Update: Welcome new readers. Many of you have come here via a link from TPM or Daily Kos. We’re glad that you’ve decided to drop by. And while you’re here, let me invite you to look at some posts beyond this one. Here’s the original post:
I don’t want to pick a fight with Ron Paul’s spambots supporters, which who seem to be among the most annoying passionate on the web. But I will say this: their guy is more than a little nuts. Seriously, on Meet the Press earlier today he suggested that Lincoln was wrong to go to war in 1861.
Here’s the exchange:
MR. RUSSERT: I was intrigued by your comments about Abe Lincoln. “According to Paul, Abe Lincoln should never have gone to war; there were better ways of getting rid of slavery.”
REP. PAUL: Absolutely. Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war. No, he shouldn’t have gone, gone to war. He did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic. I mean, it was the–that iron, iron fist..
MR. RUSSERT: We’d still have slavery.
REP. PAUL: Oh, come on, Tim. Slavery was phased out in every other country of the world. And the way I’m advising that it should have been done is do like the British empire did. You, you buy the slaves and release them. How much would that cost compared to killing 600,000 Americans and where it lingered for 100 years? I mean, the hatred and all that existed. So every other major country in the world got rid of slavery without a civil war. I mean, that doesn’t sound too radical to me. That sounds like a pretty reasonable approach.
There are so many things wrong with this line of argument that I don’t even know where to start. Oh wait, yes I do. Let’s begin with: Lincoln didn’t go to war to “get rid of the original intent of the republic.” You have to know even less about history than Tim Russert — I wouldn’t have thought it possible — to say such a ridiculous thing. Or you have to be a bit too willing, eager even, to marry libertarian political ideology with neo-Confederate historical revisionism. Just to be clear: Lincoln went to war to preserve the Union. That’s it. End of story. Full stop.
Also: Lincoln didn’t start the Civil War. To clarify his position throughout the 1860 campaign and well into 1861, long after he was elected president without his name having appeared on a single Southern ballot, Lincoln said that slavery shoudn’t be allowed to expand into the West — a position that was part of the Republican Party (Paul’s party) platform.
Because of his incredibly bold lukewarm stance — again, not for emancipation and certainly not for immediate abolition but only against the further expansion of slavery — South Carolina seceded after the 1860 election results became clear. Six other Confederate States soon followed. This was still prior to Lincoln’s inauguration, mind you, and the president-elect needed to try to persuade the Border States to reject rebellion. So he kept promising, as he had throughout the electoral season, not to prune back the peculiar institution where it already had taken root, but only to insure that it would spread no further.
Which compromised position, by the way, wasn’t good enough for many loyal Republicans (the Ron Pauls of their era, I suppose), who asked that Lincoln forestall war by allowing slavery unfettered access to Western soil. Lincoln, to his credit, replied that such a move would have rendered the Republican Party and his administration a “mere sucked egg, all shell and no principle in it.”
And then, to reitterate, South Carolina seceded. Still, the war didn’t actually start until Confederate artillery began bombarding Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor on April 12, 1861. Then and only then did Lincoln call for troops.
So, because Tim Russert is such an ignorant gassbag, here are my questions for Paul: given that Lincoln didn’t start the war, what should he have done? Allowed the Union to blow apart to avoid bloodshed? And for how much longer, Dr. Paul, you exquisite champion of freedom, would it have been okay to enslave African-Americans in the United States? Another generation? Two? More than that?
And what of denying African-Americans the rights guaranteed in the Constitution, which document, I’ve heard, you admire? (What do I mean, gentle reader? Well, it seems that Paul’s also no fan of the Civil Rights Act.)
Roll tape:
MR. RUSSERT: Let me ask you about race, because I, I read a speech you gave in 2004, the 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. And you said this: “Contrary to the claims of” “supporters of the Civil Rights Act of” ’64, “the act did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of” ’64 “increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty.” That act gave equal rights to African-Americans to vote, to live, to go to lunch counters, and you seem to be criticizing it.
REP. PAUL: Well, we should do, we should do this at a federal level, at a federal lunch counter it’d be OK or for the military. Just think of how the government, you know, caused all the segregation in the military until after World War II. But when it comes, Tim, you’re, you’re, you’re not compelled in your house to invade strangers that you don’t like. So it’s a property rights issue. And this idea that all private property is under the domain of the federal government I think is wrong. So this–I think even Barry Goldwater opposed that bill on the same property rights position, and that–and now this thing is totally out of control. If you happen to like to smoke a cigar, you know, the federal government’s going to come down and say you’re not allowed to do this.
MR. RUSSERT: But you would vote against…
REP. PAUL: So it’s…
MR. RUSSERT: You would vote against the Civil Rights Act if, if it was today?
REP. PAUL: If it were written the same way, where the federal government’s taken over property–has nothing to do with race relations. It just happens, Tim, that I get more support from black people today than any other Republican candidate, according to some statistics. And I have a great appeal to people who care about personal liberties and to those individuals who would like to get us out of wars. So it has nothing to do with racism, it has to do with the Constitution and private property rights.
For anyone considering voting for Ron Paul, please think again. I know that you’re fed up with the war. So am I. I know that you distrust politicians. So do I. I know that you crave change. Me too. But Ron Paul is either a lunatic, a stone-cold racist (seemingly an in-the-hip-pocket-of-the-Slaveocracy racist, which, to be fair, isn’t very different from some other prominent Republicans — see Trent Lott and his recent defenders) or both. And, by the way, what happened to supporting the troops? Calling the Civil War “senseless”; what will that do to morale?
Update: Matthew Yglesias, as usual, beat me to punch. I’d say that I’m getting tired of this. But I’d better get used to it. I’m old and slow. He’s young and nimble.
The Edge of the American West 
376 comments
December 24, 2007 at 12:39 am
bitchphd
No comments on this yet? Obscurity has its advantages.
December 24, 2007 at 12:43 am
Rhetorical Spiral » Ron Paul: Lincoln Was A Warmonger
[…] out that that and everything in the above passage is, well, batshit insane, and I’ll let a real historian do the dirty work of really debunking all of this, but perhaps someone should go tell Mr. Paul about Fort Sumter. No, wait, don’t tell me, […]
December 24, 2007 at 5:10 am
DrEast
“Allowed the Union to blow apart to avoid bloodshed?”
That is exactly what he should have done. What’s so great about the Union?
December 24, 2007 at 5:36 am
ari
If that’s your point, okay. Just so we’re clear.
December 24, 2007 at 6:24 am
David Carlton
“To Horace Greeley he famously infamously said: ‘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.'”
A correction–Lincoln did *not* say this to conciliate the South prior to Fort Sumter. He wrote this letter in the Summer of 1862, even as the draft of the Emancipation Proclamation was sitting on his desk. I’d say the best reading of this letter [ambiguous as so many of Lincoln’s pronouncements were–We keep forgetting that he was a politician] is that he was preparing the nation to accept Emancipation as a means to preserve the Union. It was, after all, an enormously controversial move, and risked splitting support for the war effort among a white population still very much committed to white supremacy. But placed in its context, it means something very different than what Lincoln’s detractors think it does.
December 24, 2007 at 6:29 am
ari
Sorry, I wasn’t implying that he wrote that to conciliate the South prior to the war. I thought the link would make that clear. But I’ll clarify what is an ambiguous part of the post. Thanks for bringing this to my attention and for the rest of your thoughtful comment.
December 24, 2007 at 11:13 am
Tom Paine
It sounds as if you know your Civil War history. When I was in college it seemed as it even though the Civil War was long ago, both academics and non-academics still debated its causes and if it could have been prevented.
But as for me re-thinking my support for Ron Paul – not a chance – the Civil War happened a long time ago – now Americans have to deal with an Imperial Presidency, a war based on lies, and a threat to our liberties.
But if you are a Democratic Party member, how can you defend their top tier candidates’ stand on Iraq and the threat to our civil liberties? Paul would end the Iraq war immediately, unlike the Democrats who use language like ‘phased withdrawal’ to indicate that there would still be a US presence in Iraq for years to come.
Democrats would also tinker with the Patriot Act, not eliminate it like Paul would.
And do the Democrats call for an end to US Imperialism like Paul proposes?
So instead of asking me to re-think my support for Paul, perhaps it is you Democrats who need to re-think your support of a party who enabled Bush to wage imperial war and dilute our liberties.
December 24, 2007 at 11:30 am
anon
You should re-read Edmund Wilson’s essay on Lincoln in “Patriotic Gore.” Paul basically follows the Wilson line. Is Wilson a nut?
December 24, 2007 at 11:37 am
ari
Thanks for stopping by Tom. All of the points you make have some merit, to be sure. And I think the positions you’ve outlined are what many people see in Congressman Paul. But, in the end we’ll have to agree to disagree, because I can’t support any candidate who comes across as tacitly anti-Union and even a little tolerant of slavery. It’s hard for me to read Paul’s comment in any other way. Put another way, I understand that many people support Paul because of his position on civil liberties. I respect that. And, inasmuch as Paul’s surprisingly wides and very deep support might shape the debate over the rule of law, I thank his supporters. Regardless, I can’t help but find their chosen candidate a bit out there. Have a wonderful holiday season.
December 24, 2007 at 11:57 am
Bruce Moomaw
Actually, David Carlton’s correction is irrelevant — our host didn’t specifically quote that particular statement of Lincoln’s as evidence that Lincoln said he was willing to compromise on slavery before the Civil War started. He doesn’t have to; Lincoln said precisely the same thing on numerous other occasions during his campaign — including on one visit to South Carolina. (He made that trip despite the fact that not only was he not on the ballot in that state; NOBODY was on the ballot in that state, since it didn’t allow its people to vote for President at all till after the Civil War.)
December 24, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Tom Paine
Thanks for the civil discussion Ari:
But just because Paul believes that slavery could have been ended by means other than war doesn’t necessarily mean that he is a “little tolerant of slavery.”
To me, that is somewhat akin to the neo-con argument that if you don’t believe in invading Iraq to liberate them from the brutal dictator Saddam, you support his tactics.
And what is so great about a union of states whose land was in many cases acquired unjustly?
December 24, 2007 at 12:02 pm
out of the loop
Neither Paul’s comments nor the comments in this blog provide an accurate portrayal of the causes of the civil war. One thing that is for sure: it wasn’t fought to “free the slaves.” Like all other things that have to do with politics and war, the civil war was the culmination of shifts in political and financial power in the preceding decades. the agricultural south was becoming relatively less powerful and the industrial north relatively more powerful with the growth of the industrial revolution. just as the invasion of iraq now is justified by Bush in terms of bringing freedom, the civil war has been justified in terms of ending slavery. but, let’s not be naive. Paul’s analysis isn’t sensible, but neither are the knee jerk responses against it that seemingly accept the false argument that it was fought to free the slaves. let’s all grow up. russert and paul are no more wrong (and not more right) than are the bloggers going after them on this. paul’s probably right about one thing. the civil war cannot be justified on the basis of an effort to end slavery. that’s a false justification. slavery had to be ended, but no war needs to be fought.
December 24, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Liam
Ron Paul on NBC Sunday Morning:
He is one scary crackpot.
He said that the civil rights bill that ended segregation should never have been put in to law.
Then he said that Abraham Lincoln should not have fought the Civil War.
Does Ron Paul even know which side in the Civil War started it, and attacked the other side first?
This guy is a racist creep.
A brief history lesson on who actually caused the civil war. Some one please have Ron Paul read it, so he doesn’t continue to make a complete fool of himself with his statement about how Abraham Lincoln should not have fought the civil war.
If Ron Paul is so ignorant about which side started the civil war, and tried to leave the Union, then how the hell could any rational person want such an addled moron as President of the United States now!
Reality check; Mr. Paul.
January 1861 — The South Secedes.
When Abraham Lincoln, a known opponent of slavery, was elected president, the South Carolina legislature perceived a threat. Calling a state convention, the delegates voted to remove the state of South Carolina from the union known as the United States of America. The secession of South Carolina was followed by the secession of six more states — Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas — and the threat of secession by four more — Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. These eleven states eventually formed the Confederate States of America.
February 1861 — The South Creates a Government.
At a convention in Montgomery, Alabama, the seven seceding states created the Confederate Constitution, a document similar to the United States Constitution, but with greater stress on the autonomy of each state. Jefferson Davis was named provisional president of the Confederacy until elections could be held.
February 1861 — The South Seizes Federal Forts.
When President Buchanan — Lincoln’s predecessor — refused to surrender southern federal forts to the seceding states, southern state troops seized them. At Fort Sumter, South Carolina troops repulsed a supply ship trying to reach federal forces based in the fort. The ship was forced to return to New York, its supplies undelivered.
March 1861 — Lincoln’s Inauguration.
At Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, the new president said he had no plans to end slavery in those states where it already existed, but he also said he would not accept secession. He hoped to resolve the national crisis without warfare.
April 1861 — Attack on Fort Sumter.
When President Lincoln planned to send supplies to Fort Sumter, he alerted the state in advance, in an attempt to avoid hostilities. South Carolina, however, feared a trick; the commander of the fort, Robert Anderson, was asked to surrender immediately. Anderson offered to surrender, but only after he had exhausted his supplies. His offer was rejected, and on April 12, the Civil War began with shots fired on the fort. Fort Sumter eventually was surrendered to South Carolina.
April 1861 — Four More States Join the Confederacy.
The attack on Fort Sumter prompted four more states to join the Confederacy. With Virginia’s secession, Richmond was named the Confederate capitol.
December 24, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Ivan
Out of the loop, you’re pretty mistaken:
>russert and paul are no more wrong .. than are the bloggers
>going after them on this.
Actually, Ron Paul is entirely and completely full of shit, and the bloggers are correct.
His argument assumes the (as you already granted, incorrect) premise that the war was fought to free the slaves (otherwise, how could buying the slaves have avoided the war as he argues?).
But as you’ve agreed, the war wasn’t even fought to free the slaves; the war was fought, as this blog correctly noted, because the South wanted to secede primarily over the ability to *expand* slavery into new territories (yeah, people point to other possible reasons, but the fact of the matter is that every single state’s declaration of secession hammers the point repeatedly: slavery, slavery, slavery).
Care to explain how “no war needs to be fought”, given the above? What should’ve happened? Should Lincoln have let them go? Should he have acquiesced to their demands over expansion?
December 24, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Damn Yankee and Proud
Wow the southern racist revisionist scumbags are out in force today.
All it takes is one loss of message discipline by Ron Paul to turn the “party of Lincoln” types into raving crypto slavery advocates.
The Civil War was fought to preserve the Union. Southern states were seceeding to protect the institution of slavery. They lost, and slavery ended. If you have a problem with that, maybe you don’t belong in the United States of America. In fact, I doubt you belong in the human race. And you are certainly a certified kook sorely lacking in education.
December 24, 2007 at 1:19 pm
me
“Lincoln didn’t go to war to ‘get rid of the original intent of the republic.’ …Lincoln went to war to preserve the Union.”
Paul sounded like an idiot, but you’ve managed to elide a century of debate over the nature of the Constitution. What do you make of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, the Hartford convention, and the nullification crisis? It’s not right-wing nutbaggery to argue that many Americans believed in the compact theory of the Constitution.
And how did that whole “ending slavery” thing work out, after the war? What would, say, Ransom and Sutch argue about the northern commitment to ending racial subjugation?
December 24, 2007 at 1:38 pm
me
“The Civil War was fought to preserve the Union. Southern states were seceeding to protect the institution of slavery. They lost, and slavery ended.”
And that’s why Rutherford B. Hayes ended the military occupation of the South. And it explains sharecropping and Jim Crow and everything.
Whiggish fairytales.
December 24, 2007 at 1:43 pm
MAKE ME CA$H
take a break from the thought.
Visit http://makemecash.wordpress.com
December 24, 2007 at 2:02 pm
improbable
Tom Paine’s question about the value of preserving the union is a good one.
It seems that letting them secede, and preventing them (militarily if necessary) from gaining taking new territory in the west might have been a plausible option. The union would still have been a big strong industrial country. The confederacy would probably look something like the Caribbean today.
This isn’t my country, so I don’t know the civil war very well. Is there an agreed answer to this?
December 24, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Jymn
You have to remember too that the Civil War is still THE war in the south. There’s no real importance put on any succeeding war. The south lost and many southerners still speak of the loss in present tense. They are still pissed. They still hate Lincoln and the North. With a passion. And underlying it all is an incredible rascism that is passed in whispered jokes between almost every southerner I ever met. It is indeed a passion, this civil war, that only a loss can smart so bad.
December 24, 2007 at 2:34 pm
jw
Sorry, but Mr Paul is nothing like a “nut” in the first case. He’s saying that Lincoln went to war for the idea that Southern states did not have the right to secede from the Federal Republic, whereas the Southern states felt they did. This debate has been going on ever since the war itself, and you add nothing to it here. He also states his sense that, since other countries were ending slavery, the southern states would be coming along soon as well. Again, a reasonable enough position. Was “preserving the Union” and a century of Jim Crow (extending to more than fifty years after even Brazil ended slavery) worth 600,000 lives? This is, frankly, not something I can answer. I personally am not going to go to war to prevent the Limbaugh Nation from seceding; my feeling is that we’ll have a much better (if smaller) country without them. I see only two arguments for such a war: 1. the survival of MY part of the country depends on union, or 2. ending Limbidiocy, which would be a moral reason parallel to ending slavery. I don’t think the first argument was makable in either case.
December 24, 2007 at 2:35 pm
deacon
This statement is flatly incorrect:
“The rest of the Confederate States followed. This was still prior to Lincoln’s inauguration, mind you, and the president-elect needed to try to persuade the Border States to reject rebellion.”
The border South states had not yet seceded, and did not do so until after the events at Sumter and Lincoln’s call to arms. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas had all explicitly rejected the idea of secession at the point in time you reference. As you well know many well respected historians — most popularly Daniel Crofts — argue that these states ultimately seceded, and a civil war took place, only because Lincoln and the Republican party pursued an overly aggressive course of action in dealing with the seceded states.
The Civil War wasn’t fought over slavery, as Ron Paul and 99.9% of the American public assume, but it may well have been fought because of Lincoln’s aggressive policy.
December 24, 2007 at 2:47 pm
me
“The beatings meted out to black voters, the assassination of black leaders, the intimidation of black candidates, and the breaking up of meetings suggested in 1867 so of the techniques of terrorism that would be embellished in the next few years to expedite the political emasculation of the freedmen…Except for a few sporadic skirmishes, election day in the South passed quietly — and with it, some mistakenly thought, the old political and social order.” — Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery, 555-56.
“It must be remembered and never forgotten that the civil war in the South which overthrew Reconstruction was a determined effort to reduce black labor as nearly as possible to a condition of unlimited exploitation and build a new class of capitalists on this foundation. The wage of the Negro worker, despite the war amendments, was to be reduced to the level of bare subsistence by taxation, peonage, caste, and every method of discrimination.” — W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880, 670 (from the final chapter, “Back Toward Slavery”).
“In the end, however, the South could boast of white amnesty but had rejected black suffrage. The irony was not merely that the South had lost the war and won the peace by nullifying reconstruction, but that it was actually rewarded through congressional apportionment, when the southern states gained more congressional seats and more electoral votes, by having counted the entire free black population, yet prevented the blacks from voting…For the southern Negro, the end of reconstruction meant nothing but defeat, for the southern whites, who became finally reconciled to the end of slavery, decided to treat the blacks as peasants instead. As a result, the Negro was subordinated politically, economically, educationally, and socially…The South, then, had never been truly reconstructed or reformed, and in many respects it had not been fundamentally changed.” — William Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869-1879, 378-79.
W.E.B. Du Bois was obviously a right-wing nutjob — the South lost the Civil War, and slavery ended. That’s it. End of story. Full stop.
Right?
December 24, 2007 at 2:52 pm
jw
I should add that, while I might not fight in a war to end Limbidiocy, I probably WOULD fight in a war to end slavery if I didn’t think it would end any other way. The two are not equivalent.
December 24, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Liam
Ron Paul also told Tim Russert that he still believes that the passage of the Civil Rights bill, which ended racial segregation, was wrong. Paul is crypto white supremacist.
He is no better than Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, and Trent Lott on that issue.
The Nostalgia of Trent:
O he wished he were in a Strom led land,
Where non-whites’ rights were forever banned;
Lynch away, Lynch away, Lynch away Dixicrats.
December 24, 2007 at 3:22 pm
rob
Why has being a “racist” become such a cardinal sin in our society?
December 24, 2007 at 3:23 pm
7oby
I just wanted to mention that I come from south Mississippi and down there, hell all over the state, people still boil inside over the civil war. Many lost quite a lot more than just their slaves. And, many believe it wasn’t over slavery as much as it was over business, the way the south made it’s money was efficient (while pretty evil). I’m not necessarily in agreement, but “Intelligent Design” is just one thing they want taught in schools alongside science. “The War wasn’t about slavery” is the other.
Is it really a victory if nobody’s learned anything? Is Dr. Paul’s interest in alternative histories (what WOULD have happened if things happened differently) something to be scorned? The two most popular themes for alt histories are “What if Napoleon won?” and “What if the Civil War ended differently?”. Why not “What if the Civil War was sidestepped for something more civil?”
It’s not like he has a plan to subsidize creation of a time machine to go back and change it to the way he would like to have seen it go. Ron came back on Bill Maher in May after the interview in March wherein they discussed this civil war issue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo6KIusCBoU
December 24, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Liam
Why do so many people who live in what was the Confederate states, go bonkers over any perceived slight toward the Stars and Stripes, but at the same time insist that they have the absolute right to fly the Battle flag of the Confedracy: The flag that symbolizes that they wanted to leave the Union and no longer be among the stars and bars of the National flag.
Make up your minds, all you retro rebels; which flag is your national flag, and if it is the confedrate one, then you are not American, so go ahead and secede, and good riddance to you.
You have not right to complaint about any disrespect toward the stars and stripes as long as you choose to honor the flag of those national traitors who sought to break away from the USA.
December 24, 2007 at 3:46 pm
JW
“I’m old and slow”.
Yeah? Well, I’m old, slow, and increasingly cantankerous.
Did you ever see the National Lampoon cover of the old, old, withered old man staring out his upstairs window to the ground below? The caption had him shouting, “Hey you young people- GO TO HELL”!!!
That’s be me the day after tomorrow. Leastwise, in another 20 years or so.
December 24, 2007 at 3:56 pm
anon
ari,
do you have a take on the edmund wilson-gore vidal line on lincoln?
w/o being neo-racists, they do portray lincoln as a bismarck like statesman intent on consolidating his own/federal power. doesn’t mcpherson also say, in effect, that lincoln’s war made the u.s. safe for national consolidation–whether that be corporate rule (lincoln helped establish the rule of the railroad barons, didn’t he?) or eisenhower’s sending the troops to little rock? i happen to think that lincoln, among other achievements, did co-opt the civil war as an opportunity to end slavery (and admire him for it) but that does not mean that history–the past we inherit today–might not be better had lincoln not gone to war and legal slavery ended in some other way. the south does not acknowledge the north’s dominion and works to subvert the north’s victory–often with the aid of the north. wouldn’t you love to see how the country would function w/o the red states’ input? at any rate, the varying comments posted here suggest that the civil war is not over, is ongoing, and can’t be contained by a historian’s self-confident recounting of “the facts.” clearly, people do not agree what those facts mean. in the end, history is known only through conflict, which means that only in plato’s republic can “we” agree about what the civil war was for or whether it is even over. i wish lincoln’s union had won–but it is hard to say that they–we–did. paul may seem to some of you a kook–but the “racist” and “ignorant” views some of you attribute to him have plenty of support in the senate, the congress, the executive branch, and on the supreme court bench. fwiw (and i may be wrong), i dont think paul himelf is a racist or want to promote racism–just a little utopian in a recognizably american way. would the democratic candidates were too.
December 24, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Alexia
I swear you people only hear what you want to hear. Paul said the reason that he wouldn’t have voted for the Civil Rights bill AS IT WAS WRITTEN was because it gave away too much private property rights to the federal government. It had nothing to do with racism, and he specifically mentioned that it was wrong for the federal government to have segragated the troops for as long as they did. But everything else still came down to the question of personal liberty or federal government interference. As always, Paul opted to side with the Constitution.
