The Confederacy was About Slavery

you go snood.

It's a shame that you have to tell people that, though, eh?

See what i mean?

Don't waste your time on him, Boss. He's not even American, and has proven time and again that he really knows nothing about American history.

When someone raises you to the status of an original source, then you can tell people what to do...in the meantime, **** for brains, dont insult snood. As for "not even american" how is that a condemnation ? As for not knowing about "American history", we are talking about the history of the USA, not all of America, **** for brains.

The union was not about Anti-slavery, so even if you are correct so what?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2967.html

The tone of your response is evidence of the value of your argument. You tell us that we shouldn't believe Stevens because he was a politician, and all politicians lie. Yet you want us to believe Lincoln when you provide a butchered quote, because . . . ? Because he wasn't a politician? Because he never lied? You're stepping on your own dick here.

Your comment about an "original source" is hilarious, given that you never provide a shred of support for any of your ex cathedra statements. The quote which you have disingenuously referred to was from Lincoln's comments on emancipation, at the time of his first attempt at an emancipation proclamation. What he actually said was:

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.

In January, 1861, two months after Lincoln was elected, but two months before he was sworn into office, an armed mob from Pensacola, Florida attempted to seize the Federal property at Forts McCrae and Barrancas. Lieutenant Adam Slemmer drove off the mob, and his detachment, which had already removed most of the powder to Fort Pickens in the harbor, then spiked the guns they could not remove, and set fire to the rest of the arsenal. The State of Florida subsequently sent in militia to seize and hold those now useless forts. The actions of the State of Florida, and the State of Alabama in sending troops to Pensacola clearly violate Article One, Section 10, third paragraph, of the constitution.

In February, 1861, at Montgomery, Alabama, seven states formed the Confederate States of America, including states which had originally ratified the constitution without reservation about the provisions of Article One, Section ten, first paragraph which was violated by their actions.

In December, 1860, little more than a month after Lincoln was elected, and more than three months before he was sworn in, South Carolina militia occupied water batteries in the harbor at Charleston, and set up other batteries in the attempt to command Fort Sumter. They were outraged that Major Anderson had removed Federal property from the arsenal in the city to his position at Fort Moultrie, and when Anderson removed his garrison to the more defensible Fort Sumter, state authorities loudly complained of a "breach of good faith," and began a seige of the fortress. President Buchanan refused an indirect summons, just as Major Anderson refused a direct summons--both in January, 1861, two months before Lincoln was sworn in. This was a clear violation of Article One, Section ten, third paragraph of the constitution, as was South Carolina's adherence to a confederacy in February a violation of the first paragraph. So was the act of firing on The Star of the West which attempted to supply and reinforce Major Anderson at Fort Sumter--once again, before Lincoln had been inaugurated.

The fact that you are not an American calls into question your ordinary knowledge of American history. You have never demonstrated any particularly well-informed knowledge of the subject, and all you do is offer your unsubstantiated ipse dixit comments. If you really wanted to be taken seriously, you'd demonstrate your knowledge, and provide support for your claims. This is, of course, something you never do. If you allege that the war was about "sorting out" the constitution, inform us of what about the constitution needed to be sorted out, and how pre-emptive military action on the part of an illegal confederation of states intended to accomplish this.

To those who do know the history of this country, the Southern reaction is no surprise at all. In 1858, Lincoln held a series of debates with Stephen Douglas in Illinois. Both men were vying for a Senate seat, at a time when the state legislatures appointed Senators, and therefore they were each campaigning for their respective parties, in the hope to taking control of the legislature and securing the appointment. Lincoln spoke on behalf of the new Republican Party, and Douglas on behalf of the Democrats. Lincoln effectively torpedoed Douglas' eventual bid for the Presidency, although Douglas was appointed to the open Senate seat. It was precisely because Lincoln forced Douglas to come out against slavery in the Lincoln-Douglas debates that the former Vice President John Breckenridge split the Democratic party in the 1860 election--to provide pro-slavery Democrats a candidate in preference to Douglas. Douglas beat Breckenridge in the popular vote, but Breckenridge carried all of the southern states, and therefore took more votes in the Electoral College. The effect, of course, was to throw the election to Lincoln and the Republican Party, which has been soundly defeated when John Frémont had run for the office in 1856.

So the response of the South is obvious--the election of Lincoln lead them to believe that the institution of slavery would be abolished--never mind that Lincoln had no such power, and never mind that had their Congressional delegations remained in place, the constitution could not have been amended. Therefore, they violated the constitution by forming a confederacy, and by raising troops and levying war. They were not in the least subtle about it, either--they did so before Lincoln was even sworn in. James Chestnut, the senior Senator from South Carolina, lead the state delegation out of the Congress immediately after Lincoln's election, and even before the state had passed a secession ordinance. The reaction of most of the rest of the states which would form the Confederacy was the same. James Chestnut went back to South Carolina, and immediately began organizing the siege of the Federal installations in the harbor. He became the military aide to President Davis during the war, and his wife's diary is one of the most important primary source documents for life in Richmond and in the Carolina back country during the war.

The casus belli of the South could not be more obvious. That you choose to align yourself with the peddlers of the various feeble apologias for the South just further demonstrates how little you know. "Sorting out" the constitution? Please . . . at least make some kind of effort to produce an argument.

I suspect both that Snood is not insulted by anything i've written, and that he doesn't need your help to decide if he has been insulted.

