STOPPING THE CIVIL WAR

The best way to avoid the war would have been for the North to let the South secede.

This would not only have saved thousands of lives and years of horrible civil war, it would have made us a better country. The ideology of the Confederate South damages our country to this day.

Look at the divisiveness we are facing with two parts of an American public that is largely broken along the lines (at least philosophically) of the Union and the Confederacy.

To this day, the Conservatives hold to a religious ideals from the 19th century, segregation, harsh legalism and scorn for the poor.

We should have jettisoned the South while we had the chance.

We would have gotten rid of much of the war-mongering, Bible-banging, anti-science, pro-gun, anti-poor backwards part of our country that is causing so many problems now.

I only wish we had this option now.

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There was no possible way to stop the Civil War from happening. It has been described by some historians as "the irrepressible conflict." It wasn't a matter of 'whether' but a matter of 'when.' I suppose the South's deciding to end slavery voluntarily before 1860 would have done the trick, but that's not even utopian thinking, that's just an absurd notion. The only other way would have been for the United States (in the persons of President Lincoln and the Congress of the time) to immediately recognize the Confederate States of America as a legitimate independent nation, grant it full diplomatic recognition and go on from there.

Both the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850 were band-aid solutions for a compound fracture. The Kansas-Nebraska Act pleased nobody and Kansas became a free-fire combat zone as a result. TRhe Abolitionists were killing the pro-slavery people at approcimately the same rate that they were being done in.

There might have been yet another way to prevent the war, but we have to go wayyyy back in history for that. If slavery had been outlawed outright by the US Constitution when the 13 colonies became the 13 states, that might have done the trick. Only problem here was that none of the Southern colonies would have gone along with that proposal as their cotton-tobacco-indigo-sugar cane industry was dependent on slave labor. In that case a civil war might well have ensued 80 years earlier.

I do hope Setanta sees this thread and comes along to addmore detail. He's the expert.

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ebrown makes some sense, even tho I think it's still our mission to civilize the south.

But seriously, the best way would have been for the founding fathers to actually live up to the ideals they professed to believe in. They should have abolished slavery and the absurd idea that some of us are only 3/5 of a man.

But they didn't have the courage. And for a lot of them, their ideals were just empty rhetoric.

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The founding fathers were trying to build a government for themselves, not the masses. They only gave in to the Bill of Rights and other provisions because some states were balking at ratifying the Constitution.

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username wrote:

. . . even tho I think it's still our mission to civilize the south.

I see ignorant Yankee horsie poop like this, and it leaves me disinclined to respond to the thread . . . maybe i'll be back later . . . maybe . . .

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Set, pls note that the horsie poop was posted by a respoonder, not the person who asked the question. So, come on back, pls, and give us some more insight. I can't do this all by myself, you know.

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Some people still appear to be heavily irony-challenged.

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Nice dodge, but it won't wash, yer not foolin' anyone . . .

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Gee I kinda got the idea from being raised in the dumb South that the Civil War was just another industrial revolution and a lot of the rhetoric is guilt based. I come from one of those families that was North/South and have notable relatives that were envolved in the conflict in a big way.

I got John Brown, the heretic, on one side and John Bell Hood on the other - Both crazy as all get out. Great granddaddy, Joel Anderson was a courier for Lincoln (came from the same hometown) and was made homestead agent for the Arkansas Territory and later made the Oklahoma Land Run. The property they claim staked was taken by eminent domain and is now a part of Tinker Airforce Base.

love,

Sglass

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Yeah, I know, Seaglass. But what would you have done to stop the whole shootin' match? My guess is you couldn't've done a lick to get old John Brown to set down with old General Hood over a jug of sour-mash and talk things out.