December 24, 2007 at 4:13 pm
blah
You obviously know absolutely nothing about history. Suggest you look the real reason the Civil War was fought before you mouth off about what you don’t know about.
December 24, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Paul Davies
The point that hits me the hardest in all of this, is that Lincoln’s policy, the one that he tried to interest Congress and the border states in, was gradual, compensated emancipation. The Federal Government would compensate each state that agreed to emancipate its slaves by 1900. The plan failed because the abolitionists wanted immediate emancipation and the slave holders didn’t want emancipation at all.
December 24, 2007 at 4:40 pm
i am the son
The civil war was almost 150 years ago, and slavery still exists today as the trial of that couple in the Eastern States will prove, and they are only the ones we know about. If Ron Paul is a racist, then he shouldn’t hold any government position.
The voters will decide one way or another, and that’s a scary thought.
December 24, 2007 at 4:44 pm
ari
Anon, hello again. Thanks for coming back. You raise several reasonable questions here. So, let me try to answer them — to the best of my rather limited abilities. First, if I read you right, did Lincoln go to war to consolidate federal power? No, I don’t think so. But, once the South thrust war upon him, Lincoln did consolidate federal power in ways that were to that point unimaginable. Did he do that because he was mad for power? Nope again. At least I don’t think there’s evidence to support such a contention. Instead, he grabbed power because that was the best way he knew to win the war. And, by the way, most historians, McPherson included, suggest that the North’s centralized system of governance was one key to victory. The Confederacy, held together much more loosely, never could mount an effective war effort, much to Jeff Davis’s disgust.
At the risk of belaboring part of this point, and here I’m addressing many of the other people who have commented tonight, Lincoln didn’t want war. At all. Indeed, he did nearly everything he could to avoid it — short of compromising on the issue of allowing slavery to expand into the West. That’s why I used the sucked egg quote above. This isn’t a small point, by the way. Lincoln no more wanted to fight than he wanted to free the slaves. He went to war to preserve an iteration of the Nation that he believed worth saving. And then, as the war dragged on, he decided that he would have to remake the nation — by freeing the slaves — in order to secure its future. There can be all manner of disagreements, founded in counterfactuals, about whether the costs of the war were worth it. But there really isn’t much room for debate about whether Lincoln wanted the fight so that he could create a huge federal apparatus, squashing the rights of the states.
Now, here’s the question that I’ve left alone: what about the unintended consequences? Including, but not limited too, the massive consolidation of political and economic power in the hands of the few. Let me first say that, yes, that’s what happened. But I think, as I’ve intimated immediately above, that these consequences were unintended. In other words, Lincoln didn’t win the 1860 election, push for war hoping to gain power, and then reward railroad barons and various other plutocrats with the spoils of war. Again, the question of intent seems quite important here. And the answer is pretty clear as far as I can tell from the sources.
You then raise the question: would we be better off today had slavery ended in some other way, some more gradual manner of emancipation, presumably accompanied by some kind of compensation for slaveholders? The answer depends, I think, on too many factors ever to be knowable. Not to mention the moral issue of whether allowing slavery to have continued for even another moment is defensible. I know, I know, we have to stack that moral imperative up against the loss of 600,000 lives and untold treasure. I’m not an ethicist, but I think the idea of relegating a generation of slaves to some ill-defined additional amount of time in bondage is too horrible to contemplate. Also, remember that Lincoln didn’t enter the Civil War thinking that he would free the slaves. He entered the war to preserve the Union.
Finally, you raise an interesting issue about the way that the war is still interpreted, the collective memory of the conflict if you will. I’ll be posting more about this issue tomorrow, so forgive me if I leave that question alone for now. I’d hate to steal my own thunder.
Again, thanks both for the comments, the questions, and most of all, for the civility. It’s been my pleasure to correspond like this.
December 24, 2007 at 4:47 pm
ari
me x2: no, I’m not eliding a half a century of debates over how to interpret the Constitution. I just think those debates almost always boiled down to what would become of slavery in the future.
December 24, 2007 at 4:50 pm
ari
improbable and jw: you both ask if the country would be better off without the South. I don’t know. Which isn’t to say it’s not a good question. Just not a good question for this historian to answer. In other words, I’m not going to speculate. Sorry.
December 24, 2007 at 4:53 pm
ari
deacon: I think you’ve misninterpreted what I wrote in order to support your argument. Well played. Also, no, the idea that the rest of the Confederacy fell in line because of Lincoln’s treatment of the early secessionists is nonsense. The South had made it clear that it would not be satisified with anything other than Lincoln allowing slavery to expand into the West. Maybe a short-term compromise could have been crafted. But there had been enough of those. Too many to detail here.
December 24, 2007 at 5:08 pm
fgd
Ron Paul said that the best way to end slavery was to do it the same way that every other civilized country did it: by having the government buy slaves and release them. It’s much cheaper in the long run than a civil war. RP saying this shows that he has a good handle on rights and domestic policy.
This article is nothing but an uneducated smear.
December 24, 2007 at 5:10 pm
anon
ari,
thanks very much for the response. i asked the wilson question only to suggest that paul is not some isolated loon–just someone whose version of history you may not care for or want to endorse. i think history is mostly unintended consequences and then we who come after project our desires into the history we say the dead intended. i think what lincoln intended is “academic” in its most pejorative sense (thougha lot of fun to debate, just as could the 07 patriots defeat the 72 dolphins is fun to debate). what people intended and what happened rarely coincide, though i know historisns are generally trained to think that they do. i dont think lincoln wanted to go to war either. i do think he was happy to be the one to get the credit for ending slavery and i think w/o his political genius, slavery may very well had gone on longer–ironically, to the point where some (to we who follow) better conclusion might have happened. or not. no way to prove any of this of course. and in the end it is futile to ask how would things be different except to try to understand better how they are, or seem to be, now. and, from my point of view, paul’s position has become the de facto majority position (bush, lott, roberts, scalia, poor thomas et. al.) in practice, if not in spin. the spokesman for ge, russert, is called out by his masters to debunk paul as crazy. but we academics should be careful not to help russert too much sicnce such moments, like lottt and thurmond, are clealry “teaching” opportunities to show those less consumed with the truth of the dead than we are, how the dead continue to speak through us, perhaps most poignantly when we don’t know that they are.
December 24, 2007 at 5:16 pm
wellwellwell
Paul believes in principles of non-violence to his very core. Why is this so crazy? Instead of war, let’s find other means to settle our differences. WHY IS THIS SO CRAZY?
December 24, 2007 at 5:19 pm
trademark registration
You comment about how Paul is “a little tolerant of slavery” sounds like link baiting to me. I thought this was a serious discussion…
December 24, 2007 at 5:21 pm
ari
Me, what are you getting at with those quotes? I don’t want to pick a fight, but did I ever say that the South lost the war? No, because, in a broader sense, I agree with the people you’ve cited and with Nicholas Lemann, whose new book, Redemption, makes the same argument. The failure of Reconstruction gave the South the victory in the last battle of the war. It took until the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s to seize for African Americans basic freedoms. Which is why I find it so astounding the Congressman Paul stands with white supremacists against the Civil Rights Act.
December 24, 2007 at 5:32 pm
ari
tr: I’ve never heard the term link-baiting before. But it’s a good one. That said, no, that’s not what I was doing. Congressman Paul explicitly says in the interview that emancipation by other means, means that no doubt would have required more time, would have been preferable to the Civil War. Tell me how that doens’t suggest a bit of tolerance for slavery. I’m really not trying to inflame passions here; I’m just not following your defense of Paul. Which is to say, I understand the people who argue above that letting the South go would have been preferable to war. I understand the people above who espouse a purely pacifist position. No war under any circumstances. But I don’t follow the people who want to have it both ways: Paul wants to avoid war but he also was on the side of the angels when it came to slavery. Nope, I don’t understand that one at all.
December 24, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Rick B
It should be clear that Dr. Paul agrees with Dr. East above. Neither consider the American union of any value, which makes them extremist state’s rightests.
A person with such beliefs is unsuited to become the President of the United States – to say the very least, since their view amounts to treason.
December 24, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Rick B
To Tom Paine,
And who lied their way into this war? Bush and the Congressional Republican Party.
I find very little about the leadership of the Democratic Party that I consider positive, but they didn’t start this war, they didn’t lie to the public to get it, and they haven’t pushed the Fascist forms of authoritarianism that the Republican Party have made the touchstone of belonging to their party (along with demanding that every one in America respond positively to their catechism “Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and to you accept the Bible as true theology, history and science?”)
The structure of our political system prevents any third party from being effective, so the choice is Republican and Democrat. The option is to choose the lesser of the two evils, and then try to take it over. That is what the religious right did with the Republicans, and now for the rest of us that is what will drive us to the Democratic Party.
Ron Paul is a fruitcake. with really insane ideas.
Ron Paul would be worse as President than the worst President that American has ever had – George W. Bush. But Ron Paul has one major advantage. Frequently it takes a truly insane person to ;publicly state the truth to the public. That insane person in this election season is Ron Paul, but there has not been a candidate if equivalent insanity with similar public support in the last hundred years at least. And Huckabee would be even worse.
Bush, Cheney, Paul, Huckabee – tells you a lot about the current Republican Party, doesn’t it? As bad as it is, (and it’s pretty bad) the Democratic Party can’t approach that level of pure insanity.
December 24, 2007 at 6:04 pm
aletoledo
I’m glad to see a couple people already commenting on the unfiltered event surrounding the Civil War. Everyone should remember that history books are written by the victor and learning both sides isn’t easy. I’d like to chime in with a few historical facts…
It seems that most people are acknowledging that the Civil War wasn’t initiated because of slavery, but that this was a lucky coincidence. Every agrees that slavery was bad, Paul is saying that there were alternatives to killing 600,000 Americans.
The next defense of going to war some appear to be using is that secession was somehow illegal and Lincoln had the right to force them to stay. If the idea of forcing people to remain in a democracy doesn’t seem a bit odd, then perhaps Lincolns approval of the secession of West Virginia away from Virginia will make you scratch your head. So clearly secession wasn’t illegal as long as it was in the north’s favor. Imagine for a moment that Poland was to leave the European Union, would you really expect the then to be invaded to force them back in!
The third defense appears to go along the lines that the South started things by attacking Fort Sumter. Thats a debatable position because South Carolina was no longer part of the US and all land at that time was forfeited to the new government. Despite this obvious logic, they still attempted to purchase the land from the Union, but Lincoln refused to accept this. This refutes the claim that Lincoln did everything he could to avoid war.
So pondering these issues in an unbiased manner, I think it’s easy to decide that both sides had their points to be made. Using our own logic as applied to the modern Iraq war, there were probably a lot of obvious economic benefits to forcing the South to stay in the Union. The really scary thing to consider is if in another 100 years Bush will be viewed as attcking Iraq to liberate them from Saddam!
The final point I’d like to make was the statement by ari that the North won the war because of it’s centralized government. I think it’s generally recognized that the North out-produced in military equipment and the South required imports of weapons to bridge the disparity. It turned into a war of attrition and the north had all the advantages in this type of warfare. Neither government style realistically made much of a difference in this regard when compared to the industrial might of the North.
December 24, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Rick B
Liam,
Your statement
is quite accurate.
You have to know the area of rural Texas south and slightly west of Houston to understand his beliefs. It is extremely Racist and highly xtian fundamentalist (the two are opposite sides of the same coin.) It is an area that received many Whites who left Houston when the Houston schools were desegregated in the late 60’s, so the racisists were concentrated there. It’s not a good place to be a Jewish student in the public schools, either.
The evangelical xtians (like Huckabee) provided the philosophical basis of Racism as the federal government was forcing desegregation. That is a major reason why the concept of Biblical Inerrantism is so popular there. They claim that the Bible justifies slavery. Don’t forget that the Southern Baptists convention only grudgingly apologized for their support of slavery in the 1990’s. If they have ever apologized for their support of segregation, I am unaware of it.
The Texas racists have pushed the belief that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War for many decades. It is common wisdom there.
As High School students in Texas we used to call the Civil War the “War of Northern Aggression.” (Somewhat accurate in a geographical way.) Attorney General Ashcroft was one who pushed that idea also. No surprise – Missouri is culturally very similar. So are Oklahoma and Kansas. All are more rural than Urban.
Ron Paul speaks for those people. Don’t ever forget that.
December 24, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Liam
Recall a certain Texan named Tom DeLay. Recall how DeLay ran an Illegal Campaign slush fund.
Ron Paul accepted a nice chunk of that illegal fund from Tom Delay.
Libertarian my arse! When Tom Delay bought someone they stayed bought. Were Ron Paul to become president, Tom Delay would have his ear. I bet that Delay has enough on Paul, that he could not refuse to heed Tom Delay.
December 24, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Rick B
JW
The question of whether the states were an association of states or were a single nation was answered when the U.S. Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation.
The only reason to have brought the issue up again, once it was resolved, was because of the mental illness of slavery. Only the Southern sickness of slavery made the unity of America an issue. Like modern Republicans, the southerners weren’t willing to give up the belief that they were superior to another group of human beings, in the case of the South, the African Negro slaves.
Ron Paul is an UnAmerican nut.
December 24, 2007 at 7:27 pm
David
I agree with the other commenters above that an interest in alternative histories shouldn’t be frowned upon, even if we’re looking at events that most would agree moved society forward in a wholly positive direction. Just because the Civil Rights Act did a world of good for people of all colors, doesn’t mean that it becomes unassailable. Particularly in the case of Paul, I have a feeling he would fight equally hard for the property rights of all regardless of color. Granted, it seems he believes forcing integration was stepping outside the bounds of what government should be kept to. I would argue that he isn’t ignoring the good that came from it, but rather recognizing that once we let government out of its cage, even for the best of reasons, we will lose our freedoms and liberties as a result. Is this racist? I’d argue not.
However, I do think Paul has an incorrect take on the root causes of the Civil War. The doesn’t mean, however, that I find his thought-experiment of a non-violent solution to the Civil War and slavery abominable. Ari, you’ve made the comment that the Civil War ended slavery the quickest, and thus qualifies Paul in not supporting it as “a little tolerant of slavery.” I think that’s selling the effects of blowback a bit short. While slavery as an institution didn’t exist anymore, there’s no way to verify an alternative approach wouldn’t have improved race relations more over the next 50 years than war. Again, I find the criticisms to be both partly and partly not justified.
Finally, Ron Paul will still get my vote if he’s on my ballot, because I believe him to be an honest man who will scale back the power of the presidency as no other candidate will. I disagree with him on a number of other issues, but I think at this point, this is the most important issue facing the US government today. The balance of power needs to be re-tilted away from the presidency to the legislature, and regardless of what Paul believes of the Civil War, I think he’s the best person for the job today.
December 24, 2007 at 7:36 pm
gjdodger
I’m surprised no one else has commented on this. Ron Paul got a campaign contribution from the neo-Nazi organization Stormfront. His views are compatable with theirs. http://belowthebeltway.com/2007/12/19/the-ron-paulstormfront-story-hits-the-msm/
December 24, 2007 at 7:47 pm
bill
Wow, is this weird. The neo slave holders blame Lincoln for his being overly aggressive. This is in the face of a series of states declaring that they are no longer part of the united states, and attacking the united states!
Do they also say that Bush was overly aggressive, after 9/11, and that he should not have attacked bin Laden in Afganistan?
Do they say that Roosevelt was overly aggressive when he asked congress to declare war on Japan after Pearl Harbor?
The Constitution is clear on how states come into the Union, but silent on how they could go out. Declaring themselves out of the United States was unconstitutional. Lincoln, when he was finally sworn in, pledged to uphold the constitution. By that time the unconstitutional rebellion had started. Had he not fought back, they surely would also have fought over the western territory, which would go to the north and the south.
The only people who have questions about the legitimacy of the civil war are unreconstructed slave holders.
December 24, 2007 at 7:57 pm
ari
David, yours is a very thoughtful comment. Thank you. I should note, not to take anything away from what you’ve said, that I don’t frown on counterfactuals as thought experiments. They’re great fun, a historian’s (lay and professional) parlor game that I greatly enjoy. As to the issue of “blowback” from emancipation, there is no evidence that I know of to suggest that a more gradual approach, by the late 1850s at least, would have been acceptable to the leading lights in the Slaveocracy. Given that, I’m not sure how I’d arrive at a conclusion in which the slaves would have been emancipated in anything like a timely fashion, and once emancipated, that their rights would have been respected. Again, though, we’re now into the realm of abstracted speculation, which, while fun, isn’t what I do for a living.
Once again, thanks for an insightful and carefully worded comment, which includes far more light than heat. Your tone is much appreciated.
December 24, 2007 at 8:04 pm
kiru
Two quick points that seem to keep coming up:
First, Paul’s suggestion of freeing the slaves gradually, such as having the government purchase all the slaves and free them, while an interesting idea, doesn’t apply to the US during the civil war. The Union Government wanted an end to slavery, the Confederacy did not. Ergo, if the North freed all their slaves, the confederacy would not, or at best would free them only to buy more slaves. Yes, the north would be free, but if you believe the secession was illegal – as Lincoln apparently did – then endorsing such a path would be irresponsible.
Second, I have a hard time believing race relations in this nation would be better off if Lincoln has just let slavery continue. Yes, the period after the civil war was no doubt tumultuous, but it was made all the more so by the ascension of Andrew Johnson to the Presidency. Lincoln committed the nation to war, and Johnson came in with a very, very lenient bent towards the recovering Confederate States. The argument could just as easily be made that Johnson’s leniency (and the resulting political infighting) is responsible for the stresses and strains that followed. Had Lincoln remained in office, you can bet a great deal of the institutional racism would’ve been met with a far, far sterner hand; whether this would’ve put an end to things is doubtful at best, but it is likely what Lincoln had in mind, and you can’t blame him for failing to foresee this wouldn’t come to pass.
Now, since this thread seems to have gone far deeper into the pro / con of Ron Paul, a note on Ron Paul. I would like to thank Dr Paul and his supporters for attempting to bring attention to some issues that desperately need it. My disgust at our current national debate is vast, and there’s more than enough to go around to all the leading candidates, the media, and their pets. If only someone would give Dr Paul and Dennis Kucinich some time in the spotlight, I think our national debate would be elevated far closer to where it should be, rather than CNN planting questions about jewelry.
Having said that, I cannot support Dr Paul as a candidate; much as he espouses and end to war and opposes Imperialism abroad, he sees no trouble with imposing social imperialism at home, which at the end of the day is what forcing a woman to carry a child to term, or denying marriage rights to any two people amounts to.
Ceasing imperialism abroad only to enforce it at home is not a stance I can support.
December 24, 2007 at 8:43 pm
wellbasically
with David. Paul seems to approach the presidency as a return to a Coolidge-like past. His supporters however seem ready to move beyond him into an individualized future. The Democrats and Republicans still fight the old battle over The Commanding Heights.
December 24, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Daniel Nexon
“It seems that most people are acknowledging that the Civil War wasn’t initiated because of slavery…>”
Yes it was. The southern states, and their leadership, were quite explicit in their statements of secession and surrounding rhetoric that they were pulling out of the Union because they wanted to protect slavery. As historians have very well documented, the southern claim that they were primarily defending “states rights” or some-such developed *after* the end of the Civil War, and was peddled by many of the same people who had earlier spent their time advocating secession precisely to protect slavery.
Lincoln, on the other hand, placed the unity of the Union above the slavery issue. He didn’t mobilize the Union to get rid of the slavery; that was a positive externality.
I don’t think it requires much repeating that Paul’s general stance on states rights (except when it comes to late-term abortion etc. etc.) is straight out of the defense of Jim Crow, so I hardly think the abandonment of Reconstruction is a point of evidence for his position.
December 24, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Adam12
Lincoln should’ve gone further in avoiding a confrontation with the South, even if it meant having to acknowledge the states’ secession (thus, not traversing the shoreline of South Carolina). After Fort Sumter, Lincoln sent Union troops into the South and as a result thousands perished. It was a precarious time in the country’s history, but SOMETHING could have been done to save 600,000 lives. Admittedly many were under the bonds of slavery, but, like Paul says, we could have bought their freedom.
December 24, 2007 at 9:26 pm
ari
Really, Adam, what evidence do you have that the South would have accepted an offer to purchase freedom for all of the region’s slaves?
December 24, 2007 at 10:44 pm
The Family Atomics
aletoledo writes: “The next defense of going to war some appear to be using is that secession was somehow illegal and Lincoln had the right to force them to stay. If the idea of forcing people to remain in a democracy doesn’t seem a bit odd, then perhaps Lincolns approval of the secession of West Virginia away from Virginia will make you scratch your head. So clearly secession wasn’t illegal as long as it was in the north’s favor.”
In the north’s favor indeed. If you actually believe that the southern states had the ability to secede lawfully (you’re an idiot, but) fine, for the moment. But to suggest that there is some kind of inconsistency in Lincoln’s position and West Va leaving Va is willfully obtuse. Lincoln held that a state’s ability to secede from the Union was illegitimate. What became West Virginia was not seceding from another nation but from rebels in control of their own state, and in order to rejoin the Union; clearly a legitimate action. So what is your point? Oh yeah, this one:
“Imagine for a moment that Poland was to leave the European Union, would you really expect the then to be invaded to force them back in!”
Amazing. The United States and the European Union are equivalents. This is what you are arguing? Really? Dude, only 13 of 27 states even use the Euro. But even granting your silly equivillancy: it wouldn’t be just Poland leaving the Union but (let’s say) the other 14 non-currency-using states leaving and in so doing unmaking much the EU.
But backing up to your defense of the states’ right to secede. By ratifying the Constitution they gave up any/had no such right. The Constitution makes clear that the lands of the Union are governed by the federal government and the state government; but the federal government’s power to uphold and enforce the constitution, and the Union it created, supersedes any power of the states (Article 4 and 6). An action against the federal government, such as secession clearly is, is in violation of the constitution the state had ratified– or clearly, it is within the rights of the federal government to object to such a secession:
“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” (article 6, clause 2) Which roughly translates as ‘shut up’ to your third ‘point’ as well.
Unsurprisingly, you are also wrong (but not unforgivably) when you say:
“The final point I’d like to make was the statement by ari that the North won the war because of it’s centralized government. I think it’s generally recognized that the North out-produced in military equipment and the South required imports of weapons to bridge the disparity. It turned into a war of attrition and the north had all the advantages in this type of warfare. Neither government style realistically made much of a difference in this regard when compared to the industrial might of the North.”
You’re not as completely wrong; just in saying that ‘it’s generally recognized’, if you mean by authorities on subject. The disparity in resources was an important factor as you have been so far, but the Confederacy had it’s advantages as well: they had to fight a defensive war (which requires less forces/resources than does an invasion), they had the better officer corp (at least in the beginning of the war).
However the southern government structure was such that it caused a number of obstacles to the Confederate war effort:
1. The central government couldn’t tax its citizens (or at the least, was unwilling to do so). This led to wide-spread inflation as the South was forced to print more and more money to pay for its supplies. The inflation in turn sapped the will of the populace and in many case forced soldiers to choose between fighting and going home to provide for their families.
2. Jefferson Davis could not wield his authority effectively such as when making his states meet the troop quotas he needed. And in several cases state governors (in Georgia and North Carolina) openly defied his orders.
3. There are more but I think these two are enough to make my point. Another point but one that might not fit as squarely on this list is this: The individualistic attitudes that followed states’ secession also led to widespread desertion among Confederate troops leading to a massive desertion of 40% of forces east of the Mississippi in 1864.
In any case, the Union had none of these problems due to its centralized government. Also, this disparity in resources and war-making ability can also be found in the American Revolution; but we won that one. The American revolution also saw the Americans succeeding despite overcoming their being a decentralized government fighting a centralized one (which can also support your point in downplaying the role of a centralized government, to be fair).