April in Virginia Sucks...
R
T

No I didnt stupid, it was a trap and you walked into it. If politicians lie, then we can discount Stevens. If politicians tell the truth, then Lincoln wasnt fighting to free the slaves. It would be too much to expect your adled brain to understand simple logic.
You think you are an original source. What an unlucky day it was for us when you convinced yourself you were an historian. We can all google, fool.
Do you mean like your 1,173 words without a single reference ? Whats the matter ? Cant spell google ?
The fact that you are a USAian does discredit to them and does not mean you know more about the history of the USA anymore than fish know more about the Battle of the Pacific.
Very impressive...you are clever enough to use google.
Not to you, because you dont know what you are talking about. You impressed some of the laymen here with your ability to google and then without a single reference claim it as your personal knowledge ....who do you think you are fooling, fool ?
Dont discount yourself yet...I am not finished with you.
And that is exactly what people were supposed to think so there would be no question of ever resuming slavery...too much sacrifice to go back on.
That you choose to align yourself with the peddlers of the various feeble apologias for the North just further demonstrates how little you know.
I would be very insulted if a **** for brains type like you told me I didnt have to talk to someone. Who the ******* hell do you think you are ? Oh, thats right...an ipse dixit ex cathedra statement stealer from google.
But he needs your help to decide who to respond to ? What an unmitigating useless jerk you are....USAians must cringe to hear your dribble of amateur history. A schoolboy would do better.

Look at all that verbose garbage you copied and pasted...none of it proving anything but that you hope enough randomly goggled facts will scare people...oh, and your opinion of me....but no justification or argument supporting your claim. What a **** for brains you are...thank God you have a dog who puts up with you enough to trust you to be able to open a can of dog food.

Well snood, looks like its your week to water him.

You have my backing in this, snood. If there had been no slavery issue there would have been no war.

You make yourself out to be an idiot of the same water as the Rapist Boy. The issue of the thread is not whether or not there were racists in the North, it is not whether or not the Union and Mr. Lincoln fought to free the slaves--it is that the purpose of the Confederate States was to preserve slavery. Any comments about Mr. Lincoln's attitude or why the North fought the war are non sequiturs. You know, it's bad enough that you say such stupid things, it's really too much that you try to claim you were being clever.

I have never claimed to be an historian. You can't google something, if you don't know in the first place what you're looking for. Which is the category in which we can place you when it comes to history in general, and United States history in particular.

I see no reason to provide any more evidence than you have . . . which is to say, none.

As i've already pointed out, not only is there no reason to assume that you don't know anything about American history--you've consistently demonstrated your ignorance of the subject.

Once again, if you've got an argument to support your idiotic position, produce it. Otherwise, you're just whistling past the graveyard. Put up or sut up, clown.

Absolutely nothing which i posted was copied and pasted, with the exception of the quote of Mr. Lincoln. Make all the sneers you want about Google, but in the first place, it's more evidence than you've produced, and in the second, once again, you can't google it if you don't know what to look for.

Which probably explains why you never produce any evidence, period, on any subject.

Farmerman, you insult house plants everywhere.

I suppose in a simplistic view both sides in a war fight for the same thing...by this logic the Allies won WWII so they could free Poland...which they never did but in a simpistic view was the whole reason for WWII.

We didnt stop the Germans from having unit meetings and singing old war songs, why try to stiffle the south ? Why not stop the history of units that fought the indians ? Lets erase the history of the Tuskegee Airmen because they were a product of racism...Why did they fight for a racist USA ? Were they supporting racism ?
And this is supported by your opinion...I think we know what that is worth.
So your ability to spell one word makes you clever ? This googleing of yours is what makes your posts so pathetically dull. You neither understand the background nor the little snippets of info that come from history. Your attitude is google it, write it at A2K and stand back to take the glory...well you are a fuckwit.
So you agree you have provided no evidence, just a lot of useless information irrelevant to the debate. Are we supposed to imagine your opinion or just give you credit for being able to copy and paste ?
God you are an idiot.
So in your opinion you have provided no evidence.

Join in, fm, dont be shy...or do you and **** for brains want to get a room together ?

Since less then 20% of southerners owned slaves, I dont see how it was all about slavery.
And since free blacks in the south also owned slaves, I dont see how you can make it about white slave owners.

http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_slaveowners.htm

Was slavery an issue in the war?
Yes, but it was a minor one.

You're peddling a typical southern apologia, too. The fact that a minority of Southerners owned slaves doesn't alter the fact that the war was about slavery. That a minute handful of blacks owned slaves doesn't alter the fact that the war was about slavery. I didn't see where Snood said that it was "about white slave owners." Perhaps you can quote that passage for me.

To claim that slavery was a minor issue is to willfully ignore the central issue of the actions of the Southern states. I made the points about the fight at Pensacola, in Charleston harbor and the formation of the Confederacy in Montgomery, Alabama--all occurring before Lincoln was inaugurated precisely because it was a unique reaction to an election. On more than one occasion before 1860, people whom Southerners did not approve of were elected President. So why did they have this reaction in 1860? The answer is obvious. The effect of the Lincoln-Douglas debates was not only to ruin the political prospects of Stephen Douglas in the future, it was also to make Lincoln the boogeyman to slave owners. The reaction of the mob in Pensacola, of the seven states in Montgomery and the authorities in South Carolina was clearly an hysterical reaction to the election of a man they saw as the standard bearer for abolition.

The South did not go to war over the tariff, the only other deeply divisive issue between North and South, and one which had been on the boil for generations. If you allege that there were more important issues than slavery, what were they? What is your evidence that these states started a war in 1860 because of those issues, and not because of slavery.

You're not this stupid--you do yourself a disservice to peddle this horseshit.

The Confederacy was about fear.

Fear of what would happen when all of those slaves were freed.

When you read Mary Chestnut's diary, that fear comes through strongly in the passages she writes about going down home to the Carolina back country.