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Everything in history happens the way it did because that was the only way it could happen, due to the influences of so many different people, etc. After all, there's only ever one possible outcome, once everything's said and done (literally). So trying to think about what would have stopped the Civil War won't accomplish much, because 1) it was not stopped, 2) we will never know all of the factors contributing to it, let alone what might have hypothetically stopped it, and 3) there's already more than enough in history that actually did happen that we still can't explain or still don't even know about. Besides, the only way to understand fully what might have stopped the Civil War, in theory, is to know everything--and I mean every single individual thing--that caused it and then to do some sorta crazy reverse analysis. It won't work, though; we will never know that much. And as such, I don't even want to speculate about what might have prevented the Civil War, really.

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One thing that might have helped would have been to get rid of the candyass ditherer McClellan and hire somebody who knew how to wage an offensive war and wasn't afraid to do so.

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McClellan was a railroad company engineer before the war began. He went into civilian life after the Mexican War, and wasn't even on the military horizon when the war broke out. Apparently, as well as being a regional bigot, you don't have a good grasp of the chronology of the war. McClellan had absolutely no effect on whether or not the war took place.

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True, set, that he didn't have an effect on starting the war,but he sat and sat and sat after he got into Va., even tho he had a much bigger army at his back. Had he attacked, he'd likely have broken the back of the South, and the war wouldn't have lasted the four years it did. Not as good as not having it start at first, but far better than the disaster it became.

And I am sorry, but I cannot for the life of me see any nobility in the Southern cause--if that's regional bigotry, so be it. The South went to war because of slavery. That's why they opposed Lincoln and hated him in the first place. State's rights, then, and from the time of the Constitution and into the civil rights struggles of the 60's largely (tho not entirely) was used as a cloak for
denial of rights to black Americans.

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Uh...am I missing something here? How would the absence of McClelland or any other general have prevented the war? I believe that was the question, not how to win it faster.

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username wrote:

True, set, that he didn't have an effect on starting the war,but he sat and sat and sat after he got into Va., even tho he had a much bigger army at his back. Had he attacked, he'd likely have broken the back of the South, and the war wouldn't have lasted the four years it did. Not as good as not having it start at first, but far better than the disaster it became.

As MA points out in his subsequent post, this thread is not about the war, but a what-if of how the war might have been prevented. McClellan "got into Virginia" in a spring 1861 campaign in the western counties, in which he, thanks largely to the on-again-off-again performance of his subordinate, Rosecrans, routed the Confederate forces in western Virginia. It was for precisely that reason that he was called to Washington City and assumed command the day after Irvin McDowell's army was routed at Manassas. Yours here is but a shallow, and i suspect, ill-informed analysis, and looks at his performance in 1862, not in 1861.

Which, once again, as has been pointed out to you, had nothing to do with the titular question of the thread.

Quote:

And I am sorry, but I cannot for the life of me see any nobility in the Southern cause--if that's regional bigotry, so be it. The South went to war because of slavery. That's why they opposed Lincoln and hated him in the first place. State's rights, then, and from the time of the Constitution and into the civil rights struggles of the 60's largely (tho not entirely) was used as a cloak for
denial of rights to black Americans.

I don't know to whom you think you're apologizing. No one here has touted a notion of nobility on the part of the supporters of the southern Confederacy. One thing is correct in this however, you display regional bigotry. The notion of someone so ill-informed about the war and about the contemporary south taking up the task of civilizing them is laughably absurd.

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ebrown_p wrote:

The best way to avoid the war would have been for the North to let the South secede.

This would not only have saved thousands of lives and years of horrible civil war, it would have made us a better country. The ideology of the Confederate South damages our country to this day.

Look at the divisiveness we are facing with two parts of an American public that is largely broken along the lines (at least philosophically) of the Union and the Confederacy.

To this day, the Conservatives hold to a religious ideals from the 19th century, segregation, harsh legalism and scorn for the poor.

We should have jettisoned the South while we had the chance.

We would have gotten rid of much of the war-mongering, Bible-banging, anti-science, pro-gun, anti-poor backwards part of our country that is causing so many problems now.

I only wish we had this option now.

Believe me, it is the south that would have been better off becuase of arrogant attitudes

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STOPPING THE CIVIL WAR

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