In my opinion, it was the disparity in leadership between Lincoln and Davis that tipped the scales in the Union’s favor. Davis was an ego-driven and petty man who was incapable of remaining out of petty internal squabbles with his political opponents, let alone forging important compromises and holding his country together. It was his decision to horde 4.5 million bales of cotton (in the wrong estimation that it would force foreign intervention on their behalf) rather than sell it before the Northern blockade was effective and fill the war chest with gold — a decision that hastened the eventual inflation. He also forced his generals to send their every decision through Richmond for approval and made it impossible for Confederate forces to communicate effectively with one another to form a cohesive war plan — in favor of Davis micromanaging the war effort out of the hands of his generals.
Lincoln was able to compromise within his government with people who openly despised him and acted against him (the Radical republicans hated their own party leader with a fury). Lincoln deployed his diplomatic forces to quell any rising Confederate sympathy abroad (and although it wasn’t entirely successful it) resulted in no official recognition of the Confederacy. And most importantly, although he criticized and made changes in the leaders of the military, he let his generals use their own expertise in tactics and strategy; this ultimately resulted in Grant’s being able to shed the old Jominian paradigm of war on his way to victory.
December 24, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Tim
How the US Civil War could have been avoided is an excellent question and topic–even if just as a thought exercise. I welcome politicians talking about avoiding war in public. Period.
December 24, 2007 at 11:36 pm
me
Ari,
The quotes were a response to “Damn Yankee and Proud,” in his or her post at 12:39: “They lost, and slavery ended.” They didn’t, and it didn’t; the southern “redemptionists” substantially won the peace with mass violence, economic manipulation, and political fraud. As you note, it took another century to consolidate the most basic victories won in the Civil War. The destruction of slavery was the critical moral issue facing the country, but it didn’t really happen. The Civil War failed, which should make us willing to at least discuss other paths that may have taken the country to the same morally necessary goal. That discussion is not neo-Confederate nostalgia.
David Blight has done some exceptionally perceptive recent work on the tensions between the war aim of preserving the nation and the later war aim of providing substantial freedom to emancipated slaves. These were irreconcilable goals; northern and southern whites looked to one another as countrymen again, after the war, by throwing their black countrymen under the bus. As Brooks Simpson wrote, “Reconstruction began at Fort Sumter.” The war was fought over two goals that pushed in opposite directions — national reconciliation, and black freedom and equality — and so could not have fully succeeded. This wasn’t a problem of personalities, and Lincoln’s survival wouldn’t have made a difference.
War, in other words, carried inescapable costs. It had failure built in. Hating slavery, and hating the southern defense of it, we can still see that the thing didn’t work, and took a hundred years to fix. The defense of the war in many of the comments here is reflexive, and built on this facile assumption about slavery ending in 1865. The Civil War was not a success.
December 25, 2007 at 1:29 am
aletoledo
@ Daniel Nexon
“the southern claim that they were primarily defending “states rights” or some-such developed *after* the end of the Civil War,”
Look at the link you gave for for the secession of South Carolina and you’ll see written all through that document the case for states rights. Yes you’re right that the examples given were all based in terms of slavery, but the politics of the issue were property rights. Just look at the Dred Scott case to see why they claimed property rights and you’ll see that same claim of property right violations listed in the very same linked reasons for secession.
In the end though, the Constitution never outlawed slavery, that required the 13th amendment. South Carolina would not have needed to secede purely out of fear of having having an amendment passed, because they could have easily blocked it. What they couldn’t block and you never mentioned, is the reason most wars are fought and that is money. The northern tariffs were isolationist and made the South bear the brunt of the negative repercussions.
It sounds easy to say that the North marched to free Slaves and Southerners were pure evil been on having slaves. Yet the fact is that money makes the world go run and wars aren’t fought without a financial reason (or for power, which relates then to money) .
@ The Family Atomics
“Lincoln held that a state’s ability to secede from the Union was illegitimate. What became West Virginia was not seceding from another nation but from rebels in control of their own state, and in order to rejoin the Union”
So it’s illegitimate to secede from the Union, but its some how legitimate for counties to secede from the state. That is a peculiar double standard, since the Constitution doesn’t even address the right of secession of a state and yet it does address division of the states themselves. So it doesn’t matter if Virginia was a foreign nation, it violated the US Constitution (assuming they were still part of the Union) to have a state divide without the approval of the whole state!
” Lincoln was able to compromise within his government with people who openly despised him and acted against him ”
Those acting against Lincoln were imprisoned without hope of Habeas Corpus by the tens of thousands. Nobody was safe, not even an Ohio congressman who after disagreeing with his policies was literally kicked out of the country. Lincoln even issued an arrest warrant for a SCOTUS Justice when he disagreed with him. Everyone learned quickly to fall in line with Lincolns dictates or else. So its interesting that you equate Davis the lesser man, while Lincoln did things that would make GW Bush cringe!
December 25, 2007 at 2:36 am
abb1
“Paul’s general stance on states rights … is straight out of the defense of Jim Crow”
“…a little tolerant of slavery…”
You know, it’s gotta be possible to be both against racism and for a greater state autonomy, state rights. Just like it’s possible to be both against stalinism and for greater equality and wealth redistribution. You accuse the guy of radicalism, but look at your own rhetoric.
One can be against slavery and pro-union (though I don’t really understand why larger union is necessarily better than a smaller one) – while at the same time being against killing 600 thousand people to immediately end slavery and to preserve the union.
Does it make sense? If not, who is the extremist here?
December 25, 2007 at 4:02 am
raymonty
GOOD STUFF
December 25, 2007 at 5:04 am
p parker
That Tim Russert is an ignorant gasbag is made as a dismissive aside is unfortunate. The Ron Paul lunatics may come & go but until you inform the public that our press today is an elite group that keeps us uninformed (or misinformed) these important topics you discuss will continue to disappear down the memory hole. I know more than I need to about the candidates clothing & hairdos, or what they said or thought in grade school. Go after the mandarins in the press. The general public seems unaware of their bias. They think they’re fair (or too liberal) Don’t worry about Fox news or Limbaugh. Their bias is more honest than those at the NY Times, Washington Post or NBC. Don’t dismiss them. Hammer them
December 25, 2007 at 7:00 am
Daniel Nexon
“You know, it’s gotta be possible to be both against racism and for a greater state autonomy, state rights. Just like it’s possible to be both against stalinism and for greater equality and wealth redistribution. You accuse the guy of radicalism, but look at your own rhetoric.”
Oh, whatever. Paul explicitly argues for states rights in the context of attacking policies that extended civil rights to blacks. This isn’t some sort of slippery slope argument, but a restatement of his own argument.
December 25, 2007 at 7:30 am
bill mcwilliams
What is TPM and why do you use acronyms that only certain readers will know?
If you can’t refute Ron Paul’s points (yes, I know that Russert couldn’t or didn’t, either) and you want more clicks here, then you should at least learn how to communicate what you mean in a clear way. This isn’t texting, you know.
December 25, 2007 at 7:32 am
bj
You notice how he says “You, you buy the slaves and release them.”
Isn’t release what you do to fish?
December 25, 2007 at 7:36 am
Liam
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
According to Ron Paul that only applied to white people. By the way I am a white person.
Ron Paul feels that only white people should decide when and how black people should be treated as equals.
He did not wanted them emancipated. He claims that he wanted the slaves freedom to be purchased by the Federal Government. Keep in mind this is the same Ron Paul that claims that the Federal Government should never be allowed to raise revenues for such expenditures. He claims that only the individual states can make such decisions.
So now we have Ron Paul talking out of both sides of his mouth. He says that States Rights are supreme, and then turns around and declares that the Federal government had the right to spend money to purchase the freedom of slaves, and the slavery states would not be in a position to refuse.
We all no the real truth. Ron Paul is a crypto racist, and dealing out race baiting cards to the vile scum who to this day engage in virtual sheet wearing, and yearn for the past when lynching went mostly unchallenged.
Ron Paul said that he is still, to this day, against the civil rights bill that was enacted to end racial segregation.
Ron Paul is telling us that he does not respect what The Founders of the nation declared. Once more; here is what they said; Someone ask Ron Paul why he thinks that black people are not to be treated in such a manner, but should merely submit to the time frame and tender mercies of white strangers.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
December 25, 2007 at 7:37 am
John McCumber
I’m no libertarian, but Paul is right: we should have immediately freed the slaves by purchase, let them move North, and let the South go its own way. That way the United States would have gained all the smart, creative, hard working Southerners while isolating the Southern whites in their own country, which they could then run according to evangelical law.
December 25, 2007 at 7:38 am
Virginia
It was obviously silly for Paul to take on this irrelevant issue in the first place, but as an intellectual exercise I have to say he echoes some things I have been thinking for a long time (and I should point out that I am a die-hard Democrat and liberal).
I’ve increasingly come to the conclusion that it was a mistake to fight the Civil War. Lincoln should have let the South secede. I think there is a strong argument to be made that we would be better off today. Why?
–Not only would we have saved the 600,000 lives – we also would have avoided this damn Civil War mythos that still haunts the nation today. No Confederate flags. No “lost cause.” No Charlie Daniels.
–The stupidest line in the whole interview was idiot Russert saying “We would still have slavery today.” Poppycock! Paul was right in saying that slavery would have been gone in a few decades. The last Western country to abolish slavery was Brazil, in 1888.
–If the South had been allowed to secede, it would have been totally isolated within a few short years – just as South Africa was in the late 20th century. Slave owners would not have been able to take their “property” outside the Confederacy. The fugitive slave network would have exploded. The pressures to abolish would soon have been overwhelming. I think it quite probable that most of the Southern states (certainly Virginia, for example), would eventually have petitioned to rejoin the Union – but on our terms!
–I’m frankly sick of the Southern tail wagging the dog in our national politics. I think an amicable divorce might have been the best thing. Let them have their medieval theocracy. Give us back our Enlightenment democracy!
December 25, 2007 at 7:54 am
abb1
Look, his positions are near-absolutist positions in many respects, and I understand the reaction, the polemical impulse.
But if you think about it, there’s nothing irrational in his rhetoric; it’s not racist, it’s not superstitious, it’s not nihilistic, he’s just a bit overzealous in advocating some concepts that, in and of themselves, are not at all objectionable: local autonomy, property rights, constitutionalism – sure, at the expense of some other concepts that are also very important.
He is not “more than a little nuts”, he is just a little nuts.
December 25, 2007 at 7:56 am
Liam
Reality Check.
The South started a War of aggression against the military of the National Government.
Enough with all this blather about how Lincoln should not have resisted such Raw naked aggression. The North purchasing the slaves from the South is really a lame excuse. If the South refused to sell them, what would you do then. You have already declared that you are not going to fight back when they have attacked you.
Now ask Ron Paul, where was the Federal Government supposed to get all that money to purchase the slaves from the south. Keep in mind; Ron Paul says that the Federal Government has no right to raise revenues for such enterprises.
Finally. People can start spinning scenarios now, looking back at what has transpired, why it would have been better if Lincoln had let the South go.
Hindsight is 20/20. Lincoln had to make a decision then, and he did not have any way of knowing what would transpire in the hundred years after his death. I suppose he might have decided differently if he had been guided by some future vision type, such as Ronald Reagan’s Astrologer.
December 25, 2007 at 8:13 am
John N
That Ron Paul is over the edge is not simply based on his very odd comments on Meet the Press. His website clearly argues that the UN is out to take away our guns and that we should return to the gold standard for our money.
And as for the quotes on Meet the Press – he knows what show he’s on. He has one minute to answer. He has to choose what to say, what arguments to make, what to ignore. He chose not to praise the Civil Rights movement as a great moment in the progress of American citiizens towards individual liberty – a great moment with some side effects. No, he chose to frame his answer around the great insult done to property rights. Knowing full well that Blacks more or less couldn’t own much property as long as they had less rights than whites. And — if he isn’t stupid — he knows full well that ‘property rights’ is code for ‘keeping the blacks down.’
If he really cared about defending individual right against the government he would be praising how the Civil Rights movement empowered a whole class of people who were being oppressed — and oppressed by the government.
Given Paul’s near total silence on issues of CORPORATE power, I suspect (but can’t claim to have proven) that he is just another neo-liberal desiring a return to wealth-based govenment.
As for Lincoln. I am not a professional student of these issues, but have read a number of histories of the time. I have yet to see any suggestion that there was a serious peace movement in the south that Lincoln could have engaged with. Who in southern leadership was willing to sell off the slaves? Or content with no expansion of slavery to the west?
December 25, 2007 at 8:15 am
abb1
“If the South refused to sell them, what would you do then.”
You would, for example, refuse to trade with them.
But even without doing anything at all, it’s quite obvious that the institution of slavery was already archaic, rapidly declining, on its way out. Industrial revolution, capitalism destroyed slavery not the war. It started making more economic sense to rent or lease than to own workers, that’s all there is to it.
December 25, 2007 at 8:48 am
bookstoysgames
Ron Paul was half right here.
He is absolutely right that it would have been better to have a gradual emancipation, just like the British Empire (see the movie “Amazing Grace”) and Brazil did, with compensation to slave owners and some form of preparation for freedom for the slaves.
However, by the time of Lincoln, the battle lines were drawn and war was pretty much a certainty. Lincoln’s platform (and the more radical views of many of his supporters) made him totally unacceptable to the South, and so they left the Union.
To avoid the Civil War, and do what Ron Paul says would be better, we needed to have our equivalent of William Wilberforce by about 1930. Unfortunately, our abolitionists tended to be revolutionaries, not reformers, and they made more enemies than converts.
December 25, 2007 at 8:49 am
bookstoysgames
Oops, that should have been “1830”, not “1930.”
December 25, 2007 at 9:10 am
Liam
If the South refused to sell them, what would you do then.”
“You would, for example, refuse to trade with them.”
That would show them. Get real. They were doing most of their trading with the European powers, and they were eager to settle the conflict on terms suitable to the Confederacy.
Where was the North going to get it’s cotton from?.
All the while, you still are content to let the Southern oligarchy brutalize, rape, and kill our fellow human beings.
What does the bard say; something about people jesting at scars, when they have never felt a wound.
Nice of you to be so willing to let black southerners remain in a living hell, just as long as privileged whites did not have their lives and institutions disrupted.
Ron Paul is a despicable, uncaring human being.
December 25, 2007 at 9:45 am
Marshall
The conversation here on the causes of the Civil War is fascinating. To answer “improbable,” there is very little that is agreed about the Civil War, and I would not expect a true historical consensus for several centuries more at least. However, I do not trust the historical judgement of anyone who does not feel that the Civil War was primarily about slavery. True, there were other disagreements and irritants, as well as some deep Constitutional questions (for example, was the lack in the Constitution of a means of leaving the Union deliberate, or an oversight ?), but it is pretty clear from the records of the succession conventions that the root cause was slavery. (As an historical aside, when Georgia succeeded, the Northwest corner of Georgia, which had no plantation system and few slaves, tried to succeed from Georgia and stay in the Union. My father’s family is from there, and at least one family member did then travel North and join the Union army.)
I think that the Civil War was the greatest debacle in American history to date. The casualties were (as several have mentioned) over 600,000 killed or dead from disease, but look at what else the war brought : The richest region in the United States was economically ruined and reduced to poverty and ignorance for a century, the political life of that region was poisoned and distorted for 150 years to come and counting, in ways that have hurt the life of the country as a whole, habeas corpus was suspended, which still may reach from the past and bite us, and the theory of total war was established, to be taken up bloodily and enthusiastically in later years by a wide variety of practitioners.
And after all of the loss of blood and squandering of treasure, the Republicans gave it all away to win the Presidency in 1876. While there were profound and fundamental differences between slavery and the legal institutions of segregation that supplanted it (slaves could not immigrate to the North, could not attend school, etc.), it is still the case that the former slave populations were legally suppressed and subjugated for almost 90 years after reconstruction was abandoned.
So, the civil war was a huge strategic loss for both the South and for the United States as whole, and it is proper to wonder if it could have been avoided. It is clear to me, at least, that the problem with the various peaceful emancipation schemes proposed around 1860 was the expense of buying the slaves for emancipation, which no one wanted to pay. Of course, none of the proposed plans would have cost but the tiniest fraction of the actual expense of the War, and the actual financial loss suffered by the plantation landowners was far greater than the loss they would have suffered from any of these plans, so both sides were foolish not to come to an agreement, but I don’t think that they would have, not by the time of the Lincoln election.
Lincoln’s actual choices in 1861 were thus, it seems to me, to go to war, or to let the South succeed. (Note that the interest in the South in the expansion of slavery to the West was primarily about maintaining a balance in the US Senate, which would not have been necessary after succession, so I think it is unlikely that the two countries would have gone to war over Kansas if the split had been peaceful.) I have long felt that the best course for the South would have been not to have acted forcibly, but to have been determined not to fire the first shot, and to continue to call for a peaceful separation. Who knows if Lincoln would have resorted to force in that case, and things might be very different now. But, it seems very clear to me that, once the shots were fired by South Carolina, a war was inevitable, and the blame lies on the South, regardless of the provocation that went on before.
Note, by the way, that it would probably be more accurate to say that the Civil War was about the plantation system than about slavery per se. It was the plantation system that needed large numbers of slaves, and it was the plantation system that generated the wealth and the political leadership. It is ironic that large numbers of non-slave-owners in the South fought on behalf of this system, as it in many ways acted against their self-interest. This case of strong devotion for a cause not really to their own benefit also has echos in modern politics…
December 25, 2007 at 9:53 am
Marshall
Arghhh!!!!
It is of course secede not succeed that I was meant above. I hate that mistake and now I have made it, beguiled by my spell checker. I have no excuse; I haven’t even had any eggnog for at least 12 hours.
Happy Holidays to all.
December 25, 2007 at 9:58 am
abb1
Liam, you seem to have this feeling – that slavery is a terrible thing (which it is) that’s worse than anything you can imagine.
Well, read something about, for example, the construction of the Central Pacific railroad – built by 100% free workers – and then tell me if you still think it should be all about slavery.
December 25, 2007 at 10:03 am
Jimmy the Geek
The civil war had almost nothing to do with slavery. Slavery was just the excuse the politicians needed to fight their other battles. The cotton gin did more to end slavery than anything the government did. Technological advancement made slaves too expensive.
The Civil War was about states rights and whether or not the federal government could tell the states what to do.
The expansion of the federal government didn’t begin in earnest until after the civil war.
December 25, 2007 at 10:26 am
Daniel
Southerners, still feeling raw for losing their precious economic model of slavery. Give it up already, guys. You lost.
December 25, 2007 at 11:16 am
Lee Scoresby
The main reason for a lack of “consensus” about the causes of the civil war is over a century of obfuscation by those pushing the myth of the lost cause. The proximate cause of the war was slavery. Southerners justified their right to secede, of course, with reference to states rights. But they had absolutely no commitment to that concept, as evidenced by their consistent attempts to override the rights of northern states with Federal legislation and their own establishment of a much more centralized, more autocratic form of government.
The idea that the South fought a valiant, if misguided, war to preserve the rights of every state in the Union was pushed as part of the propaganda effort in the years following the War. It was part of the same effort that established memorials to traitors across the South and border states and turned Sherman into a war criminal for breaking the back of an illegitimate insurgency.
Unfortunately, slavery turns out to have been rather profitable. And even if it was net inefficient, it benefited very important *sectors* of the southern economy who just happened to also hold most of the power.
And the whole “would have been abandoned” eventually claim ignores, of course, that Lincoln had no intention of eliminating slavery immediately and that it was South Carolina that preemptively chose treason.
December 25, 2007 at 12:44 pm
ari
Please see the post I’ve just put up for more on this. And thanks for a wonderful comment Lee.
December 25, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Pardon Me « The Edge of the American West
[…] as the comments on a post I put up two days ago indicate, the fight over the meaning of the Civil War still lingers. And, it […]
December 25, 2007 at 1:52 pm
abb1
“The proximate cause of the war was slavery. Southerners justified their right to secede, of course, with reference to states rights. But they had absolutely no commitment to that concept…”
Are you trying to say that the southerners (or their elite, at least) were bad people? OK, but how is this relevant? In order to secede all you need to do is declare independence, that’s all there is to it. You don’t need to be a good person, that is not required.
Logic of your comment is exactly the same as that of justifying Chinese annexation of Tibet by pointing out to the system of serfdom practiced there when it was independent. But it is possible to reject both – serfdom and annexation.
Similarly one can argue that the southerners were wrong to practice slavery and the northerners were wrong to invade.
One doesn’t have to declare one side evil and the other righteous, because quite often generally bad people have a righteous cause and generally good people do bad things. Is this so complicated?
December 25, 2007 at 2:13 pm
LP
You seem to show that the only real opposition to Ron Paul consists almost entirely of smear. I mean “Blah blah blah racist blah blah blah civil war blah blah blah equal rights.” You’re focusing on the frankly unimportant parts of what he is saying.
In Dr. Paul’s opinion, the Civil War was unnecessary because slavery was becoming obsolete (I suggest “The South Was Right” or “Half Slave, Half Free” if you want to know more on that subject). As the US economy began to rely more on industrialization than agriculture, slavery was just becoming ineffective; slavery was banned in the North because it was useless in that industrial climate. In other words, a better approach to slavery would have been to make slavery unnecessary and let it phase out on its own, peacefully, like every other major country at the time.
As for the Civil Rights Act, Dr. Paul is not claiming that blacks and whites should not have equal rights. In his opinion the issue with the Civil Rights Act is that it is a violation of private property rights. In other words, he’s saying that if a black man and a white man want to go sit down at “a federal lunch counter” they’re more than welcome to do so. But if a black man who owns a diner doesn’t want white people in his establishment, he’s entitled to kick them out of his diner, and the government can’t force him to do otherwise. In the same sense, a white man who owns a movie theater shouldn’t be forced to have mandatory segregation. As far as Dr. Paul’s concerned the free market should be allowed to determine who is more successful.
Consider this case: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5127134.stm
Now, the guy who owns the store has options, sure. But should Big Brother be forcing his hand?
December 25, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Dilan Esper
The third defense appears to go along the lines that the South started things by attacking Fort Sumter. Thats a debatable position because South Carolina was no longer part of the US and all land at that time was forfeited to the new government.
That’s not how property rights work– and libertarians, above everyone else, ought to know it. Sovereignty– the power of the state, and property rights– the dominion of the owner, are separate concepts.
If I own property in Moscow under Soviet sovereignty in 1990, and the sovereignty then changes over to the Russian federation, I still own that property. The fact that sovereignty over that piece of property was transferred does nothing to transfer ownership.
South Carolina seceded, and the state argued that this transfered sovereignty from the US government to the State of South Carolina (or, alternatively, that the state was always sovereign). But that change in sovereignty doesn’t affect who owns the property. It continued to be a fort, owned by the United States of America.
And yes, the US government could have chosen to sell the fort to the South Carolina government or the CSA. But IT WAS NOT REQUIRED TO DO SO. Private property is freely alienable, which means it is up to the owner if he or she wanted to sell. The US government did not want to sell.
This is the weakest link in the secessionists’ weak case. Even if they had the right to secede, they needed to leave the US government installations alone. They decided, instead, to fire on Fort Sumter and start a war. And General Sherman, to his great credit, gave the South what it deserved for doing that.
December 25, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Doug
The number of people posting here with absolutely no knowledge of history is appalling! The Confederate Constitution stated plainly that no law affecting the legality of slavery could be passed. The entire raison d’etre of the Confederacy was the protection and propagation of slavery; that was why the original seven states seceded – to protect their “property” (something Mr. Paul apparently considers to be appropriate).
Conversely, the Union’s original aim was simply the prevention of seccession. There were large numbers of abolitionists who would have been quite happy to see the two sections part; the Emancipation Proclaimation originally was Mr. Lincoln’s method of getting the abolitionists behind the war effort. Most students of Lincoln believe, though, that he had moved past that utilitarianism to a vision of mutual citizenship for the blacks by the end of the war.
And the idea that slavery was dying economically is completely false, unfortunately. It had been up until the invention of the cotton gin in the 1780’s, which reduced the price of cotton and made it very profitable to grow. There is no reason to suppose that slavery could not also have been put to use on large wheat farms, for instance, or in mining. The only refutation is that the South hadn’t done so YET; not a very convincing argument.
