publius wrote:My problem is that Lincoln prosecuted the war under a War Dictatorship. Do you disagree?
He did. Hostilities were initiated years earlier from the South, in the attempt to establish slavery in Kansas. The states that seceded after Lincoln's election attacked Union troops. And so the war began - by the actions of the Confederacy.
My second problem is this war killed two million and created an American Warfare State.
Agreed: an unhappy circumstance that two million died in the hostilities between the two sides in the Civil War. The seceding states should not have started this war. The South before secession should not have moved toward war in its longstanding attempt to expand slavery.
The Union had existed half slave and half free from its inception. There appears to be no logical reason why slavery could not have continued to have existed in that fashion.
The seceding states implicitly disagreed. They saw a need to expand slavery. They had constantly pushed to establish new slave states. They had pushed for and got a war with Mexico and the seizure of new territory, which they hoped to make into new slave states. The South commandeered federal institutions to impose enforcement of Southern slave laws in the North. Slaveholders plotted to invade countries to the south with the intent of making new states out of those.
At the risk of saying it bluntly, two million dead did not enable harmonious relations among the races.
Were these harmonious before, when the blacks were straight up chattel? Is this a goal, harmonious relations, or is freedom more important. And once again, "two million dead" but no consideration of 300 years of slavery.
My opinion is slavery was going to be eliminated by the progress of technology in the South. This is at least reasonable.
You know what? The slaveholders implicitly agreed with that assessment. They saw their peculiar institution under threat. This is why they decided it was better to start a war now, as a final attempt to save slavery for future generations, than to wait for a peaceful demise of the institution. They are the ones responsible for two million dead.
The issue was over mastery.
What else is new? The issue was over the South's insistence on mastery over the West and North in the question of slavery.
De Facto Federalism won.
Under the same constitution as before. The same country that had expelled the Cherokee, put them on the Trail of Tears.
The consequence of this is the modern Warfare State-the child is the father of the man. I think exploring the conflict is worthwhile as we are unable to have freedom outside of Federal authority. The South too was not allowed to peacefully go it's own way.
The South was not peaceful and started a war to preserve and expand slavery.
I am willing to think that history is better without two million dead Americans, even if the South was in the Confederacy.
We can think a lot of things about past circumstances we cannot change. I might think history would have been better if slave states had never been established in the first place, or if the colonies had never been, or if Columbus had turned around. We all have our preferred what-ifs. Perhaps our choice of what-ifs tells us something about ourselves, perhaps not. That's not a reason for anyone to falsify history, as you do, and to propagate nonsense myths about fringed flags and fictional corporations, as you do.
Stephen Douglas pointed out in the United States Senate, as the secession crisis developed, there were three possible courses for the United States to take in dealing with the sectional crisis: 1 The Union could be saved by compromise and reconciliation between men of good will in both sections; 2 The South could be allowed to withdraw in peace and set up her own government independent of the North; 3 The South could be coerced by military force into remaining subject to the Union. According to Douglas, the best solution would have been one based on compromise and reconciliation. The next best would have been to allow the South to depart in peace. The worst was to resort to violent military force to coerce the South into the Union like a conquered province
4 The South could make anything but war impossible, despite Lincoln's attempts at appesement, by opening fire on the federal soldiers.
From whose perspective are these options judged as good or bad? I ain't no senator's son.
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