whats the point of war?

THERE IS NONE.

Why did this thread get so sidetracked? Lincoln was not the point, I was just using examples of statesmen who were somehow involved with war.

Yes I should have avoided the obvious semantic mistake of claiming the wartime leader who was the commander in chief when hostilities actually broke out and who gave the US army the orders to mobilize against the South war actually "led the country into war".

The real point is that war (Civil or otherwise) is a human necessity and that without war we wouldn't be human.

Now I will withdraw my statement about Lincoln, let's get back on topic.

I don't care what you deny as a result of your obsessive-compulsive delusions about some possible "libertarian" paradise. Your inferences from what i have posted are not justified. Secretary Floyd began illegally shipping arms, in the end well over one hundred thousand muskets, to southern states in 1860, before Lincoln had even been elected. So-called "state troops" of at least three states took military action against the United States without provocation, and in the cases of Florida and Alabama, without having passed ordinances of secession. They were bent on war, and wrapping yourself in some flimsy rag of a flag stitched up from melodramatic statements about independence doesn't change that.

OK, so lemme get this straight:
in the Setantric vu of history,
REGARDLESS of whether thay could leave in peace,
the Southern States wanted war against the North,
NOT for political INDEPENDENCE, but for some other, different goal.

WHAT was the OBJECTIVE of that war, in the minds of the Southern Secessionists, if not Independence ???????


Please reveal this to us.





David

and how can i start a thread that has anything remotely to do with history or war, that doesn't come back to a huge discussion about the civil war?
it's never failed.
ask a question, and some one brings up the civil war.
i have nothing against this, but, its kind of strange, or at least, curios.

The preservation of the institution of slavery. Duh . . .

Something which never seems to come up in the Omsignacian "vu" of history. (No one in their right mind would pronounce "vu" as the would "view"--view is two syllables.)

If, as you allege, the southern states could have left in peace, why did they make war on the United States?

Some people say that war is only good for population control.

Now u CONTRADICT Setanta.
We have already agreed that its preservation
coud be and woud be accomplished by remaining and voting in Congress,
because the Abolitionists did NOT have the numbers to end slavery.
By reason of these facts: war was irrelevant to slavery,
or worse, for the Southern States: it resulted in ending it
and in undermining the sovereignty not only of the defeated States,
but also of the States whose successful troops conquered them.


It is beyond my power to conceive of the word: "view" being 2 syllables.
How can anyone say it that way????






Thay did so to eradicate an alien military presence from their midst.
That is what woud happen next week, if a community of Arabs
somewhere in America declared the Republic of Moslem,
and fortified it. It woud be like another Waco.





David

The fact that making war on the United States was just about the stupidest thing the southern states could have done to preserve the institution of slavery is not an argument against that having been their motive. Not only is there no universal law that people only ever do the most efficient things to acheive their ends, history is littered with the evidence of people doing just about the stupidest things they could and accomplishing as a result the exact opposite of their goals. I cannot recommend too highly Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly. That the southern states acted in a puerile, stupid manner does not contradict that they acted, ostensibly, to protect the institution of slavery. There is abundant documentary evidence to that effect.

The limits of your conceptual abilities are a subject of no interest to me.

Now you're reaching even farther from reality than is your wont. Not only is it a false analogy to compare Americans from one region to Americans from another to the rather obvious distinctions between Americans and Arabs, but in fact, southerners fought for the Union, and northerners fought for the South. Probably the most efficient and modern general during that war was George Henry Thomas, a native of Virginia. The commander of the cavalry division which crucially retarded the advance of Heth's division toward Gettysburg on July 1, 1863 was John Buford, a native of Kentucky. A few days later, the city of Vicksburg was surrendered to the Federal army commanded by Ulysses Grant. It was surrendered by General John Pemberton, a native of Philadelphia. Philip St. George Cooke, a native of Leesburg, Virginia, was the father of the woman who married James Ewell Brown Stuart. Cooke fought for the Union during the war, and of course, Stuart fought for the Confederacy--as did Cooke's son.

As usual, you trivialize these issues. The more i speak with you about history, the more apparent it becomes that your knowledge of history is only superficial, it is shallow, and that this cannot be corrected because you surrender your intellectual abilities to your political obsessions. The South started that war, and it had nothing to do with an allegedly "alien" military power in thei midst. I'm sure they didn't feel that they were that alien when they were fighting the Creek War or the Seminole War, and they certainly benefited from northern participation in the Mexican War, which, as many northerners saw it, served to extend the potential territory for slave states. That it didn't work out that way does not alter the intent. The southerners responsible for that war were a relatively small coterie of self-interested slave owners who were happy enought to have the military equipment and defensive installations they used provided through the revenues from the more numerous North. To now allege that they were some noble band of libertarians is, sadly, all too exemplary or your distorted and essentially immoral view of history and of life.

Of course you mean, kuvasz that there's no ethically VALID point of war.
The forces of the millitary-industrial complex find all kinds of points to war, all ethically dubious and related to greed and power hunger.

I might suggest that war is the goal of politics--sometimes.

war is a physical form of politics.

Yes, and perhaps economics as well.