Sorry, but the lack of knowledge alone about the very country he wishes to lead invalidates any claims by Mr. Paul about being a serious candidate.
December 25, 2007 at 6:13 pm
silbey
“You’re focusing on the frankly unimportant parts of what he is saying.”
And so tragedy shades into farce.
December 25, 2007 at 6:55 pm
krissnp
interesting title.
December 25, 2007 at 7:13 pm
ari
Doug, of course I agree with everything you wrote. But raison d’etre? You don’t think you’re going to convince anyone with that sort of highfalutin academic mumbo-jumbo, do you? Dude, freedom fries. And as for you Silbey, we descended into the farce portion of our show some time ago. Long before I wrote this post, truth be told.
December 25, 2007 at 8:08 pm
Chasm
I was under the impression (from recently watching “the Civil War in 4 1/2 Minutes”) that casualty figures in the North were around 702K, and 621K in the south (for a rough total dead of around 1.3 Million).
So which side isn’t Paul counting when he says “six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war?”
December 25, 2007 at 8:26 pm
ari
The figures you cite, no matter how many minutes it took to arrive at them, are wrong. Paul’s are correct, the only thing he got right.
December 25, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Talcott
“I can’t support any candidate who comes across as tacitly anti-Union and even a little tolerant of slavery. It’s hard for me to read Paul’s comment in any other way.”
I think that about sums it up.
Tolerant of slavery, you got that from the MTP clip?
That is a joke.
Perhaps your “read” is a wee bit too biased.
December 25, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Paulo
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12102
This smear attempt is pathetic. Linking from the “talking points Memo” site which approves “daily KOS” totally disqualifies your article.
Ron Paul is not a racist, nor is he advocating slavery or any other crazy thing you are accusing him of.
December 25, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Talcott
Indeed Paulo
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_anthony__071224_blind_partisanship_i.htm
We who have fought on the side of progressive causes, and in fact were using the term progressive before it was the cause celebre it has become today, should take a lesson from what has happened over at Daily Kos today. The long and the short of it is that the Editor of Opednews decided to post his article about supporting Ron Paul in the REPUBLICAN primaries, over at Kos. The response is a glimpse into the heart of the darkness that pervades this country, on both sides of the political process. Here is the link:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/24/11250/453/61/426080
December 25, 2007 at 9:10 pm
ari
Hey guys, no offense intended, but I’d be grateful if you’d take your anger at Daily Kos elsewhere. You’re welcome to hate on us in the comments. And you’re welcome to love Congressman Paul. That’s what the comments are for. But I don’t want this site to become a forum for bashing other blogs.
December 26, 2007 at 12:31 am
Corey
Quickly before I head to bed I’d just like to point out that I do indeed live in Texas and that I do not hear much of the History that I have read about in this blog.
As a Texan I feel somewhat obliged to come to our defense in this topic as it is not Texas who was ardent in it’s support for Slavery nor is it Texas that is attempting to slander the view of the Civil War. I can tell you that living here for all of my 31 years I have never heard these supposed stories of how we are angered whites who are just upset because we lost. In all honesty if it were the Union of today or the Union of 1861 who attempted to bring the full might of whatever force against a unified Texas it would not be Texas as heralded as the loser as we showed Santa Ana in 1836. We here in Texas do not view ourselves as losers to Yankee aggression this is some Virginian’s view no doubt, but not ours. In our mind there was no Yankee aggression and if there was no doubt said Yankee’s would be sent home with their tail between their legs.
Lets face it Slavery was a rich mans cause, as rich men owned them and rich men used them. The 600,000 who died in the Civil War died not truly caring about “Slavery”. Slavery is rampant today yet we call it minimum wage, or an undocumented worker. Those 600,000 were sent to war as slaves by those who cared falsely for things that only the rich would care about. Just as today as those who are rich, falsely send those who aren’t to wars that they would normally care nothing about. Was there a better way to end slavery, you betcha! Did we try it, nope, it was Lincolns way or the highway. Many talk about oh you could not wait any longer as slavery needed to be ended even by death. Well in the near 5 years of the civil war Slavery continued. One can only wonder if the great minds of the time came together what they could have accomplished in that 5 years. Now someone named “ari” as he likes to promote himself states that any other thinking on the subject is blasphemy or racist. I’d just like to say that view in among itself is Fascist and in pointing that out the Author would agree with me. Must we burn our books to obfuscate opinion? Like was pointed out earlier, the victors write the history. Must we deem someone’s opinion of history as viewed from other examples as radical or racist because it does not immediately fit the mold we have been supplied?
Oh and I will finish with a short history lesson regarding Ron Paul. So many of you seem to think there is some higher position of morality relegated to those who reside in the northern states. Well ok, Ron Paul is not a native Texan he was raised in suburban Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania a very “Yankee” state. If you have a problem with his peaceful views regarding the resolution of conflicts (his mentor on this subject is Gandhi), please we have many guns here and we have no problem laying waste to Yankee aggression if that ever truly does happen. I suggest you all look into this whole peaceful resolution thing as it appears to have some merit.
December 26, 2007 at 12:32 am
parallelsidewalk
I admire that Paul seems honest about his positions, but it’s not enough for me. He is at the absolute lunatic fringe of libertarianism and I can’t in good conscience support him. And Ron Paul fans act like a religious cult; you must be an idiot or a commie if you don’t like him. ‘Why, why don’t you love Dr. Paul and support every point of his platform?’ I honestly think a lot of his supporters on both the left and right are simply not aware of many of his positions.
December 26, 2007 at 1:35 am
r€nato
My father (aged 69) was born in rural North Carolina and to this day he stridently insists that the Civil War’s proper name is, “The War of Northern Aggression”. On the occasions when I have pointed out that in fact it was South Carolina which committed the acts of aggression… he gets angry and defensive and basically tries to bully me into shutting the fuck up about it. Which is basically what people who happen to be assholes do when they are dead wrong about something and can’t even come up with a half-assed defense of their point-of-view.
He is also a racist. Personally, I equate the Stars and Bars with treason and genocide. There is no other logical way to view the most well-known symbol of an armed rebellion against the lawful government of the United States, which fought said rebellion in the name of enslaving an entire race of people (yes, I know that ‘race’ is merely a social construct).
I get mighty tired of hearing about “Southern heritage” as a defense of this symbol of ignorance, treason and genocide. At the risk of having Godwin invoked, the Nazis stood for an Aryan heritage. “Heritage” is a dog-whistle for the southern feudal economy which was based upon enslaving Africans and their American descendents, and it is a pretty goddamned lame argument in favor of displaying it. The same can be said of that tired old ‘states’ rights’ argument. I’ll allow that the Civil War was about states’ rights, at the end of the day – the states’ rights to have slavery.
As for whether we should have allowed the South to secede… frankly, I can’t decide. As much as it would appeal to my sense of justice to allow all the bible-thumpers, god-botherers, bigots, racists, creationists, latter-day Confederate sympathizers and other embarrassments to our nation to have their own pathetic little banana republic and let them wallow in their , I like to think that retaining the South inside the US was the 19th century equivalent of liberating the Nazi death camps and occupying/re-ordering Germany in order to ensure that such atrocities never happen again.
If Southerners still rankle at losing the Civil War… then, good. Let them soak in the bitterness for the next hundred years or however long it takes until they grow the fuck up and realize that the Union did them a favor by dragging them kicking and screaming out of the last remnants of the feudal ages.
December 26, 2007 at 1:45 am
abb1
“The entire raison d’etre of the Confederacy was the protection and propagation of slavery; that was why the original seven states seceded – to protect their “property” (something Mr. Paul apparently considers to be appropriate).”
Once again, this, like so may other comments here, is not an argument but an emotional appeal.
It’s irrelevant what their raison d’etre was and why they seceded. There’s not a slightest hint anywhere that Mr. Paul might be considering slavery “to be appropriate”.
One can be against the Iraq war without being “objectively pro-Saddam”, y’know.
December 26, 2007 at 3:47 am
psmc
The criticism of Mr Russert’s knowledge of history is unfair. I am fairly certain Mr. Russert has a good grasp of history. He did the US public a service by not challenging Mr. Paul’s and allowing Mr. Paul talk freely. Thereby showing the world how he thinks and how he views the world. By aggressively challenging Mr. Paul he could have given Mr. Paul’s supporters ammunition by saying that their candidate was unfairly treated and not allowed to freely speak his mind. Mr. Russert did that and Mr. Paul spoke hismind and we al know him better for it.
December 26, 2007 at 4:42 am
ari
Tim, is that you? You don’t have to use a pseudonym, you know.
December 26, 2007 at 4:57 am
Chris
It’s mostly about hate, not heritage. The Confederate flag fetishists:
1) tend overwhelmingly towards racial prejudice and conservativism.
2) never honor the 50% of their ancestors who fought for the Union
3) generally pick up their fetish later in life, and not from their parents. George Allen is a typical example of this.
By the way, I am a white person who has never lived above the Mason-Dixon. I’m not just talking out of my butt here. Plenty of us Southerners would rather not be remembered for our worst moments.
December 26, 2007 at 5:55 am
JC
ARI WROTE: “….what should he have done? Allowed the Union to blow apart to avoid bloodshed?”
***BINGO, what a brilliant solution, Ari! Since the Union was CREATED by the states (not the other way around, go look it up, Ari), the Union was the States’ “agent” and you ALWAYS have the right to fire your own agent.
THINK ABOUT IT, once Lincoln established the principle that NO state is allowed to leave the Union, then the states are at the Fed’s MERCY. If we passed a law that said that no wife was allowed to leave her husband once married, do you think wives would be treated better or worse? AN ENTITY’S RIGHT TO LEAVE A SITUATION OR ARRANGEMENT IS THE MOST POWERFUL RIGHT THAT ENTITY HAS! Without the right to leave, you really have no rights at all. Think “East Germany” and the “Berlin Wall” if it helps you there, Ari.
This concept ain’t exactly “rocket surgery”, Ari. What a pity that you simply cannot fathom it… 8-)
December 26, 2007 at 6:58 am
Liam
Now folks: based on some more recent history; Johnson, Bush One, and Bush Two, why should we keep going back to the State of Texas to find the next President? The last three from Texas got us embroiled in wars that actually left us worse off than before they went to war.
Take a break from Texas, and try some one from any of the other 49 states. Why go back to the same well again, especially to vote for a far right Republican from Texas who accepted dirty campaign funds from Tom Delay.
December 26, 2007 at 7:24 am
silbey
“And as for you Silbey, we descended into the farce portion of our show some time ago. Long before I wrote this post, truth be told”
Light satire, surely.
December 26, 2007 at 7:29 am
Justicia
Ron Paul calls himself a defender of the Constitution. But of which one? The Constitution of 1789 in which only “free persons” (i.e., white men of property) were given full civil rights and all other persons (Native Americans, enslaved Africans, and all women) were excluded from the franchise, the protection of the courts and denied rights of liberty and property altogether
— or the Constitution of 1869 which contains the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, the Civil War Amendments ending slavery and granting the privileges and immunities of citizenship to African American males (women didn’t get full civil rights until 1906 under the 19th Amendment)?
The Civil War was fought because the secessionists were determined at all costs to preserve the “rights” of one race/class to “own” other human beings. The southerners needed the instruments of state power to keep in place the legal regime that enforced the property rights of slave owners by reducing the enslaved to the status of “chattel.” So, they rebelled against the United States and began to seize federal military assets rather than seeking a negotiated withdrawal from the union.
Ron Paul and his apologists want to revise history to make the War of Southern Aggression appear to have been Lincoln’s fault. It’s nonsense to claim the secessionists had any interest in selling their slaves. As they repeatedly stated, they were fighting to preserve “a way of life” — one that elevated the property rights of a few over the human rights of a whole race.
Ron Paul’s defense of this vision is what makes him unfit to be President as far as I’m concerned.
December 26, 2007 at 8:24 am
Ron Paul, Proud Confederate « Michael Lauer’s Weblog
[…] Paul, Proud Confederate Holy crap! I knew Ron Paul was a loony, but I had thought it was in an endearing libertarian way. It […]
December 26, 2007 at 8:28 am
markg8
“but no war needs to be fought.”
Out of the loop – Sometimes you just have to beat the hell out of a people to get them over themselves. The Civil War and the destruction of Germany in WW11 are two cases in point.
In Germany it didn’t start with Hitler. For a century Germans had been convincing themselves that the Fatherland was being held back from it’s rightful place in the pantheon of nations by it’s neighbors. As it coalesced into a nation state they built up resentment against French cultural arrogance and envy for the rest of Europe’s imperial wealth. They came to consider themselves superior militarily to the rest of the world and set out to get what they wanted in the Franco Prussian War and then WW1 by the sword. The defeat in 1918 didn’t disabuse Germans of their dreams of military conquest. It took the devastation of their military and occupation of their country in WW11. Even then the Soviets killed untold numbers of captured German soldiers and in the winter of 1945-46 while the rest of Europe had little to eat 300,000 former Nazi soldiers died in squalid camps run by the Western allies. I’m guessing most these were hardcore deadenders. Waffen SS, guys who wouldn’t shave their Hitler mustaches and who would have gladly continued an insurgency if one could be organized. Eisenhower had very real concerns about that.
The South wasn’t going to give up slavery or it’s expansion into the territories without a fight even though it was a dying economic form. They wouldn’t take peace for an answer. Rather than change and prosper they too ginned up resentment and hatred against the north for decades among their people – most of whom had nothing to gain by the war even if they did win – making it inevitable. That sense of Southern “honor” remains today as a vestige of the time. The politicians would have been hardpressed to get poor whites in the South to fight for the right of fatcat plantation owners to keep on suppressing wages with slave competition. But they could get them to fight against their economic self interest for “honor”, for “state’s rights”, and most of all for racism.
The South never had a chance despite the fact that it’s army and officer corps were better than the Union’s for much of the war and most of the fighting was conducted on their home turf. The entire Confederacy couldn’t match the industrial might of New York state let alone the rest of the Union. Grant and Sherman had to burn, pillage and practically starve the rebels into submission in the end. It didn’t get them to give up their racist ways but it did save the Union.
None of this excuses the Iraq War and none of it means that war is always the answer. But to say no war needs to be fought is wrong. Sometimes was is necessary.
December 26, 2007 at 9:26 am
mcrane
This is the type of discussion I’d love to see in the national media. Absolutely enlightening! This is the America I love!!! Thanks ari and all the great posters here! Outstanding! Maybe a good first step would be to outlaw TV drivel!
MC
PS: Ron Paul has my vote because I see nobody else out there even remotely viable. At least I know what Ron Paul is about to levels far beyond any other potential candidate. Not only that, he inspires some of the best conversation I have ever seen on politics. Whether it is for or against, RP does unite people. Thats a far cry better than the divisions I have seen in the last 50 years.
December 26, 2007 at 10:07 am
SOHH Over It! » Ron Paul, The Civil War, Niggaz With Bad Judgement.
[…] More here. […]
December 26, 2007 at 10:57 am
ari
JC, the Southern states gave up the right to leave the Union when they signed onto the Constitution. Beyond that, I’m sorry that I’m frustrating you. I am a bit dense. As Silbey says, good for some light comedy, but not much more than that. Justicia, that’s an interesting comment, which rasies the evolution of the Constitution over time. And I think you point to a deeper truth: that Paul, and many other libertarians, don’t believe in anything beyond the original document and the Bill of Rights. Finally, mccrane, I’m sorry that I can’t convince you to vote for someone other than Paul. But, to be honest, that wasn’t my intent with the original post. I don’t think that people convince each other of things very often. A civil discussion, on the other hand, is enlightening. Even if it doesn’t change minds. And thanks for your praise. You’re very kind.
December 26, 2007 at 11:08 am
rob
Matthew Yglesias may have beat you to the punch, but your punch was a much stronger blow. Chalk one up for the old guys.
December 26, 2007 at 11:14 am
l
After reading some of the comments regarding the confederacy I was reminded of a sentiment expressed by the late union soldier and writer Mr.Ambrose Bierce. From “A Bivouac of the Dead”, and regarding the fallen confederate soldiers:
“They were honest and courageous foeman, having little in common with the political madmen who persuaded them to their doom and the literary bearers of false witness in the aftertime. They did not live through the period of honorable strife into the period of vilification–did not pass from the iron age to the brazen–from the era of the sword to that of the tongue and pen. Among them is no member of the Southern Historical Society. Their valor was not the fury of the non-combatant; they have no voice in the thunder of the civilians and the shouting.”
December 26, 2007 at 11:14 am
ari
I don’t know. Yglesias is one smart whippersnapper.
December 26, 2007 at 11:16 am
ari
I, that’s a lovely quote. Thanks so much for that. I hope you’ll take a moment to look at a few of the other posts on the blog.
December 26, 2007 at 11:25 am
Ben Alpers
I’m coming very late to this discussion and don’t have much to add (at this point at least) to the discussion of the Civil War (boring as it may seem, I share ari’s commitment to the current–and as always evolving–historical consensus on these issues, though I welcome an open discussion of alternate views).
But I did want to pick up on one comment by Rick B that raises an interesting side issue:
The structure of our political system prevents any third party from being effective, so the choice is Republican and Democrat. The option is to choose the lesser of the two evils, and then try to take it over. That is what the religious right did with the Republicans, and now for the rest of us that is what will drive us to the Democratic Party.
This comment struck me as fascinating for its apparent utter irrelevance. Ron Paul is running as a Republican. This conversation has nothing whatsoever to do with third party attempts.
And yet, I think this comment actually reaches the heart of what motivates a lot of Paul supporters…and the emptiness of the appeals of a lot of Paul detractors.
I’m unsympathetic to Ron Paul for a whole host of reasons, including the views highlighted in this post. But I am sympathetic to his supporters’ sense that the leading candidates of both major parties are militarists who are far too fond of executive power. The shame is that Ron Paul is virtually the only candidate so far to challenge these assumptions (Dennis Kucinich has, too, but seems to get no traction, even from progressive Democrats….why he doesn’t is, I think, an interesting topic for another day). Unfortunately, Paul challenges the neo-imperialist assumptions of the “mainstream” candidates from a place that I find unacceptable.
I mention Rick B’s little irrelevant excursus on third parties (whose role in US history is significantly more vital than he lets on, and whose exclusion has more to do with shallow, rather than deep, legal barriers erected by the major parties) because many Paul critics are less interested in (rightly) criticizing Paul than they are in building a case for progressives to, yet again, support a “lesser evil” party whose commit to war crimes such as torture should give progressive voters pause even if it falls somewhat short of the enthusiasm of most of the leading figures in the greater evil party.
December 26, 2007 at 11:28 am
rob
the other side, laid out very logically and clearly (worth reading):
Quick Commentary: Ron Paul Versus the Lincoln Cult
http://quickcommentary.blogspot.com/2007/12/ron-paul-versus-lincoln-cult.html
December 26, 2007 at 11:31 am
Liam
Reality Check:
Here is the real Ron Paul. Read it, and you will be able to put his comments to Tim Russert in their proper context.
He is a Crypto Racist.
http://theinterimissue.blogspot.com/2007/08/blog-post.html
In addition; Ron Paul also does not believe in evolution.
December 26, 2007 at 11:33 am
Abraham Lincoln
Dear Mr. Paul,
Let me be certain I have this straight. If you had been one of my advisors, you would have suggested that we simply not have a war. Well, well, well. I certainly wish I had thought of that. What a truly brilliant mind you must have.
General Grant, would you and General Lee please escort Mr. Paul to the high-horse he rode in on and feel free to share your feelings regarding his comments en route.
Sincerely,
Abraham Lincoln
December 26, 2007 at 11:34 am
Will
I am shocked at the incredible ignorance I’ve read here.
First off, the compensated emancipation Paul advocates was tried. Many times, by Lincoln both before and after the start of the war, and by his predecessors. President James Buchannon actually baught several slaves and set them free in an effort to encourage peaceful emancipation. He had no takers. The south would never have given up slavery. It was not just the question of property. Many southerners, literally, believed it was about life and death. The planters controlled the southern press and schools. They had indocotrinated the rest of southern society that slavery was indispensible to life and liberty. That is way so many poor southerners supported it.
The contention that slavery was dying on its own is totally false. The reason slavery was outlawed throughout most of the world is a direct result of the British Empire. The Britts used force, yes force, to stop slavery and slave trading. If emancipation had truly relied entirely on peaceful methods it would never have been outlawed. Spain emancipated most of its empire AFTER its had already lost most of it. It is noticable that that emancipation excluded Cuba and Puarto Rico, which it just happened to still control. Slavery wasn’t truly ended in Cuba until American soldiers went there during the Spanish-American War.
Slavery was and is far too profitable to be done away with peacefully. Today, more people are kept in slavery around the world, somewhere between 25-100 million people, than were in 1860. Contrary to the claims of Paul’s defenders here, slavery was not dying out. And it most certainly is not dead today. Frankly, don’t be surprised if, in another few decades, you don’t start hearing people arguing for a return of de-facto slavery. It is simply too convenient and profitable for the profit driven to give up.
December 26, 2007 at 11:44 am
Ron Paul: Not a Third Party Candidate « The Edge of the American West
[…] I did want to pick up on one comment by Rick B that raises an interesting side […]
December 26, 2007 at 11:58 am
Ron Elliott
I support the assertion that slavery was moribund, and the slave states had become prototypes for the modern poor mouth failed state. There was more specie under Manhattan Island than there was south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Have any of these ersatz historians noticed that it was South Carolina that opened unprovoked fire on Fort Sumter? By the logic of Paul and his kooks, F.D.R. attacked the Japanese Empire by refusing to sell them scrap iron.
The Insurrection as about “states’ rights?” States rights to do what, exactly? To spread slavery by subversion, coercion, bullying, or downright conquest if necessary! Future insurrectionist invaded Nicaragua four (4) times in attempts to impose slavery there; they tried Mexico and Cuba, too. SLAVERY HAD TO BE SPREAD, OR IT WOULD HAVE DIED.
The insurrectionists HAD NO RIGHT to secede, because they completely lacked THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.! Who? the millions of African-Americans they’d enslaved! They were just traitors protecting their investment.
The Emancipation Proclamation served its purpose spectacularly. It stopped the British P.M. from recognizing the Insurrection. The men of Lancashire preferred to be out of work rather than support slavery. After Antietam, recognition was off the table. Slavery was abolished by post-war constitutional amendment . Ron Paul is just another kook. I hope he draws support from the Preservatives.
December 26, 2007 at 11:58 am
l
Also, some of you who find the honoring of both confederate and Union flags contradictory may find the following poem by Francis Miles Finch(1827-1907) interesting. The spacings are not correct, my apologies!
The Blue and the Grey
“The women of Columbus, Missisippi, animated by nobler sentiments than are many of their sisters, have shown themselves impartial in their offerings made to the memory of the dead. They strewed flowers alike on the graves of the Confederate and of the National soldiers.”
–New York Tribune
By the flow of the inland river,
Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the the dead–
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgement day;–
Under the one, the Blue;
Under the other, the Gray.
These in the robings of glory,
Those in the gloom of defeat,
All with the Battle-blood gory,
In the dusk of eternity meet;–
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgement day;–
Under the laurel, the Blue;
Under the willow, the Gray.
From the silence of sorrowful hours
The desolate mourners go,
Lovingly laden with flowers
Alike for thr friend and the foe;–
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgement day;–
Under the roses, the Blue;
Under the lilies, the Gray.
So wit han equal spendor
The morning sun-rays fall,
With a touch, impartially tender,
On the blossoms blooming for all;
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgemnt day;–
Broidered with gold the Blue;
Mellowed with gold, the Gray.
So, when the Summer calleth,
On forest and field of grain
With an equal murmur falleth
The cooling drip of the rain;–
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgement day;–
Wet with rain the, the Blue;
Wet with rain, the Grey.
Sadly, but not with upbraiding,
The generous deed was done;
In the storm of the years that are fading,
No braver battle was won;–
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgement day;–
Under the blossoms, the Blue,
Under the garlands the Grey.
No more shall the war-cry sever,
Or the winding rivers be red;
They banish our anger forever
When they laurel the graves of our dead!
