[extropy-chat] looks like Bush will win

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Trend Ologist <trendologist at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>  And they want us to pity them for 140 years ago?
> Northerners weren't particularly interested in
> abolishing slavery, they bent over backwards to avoid
> the war yet Southerners wanted the Feds to guarantee
> slavery by using Federal agents to retrieve runaway
> slaves-- plus the South wanted other completely
> un-Christian measures to be instituted. 
> Sure, this is all a generalization however I can't
> avoid thinking very many Southerners want some sort of
> revenge. 
> 

I don't know what school you went to, Trend, but you are seriously
misinformed about the Civil War, its causes, and its cheerleaders.
Northern industrialists needed cheap scab labor to combat the nascent
labor movement. Many protestant sects saw slavery as a mortal sin. Who
do you think instigated the attack on Harper's Ferry? Northern
abolitionists, in control of northern governments, had sent agents into
southern states for 20 years preceding the war to incite slaves to
escape and assist escape, teaching slaves to read, and inciting slave
revolts. The northern states had prohibited any new states north of the
36th parallel from permitting slavery, and tried to force Texas to
disavow slavery for admission to the union.

Nor, contrary to what you were probably taught in your textbooks, were
Southern claims based on "states rights", despite what your socialist
teachers like to claim. The fact is that it was the NORTHERN states,
resisting the Fugitive Slave Act, claiming a state's rights argument to
interposition against the Act and the articles of the Constitution they
found repellent pillars of slavery enforcement, and they lost the
argument in the nefarious Dredd Scott decision. The Southern States
were arguing the proper enforcement of the US Constitution,
particularly the "full faith and credit" clause, which REQUIRES that
all states recognise the validity of court orders issued by a court in
another state, including writs for return of property.

The North attacked the South because almost all southern congressmen
and senators walked out of congress in mid-session, leaving it in a
rump state, a situation the Constitution was not constructed to be able
to handle, and thus their walkout was an attack upon the Constitution.
The only southern politician to remain in congress was Senator Andrew
Johnson, of Tennessee, who became Lincoln's last Vice President.

The South had legitimate gripes in addition to their clinging to the
institution of slavery. For example, "Theses interests, in connection
with the commercial and manufacturing classes, have also succeeded, by
means of subventions to mail steamers and the reduction in postage, in
relieving their business from the payment of about $7,000,000 annually,
throwing it upon the public Treasury under the name of postal
deficiency." (Georgia declaration of secession) i.e. US Postal Service
subsidized the mailing costs for northern industry.

Also, "The manufacturers and miners wisely based their demands upon
special facts and reasons rather than upon general principles, and
thereby mollified much of the opposition of the opposing interest. They
pleaded in their favor the infancy of their business in this country,
the scarcity of labor and capital, the hostile legislation of other
countries toward them, the great necessity of their fabrics in the time
of war, and the necessity of high duties to pay the debt incurred in
our war for independence. These reasons prevailed, and they received
for many years enormous bounties by the general acquiescence of the
whole country." (Georgia declaration of secession) i.e. very high
tariffs upon imported cloth (even cloth manufactured in Europe from
Southern cotton) to protect the northern cloth and clothing industries.

 



=====
Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Sadomikeyism


		
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