In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes purports that the theft of the wealth of others is the origin of war.

Yes, and, of course, that wealth may be territory, with its resources..

I've wondered if the Civil War was "baited" by the North, since it ultimately allowed the North to impoverish a Southern banking system? And, we know "nature abhors a vacuum." Plus, the North might have been aware that Britain would not come to the aid of the South, even though cotton was king, perhaps for one of two possible reasons? a) England might have been looking to make India a cotton producer? b) In international affairs, the slave-holding South might have become a cause for embarrassment, since other European powers could point to Britain's allowing the colonies its independence (approximately 70 years earlier), but then the newly independent nation maintaining a slave driven economy well into the 19th century?

Regardless, I do not see the South's beginning the Civil War as an act of "stupidity," but a reflection of a "White birthright" system that Southerners were born into, and had no way to "convert out of." Southerners were born into the "sin" of prior generations, and could not "opt out," based on the economy being driven by slaves being mortgaged property with banks. Southerners, in my opinion, had been painted, so to speak, into a corner, that they had been put in, by prior generations of White Southerners. Sort of like blaming a Jew for his/her non-Christian beliefs. Not his/her fault for being born into a Jewish family.

And, while people equate the sin of slavery to the Nazi use of slave labor, the Nazis were the generation that initially bought the propaganda that slave labor was acceptable. The White Southerners of the Civil War generation were born more than a hundred years after the initial acceptance of slavery being the driver of the Southern economy.

What southern banking system? You just make this **** up as you go along, don't you. In fact, the Prime Minister of England, Lord Palmerston, hated the United States, had done so all his life, and had always said so. He particularly despised Lincoln and Stanton, and he said that, too. However, the textile industry in England had the greatest concentration of factory workers, and they idolized Lincoln, and many of them were followers of evangelical religions, which has supported William Wilberforce's anti-slavery movement. Although most of them could not vote, the power of public opinion, and of evangelical sentiment among men who could vote was such that Palmerston dared not act on his hatred of the United States. By the way, Lincoln's "four score and seven years ago" ought to have been a clue for you--the Gettysburg address, delivered in November, 1863, was 87 years after the Declaration of Independence.

You're a fool if you think that all southerners had a "white birthright" for which they were willing to fight and die. While many men who owned no slaves supported the institution of slavery in the hope of one day being that affluent, much as contemporary Republican supporters who don't benefit from tax cuts still support them, it would be difficult to suggest that even half of southerners supported fighting a war for the institution of slavery. The western counties of Virginia seceded from Virginia after Virginia had seceded from the United States. That's the origin of the state of West Virginia. The eastern counties of Tennessee did not secede from that state, but neither did they participate in the Confederacy, and in fact, many of the men from eastern Tennessee fought in Federal armies. Knoxville, the largest city of eastern Tennessee, held for the Union, and held out throughout the war against Confederate attacks and a protracted siege. Lincoln's second Vice President, Andrew Johnson, was the political leader of the Union men of Tennessee.

Manpower was sufficiently crucial in the South that the Confederate States Congress enacted conscription before it was enacted in the United States. Even then, it was necessary to send significant armed forces into the mountains to try to round up draftees and deserters. Desertion cost southern armies as much as combat casualties in the last two years of the war.

It just astounds me that you think you know anything about history.

Set, I'm impressed by both your control of so much historical information and your ability to read its meaning so clearly and sensibly.

Slaves were expensive, and plantation owners purchased new slaves, like one purchases new equipment for a factory with a bank loan.

Regardless, it appears to me that you seem to interpret the Southern attempt at seccession as a fool's dream, with too many obstacles to have made it anything else.

I believe that the North was fighting for its national sovereignty, since if the South won, and some had desires to annex Mexico, the North might have found itself willing to go back to Mother England for its safety (merge with Canada), since to its South there might have been a pugnacious new nation.

The problem with my accepting your "facts" is you back them up with what historians have wrote, and may or may not be the reality, but what historians want people to believe for posterity. I tend to believe that, like many an organization's management, the real reason for something transpiring is often not made public. Dissimulation may be the byword for much of history, in my opinion.

And, I do not believe that White Southerners were fighting so that one day they would have the chance to be the owner of a plantation. Similar to the poor Whites today that vote Republican, and will never be the "wealthy Republican," the purpose of fighting for the Southern Confederacy was to MAINTAIN THE STATUS QUO, WHERE BEING WHITE AUTOMATICALLY MEANT SUPERIORITY. Also, there was a visceral antipathy to Northerners, including all the variations of immigrants that were in the North. In effect, as poor as a White Southerner might be, he felt superior to all White Northerners and Blacks. I have always tried to put myself into the shoes (aka, mindset) of those I want to understand, rather than just look at the facts. That is why many cannot predict what Israel is capable of doing, in my opinion, for example.

If I want the "facts" and responsible interpretations of what happened in the past, I think my best strategy is to turn mainly to scholars (both academic specialists and commited amateurs) who have spent a good deal of time preparing themselves for the discipline of historiography. This does not guarantee that they will set me straight, but they are my best chance. I would avoid, or at least read with scepticism, ideologues.