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgemnt day;–
Love and tears for the Blue,
Tears and Love for the Grey.
December 26, 2007 at 12:25 pm
deacon
I don’t believe I misinterpreted what you wrote. Though I see you’ve now edited your previous entry, without notation, so that it isn’t so transparently false. Six southern states followed …. LOL. And what of the others?
The fact remains that Lincoln could have done many things to avoid war — indeed was literally begged to take a conciliatory approach. Instead he took a hardline approach over a worthless asset and made it easy for firebreathing secessionists to provoke a wider war.
Had Lincoln taken a more conciliatory approach it is certainly possible that Virginia (along with NC, TN, and AR) would have continued in their steadfast opposition to secession.
It really isn’t so simple — and Paul isn’t very far off base.
December 26, 2007 at 12:33 pm
l
Ok no more literary drivel. I promise (fingers crossed). I must say many of the comments I have read have been exceedingly shallow. I think both sides are preaching to their own choirs. I wonder how may of you have actually had contact with Southerners or families with personal histories of the Civil war on either side. Most of you don’t seem to know anything beyond they typical text-book responses. Were any of your families affected personally? Some of my family come from border states and during the war were split, some Union and some Confederate. Some others were Cherokee which were Confederate, and a few were Southern Confederate. Also, some where abolitionists from Wisconsin. There are many bitter sentiments on all sides of my family regarding the war. Something forgotton in the talk of tallying the dead is that the significance is not just in the number of persons killed, but that there were family members killing other family members. Also, for any of you that are touting your ethnocentric viewpoints you may be suprised to know the there aren’t just white or black people living in the South and there are many families of mixed race, ethnicity, and religion. I swear i think some of you are living in books and Hollywood movies!
December 26, 2007 at 12:45 pm
ari
Sorry, I thought the change would please you. The wording is now more precise, reflecting your suggestion from a previous comment.
As to whether Lincoln could have done more to avoid the war: maybe. But anything he would have done, any compromise, in order to have held together the Union for more than a very short time, would certainly have had to include allowing slavery to move west. (Wow, that’s just awful writing. Again, sorry.) As numerous commenters above have noted, one need only look at documents produced by the various secession conventions to understand the centrality of slavery’s spread to emerging Confederate nationalism. On that principle, Lincoln wouldn’t compromise. That he was begged to do so, by various editors, the head of the Republican Party, and likely others as well, seems beside the point to me. Except to say that Lincoln showed courage, as a president-elect with very little experience on the national stage, by ignoring these suggestions. Unless you think he was wrong, which you obviously do, and then Lincoln was a fool.
Is that simple? No, I suppose not. History rarely is, as you seem to know well. Is Paul off base? Yes, I still think so. Very wide of the mark, I’d say, and seemingly enthralled by a neo-Confederate memory project.
Update: The above is directed to deacon, who’s apparently still really mad at me.
December 26, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Nova Dave
Will – thanks for the reality injection. Historical revisionists always amaze me. Their arguments almost universally contradict the actual contemporaneous historical record. Southerners (and Northerners) made no secret of their thoughts and feelings. It’s all there in their writings, speeches, newspaper articles, diaries, letters, you name it. The South was completely unwilling to compromise on the issue of slavery in any way, shape or form. Nearly all Southerners thought they were superior to the black man, so much so that it was OK to own them and treat them as farm implements (many even made the argument that black people felt no pain and had no emotions about having their families broken up at slave auctions!). In fairness, most Northern whites (and Europeans) also thought they were superior to blacks. The difference was that most Northerners thought slavery was immoral and backward.
Southerners felt they had the right to own slaves anywhere, including new territories in the west. Again, this is all well documented historical fact, not speculation. To claim that they could have been talked into gradually having their slaves bought from them is nonsense. There is nothing in the historical record that supports this. It would have required Southern plantation owners to voluntarily dissolve their entire way of life and basis of their wealth. In any case, who would have paid the bill? There was no federal income tax before the Civil War.
Feelings were intense and uncompromising on both sides. The Missouri Compromise and Kansas-Nebraska act did little to achieve reconciliation. But the fact remains that the South seceded, the South began seizing Federal property, and the South fired on Fort Sumter. Lincoln was not willing to go to war over slavery (as he clearly stated), but was willing to fight to preserve the Union, especially in the face of Southern aggression. Again, this is historical fact, not me guessing or putting words in anyone’s mouth.
The bloodiness and bitterness of the Civil War surprised nearly everyone (except perhaps Sherman, who was thought to be mentally ill); it was only after years of slaughter that Northerners began to believe that it had to be about more than preserving the Union. There had to be a higher purpose. It’s why Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation when he did. By late 1863, public opinion in the North had clearly shifted. Lincoln wanted to make it clear that they were now fighting for a higher moral purpose, that the slaughter was justified.
The idea that the South had the right to secede from the Union as if it were a bad real estate deal holds little water. There are no historical precedents for provinces being able to legally secede from a country if they don’t get their way. Yes, it’s been tried (see Biafra, East Pakistan), but always results in bloody Civil Wars and is usually unsuccessful. In fact, Virginia was reluctant to ratify the Constitution for those very reasons – she felt she would be giving up power, subsidizing smaller states, and there was no mechanism for orderly dissolution.
This whole “states rights” malarkey boils down to the “right” of a small number of powerful plantation owners to become wealthy through slave labor. Period. End of story. The rest is obfuscation and window dressing. The fact that they propagandized poor Southern whites into fighting their war for them shows the power of an obedient press using fear tactics (blacks will marry our white women! They’ll take your jobs and farms! Yankees will own everything!). Again, this is all historical record. If you want to understand how the Civil War came about, read what the people AT THAT TIME were thinking and writing. It’s no mystery and doesn’t require any disingenuous revisionism.
December 26, 2007 at 2:39 pm
feckless
Scratch a libertarian, wound a racist.
Like Dr. Paul’s $4 Billion in Federal flood relief for his worthless undertaxed west texas district, Libertarians want tax relief, as long as its someone else’s bull being gored. They aren’t really opposed to federal tax money being spent, they are only opposed to it being spent on the Wrong People (non-white). They are propaganda victims of Reagan/Atwater’s welfare queen mythos.
Dr. Paul’s revelations about the civil war and civil rights are relevant to his views on race, and his fitness for leadership.
The South fired the first shot, and that shot was fired for limitless slavery.
As for emancipation without bloodshed, yeah it worked great in England, but in Russia, not so much. The charade of emancipation foisted on 80% of the Russian population that were serfs was a direct cause of the Russian revolution.
December 26, 2007 at 2:48 pm
abb1
The charade of emancipation foisted on 80% of the Russian population that were serfs was a direct cause of the Russian revolution.
Perhaps the Russian emancipation without bloodshed was indeed a charade, but no more so than the American one with bloodshed.
December 26, 2007 at 2:51 pm
feckless
Trotsky was truthful and right about Stalin’s communism.
Paul is truthful and right about Bush’s republicanism.
Trotsky’s truth did not mean communism was a good form of governance.
Paul’s truth does not mean libertarianism/republicanism is a good form of governance.
The last 7 years have been economically libertarian as it gets, no regulation – no enforcement. Dr. Paul’s skewed ideas of human rights (there is an assault on chistmas/christians, property rights over human rights) will not reverse this trend towards totalitarian oligarchy it will only accelerate it.
December 26, 2007 at 3:11 pm
abb1
The last 7 years have been economically libertarian as it gets, no regulation – no enforcement.
If you spend a few minutes listening to what the guy is actually saying, you’ll find that his particular brand of libertarianism is in opposition to the corporate-government symbiosis, which what the last 7 years (or rather the last 35 years) have been. That’s another one of his good lines – in addition to his extremely attractive anti-war line.
December 26, 2007 at 4:23 pm
John Foster
Quote:
WE must never lose sight of the main object of the war, and of the means by which that object can be attained.
This war is prosecuted for the maintenance of the Union and of the indivisible nationality of the United States. It is not, as foreigners suppose, a war for tariffs, or on account of slavery. The United States Government has no other object in view than the assertion of its authority over the whole of its dominion, and the practical refutation of the subversive doctrines of secession and State sovereignty.
– Harper’s Weekly, 12/21/1861
December 26, 2007 at 4:30 pm
John Foster
If you oppose the war in Iraq where almost 5,000 Americans have died how on earth can you justify a war where over 600,000 Americans died.
Ron Paul is consistant. War should always be the last resort. There are always better options for solving problems.
December 26, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Contumacious
Clearly , this was a bold face attempt to assassinate Dr Paul’s character.
In the case styled Matson v. Rutherford (1847). The case involved a slave owner named Robert Matson claiming return of fugitive slaves. Matson was from Kentucky and brought slaves to Coles County, Illinois, for part of the year. Jane Bryant escaped with her four children from the Coles County plantation and found refuge with local abolitionists. They were soon after found and jailed as fugitive slaves.
Given Lincoln’s 1837 description of slavery as “founded on both injustice and bad policy” and his 1841 advocacy, one would guess he came to aid of the runaways. In fact, Lincoln represented Matson in his desire to re-enslave Bryant and her children. He predicated his argument upon Illinois law that allowed ownership in slaves to be maintained if they were brought into the state in transit. The Illinois circuit court was unconvinced, and the disgruntled tyrant returned to Kentucky in default on his attorney fees; the Bryants left to make a new start in Liberia.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/kantor/kantor6.html
December 26, 2007 at 5:45 pm
ari
Wow, we’ve arrived at the Slavehound-from-Illinois portion of the discussion. Frankly, I’m surprised it took us this long.
December 26, 2007 at 5:51 pm
ewd
If you oppose the war in Iraq where almost 5,000 Americans have died how on earth can you justify a war where over 600,000 Americans died.
The difference, in my mind, is that the motivations were very different. Even if you want to put the issue of chattel slavery completely aside, there’s simply nothing like the preservation of the Union at stake in Iraq. The loss of American lives in just and necessary wars, while tragic, is sometimes necessary. And to be clear, I’m speaking as an ex-sailor who meant it when he would recite the Code of Conduct.
December 26, 2007 at 7:23 pm
mattski
If you oppose the war in Iraq where almost 5,000 Americans have died how on earth can you justify a war where over 600,000 Americans died.
This does not even approach a coherent statement.
Different wars serve different purposes, each to be evaluated on their own merits. That’s #1.
At the time that the Confederacy initiated hostilities Lincoln was not in possession of a crystal ball. He didn’t know what the casualties would be, nor did anyone else. That’s #2.
Lincoln didn’t start the war, the Confederacy did. If we’re going to ask anyone whether the CW was worth it shouldn’t we ask the die-hard Confederates?
For those who wonder if we’d all be better off had the South seceded, what is your vision of today’s world in that scenario? Is the sovereign Confederate nation a happy agrarian paradise living peacefully alongside it’s vastly richer, more developed industrial neighbor to the north?
Just asking.
December 26, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Justicia
Thanks Nova and Will for bringing us back to historic reality. (Thanks Ari for launching such a rich discussion.)
Interesting how many people are invested in the position that the war was fought for one reason alone (slavery or the union) to the exclusion of all others when so clearly the Civil War was about both and so much more.
Slavery was The moral issue of the time, not only in the U.S. but in all the Christian countries that profited from the trade in human lives. Had Lincoln been willing to capitulate to southern demands, the cataclysm would only have been postponed. The secessionist cause would have been strengthened by extension of slavery into the west at a time when civilized nations were declaring slavery an intolerable affront to God and man.
The slave owners were fighting against the historic tide as slavery was outlawed in England (1837), France (1852), and the northern states (PA 1780, NY 1827, NJ 1846). Knowing this, they instigated a war to create a new nation on this continent built upon slavery. That’s what Ron Paul defends.
December 27, 2007 at 4:35 am
l
fyi people: It wasn’t just the Southern whites that thought blacks were inferior. If you bother to read some of those papers, diaries, letters ect.. you would know that. Also, emancipation was used later in the war to legitimize the Union’s position and to gain allies in Europe, which had initially supported the South. I guess economy was more important to England and France than morals. Face it folks, the Civil war was one evil vs. another evil, and evil won. You Unionists and Southern Separationists are all touting left over propaganda which conveniently distracts you from seeking either truth or issues of actual importance.
Oh and quit with calling people racist just because they are light skinned and don’t agree with you. You can’t tell a persons ethnic makup by looking at them. As it was stated before Mr. Paul is not a Southerner. However, my father’s family is from a remote area in the deep South and we are not purely European decent or racist and some of us aren’t even Christian, thank you. Our family has lived there both from seven generations ago and some since the world was flat and sitting on top of a turtle. Why don’t some of you actually travel through the Southern states before you slander the people living there. Not everone fits into your little stereotype either historically or currently.
December 27, 2007 at 4:54 am
l
…and if the Union was so righteous compared to the South then why didn’t they free women or stop the decimation of the American Indians. Speaking of American Indians, by the way, the decimation continues while y’all are fussing over whose ancestors have halos ’round their heads or which geography is the bestest one to hail from. That what your really saying regardless of your high falootin “educated” arguements, written in your best mock londonese, with your hoighty toity PC slogans.
December 27, 2007 at 7:49 am
Liam
If Ron Paul became President, he would not be able to change the way the Federal Government operates. Congress would not let him. He would not get any of his plans to get rid of the IRS, Social Security, Medicare, Dept. of Education. HUD, FEMA, Dept of Agriculture, Dept. of Education, Dept of Transportation, and on and on. Congress would not approve of eliminating any of them.
That would make Paul a do nothing President, since all the things he is against would not get removed, and he is against everything, but for nothing.
Furthermore, he voted to not renew the Civil Rights bill, which makes him an up to date Crypto Racist.
December 27, 2007 at 7:52 am
deacon
Emerging Confederate Nationalism? Are you kidding? What did they think of that in Richmond and Nashville? Or in Jefferson City or Little Rock? The idea of emerging Confederate nationalism is patently ridiculous. There is a mountain of contrary evidence, and mere scraps of supporting evidence for your thesis.
If I seem upset with you, it’s because you should know better, but apparently don’t (or don’t care).
December 27, 2007 at 8:09 am
l
I’m not a Paul-bot revolutionist, I’m unsure of whom I will vote for this time ’round, but tend to swing liberal as long as they aren’t too socialist or for conscription. I do think a lot of people are unfairly judging Paul’s mental capacities and unfairly calling him a racist due to his comments about the civil war.
There are valid criticisms of President Lincolin, the Republican agenda, and the conduct of the North before,during, and after the war. By the way saying so does not legitimize the lifestyle and political conduct of the South. They clearly were also many things wrong in the South and not just slavery. Why is it though that anytime anyone voices these criticisms they are immeadiatly labeled as a backwards thinking racist? Are your beliefs in a saintly North and Progressive perfection so fundamental that there is no room for debate?
In my opinion hate for the South will continue to seperate them from the rest of the country. It will provide a reason and a platform for those that are racist and sepratist to contine recruiting impressionable folk into their warped beliefs. What does this do for you Northerners? Or do you like helping to create the problem so you can say “Look at the idiot racists there. See I told you so(nah,nah). We are in fact superior (high five).”
As I mentioned before a good part of my family is from the rural South and most don’t fit your stereotype of backwards, bible thumpin, Whitey McCracker. Prejudice is everywhere. I was in a New york city burrough and a African American male and a white male (Polish I’d surmise from the slurs) were yelling racial and ethnic slurs across the road at each other. I was at a pool in LA and some White people were using the N word and saying all kinds of heinous things about blacks. Yes certainly, I’ve heard some rotten things said in the South, but I’ve traveled around quite a bit and I hear those things everywhery from all kinds of people. Pernicious stupidity thrives in any climate, and can be nurtured by any kind of hate regardless of color, ethnicity, geography, or idealistic creed. Quite hardy.
If you want to stop others from being prejudicial start with yourself. Creating hatred will not get rid of hatred. Please realise that we are all imperfect even when we try to hold ourselves to the high ideals of our time. That is all either North or South did in their time, and those ideals being imperfect(as all ideals always are) caused much strife. Let’s try not to allow that to continue in the present. Oh and intellectuals, sorry for the junk I wrote earlier, I’m not perfect, and quite cranky when insomnia keeps me up.
December 27, 2007 at 8:53 am
Liam
Ron Paul said that he was against the civil rights bill that ended racial desegregation, and he recently cast his vote against renewing that same civil rights legislation. If Paul is not a Racist, he will do until the real thing comes along. By their deeds shall ye know them. He is a Crypto Racist. Lincoln is long dead, but Ron Paul is currently voting in a racist, and white supremacist manner.
December 27, 2007 at 9:11 am
ari
Deacon, you didn’t upset me. Sorry to have left you with that impression. I was apologizing for having made a change without noting it. The blog, you may have noticed, is just about a month old. I’m learning as I go. And I, we all get cranky sometimes. I’ve been called worse things than intellectual. As for racism in the North, you’re right: there was and is plenty.
December 27, 2007 at 10:04 am
Daryl
They still hate Lincoln and the North. With a passion. And underlying it all is an incredible rascism that is passed in whispered jokes between almost every southerner I ever met.
Excellent point Jymn. The weird part is they never got angry with the people who were actually making their lives miserable; Southern Aristocracy. Probably the worst thing that ever happened to the South was the day Reconstruction ended.
December 27, 2007 at 11:31 am
n0rd1x
Sorry I have not read through the whole comment thread, but:
If the South seceeded to “expand slavery,” then why was it that somewhere around 80% of the southern population did not own slaves? Could it not be that many of these non-slave owning Southerners felt that if slavery were to be abolished, considering that at the time slaves were considered property, then what would prevent the federal government from seizing their land for whatever purpose?
As far as why it was brought up on MTP, boggles the mind. How does teh Civil War have anything to do with the NOW?
December 27, 2007 at 12:27 pm
jethro
without commenting on the larger issue, i just want to take issue with your decription of Lincoln’s position against the westward expansion of slavery as a compromise position.
Stopping westward expansion was really just a backdoor attempt to break the congressional stalemate on the issue in favor of the abolitionists, was it not?
December 27, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Daniel Pye
Lincoln’s refusal to extend the Missouri compromise into the western states meant that the free states would eventually be able to pass an amendment banning slavery throughout the Union. That was the whole reason for the Missouri compromise in the first place. Lincoln’s subsequent promises not to ban slavery can only be seen as disingenuous, since he neither had nor requested any power to block an anti-slavery amendment. It was his stated goal to build a country in which slavery would wither and die.
Likewise, suggesting that the war was about preserving the Union, full stop, is pretty slippery causation: secession bred the war, but anti-slavery bred secession: the only other gripes on the table were pretty small.
As far as Ron Paul being a racist, I have to admit that I find it kind of funny how difficult it is for people to really understand what freedom and Rule of Law means. I expect that in the coming weeks, he’ll be tarred as a communist because he wants to restore relations with Cuba and North Korea, then he will be labeled a drug fiend for his platform to end the War on Drugs.
The same federal government which brought in the Civil Rights Act, ten years later began a War on Drugs. Since then, the US has incarcerated blacks to a degree not seen in any other nation on earth. One out of three black men in his twenties is in prison, on parole, or awaiting trial. One out of eight black men has no right to vote due to felony disenfranchisement laws. The War on Drugs is, in practice, a war on minorities.
By ending the War on Drugs, Ron Paul will do more for minorities in the US than anything since the Civil Rights Act. If this latter-day emancipation were followed by a push for a Civil Rights Amendment (rather than an Act), I’m sure myself and other Ron Paul supporters would be happy to work towards entrenching equals rights for all in the Constitution where they would rest beyond the grasp of the next populist dogooder.
December 27, 2007 at 2:25 pm
ari
You’ve all convinced me: Ron Paul is hott. Okay, just kidding. So here are a few quick replies. 1) The South seceded because the slaveholders, particularly those in the so-called planter class, held
mostnearly all of the political power in the region. 2) What would you have had Lincoln do? Allow slavery to expand into the West to forestall war? That was the other choice. Now we’re talking about infusing the Peculiar Institution with new vitality. Which, again, leads me to: Paul is at least somewhat tolerant of slavery if that’s his position. 3) Yep, there’s a strong argument to be made that had abolitionists not accrued cultural power in the 1830s, 40s, and 50s, there would have been no secession movement. Which is just another way of saying: had there been no threat to slavery, there would have been no secession movement. 4) The War on Drugs has been both a terrible failure and, in myriad ways, bad for the African-American community. Ergo, the Civil Rights Act also was bad for black people. Your logic is dizzying. Seriously, this transitive property of libertarian hokum leaves me no choice but to vote for Congressman Paul. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be that snide. I’m getting tired, too. I have nobody to blame but myself, of course, as I wrote the original post.December 27, 2007 at 6:04 pm
ari
Hi all. I hope you’ll forgive me, but I’m going to have to stop replying to comments on the two main Ron Paul posts for a bit. I’ll check in periodically, but these posts are consuming so much of my time that other things are not getting done. I’ve genuinely enjoyed the back and forth here, and I hope that many of you will take the time to visit us again. Or, if not that, please at least take the time to look at some of our other posts before you go. And you’re welcome to keep commenting, of course. There’s still much to be said, I’m sure; I just need a break. Happy New Year.
December 27, 2007 at 9:17 pm
Jason Brzoska
>Paul is at least somewhat tolerant of slavery if that’s his position.
No, it can just mean that he places less priority on it than he does about his core ideological issues…
Now, it’s really, really tough to call a dog-whistler out on racism these days to the average person — lots of people just don’t think racism really exists much anymore outside of the KKK, and it’s hard to convince a friend who’s pulling for Paul because of his stance of the war or the Patriot Act that Paul’s a racist. It just results in that Paul supporter not listening…
The root of my argument against Paul, and where I think Russert (whom I normally find to be a totally ninny) was justified in asking the questions he did, is even giving Paul the benefit of the doubt (that he’s not a racist and really does completely abhor slavery and is for civil rights), how dogmatic is this dude if he is against federal intervention even more than he is against slavery or segregation? What kind of priorities would he have as President?
And, even if you didn’t know a damn thing about history, or dog whistle politics, or the nature of Paul’s district, or Paul’s publications, or anything else, shouldn’t the answer to that question turn you off to him if you’re not either a crazy dogmatist, a racist, or both?
-Jason
December 28, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Roy E Pearson
It is getting a bit old hearing otherwise intelligent people referring to someone who is out of the mainstream of political thought as a nutcase or a wacko.
It to me says more about the person who speaks that than the person spoken of.
There is a rational, though outside of the mainstream, school of thought that the Civil War was not needed.
“Let us end where we began, with the Civil War. In ‘Rethinking Lincoln,’ Richard Gamble shows the influence of another bad argument. When the southern states seceded from the Union, Lincoln argued that they had acted illegally. On what basis did he claim this? To Lincoln, the union preceded the states: in his opinion, “the union was not only perpetual, antecedent to the Constitution, and the creator of the very states that now sought to leave, it was also a spiritual entity, the mystical expression of a People” (p. 137). The argument has nothing to recommend it as history: did Lincoln ever ask himself who ratified the Constitution? But how terrible its results! Once again, as Richard Weaver said, ‘ideas have consequences.”
http://www.mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=15
Granted that this site is a Libertarian, it not a nutcase or wacko site.
So active is the discussion about that validity, that rebuttals have been written.
“However, since the states had unanimously granted three-fourths of the states the ability, through the Constitution, to amend the document governing the wielding of power and sovereignty at a national level, it was obvious that individual states could not secede and claim a constitutional prerogative for doing so any more than a majority of the states could vote to withdraw from another. Still less could they do so in the name of claiming a prerogative to systematically violate the private property rights of a significant majority within their borders. ”
http://www.natreformassn.org/statesman/98/refight.html
The American Experience was a new one and a lot of what we have done was a great experiment in how people live together under law with widely varying ideas, faiths, and practices. It never helps to classify people with hew ideas as nut-cases or wackos. If you take a reading of the Supreme Court Dissents and see how often a lone dissenter will in time be the leader of the majority, though maybe not in his life time.
Disagree, but do not disparage.
December 28, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Jason Brzoska
>It never helps to classify people with hew ideas as nut-cases or wackos.
