if the particular event did not happen. That is painfully obvious.

    But we are not chess pieces that can be lifted from the board at random by some capricious divinity. If the event in question did not happen, one doesn't get to still keep all the other ones that did. Accepting that our past was not necessary does not give anybody the power to see what the past that didn't happen turned out to be. One cannot do that even the context of one's own life. Picture the arrogance needed to scribble generations of mankind into such a dream.


    by moat on Mon, 04/02/2018 - 5:14pm

    Moat, this is most poetic.

    I just kept thinking of this 'revisionism' lately.

    Somehow slavery would have simply faded away.

    When in fact, following the deaths of 650,000 Americans it took a hundred and fifty years for slavery to end.

    But has it ended after all?

    MLK certainly had a dream.

    But others lie in their own diverse dream universe, I guess.

    WELL PUT MOAT!

     


    by Richard Day on Mon, 04/02/2018 - 6:15pm

    Thank you for the thumbs up.
    The "fade away" dream is an extension of resisting change in the present moment. It is a kind of nostalgia.
    Not all nostalgia is bad. Writing a version of the past that helps one make connections is a part of life. Michel Foucault made a good point on this matter:

    All of this beauty of old times is an effect of and not a reason for nostalgia. I know very well that it is our own invention. But it's quite good to have this kind of nostalgia, just as it's good to have a good relationship with your own childhood if you have children. It's a good thing to have nostalgia toward some periods on the condition that it's a way to have a thoughtful and positive relation to your own present. But if nostalgia is a reason to be aggressive and uncomprehending toward the present, it has to be excluded.  

    That point of view isn't stuck with the job of explaining what fight was necessary or not. Martin Luther King Jr. explained why he couldn't wait right now. He didn't waste time talking about why other people couldn't wait in the past.
    And that signals the absurdity of the modern Conservative movement. Goldwater acknowledged the evil of racism but said it was wrong to try to fix it directly. Nobody raises their children to think like that about their own lives.


    by moat on Mon, 04/02/2018 - 7:28pm