Maybe. But in Ron Paul’s case, his ideas aren’t new, so I’ll comfortably classify him as a nut-case and a wacko.
December 28, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Roy E Pearson
Rick B
I am in Ron Paul’s District. I was born and raised in his District. I challenge you to document your absurd statement that the 14th District ” is an area that received many Whites who left Houston when the Houston schools were desegregated in the late 60’s, so the racisists were concentrated there. ”
That is totally absurd. I lived in Alvin in until I went to Viet Nam in 1967. The Alvin Schools desegregated in 1965, the year after I graduated. SO why would some one come here to get away from desegregation.
I lived most of my adult life in Austin, so when I returned to Alvin a few Years ago I was shocked to hear the “N” word used so frequently. Now it is also the “M” word. Yes this area and most of Texas is pretty damn racist. Vider and East Texas is for worse than here.
The dismaying fact is that most of the US is still very racist. Better than we used to be but a long way to go.
As for Dr. Paul. He is neither a nutcase or a wacko and not any more racist than a good chunk of our society if he even is at all.
The Civil War was inevitable. It is fanciful to think that Lincoln or anyone could have avoided it. As ineveitable as it was, the South was doomed to fail before the war started.
Jefferson Davis lamented that the several Confederate States could not agree on much of anything. That is the thing about States Rights. That is what doomed the Articles of Confederation. With or without the Civil War it is hard to see the existence of Slavery at the same time Corporations and Big Business were emerging.
That is what I think. That does not make me racially tolerant or a racist. What makes me not a racist is the fact that I believe that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I believe that with all my heart.
Has anyone bothered to ask Dr. Paul how he feels about that rather than some obscure issue on a war that happened about 150 years ago and about which there is clearly as much divergence of opinion as there is about the Vietnam action.
As an aside the blog story about the contribution that was supposedly made by the StormFont group to Dr. Paul, and reprinted by the either the NYT or WP has been retracted as not accurate.
“A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest, Lie de Lie, Lie de Lie Lie Lie Lie…” Paul Simon, The Boxer
December 28, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Roy E Pearson
Jason, you are right, I used the wrong word – hew(new). It never helps to classify people with different ideas as nut-cases or wackos. Just like you would not want to disparage people whose skin color, religion, sex, or any other difference.
The great thing about our the ideas expressed at the onset of this Great Country is that people are free to think what ever they want. Or to be comfortable with different things.
A person in this couthry has the right to be a racist, or a bigot. And if such a person wishes to run for office, the voters can make their assessment of his views rightly or wrongly. As long as I follow the Law and do not violate someone elses legal rights, I can think and avocate for pretty much whatever I want.
I just think that name calling is a bit juvenile at best and unproductive. I could be wrong. When Representative Dr. Ron Paul says that Blacks should have different rights than Whites, then I will think that he is a racist. So far I have not read nor heard anything to that effect.
December 28, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Matt66501
I think we all have to take a step back and attempt to step aside from the civil war issue for a second. Was the war preventable? Perhaps it was. Most wars are to some degree. Did Lincoln start the war? Not entirely, but under the circumstances he did a decent job of preserving the union. Congressman Paul commented that he’s like to have done it without all the bloodshed. It’s an issue of the past. We need to focus on the present and deal with a more troubling problem. after seeing the results of the last two elections any reasonable and rational person would have to call into question the validity of the votes in Ohio and Florida. It’s something to think about. The problem Ron Paul adresses and so do many others is that both parties seem to be moving along the same path. Take the war for example: The Democrats favor some type of timely withdrawl, sooner than later. Republicans favor a withdrawl only after the job is finished. Given we have 155,000 troops doing the jobs of policemen in a failed state and considering they are building bases the size of a small city over there one has to question the credibility of any of the front runners.
December 31, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Scroop Moth
It was clearly understood that, in a brilliant maneuver, Lincoln offered the South war OR peace, and Jefferson Davis chose: War.
In addition to South Carolina’s attack on federal property at Ft. Sumter while their commissioners were in Washington DC trying to negotiate transfer, there were other attacks on the US. Virginia seized the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry and the naval yard. Arkansas attacked Ft.Smith. Confederate states raised a military. All this happened before Lincoln called up 70,000 militia and attacked Confederate forces at Bull Run.
December 31, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Patrick ONeill
Paul is not a libertarian – he is a confederate.
I am constantly amazed that libertarians support him – if you listen to his statements carefully he does not oppose governmental control – he opposes “federal” government control.
He is perfectly happy with state governments throwing gays in jail – it is only the federal government that bothers him
December 31, 2007 at 7:57 pm
ronpaulsucks
I really get sick of the Ron Paul Politically Correct brigade running around telling everyone how and what to think. They’re like the liberals on a college campus, screaming, yelling acting like assholes because their guy is supposedly so fucking great, and hate free speech for anyone not believing their views.
Someone get them an enema, and tell them to REDACTED off, please!
December 31, 2007 at 8:46 pm
AMERICAN NONSENSE » Yup, Ron Paul is still racist
[…] Paul says some of his best friends are black. It just happens, Tim, that I get more support from black people today than any other Republican […]
December 31, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Howard
“But Ron Paul has done something that no presidential candidate of any prominence has done in many, many years — he has challenged the cult of Lincoln, the ideological godhead of the modern American regime. The Federal Reserve, the Income Tax, the Wilsonian empire and now the Lincolnian central state have all become national issues of discourse again. Thanks, Ron Paul. Once again, you have told the American people what they need to hear. If we want America to become a free country, we must go further than overturning the legacy of George W. Bush. We must overturn much more, and replace it with liberty itself. We are closer to that goal than ever, as the ideological basis for the modern American system is crumbling at every moment of exposure to Dr. Paul’s truth serum.”
January 1, 2008 at 2:07 am
Someone Special
Lincoln was NOT anti-slavery. This shouldn’t have to be debated over and over again. The Civil War was not started over slavery but more over the infringement of states rights. There is no way thousands of men would die for the south for an institution that less than 10% benefited from. Thus they fought on PRINCIPLE. If abortion were the issue then they would’ve fought just the same. Furthermore, the Radical Republicans (led by Senator Wade of Ohio) were the ones that urged the President into war. Some of you have tried (emphasis on TRIED) to give a history review, but failed to state that the seceded states sent representatives to the White House to negotiate with Lincoln. Lincoln refused. Fort Sumter was attacked because Lincoln gave the direct order to send supplies there, amidst negotations with the confederacy to release it. Now, if Lincoln was so convinced that the seceded states never left because it would be unconstitutional, then why would he be negotiating with them? The attack of Ft. Sumter was provocation that gave Lincoln an excuse to start the war for his party to get the South back by FORCE, the way they wanted it. Which only proved the South’s point in the first place, in that the federal government shouldn’t have so much power over them.
Way to go, “history buffs.”
January 1, 2008 at 6:32 am
silbey
“The Civil War was not started over slavery but more over the infringement of states rights”
You haven’t really read the rest of the thread, have you?
“Fort Sumter was attacked because Lincoln gave the direct order to send supplies there, amidst negotations with the confederacy to release it. ”
How shocking! The President of the United States had a government fort within the United States resupplied? What a dastardly thing to do. Next, Lincoln had plans to order gardening in a national park!
January 1, 2008 at 9:27 am
matt w
Next, Lincoln had plans to order gardening in a national park!
I don’t think Paul would approve of that either.
January 1, 2008 at 10:02 am
JArnold
There’s much to respond to on this fascinating thread.
I especially appreciate Jason’s comment: “how dogmatic is this dude if he is against federal intervention even more than he is against slavery or segregation? What kind of priorities would he have as President?”
There’s been a lot of speculation on alternate history, which is usually questionable at best. But there’s one what-if that I believe is certain: If Lincoln hadn’t gone to war against secession, the South wouldn’t have respected U.S. sovereignty of the western territories. The war would have started there by a Confederate invasion, and spread east.
One more issue I’d like to comment on concerns libertarian ideology. A defender of Paul wrote:
“he’s saying that if a black man and a white man want to go sit down at ‘a federal lunch counter’ they’re more than welcome to do so. But if a black man who owns a diner doesn’t want white people in his establishment, he’s entitled to kick them out of his diner, and the government can’t force him to do otherwise.”
I think it’s arguable if you’re talking about your own home, you can refuse entry to anyone you want – except of course for legitimate law enforcement reasons. But to own a diner is both a public and a private enterprise – it’s a privately owned business in the public market place. A society has a legitimate interest in how you run a diner. If a society, and its agent, the government, refuses to tolerate a situation where (for example) a black family traveling cross-country will never know if they’ll be thrown out of the next diner like animals for the presumption of acting like people, if a society sets rules for the operation of such enterprises (whether for public health or public decency), the owner of a diner is free to sell his diner if he objects, and remove his petty ass from the public marketplace. This is where libertarian ideology is both ridiculous and disgusting: They will happily take advantage of every benefit a society provides, but imagine themselves self-made and supremely important when society insists that in return for the advantages there is a responsibility of membership.
January 1, 2008 at 11:05 am
Paul
JArnold, you’re making the same misinterpretation of the Libertarian point of view that many others have made. You assume that without government intervention, there will be racist business owners across the country throwing people out or denying service in their businesses. You forget that there’s another force that would assuage the business owners from doing that: the free market. Just because Libertarians believe that the federal government shouldn’t be involved in these types of incidences does not mean that they condone them. It means that they trust the free market to take care of these issues. If a business owner decided to throw out all its black guests, you can’t tell me that the moral outrage of the public wouldn’t be enough to shut the guy down. Just look at the Imus situation. The government did not intervene, yet the public outrage among various civil rights groups and individuals forced the company who employed him to fire him.
I’d also like to know how many of you who pin Ron Paul a racist are black. It seems to me to be a perfect example of what Shelby Steele calls “white guilt” where white people must dissociate themselves from supposed racists for fear of being called racists themselves. It does nothing to further race relations. If Ron Paul truly is a racist, he will lose votes from those who are truly offended by him, which will be enough to cost him the election. Stick to the issues that actually affect you and let everyone else take care of themselves.
January 1, 2008 at 11:17 am
ari
We’ve arrived at the “And-a-Pony” portion of our program. Enlightenment is sure to follow. But if not that, at least I have an opportunity to link to the best blog post ever (see above). I heart john & belle.
January 1, 2008 at 11:25 am
ari
Extra special credit to the commenter who sends a link to the original Calvin and Hobbes strip in which Susie wishes for a pony. The link in Belle Waring’s post doesn’t work anymore — if it ever did (Wolfson’s fault, no doubt).
January 1, 2008 at 11:49 am
silbey
“It seems to me to be a perfect example of what Shelby Steele calls “white guilt” where white people must dissociate themselves from supposed racists for fear of being called racists themselves.”
It’s also possible that they think Ron Paul is actually a racist, and are not, as a matter of fact, acting out some particular psychodrama of their own.
“Stick to the issues that actually affect you and let everyone else take care of themselves.”
‘Cause that works so well in real life.
January 1, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Ben Alpers
Extra special credit to the commenter who sends a link to the original Calvin and Hobbes strip in which Susie wishes for a pony
Here it is, Ari!
January 1, 2008 at 1:05 pm
George
Paul: I’m black and think Ron Paul is a racist but not necessarily moreso than the average white american. By that I mean I’m sure he doesn’t secretly attend lynchings by night and then pass himself off as an “regular” white guy during the day. The thing about you white folks is that you all think that white racism is only manifested if you’re white and call blacks niggers and attend regular kkk/neo-nazi meetings. A few of you realize that white racism comes in degrees and flavors which are ALL bad for non-whites. The whites that will lynch a black are racist as well as the ones who think that slavery would have “eventually ended on its own”. The very fact that NONE of you history revisionists want to acknowledge that the south’s supposed problem had to do with “states rights” and that the “right” the south wanted to keep was a states “right” to allow the white citizens, who could afford it, to own black people exposes your racist attitudes. That being said the general racism of whites is understandable because ever since this country was founded it has, hypocritically, proclaimed itself as some great defender of human rights and freedom while amassing its wealth and power on the backs of slave laborers in a land ethnically cleansed of its original indigenous population. The white majority doesn’t want to deal with that so you conjure up false “history” to make yourselves feel better about your country and to distance yourselves from reality. I’d also like to point out to you, Paul, that the “free market will take care of everything philosophy” is a load of crap. Your example about Imus actually supports the fact that american racism ALWAYS prevails. Tell me, how exactly did Imus suffer? He got some time off, with pay, and even has a contract that says he can say whatever he wants when he wants and if his employer wants to fire him they have to give him a warning first or else they have to pay him 40 million dollars etc., bullshit, etc. and then even though he did get “fired” from one network he simply got a new job with another one AND STILL gets a 20 million (or whatever) dollar salary! Funny how you didn’t notice that.
January 1, 2008 at 1:05 pm
ari
Hurrah for Ben! Did you do celebrate New Year’s in some wonderfully European fashion (insert joke here)?
January 1, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Ben Alpers
If putting the kids to bed and sharing a bottle of cheap East German bubbly while (finally) watching The Departed on DVD counts as wonderfully European, I suppose we did!
January 1, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Paul
silbey, yes, it is possible, however not very probable.
And sticking to issues that affect yourself? The problem is that rarely happens. If the more of the middle class voted on issues that actually affected themselves, such as their own economic interests or against wars, instead of purely moral issues such as abortion or gay marriage, I think we’d all be better off. Instead, more of their kids get sent off to die in senseless wars, and the value of their wages decline, while nothing happens on the issues on which they were duped into voting.
January 1, 2008 at 1:19 pm
ari
Yes, Paul, we need more overt expressions of self-interest when people arrive at the voting booth. Quite so.
January 1, 2008 at 1:21 pm
ari
And Ben, I can top that: I composed a blog post and read fellowship applications. And the post isn’t even that good. Some ofhe applications, though, were really excellent. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.
January 1, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Paul
George, who here has said slavery would have ended on its own? Certainly not me, and certainly not Ron Paul. If you actually read his quote, you’ll see that he suggested that the federal government could have bought the slaves and set them free rather than fight an extremely bloody war over it, which is what other countries had done. Just because someone objects to a method doesn’t mean he objects to the goal.
I personally don’t appreciate being lumped into the “white majority”, trying to “distance myself from reality,” or being called a “history revisionist.” I said nothing in my post to imply I am any of those things, other than the fact that I vaguely indicated I’m white, which is the only thing you appear to be going on.
January 1, 2008 at 1:56 pm
silbey
“yes, it is possible, however not very probable.”
You have no earthly way of knowing that.
“issues on which they were duped into voting.”
You objected to being lumped into a certain group of people and yet you seem to be doing that quite regularly yourself, first by lumping the “Ron Paul is a racist” group into a “white guilt” crowd, and second by lumping all voters into a “we’re too stupid to understand what we’re doing” group.
January 1, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Paul
silbey, I’m not lumping anyone into groups. I simply stated that the behavior I’ve witnessed in these “Ron Paul is a racist” postings appears to me to be evidence of white guilt. I also did not lump all voters into any group. I said “if more of the middle class voted on issues that actually affected themselves…we’d all be better off.” How are you miscronstruing “more of the middle class” into “all voters?” And if you’re trying to dispute my assertion that certain voters vote on issues that don’t affect them, just Google “gay marriage” and “voting issue” and you’ll see both the fact that it is a major point for many voters as well as the fact that the issue they’re voting on has gone nowhere in the federal government.
January 1, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Someone Special
“How shocking! The President of the United States had a government fort within the United States resupplied? What a dastardly thing to do. Next, Lincoln had plans to order gardening in a national park!”
Oh please. They moved into the fort without ANY notification at all (so devilishly that they did it in secret). But that’s beside the point. He knew that both sides were drilling and preparing to fight in case something happened. Don’t try to spin this. Lincoln sent those ships in on purpose to ignite the beginning of the war. Period. The confederacy knew that Lincoln was yanking their chain. The governor of South Carolina repeatedly led the brigade against Lincoln to regain control of the fort, and Lincoln in a clever plan alerted him, almost in satirical fashion, that the naval ships were coming. So it is clear he wanted to aggravate what was already becoming a hostile situation.
“I’d also like to point out to you, Paul, that the “free market will take care of everything philosophy” is a load of crap. ”
There’s no such thing as a perfect market. You have to deal with the lesser of the two evils.
January 1, 2008 at 2:51 pm
George
Paul, I am “collectively” criticizing arguments made by pro-confederate “historians”. Ron Paul (and his supporters) contention that Lincoln could have just bought all those black people and set them free has already been discussed on this site and it has also, already, been pointed out how that particular “compromise” and others like it did NOTHING. White southerners wanted to keep having the “right” to buy and sell black people and they weren’t going to compromise about it! It has been ALSO pointed out by people in this discussion who know a little history that “other countries” didn’t just “non-violently” end slavery. A final point I’d like to make is that the very argument that Lincoln should have just “bought the blacks” and “freed” them runs counter to the principles of this country. You know the whole thing about ALL men being created equal and having the RIGHT to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Why, precisely, should Lincoln or anyone else have bought black human beings from white human beings when the white human beings didn’t have any business “owning” black people in the first place! I realize that as a white american you’re real sorry so many white folks died fighting over that and, by golly, you just wish there was some other way it could have all been worked out. Sorry you don’t like being “lumped” but you’re white so I “lumped” you the fact you distance yourself from reality, like the rest of white america, is obvious from what you say. I like, by the way, how you chose to remain silent about what I said about Imus and the “free market”. The thing about the white people in this country is that they think that if they acknowledge their racism that they are somehow “bad” people. That isn’t necessarily true so just because your white and I lumped you, appropriately, with the other white people in this country I didn’t mean to “offend” you.
January 1, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Paul
George, I still don’t see how I’m personally distancing myself from reality. I’ve tried to defend Ron Paul’s statement about the end of slavery not because I personally believe it but because I felt he was being misinterpreted. I don’t pretend to be a historian and obviously can’t say what the best way to end the slavery could have been, but I certainly have respect for someone who would consider options other than war for solving these types of problems. I also have respect for someone who takes a pragmatic approach to these types of hot-button issues knowing full well that emotional and moral knee-jerk reactions will ensue.
If you want me to take a stance on the Imus situation, here it is: I think people should be free to say what they want, so Imus had the right to say what he did. I also have the right to listen to whomever I want, and I’ve always chosen not to listen to him because of what he says. As far as why he’s still in business: he’d still be unemployed if those who opposed him so vehemently at the beginning followed through with the same fervor when he was re-hired by another broadcaster. Don’t blame “American racism” for keeping Imus employed just because his opponents have backed down.
January 1, 2008 at 4:04 pm
George
Paul, Since you are a white american I really don’t expect you to see how you distance yourself from reality the overwhelming majority of you people DON’T see it so it’s futile to point it out to you, I don’t see what you feel was “misinterpreted” either. Ron Paul said that something “other than war” should have been tried and history shows that other things WERE tried and that they ALL failed because white southerners wanted the “right” to own black people. They even went to war over their belief in this “right”. You say you’re not a historian but I think you would agree that when they attacked Fort Sumter that pretty much eliminated any ambiguities about how far they were willing to go to defend their “right” to own black people. Since Lincoln,and the north, didn’t attack the south first why don’t you have more respect for his restraint? You say that “obviously” you can’t say what the best way to end slavery was, why not? If you claim that your country stands for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and that “all men are created equal” then what’s the problem? You end something wrong by ending it slaveowners are/were criminals what is your personal attitude about how criminals should be dealt with? Pragmatically speaking, if you had been Lincoln and the criminal slaveowners had just attacked Ft. Sumter what would you have done? Negotiate with them? I didn’t need you to take a stance, by the way, on Imus considering you already had when you brought him up. You held him up as a good example of the power of the “free market” to tackle racism in america and how it demonstrated that “gummint interference” wasn’t necessary. When I pointed out to you how the whole Imus thing shows that what matters in america most is that wealthy, racist, white men be given a break (he was never unemployed) you decided to back off on the whole “the free market will take care of racism” argument and then shift to criticizing Imus’ critics for “backing down”. Typical of white people to do that and it shows why it is futile to point out white racism to white people.
January 1, 2008 at 5:01 pm
JArnold
George,
I agree with everything you’ve said… except that I’m white, and maybe don’t belong in the lump.
January 1, 2008 at 6:07 pm
George
JArnold, I know it isn’t fair and just to “lump” everyone but I’ve been doing it for the basically for the context of this discussion. The thing about lumping is that it is easily picked apart if you get more specific about just who “you white people” I’ve been talking about. Even though white people show a predictible consistency, in a general sense, you couldn’t get me to disagree that there are white people who do and have done what they could to respect ALL people. White abolitionists during and before the civil war need to be respected and remembered, for example, for their contributions to try to make a better society for all of us. As a black man though while I do remember and respect them and recognize that white people are just as human as I am it doesn’t matter much when I still see white people pretty much acting like they always have since Christopher Columbus. Something I hope white people of today stop doing is having any “white guilt” about the past. You all are presently the inheritors and benefactors of your unapologetically racist ancestors but I don’t see why any of you should apologize for them or feel guilty about what they did. You all SHOULD stop bullshitting yourselves, however, that the racist/genocidal actions of your ancestors have done nothing to shape your here/now attitudes about race and that as their progeny you have not gained any unfair advantage in this society over blacks and other minorities as a result and that you don’t practice any 21st century versions of what your ancestors did. White people have a tough thing to tackle amongst themselves when it comes to their racism because, bottom line, it’s about your personal racism and the racism of your loved ones and racism is such an ugly thing it’s hard to look at yourself and say “Yep, that’s me alright and my dad and mom ….” without at the same time getting frustrated because you don’t really know what to do about it.
January 2, 2008 at 1:32 am
LP
“When I pointed out to you how the whole Imus thing shows that what matters in america most is that wealthy, racist, white men be given a break (he was never unemployed) you decided to back off on the whole “the free market will take care of racism” argument and then shift to criticizing Imus’ critics for “backing down”.”
Imus, a washed up, radio shock-jock comedian, uses the word “nappy” and there’s a giant ruckus over the entire thing. Imus is fired(?) because his network doesn’t want to lose sponsors.
Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Carlos Mencia, and essentially every successful minority comedian on the planet Earth use repulsive racial slurs *every day* and how much controversy does it cause? Zero. And despite minor, minor complaints, Comedy Central and other networks keep these offensive idiots because they attract an audience (i.e. the sponsors remain happy).
All the “Imus thing” shows is that what matters in America is whatever the free market says matters, apparently.
January 2, 2008 at 5:37 am
George
LP, Yes exactly. Black people are more powerless and irrelevant to whites now than we ever have been. When a “washed up” white asshole like Imus (you people sure pay nice money to your “washed up” white brothers) just keeps his thing going that reinforces just how much white people don’t give a damn when their own denigrate minorities. The comedians you mention also get their paychecks from whites (who make even more than they do) to denigrate their own people which, of course, serves the aims of white people by rewarding us to denigrate ourselves. The “free market” was held up as the way racism should be handled and I showed that it does the opposite by design.
January 2, 2008 at 6:46 am
Gotomario.com - The Mario Solis Marich Show » January 3, 2008 MARIO LIVE TODAY NOON to 3 PM PT
[…] TROUBLE IN RON PAUL PARADISE […]
January 2, 2008 at 9:10 am
silbey
“’m not lumping anyone into groups. I simply stated that the behavior I’ve witnessed in these “Ron Paul is a racist” postings appears to me to be evidence of white guilt.”
Thus lumping them into a group.
“I also did not lump all voters into any group”
Sure you did: you presumed that voters were “duped” into voting a certain way, thus lumping them into a group. The correct label for this is “false consciousness” as in “if only people understood the TRUTH, they’d stop supporting such silly ideas.” Though the concept was used most aggressively by Marxists, I won’t think to lump you in with them.
“They moved into the fort without ANY notification at all”
Again: eek! Members of the United States military mounted a dastardly surprise assault on _their own fort_! The horror! The horror!
“He knew that both sides were drilling and preparing to fight in case something happened.”
So, if I may translate your comment, Abraham Lincoln knew that citizens of the United States were about to commit treason, and he should have avoided doing anything to irritate them?
“and Lincoln in a clever plan alerted him”
Uh, I thought you said that they came without any notification?
January 2, 2008 at 1:22 pm
links for 2008-01-02 | jason brown
[…] Ron Paul: Very Gradual Emancipationist In the comments, Ron Paul supporters attack Lincoln and defend the Confederacy. The libertarian train to Crazyville has pulled out of Gum-Drop Station and is on it’s way around Holy Shit Bend… (tags: history politics batshit.crazy ronpaul) […]
January 2, 2008 at 7:20 pm
LP
“Black people are more powerless and irrelevant to whites now than we ever have been.”
Really George? Can you name any blacks in the United States wielding enormous power in 1790? Were there any black secretaries of state in the 1800s or likely presidential candidates? Did any of them own a multi-billion dollar TV network?
I also like how you use the term “you people.” Wow, like, as if I’m white or something because I think Imus and Chris Rock should be treated equally for equally offensive comments.
Your argument still doesn’t hold. If people were offended by the comedians I mentioned, they wouldn’t watch them. If people didn’t watch them, the “whites” wouldn’t pay them to “denigrate” themselves. White people have the same common aim as everyone else: money. That’s the bottom line.
January 2, 2008 at 7:47 pm
ari
Ugh, I can’t believe I’m wading into this mess, but I just have to ask a quick question before I scuttle off to other, quieter, corners of this blog. So, here it is: LP, what is it about Chris Rock’s material that causes you to see his work as comparable to Don Imus’s? Is it Rock’s consistent skewering of certain segments of the African-American community? You’re upset that he uses the so-called N-word, in other words? Or are you raising that hilarious bugbear, reverse-racism? I’m just curious, is all. So humor me, if you don’t mind. And Happy New Year.
January 3, 2008 at 2:22 am
Ron Paul - « Les États-Unis progressent vers une forme douce de fascisme » « De ce côté-ci de l’Amérique
[…] pour scruter faits et gestes, en plus de ses déclarations, à la loupe. C’est le cas du blog The Edge of the American West, géré par Eric Rauchway et Ari Kelman, qui a passé en revue une entrevue que donnait Ron Paul à […]
January 3, 2008 at 10:01 am
George
LP, In the 1790s the total population of blacks in amerikkka was 757,208 (19.3% of total US pop.). 697,681 (92%) were slaves (so much for the “land of the free” myth) In the 1800s there weren’t any black secretaries of state but during the Reconstruction (which you pro-confederacy “historians” really hated) you finally, and VERY grudgingly, first allowed blacks people to vote. Of course there weren’t any white OR black multi-billion dollar TV network owners in the 1790s or 1800s. I realize that, as a white american you think that Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice amount to something or indicate that blacks are wielding power now but whites have ALWAYS divided blacks into two categories in this country: field niggers and house niggers. House niggers like Powell, Rice and Thomas get their jobs by going along with whatever white people want at the expense of their own people and you all REALLY like blacks like that. So what’s your point exactly? That just because you all have finally allowed three house niggers to hold the best jobs that house niggers have ever gotten in amerikkkan history that proves that things are better for the rest of us field niggers? I agree with you that, with whites, it’s all about money and ALWAYS has been. That shit you all talk about amerikka being about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and “ALL men being created equal” is just something you have used as a marketing angle to sell your “democracy” to the suckers. The denigration of minorities in this country is necessary in order for amerikkka to BE amerikkka and you all pay each other (Imus) and black house niggers (Powell, Rice, Thomas, rappers etc.) well to continue doing it. As a quick history lesson here are some prominent African american leaders from the 1790s/1800s: 1790s, Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, David Walker, Sojourner Truth; 1800s Nat Turner, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman.
January 3, 2008 at 10:12 am
Hank
“but during the Reconstruction (which you pro-confederacy “historians” really hated) you finally, and VERY grudgingly, first allowed blacks people to vote. ”
Ex-Confederates hardly “allowed” black people to vote. The Union Army forced that change. When the army was withdrawn after 1877, they went back to an all-white electorate. When the US govn. decided to resume promoting change in the South, it came in the form of the 101st Airborne in Little Rock.
January 3, 2008 at 1:57 pm
George
Thank you Hank! I do stand corrected! And let’s not forget the birth of that WONDERFUL amerikkkan “christian” terrorist organization that amerikkka shat out its ass during that time too.
January 3, 2008 at 2:18 pm
ari
Also, not to quibble George, but Garrison was white. Like lily-white. Like fishbelly white. Which makes him as black as William Jefferson Clinton.
January 3, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Tom W
I just stumbled onto this whole discussion from another web site. I’m a white male, a Libertarian politically, and currently a supporter of Ron Paul. (Not that it *should* be of any relevance, but I also happen to have a black girlfriend. Perhaps that throws off the stereotype some would have cast me into otherwise though?)
After trying to make sense of this whole “Ron Paul is a racist!” business, I still find myself at a loss to see how that’s really the case. The comments people keep referring to all tell me he’s simply a man with a sharp focus on certain core beliefs that Libertarians have always hung onto. It sounds like certain interviewers tried their best to lead him into making statements they could twist around to use against him. But the bottom line is, all he has really said is that he would vote against any legislation that takes away individual property rights and hands them over to federal government (yes, even if it was wrapped around something like “Civil Rights” legislation). And he happens to feel that the slavery issue back in the Civil War era was something best solved by means other than war. At face value, how can you really disagree with that one? Like he said, 600,000+ lives lost isn’t exactly an ideal outcome or scenario – and other 1st. world nations managed to abolish slavery without the bloodshed.
To George: I’d like to remind you that our Constitution says “All men are CREATED equal.” It never says anything about guaranteeing “equality” after that. Ultimately, it’s a philosophical statement (and a pretty important one at that!). It clarifies that we’re a nation that believes nobody is born with special privileges or rights that the next guy/gal doesn’t have. What you do for YOURSELF determines your fate as you go through your life. As we lose sight of principles like this, our nation turns towards “Robin Hood politics” – blaming the “rich” for all of our problems, and pretending we can “fix” things by throwing their money at those lacking it, trying to artificially maintain “equality”. And that is a recipe for failure.
And sorry, but I think you’re mistaken if you feel that only WHITES want to maintain this “division between house and field niggers”. I truly think this distinction is artificially created by those with a chip on their shoulder, and those who think it’s financially or politically advantageous to maintain it. But those motivations cross skin color. IMHO, the likes of Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakan are JUST as anxious to preserve such ideas – because it keeps them where they want to be in terms of political clout and recognition.
I witness blacks all the time who pursue their dreams and goals, and succeed in their endeavors, yet it’s usually other BLACKS who take issue with them once they get there — UNLESS their dreams and goals match up with what THEY think their race should be involved in. EG. In my own city, there’s a young black man who is one of the top bowlers in the region. Unfortunately, it’s mainly whites who follow his efforts and root for his success, because too many blacks think “bowling is an old white man’s sport” and it’s not something a black man should pursue. (But oddly enough, if I made comments about what ANYONE can observe if they look around …. regarding blacks and the sports they usually DO choose to play, someone would be offended at my “racist comments” on, say, basketball being a sport for black people, right?)
January 3, 2008 at 4:52 pm
silbey
“Not that it *should* be of any relevance, but I also happen to have a black girlfriend. Perhaps that throws off the stereotype some would have cast me into otherwise though?)”
You know, the “My best friend/spouse/significant other is a (insert racial/ethnic group here)” introductory tactic just never comes across well.
Following it at the end with the “concerned criticism of the culture of (insert racial/ethnic group here) backed up by a touching yet anonymous anecdote” concluding strategy is really, really awkward.
I may have to come up with a checklist for folks (“Called the candidate “Dr. Paul” at all times? Check!).
January 3, 2008 at 5:12 pm
George
ari Thank you for reminding me and correcting me about Garrison. He’s one of those white people I was referring to when I said that there are whites who have done what they could to make a better society for all of us I just remembered wrong about him being black.
TomW Much of what you ask about was covered in this post by myself and a lot of others and rehashing would be redundant. The thing about those poor 600,000 people for example. True it was too bad but what about the slaves before, during and after the war? If its about numbers with you then I guess I’m curious why you libertarians never seem to consider adding the lives lost of the slaves from the inception of this country until the Civil War. I don’t know if any numbers of murdered/enslaved blacks were kept by whites but if there are any I wouldn’t be surprised if it far surpasses 600,000. The thing about “property rights” was covered too. Do Libertarians believe that human beings can be legally considered “property” AT ALL under ANY circumstances? I realize it was what was going at the time but it begs the question. So “all the kids were doing it” so what? If it is your conviction that people ARE not and CANNOT be the property of other human beings then “all the kids were doing it” is not a defense for what was going on. Libertarians , therefore, have no argument when they bring up “property rights” when the discussion is about slavery. Slavery is about criminality. White slave owning criminals were buying and selling human beings with the EXCUSE that they were merely buying and selling “property”. The government, therefore, was NOT engaged in “taking private property” away from slave owners it was finally going after a bunch of criminals. Think about a cop who gets shot in the line of duty while attempting to deal with a criminal and you got Lincoln and the Union. When cops get shot in this society while doing their duty we hail them as heroes and we don’t condemn them or their actions. The Union “cops” should be honored for their service and their deaths should not be mourned as a “waste of life”. Your “created but not guaranteed” argument is faulty in that while, in a limited way, contemporary blacks are “free” to do more than our ancestors were OUR ancestors, however, certainly couldn’t “determine their fate” themselves at all! We weren’t even allowed to vote until the 1960s! The distinction of “house and field niggers” might be exploited by some blacks in amerikkka and I wouldn’t even disagree that Jesse and Louie use it to their personal financial advantage but I disagree that THEY are interested in “preserving” it. Both of them are not as influential as you white critics think they are either in the black community or in amerikkka in general. True, they can still pull decent crowds and get TV time if they want but other than the occasional sensational “TV” thing where is their real political clout? Sure, blacks succeed at their goals and endeavors DESPITE the bullshit we have to put up with from whites but that ain’t saying much. There are definetely MANY blacks who resent seeing other black people make it self loathing is a by product of the racist history of this country. I can’t say why your boy is not getting any support about the bowling though cuz in Buffalo WE think bowling is cool and Buffalo is a big bowling town and always has been. All our alleys are closed in the hood though but we invade the suburbs to get our bowl on and don’t give a fuck what you white folks think about it!
January 3, 2008 at 5:41 pm
ari
Garrison was an extraordinary figure. If you have the time, you might want to check out this book, my dissertation director’s first scholarly monograph. It’s very old, and somewhat dated, but still the best analysis of Garrison. That said, Caleb McDaniel, once upon a time a fiendishly good blogger, is working hard on a book about Garrison. I imagine it will supplant dearly departed Jack Thomas’s Liberator — not to put too much pressure on Caleb.
January 3, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Hank
Tom W– a few comments:
“After trying to make sense of this whole “Ron Paul is a racist!” business, I still find myself at a loss to see how that’s really the case. The comments people keep referring to all tell me he’s simply a man with a sharp focus on certain core beliefs that Libertarians have always hung onto.”
I don’t necessarily think Paul is personaly a racist, but his policies are decidedly NOT libertarian (which may be why he isn’t a Libertarian!). He’s states’ rights. Just as he is personally opposed to marijuana usage, he believes states may regulate it. Same with gambling. Same with homosexuality and contraception. He’s perfectly fine with the states outlawing those if they want to.
Paul is more of a Neo-Confederate than a libertarian. Not all Neo-Confederates are themselves racist. They do believe, however, that racists have the right to BE and ACT racist (within limits).
“our Constitution says “All men are CREATED equal.” ”
Uh, that would be the Declaration of Independence, Einstein.
“It clarifies that we’re a nation that believes nobody is born with special privileges or rights that the next guy/gal doesn’t have.”
Really? The Constitution established a slave-republic. It gave rights to slave-owners that slaves didn’t have. Paul, interestingly, finds that notion attractive.
Not sure where you learned your history, but if I were you, I’d ask for a refund.
January 3, 2008 at 6:53 pm
urbino
I think it’s just adorable that you people are still talking about this. Cute as a button.
January 4, 2008 at 11:14 am
Hank
Thanks for sharing that sterling thought there, urbino. The world is desperate for more.
January 5, 2008 at 3:57 am
James Dodson
Both the North and the South were slave states; the Civil War was a war between two slave states. At the beginning of the war, the shelling of Ft. Sumter by the South was to get the Northern troops to withdraw. The shelling caused exactly 0 (zero) casualties to the North, but resulted in the North surrendering the fort, and being allowed to return north. One Union soldier died
during the closing ceremony, from the ceremonial firing of a cannon, but not due to any action by the South (bizarre, but apparently true). The packing shot out the barrel of the cannon and hit the soldier in the chest- no cannonball.
Was this provocation strong enough to prosecute a total war against the South, one where 600,000 died and over twice that number were permanently disabled with losses of eyes, limbs, or in constant pain for life, etc.? If you extrapolate the populations to today’s, that would be six million dead and twelve million permanently disabled.
Many of those who were vehemently opposed to slavery at the time were also opposed to war as well. Lysander Spooner was an anti-war abolitionist, and I would bet that Dr. Ron Paul has read his work, something I doubt any other candidate has done. Spooner is proudly looked upon by many libertarians as a forefather of libertarianism. Spooner wrote a very strong piece that declared the institution of slavery to be unconstitutional.
Both war and slavery are evils, and they are both evils that encourage the other. Yes, wanting war encourages slavery, it does not end it. What, exactly is conscription, but a temporary slavery exacted against young men to force them to fight or face being imprisoned, another state easily likened to slavery. Parchman farm and all of the horrors of the post-reconstruction were not freedom but were slavery under new names.
In war, evil is commonplace. Theft, rape and murder are frequently crimes that are freely during wartime, and the perpetrators generally are overlooked or even encouraged.
The Civil War was something Lincoln thought he could win quickly and easily at first- a cakewalk. Does that sound familiar? His rhetoric at the beginning was to “preserve the union”. What Lincoln really wanted the most was to keep exacting tariffs (taxes) upon the South to aid his buddy industrialists in the North. Most of the revenue collected by the federal government was from the South, not the North,
The war dragged on. The North was definitely in danger of losing. Now a different reason for the war was posed-freedom for the slaves. Lincoln wanted new bodies to replace the dead and disabled bodies already consumed by the war. Being a wonderful poet of war- look at the Gettysburg Address-
Lincoln was able to stir the hearts of those wanting to be free, and those wishing to see them free. He manipulated the good intentions of people to set them behind the faltering war. He was a masterful politician. He is also a forefather of the current neocon movement, which has successfully welded right and left elements to “free” the world- using the blood of others.
The left is sadly incapable of seeing how their good intentions are being misused. The neocons have co-opted them. The neocons have so far been able to paint Ron Paul as something he is definitely not. Dr. Ron Paul has a great and good heart, as the people in the 14th district of Texas can attest. I am lucky enough to know several very liberal people in the 14th district who like Ron Paul for his decency, his honesty and his fair-mindedness. He is a good man.
Ron Paul is the only viable anti-war candidate in either party. Yes, Richardson, Kucinich and Gravel have much to admire, but I do not think they see the inherent dangers of an enormous overfed government. They are not talking about the debt, the taxes and inflation that continually refill the war chest of the neocons.
January 5, 2008 at 4:07 am
James Dodson
As a postscript. What did the honorable federal government do after the Civil War? They prosecuted a war of genocide against the Native Americans- the Indians. Some of the freed slaves who survived the war and had fought for the Union then were set the task of fighting the Indians. The Buffalo Soldiers were good fighters, but I believe they may have frequently been demoralized by the amount of death and destruction they were being ordered to deal out, and often to “civilians”.
January 5, 2008 at 4:25 am
James Dodson
A final note concerning the deified Lincoln- he wanted to enshrine slavery in the Constituion as a permanent fixture in order to “preserve the union”. Google the Corwin amendment.
Lincoln was a hateful, bloodyminded man, who loved power at the expense of any amount of blood, or any human freedom.
January 5, 2008 at 6:44 am
silbey
“Both the North and the South were slave states; the Civil War was a war between two slave states”
*That* explains why–when the North won the war–they spread slavery throughout the United States. I had been wondering.
“The shelling caused exactly 0 (zero) casualties to the North, but resulted in the North surrendering the fort, and being allowed to return north.”
Treason: Okay As Long As You Cause 0 (Zero) Casualties.
January 5, 2008 at 7:16 am
Hank
“Lincoln was a hateful, bloodyminded man, who loved power at the expense of any amount of blood, or any human freedom.”
Excellent stuff there, Mr. Dodson.
You forgot to mention that he was also possessed of an irrational hatred for white people. His opposition to the Mexican War is well known, but did you know why? In a letter to his buddy, Nat Turner (the real one, who escaped and moved to France), Lincoln wrote: “I love blood and death and senseless mayhem, but I’d prefer to unleash it on whites, not those adorable swarthy dudes to the South. Save your powder, America! When I’m elected, we’ll kill all the whiteys.”
January 5, 2008 at 8:42 am
George
KILL THE WHITEYS! KILL THE WHITEYS! GOOOOOOOO LINCOLN!
January 5, 2008 at 9:32 am
George
John D. You forgot how Lincoln got his orders from UFOs that came out of area 51 and used to have “nocturnal congress” with gay bigfootses too…
January 5, 2008 at 5:22 pm
George
Ari -Your discussion has been invigorating and now that Iowa is done I don’t think ANY of us need to waste any more time with Ronny. The neo-confederates have shown they may got dollas but they sho’ ain’t got no sense. Ron Paul my ass. Stop sellin wolf tickets suckas! You blew your shot to show amerikkka that you was ready to take over and DO something. You mutherfuckers can’t support a 2 year olds jock strap.
January 5, 2008 at 11:29 pm
James Dodson
Yes both North and South were slave states. The North included Delaware, Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky, all slave states. The Northern industrial base supported and fed off of slavery. The federal tax base fed off of slavery. Lincoln wished to preserve the Union, and was so enamored of this idea that he was quite willing to keep slavery a permanent, yes PERMANENT part of the Constitution and a permanent part of the Union, within the slave states. Lincoln not only wished no slaves in the western states, he wanted no freed slaves there either. Please look at the Corwin Amendment, which is an insidious proposal that Lincoln pushed in private, being the duplicitous individual he was. Goooo Lincoln, not.
Ending slavery was the best thing that came out of the Civil War. It was an unintended outcome of the war, and did not mean freedom, just no more chattel slavery. Other less positive things were a century of the bitterest race relations on the planet. Make that a century plus.
No return comments about the genocidal war against Native Americans by the North? Lincoln’s most vicious appointees to lead the war against the South were also those ones sent to commit genocide, and included Sherman and Sheridan of “the only good Indian is a dead Indian”fame.
Condemning the actions of Lincoln is not in any way a sign of racism, except in the eyes of those so propagandized they believe Lincoln to be a saint. I also believed him to be the greatest President when I was younger.
Thomas DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln and Lincoln Unmasked are helpful antidotes to the Lincoln deification claptrap we are fed from earliest school age. The Neocons love Lincoln. They also enjoy making wars. They also like making a lot of money off of wars, just like the industrialist buddies of Lincoln. They also like having other people than themselves shed all the blood.
It is convenient for people today to trivialize the lives of others, and if they are separated in time from the present, like the Civil War, or separated in space, as the wars in Central Asia, Iraq and Afghanistan, they can be pretty uncaring .
It is intellectually and morally repugant to accept the only choices to be slavery or war. It shows a lot of heart and intellectual honesty to try to find something better.
10% for Ron Paul is a great start. Giuliani got 4%. There are 49 states to go, and Ron Paul is in every one of them.
He’s already picked up a few delegates, and he’ll be getting more.
Whatever the outcome, this is not over. It hasn’t hardly started.
Please read WAR IS A RACKET by former Marine General Smedley Butler.
January 6, 2008 at 5:31 am
silbey
What’s both fascinating and appalling about Mr. Dodson’s comments is that he’s edging up to some of the real complexities of the Civil War and its start, and then somehow turning it into Ron Paul. It’s like someone with a serious medical condition who listens to all the percentages and treatment options, and then decides to go to a shaman.
(Chances that in the response there is something about the conspiracy of modern medicine?).
Congratulations, Mr. Dodson, you’ve discovered that history isn’t clear-cut. It is unutterably complex and morally compromised and awkward. Supporting the shaman isn’t going to make it less so.
“There are 49 states to go, and Ron Paul is in every one of them.”
Now I have a vision of animatronic Ron Paul robots (49 of them) marching through all the states of the union. Or clones, maybe it’s clones…
January 6, 2008 at 12:39 pm
James Dodson
My vision of what I perceive as a future without an abrupt change in direction is a nation squandering all of its resources, both human and physical, on the fool’s errand of changing the world over. And all this is being done out of an overwhelming pride, a fatal hubris. I see today an animatronic nation (thanks for the vivid analogy) following the will of a political elite without any desire to do so, but following nonetheless.
I see a nation of warmongers (all the Republicans minus Ron Paul and his supporters) following the clarion call of the god of war. I see the vision of those purporting to be opposed to these wars (many Democrats, minus those independent enough to follow Paul or Kucinich or Gravel or Richardson) being co-opted. Thet are not warmongers, but merely the war enablers.
I see a lot of otherwise bright people blindly believing the propaganda that helps a warfare state maintain its stranglehold.
I do not believe history to be so clearcut, and your mischaracterization, without any real attempt to address anything I have written about, is more indicative of your own fearfulness.
Ron Paul is a 10 term congressman from an enormous and rather liberal part of Texas. By your mischaracterization of Paul, you seem to imply that the 14th district is something other.
So, who are you supporting in the primaries, and why?
January 6, 2008 at 3:11 pm
George
I’m supporting someone who knows two plus two doesn’t equal fish.
January 6, 2008 at 3:50 pm
James Dodson
No, I think $3.99 equals fish, plus you get fries and a coke.
January 6, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Hank
“The federal tax base fed off of slavery.”
Um, how so?
January 6, 2008 at 4:17 pm
George
The same way $3.99 equals fish, fries and a coke! Didn’t you pay attention Hank?
January 6, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Hank
“Please look at the Corwin Amendment, which is an insidious proposal that Lincoln pushed in private, being the duplicitous individual he was.”
Speaking of dublicitous. Let’s see. The nation was in the greatest, most threatening crisis–Constitutional, militarily, economically, socially–of its history. The Corwin Amendment held a chance of averting war. It was proposed before Lincoln’s inaugeration. Had he opposed it, neo-Confederates such as Mr. Dodson here would be jumping all over him because, they would say, its obvious he was eager for war, opposing even this half-baked attempt to avert it.
As it is, he did give it moderate support (referring to it obliquely in his inaugeral). Any sane individual would see this as a reasonable last ditch effort to avoid disunion and disaster. (Recall that at this point Lincoln had yet to find an argument for slavery’s un-Constitutionality. And, frankly, he had bigger fish to fry, since–like it or not–the President’s duties don’t specify “end slavery, jack” but do say something about preserving and protecting the Constitution.
Somehow, in the twisted backwaters of the neo-Confederate “mind” this becomes evidence that Lincoln was a pro-slavery racist. At least, he was during those moments when he wasn’t a slave-loving “black republican” intent on making war against the south with “that iron, that iron fist,” destroying their lovely civilization and opening it to capitalist predators.
Somehow, also, the fact that the South reoundly repudiated the Corwin Amendment–since by this time they actively desired secession and independence and much preferred war to rejoining the United States, even if slavery were guaranteed–doesn’t get mentioned by these neo-Confederates. That’s the real lesson of the Corwin Amendment: it was these slaveholding, racist assholes who wanted the war. When it came, they got whipped bad–though not as badly as they deserved. If the “fist” had been as “iron” as Paul’s psychotic nightmares imagine it to be, Davis and Lee and Stephens would have ended up dangling from a big tree somewhere near Jena Louisiana.
Instead, after leading a rebellion on behalf of the most shameful institution in American history, they just ambled off. Wow. What a vicious totalitarian Lincoln turned out to be.
Oh, and Dodson? Please don’t mention Thomas DiLorenzo around here. I’m not sure its possible to keep America beautiful anymore, but at least, maybe, this little corner of it? I mean, I’m as down with free speech as the next fellow, but that man’s an embarrassment to the academic profession.
January 6, 2008 at 5:35 pm
silbey
“I do not believe history to be so clearcut, and your mischaracterization, without any real attempt to address anything I have written about, is more indicative of your own fearfulness.”
Bzzt. I’m sorry, that is NOT the correct answer. Read the excerpt again, and then attempt the essay question. Be sure to back up your argument with effective examples. (Hint: my point was exactly the opposite of what you thought it was).
“So, who are you supporting in the primaries, and why?”
I’m supporting someone from this universe.
January 6, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Matt W
rather liberal part of Texas
Wha?
January 6, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Hank
That would be “rather Liberal” by Texas standards, you understand. I think that means there’s only a burning cross on every OTHER lawn . . .
January 6, 2008 at 9:00 pm
James Dodson
The federal tax base fed off slavery.
“Um, how so?”, says Hank.
Thanks for asking. Through rapacious tariffs, the South was forced to pay what amounts to an enormous tribute long before the Civil War. In 1840, the South paid 84% of the total U.S. tariffs, and this rose to 87% in 1860 (See Carl Pearlston’s A New Look At The Civil War-at http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/pearlston1.html -Pearston is a member of the Southern California ADL, not known as a hotbed of Confederates)
The relationship of the North to the South was as a parasite to a host. In turn, the relationship of the slaveholders to the slaves was as a parasite to a host.
This wealth that was exacted from the South was largely due to slave labor.
Nearly all of these funds collected by the federal government from the South were spent in the North. There was a near rebellion over this same issue in 1828.
The moral high ground of the North was false.
Profiting from slavery from a distance is still profiting from slavery.
The reason we are discussing this is because of Tim Russert’s MTP questions.
His mission was to derail Ron Paul.
” President’s duties don’t specify “end slavery, jack” but do say something about preserving and protecting the Constitution” says Hank.
How did Lincoln preserve the Constitution? By doing away with habeus corpus, closing hundreds of newspapers he didn’t like, and making the Constitution whatever he wanted it to be.
January 6, 2008 at 9:15 pm
James Dodson
Why the beef with DiLorenzo? He has punctured holes all through the Lincoln
mythos, while the mainstream Lincoln hagiographers continue to pretend that a lot of documents do not exist. The Lincoln “court historians” are the ones you should vent your wrath upon.
A Rasmussen Poll recently had Paul at 14% in New Hampshire, so all the foul winds being pumped up by the neocons and their enablers may not be working as planned.
January 7, 2008 at 2:31 am
LP
Very well, ari. Prepare to be astounded by the razor-sharp intellect of my bugbear. http://minipainting-guild.net/eo/bugbear.jpg
No but seriously, you’re missing my point. George maintains that blacks are in a more powerless and irrelevant condition than ever before. I suppose his evidence for this is that people like Don Imus aren’t burned at the stake for their half-witted comments.
However, I maintain that blacks are doing better than ever before. Aside from using Oprah, Obama, Rice, Powell and every black person in the United States who rides in the front of bus or knows how to read as my evidence, I cited that when a white person today says or does anything that can even be construed as mildly racist (such as lamenting over the high cost of the Civil War or convicting a black man who shoots a teenager in Miller Place) it appears that the media, the blogosphere, and most of the public go (for lack of a better term) fucking bananas. If blacks were in an irrelevant position the controversy would have never made the news. Yet every minority comedian can make the same vile statements and the public eats it up, buys DVDs loaded with it, and it causes zero controversy.
“LP, what is it about Chris Rock’s material that causes you to see his work as comparable to Don Imus’s?”
Well, Don Imus said on Al Sharpton’s radio show that “Our agenda is to be funny.” Unless Chris Rock’s agenda is to be morose, it appears their work is comparable. He then went on to say “Sometimes we go too far. And this time we went way too far.” He then commented “You can’t make fun of everybody, because some people don’t deserve it.”
I criticize Chris Rock because he consistently steps far, far over the line that Don Imus lightly treaded on. Does that make Don Imus’ comments okay? No, of course not. Racism is never tolerable. But as to why Chris Rock thinks some people “deserve it,” and as to why a gross percentage of our populace seems to agree with him, outright boggles me.
But just to really drive my point,
“That’s some nappy-headed hos there.” – Don Imus, comedian
Controversy: 8.9/10
“You can’t have shit when you around niggas, you can’t have shit. You can’t have no big screen TV! You can have it but you better move it in at 3 in the mornin’. Paint it white, hope niggas think it’s a bassinet. Can’t have shit in yo house! Why?! Because niggas’ll break in your house. Niggas that live next door to you break in your house, come over the next day and go ‘I heard you got robbed.’ Nigga you know you robbed me. You didn’t see shit cause you was doin shit.” – Chris Rock, comedian
Controversy: 0/10
January 7, 2008 at 10:18 am
charlieford
Point # 1: A tariff isn’t a tax.
Point # 2: For how long, and in what contexts, did Lincoln suspend habeus corpus?
More importantly, why did he do this?
Point # 3: Dilorenzo’s an economist preaching to the neo-Confederate choir. Going to him for your history is like going to your mechanic for dentistry.
January 7, 2008 at 9:04 pm
James Dodson
Thank you for the questions and comment, charlieford. Sorry for all the cut and paste, but it seemed like a quick way to answer, at least partially some of your questions
“Point # 1: A tariff isn’t a tax.”
A few definitions of tariff that define it as a tax.
• A tax levied on imports. www.argmax.com/About/articles.php
• A duty(or tax) applied to goods transported from one country to another, or on imported products. Tariffs raise the prices of imported goods, thus making them less competitive within the market of the importing country.
A tariff is a tax on foreign goods upon importation. When a ship arrives in port a customs officer inspects the contents and charges a tax according to the tariff formula. … en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff
A tax on imports. Tariffs may be ad valorem or specific or some combination. www.tcd.ie/iiis/policycoherence/index.php/iiis/glossary
tariff – definition of tariff – A tax imposed on a product when it is imported into a country.
http://www.investorwords.com/4877/tariff.html
This next is a definition of tariff wall- I’m including this because it is interesting.
Your Query of ‘tariff wall’ Resulted in 1 Matches … tariff wall noun. 1. A barrier to the flow of imports made by high rates of customs duties. …
What is interesting to me is that a tariff high enough ( a wall) pretty much is an act of war- shutting the door on a nation’s. commerce to an extent. Also, it is interesting to note how much the South was already being treated as a foreign vassal state of the North. I think that the North’s apparent disgust with slavery may have been in part feigned, since they were profiting from this evil institution quite a bit. I’m sure the abolitionists were sincere- and a lot of them did not want either war or slavery. Both peace and freedom seem like very good things to me
“Point # 2: For how long, and in what contexts, did Lincoln suspend habeus corpus?”
Please note that as far as I can credit the following excerpts, I am attempting to do so. It appears to me that Lessig is quoted by “Ronbo”. “Ronbo” seems to want to imprison American leftists today, and is using Lincoln’s example of suspension of habeas corpus as inspiration. He has also written a book, hopefully one with very little interest to anybody. This is not good.
May 5, 2004
Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties in Wartime
by The Honorable Frank J. Williams
Heritage Lecture #834
http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/hl834.cfm The Heritage Foundation
Thursday, September 15, 2005
TIME TO SUSPEND WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS?
“The U.S. Constitution recognizes that in certain extreme cases the Writ of Habeas Corpus can be suspended for the duration of the conflict. This was done by President Lincoln during in the U.S. Civil War and over 38,000 people were imprisoned by the federal government, including a vast number of jounalists who refused to toe the Union line….
“In the fall of 2005 it has become clear that the national security of the United States is at risk if the federal government allows access and/or control of the mainstream media to stay in the hands of the American Left and the Islamists. Perhaps the time has come to suspend the Writ of Habeas Corpus and for the government to make mass arrests of Leftist journalists, academics, politicians and any others who threaten the security of the United States?…
“During the course of the Civil War, Lincoln suspending the writ on eight separate occasions. The most far reaching of these was a suspension in 1863 that applied across the entire Union and empowered military officials to arrest and confine any person “guilty of any disloyal act or practice.” As many as 38,000 civilians in the North were arrested by the military during the Civil War under these suspensions. Most were suspected of draft evasion, desertion, or sabotage. Some were accused of seditious utterance
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15316
“Last fall I published a book called “Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left,” which argued that the progressive left in the West was in a de facto alliance with the Islamic jihadists…
Posted by Ronbo at 2:43 AM
http://ronbosoldier.blogspot.com/2005/09/time-to-suspend-writ-of-habeas-corpus_14.html
“During the course of the Civil War, Lincoln suspend(ed) the writ on eight separate occasions. The most far reaching of these was a suspension in 1863 that applied across the entire Union and empowered military officials to arrest and confine any person “guilty of any disloyal act or practice.” As many as 38,000 civilians in the North were arrested by the military during the Civil War under these suspensions. Most were suspected of draft evasion, desertion, or sabotage. Some were accused of seditious utterance.” Lawrence Lessig
http://lessig.org/blog/2004/12/the_civil_war.html
“Point # 3: Dilorenzo’s an economist preaching to the neo-Confederate choir. Going to him for your history is like going to your mechanic for dentistry.”
This is a decent point. Many specialists aren’t particularly good when they stray outside their fields. “Experts are intelligences confined by high walls” someone once said, I think. Even so, there is Noam Chomsky, a linguist whose words concerning history, politics, economics, sociology, etc. are accepted as holy writ. Can you at least accept the possibility that DiLorenzo may actually occasionally have something worthy to say outside economics? I have not seen any specifics listed here about any academic atrocities he has committed, and as far as I know, he’s probably more honest than most of his opposition in the Lincoln canonozation business.
January 7, 2008 at 9:10 pm
James Dodson
I forgot to mention that the Heritage Foundation likes Lincoln’s approach to civil liberties a lot. I think this should be of concern, siince they have some influence. I am not sure why the left should love Lincoln so much. Maybe it might be good to reconsider.
January 7, 2008 at 9:14 pm
James Dodson
By the way, I do not accept Noam Chomsky’s words as holy writ. Sometimes he does make some decent criticisms, though. I’m glad he’s around, and wouldn’t want him locked up.
January 7, 2008 at 9:21 pm
ari
LP, I hope you’ll forgive me, but I’m not going to weigh in on the relative power of African-Americans now as compared to during previous eras. That wasn’t my point. What I asked about was your problem with Chris Rock, and your answer has left me flummoxed. I assumed that you’d tote out some of Rock’s material in which he lampoons white people. But no, you’re upset about him using a racial slur in describing other Black people. And you see that as somehow similar to Don Imus’s comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team.
Um, there’s a pretty important difference between the two cases: Rock is, himself, African-American; Imus is as white as, well, as me. Based on certain cultural rules and regulations, Rock is allowed to make sport of his own people. Imus, by contrast, is not allowed to say nasty things about people of another race.
Under these rules, to hit a little closer to home, I’m allowed to make all the jokes about penny-pinching Jews that I want. But you, I’m guessing (and this really is only a guess), are not. You might not like the jokes. You might not like the rules. But there they are.
This has been your moment in cultural sensitivity training. Use what I’ve told you wisely. Or you may end up in a spot of bother.
January 7, 2008 at 9:23 pm
James Dodson
Pardon me again, but in looking at all the stuff above, I wanted to point out that the Heritage foundation stuff is all at the website listed directly below “Heritage Lecture # 834” The stuff immediately below that is from “Ronbo”, who bears no relation to any other Ron mentioned, as far as I know. Sorry for any confusion, but when you get over it, please vote for Dr. Ron Paul, a decent Paul (all in all).
January 8, 2008 at 5:11 am
Matt W
Unholy Alliance is by David Horowitz (as is the paragraph describing it).
January 8, 2008 at 9:51 am
James Dodson
Thanks for the correction, Matt W. An interview with David Horowitz is at the frontpagemag website above. Unholy Alliance has apparently sold well on Amazon, unfortunately.
January 8, 2008 at 11:33 am
charlieford
Tariffs and duties aren’t taxes. Those that use the words interchangeably don’t understand the terms. They also will have a hard time understanding the fuss over the Stamp Act.
January 8, 2008 at 12:54 pm
silbey
Oops:
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/46226.html
January 8, 2008 at 1:25 pm
George
Ron Paul – ites and detractors.
Kucinich is on youtube saying some very nice things about Ronny that I respect. I still don’t like you people and as far as I’m concerned your racist piece of shit country can just collapse but with regards to TRYING to find a reason to keep attempting to communicate I recommend checking out what Kucinich says. Basically he endorses the idea of having Ron as a running mate DESPITE the fact that Ron and his followers are a bunch of nutballs. It’s also on freemindtv.com
Peace you KKKrakas
January 8, 2008 at 1:48 pm
ari
Also: http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2008/01/racism-of-ron-paul.html. Time to reckon with the facts on the ground people. Dr. Paul is not who you want him to be. Or maybe he is. Either way, I’m sorry about that.
January 8, 2008 at 6:18 pm
James Dodson
Yes, taxes and tariffs are not interchangeable. While not all taxes are tariffs, all tariffs are a subset of taxes. Please refer to my Jan. 08 2008 posting at 9:04 pm. There are plenty of reputable sources that define a tariff as a type of tax.
Here, again are some definitions.
A few definitions of tariff that define it as a tax.
• A tax levied on imports. www.argmax.com/About/articles.php
• A duty(or tax) applied to goods transported from one country to another, or on imported products. Tariffs raise the prices of imported goods, thus making them less competitive within the market of the importing country.
A tariff is a tax on foreign goods upon importation. When a ship arrives in port a customs officer inspects the contents and charges a tax according to the tariff formula. … en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff
A tax on imports. Tariffs may be ad valorem or specific or some combination. www.tcd.ie/iiis/policycoherence/index.php/iiis/glossary
tariff – definition of tariff – A tax imposed on a product when it is imported into a country.
http://www.investorwords.com/4877/tariff.html
*******
How do you define a tax? How do you define a tariff? You have not given any definition of either of these terms.
January 10, 2008 at 9:43 am
charlieford
My point was to make the usual distinction between taxes and tariffs, the latter being duties slapped on IMPORTS. Your phrase, “The federal tax base fed off slavery,” could lead the untutored reader to assume the federal government derived its revenue from a sales tax on slaves or on cotton, or some such thing. There were no federal taxes of that sort in the antebellum era. The federal government raised its revenue from tariffs on imports (which were applied equally–there was no “weighting” of these tariffs so they would be more onerous for the south), the sale of western lands, and the discovery of minerals etc. Historians retain a distinction between a “tax” (which is all but unavoidable if you purchase things or, if you have an income at a certain level since the inaugeration of the income tax) and a “tariff” which affects imports (which, in the nature of the case, were usually luxury or other specialty goods). In some cases tariffs on imports may have allowed domestic manufacturers to raise their prices while remaining competitive with the imported product, but this invited competition from other domestic providers, and it isn’t clear that tariffs inflated prices (though specialty crops such as sugar may have been an exception).
January 10, 2008 at 10:14 am
George
To DELIBERATELY pick a fight with you “ARI” for no damn particular reason. Are you a Jew Ari or the good kind of Ari, if a BLACKman HAD to pick one, “Ari”stotle greek (orthodox greek catholic if possible)? Straight up as a brotha both varieties of whitey is pretty much like french/real vanilla there’s definetely some added ingredients but its pretty vanilla to a nigah.
January 10, 2008 at 10:24 am
ari
Based on your formulation, George, I’m the bad kind of “Ari” (see my comment about ten slots up from here). And, as you say, vanilla, though certainly not French: a mix of Polish/Russian vanillas, actually.
Also, you’ll have to do a lot better than that if you want to pick a fight with me. Try suggesting that the Civil War was fought over states’ rights; that’s been known to get my blood boiling.
January 10, 2008 at 10:31 am
eric
Are you a Jew Ari or the good kind of Ari
I think we need a Frequently Asked Questions page.
January 10, 2008 at 11:33 am
charlieford
The Civil War WAS fought over states’ rights–or at least, the presumed right of some states to hold human property; and their concomitant right to force the other states to respect that right.
January 11, 2008 at 4:26 am
George
A commy, polack, jew huh? Guess it’ll have to do. I got love for commys like Castro and Chavez and some Polacks actually fought with the black Haitians against Napolean to end slavery there. It’s a weird history fact but a platoon or regiment of Polacks said fuck Napolean and there is a minority of Haitians in Haiti with Polack last names. Not even a lot of Haitians know about them.
Just saw Ronny on CNN babbling about his racist newsletter. Fuck what I said before. FUCK THE CONFEDERACY AND RON PAUL IS A LOAD OF SHIT.
I didn’t exactly say that being a jew Ari was necessarily the “bad kind” of Ari by the way.
January 11, 2008 at 6:52 pm
George
Love Vonnegut:
“…we may not be able, Vonnegut is saying, to undo the harm that has been done, but we can certainly love, simply because they are people, those who have been made useless by our past stupidity and greed, our previous crimes against our brothers. And if that seems insane, then the better the world for such folly…” (John R. May)
January 12, 2008 at 9:32 pm
James Dodson
“Your phrase, “The federal tax base fed off slavery,” could lead the untutored reader to assume the federal government derived its revenue from a sales tax on slaves or on cotton, or some such thing” says charlieford.
No sales tax of any kind was needed for the north to profit from slavery. The north had an enormous manufacturing base, far larger than the south, which was an agrarian society. The tariffs on imports increased costs of all sorts for the south, which had a pitifully small manufacturing sector. Lower cost items were kept out of their markets, also hurting the foreign producers. The north became the “company store” for the south. At the same time, because so much revenue was raised by tariffs against the south, it allowed northern manufacturers to escape a higher tax burden. This is easily seen as a subsidy for northern manufacturers. Tariffs may have had the effect of actually prolonging slavery in the south by making labor-saving machinery costlier than keeping slaves. Economically as well as morally, slavery is built upon shakey ground. The north’s approach to the south for decades helped maintain it.
Further, there were definite costs to slavery beyond the obvious moral costs. Slave escapes and rebellions were always possible. The Seminole Wars are typically presented as wars involving the federal government and the Seminoles. But many in the Seminole tribe were former slaves or their offspring. These wars should be called the Black Seminole Wars. The Seminoles accepted many fugitive slaves into their ranks, as did other tribes. Under the leadership of the Black Seminole John Horse, largescale attacks were made upon slave plantations in Florida, freeing thousands of slaves. This “insurgency” was fought with little success for the federal government. John Horse was not only able to successfully outfight and frustrate a succession of generals, he led the most successful slave rebellions in American history. Turner’s ended with only a small number freed, and mostly recaptured, and he and his outfit killed- not a success by most measures. Further, John Horse was not a bloodthirsty man, and did his best to avoid unnecessary killing or brutality towards his foes. After taking over a plantation, he would set free the disarmed former slaveholders who survived the attack.
Alliances between freed slaves and native Americans were no surprise. With the fugutive slave act repealed and the lands of native Americans respected as sovereign, slavery would have been weakened somewhat.
The profits for the north at the expense of the south were huge, and lowering or eliminating tariffs could have been used to help reduce the southern dependency on the institution of slavery.
Starting a war was at the disgression of Lincoln, even after Ft. Sumter. He clearly wanted one, and believed winning would be a cake walk. Manufacturing based economies can and do profit greatly during wartime, so the northern manufacturers were probably ok with war, just like the military- industrial complex today.
Over 40,000 Black soldiers died during the Civil War, and about twice that number disabled. In fact, a third that served died. With the war on, escaping the south as a fugitive slave became even more difficult- borders tend to get tougher to cross when wars occur. Though Lincoln could have pushed in peacetime to repeal the fugitive slave act, he wanted to keep the northern slaves states mollified, so no repeal.
The end of chattel slavery was followed by other ugly forms of servitude for Blacks. Today, millions of people of color are cast into the criminal (in)justice system due to the war on drugs, which is also another way for the state to seize property, and even turns humans into property by imprisoning them. Another bit of blowback from the Civil War is that states have little in the way of states “rights” today. The federal government ignores referenda permitting medical marijuana within states.
The only candidate who is confronting this reality at all is Ron Paul.
Further, foreign wars and interventions are putting whole nations into conditions of servitude toward the U.S., while permanently harnessing U.S. citizens to support things they abhor.
Freedom and peace go together.
January 12, 2008 at 9:57 pm
James Dodson
When I said above that “Starting a war was at the disgression of Lincoln…” i mean that Lincoln could have done something other than sending an invading army south. Ft. Sumter needed some hyping. The south wanted foreign (Union) troops out of their land. Is this so unusual? When troops were obviously being maintained and even reinforced, it helped to heighten tensions further. This was an obvious ploy to force a confrontation.
Lincoln was a truly gifted speaker and writer, and after the war to “preserve the union” was floundering he introduced a new reason to have your guts blown out your spine or be blinded, or missing an arm, leg or other appendage. He found that freedom really resonated. Later Presidents have discovered the same thing. This sort of freedom usually requires a lot of death, conscription and a heavy grip on the wallets of all citizens- taxes, debt and inflation. All ways to refill the war chest. And the form of servitude is changed or redefined, and continues.
January 12, 2008 at 10:17 pm
James Dodson
At least we don’t have conscription yet. But we still have registration upon reaching 18 years of age.
Libertarians worthy of the name are opposed to both aggressive war and slavery. Being enslaved is having violence initiated against you. Fighting back, even with lethal force, is justified. Just trying to clear up earlier false comments in the thread above.
January 12, 2008 at 10:25 pm
James Dodson
An essay by Thomas DiLorenzo entitled “An African-American Icon Speaks Truth to the Lincoln Cult” appeared on lewrockwell.com. Please see below.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo139.html
January 12, 2008 at 10:35 pm
James Dodson
For the time-being, I might be right about “At least we don’t have conscription yet.” But that might be subject to change.
Introduced: Jan 10, 2007
Sponsor: Rep. Charles Rangel [D-NY]
Status: Introduced
Go to Bill Status Page
You are viewing the following version of this bill:
Introduced in House: This is the original text of the bill as it was written by its sponsor and submitted to the House for consideration.
Text of Legislation
HR 393 IH
110th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 393
To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to make permanent the favorable treatment afforded combat pay under the earned income tax credit, and for other purposes.
January 13, 2008 at 5:31 am
George
Ari Last question. Are you a commy, polack, jew BOY or jew MAN? JDodson, Become literate, read real history books, starting with 4th grade level. Lincoln should have ended the war with less loss of life by STARTING with Sherman instead of holding him back. When you kkkrakers start putting money and votes behind Kucinich and recognize he’s pretty 21st century Lincoln then you’ll be getting somewhere. Stop asking him panzyesque questions too at “town hall” meetings. Fuck alternative fuel cars and solar panels. Ask him who he’s gonna appoint as Sherman to go arrest your kkkraker brothers Bush/Cheney to put them on trial for war crimes against humanity.
January 13, 2008 at 7:55 am
silbey
“The south wanted foreign (Union) troops out of their land.”
Those damn American troops! First, they try to resupply an American fort on American land, then they dare to remain in occupation of territory that was, ah, well, American. The invasion of Iraq has nothing on this!
Next up: Lincoln and Southern WMDs.
January 13, 2008 at 9:27 am
ari
James, you’re tying Silbey up with this nonsense. We miss him at other parts of the blog. Seriously, I’m with George on this: stop citing discredited cranks. Then we’ll talk. All best, Ari.
Oh, and George, I’m a very boyish man. Or maybe a very Jewish goy. It’s really kind of hard to say.
January 13, 2008 at 11:19 am
George
Well if you ain’t a mannish man why the hell NOT yah queer too son?! DAMN, you almost got nigger problems….
January 13, 2008 at 11:26 am
silbey
It’s my own fault. Apparently, I can’t stop poking the bear.
January 13, 2008 at 12:22 pm
charlieford
Dodson, I’m going to have to skip a point-by-point analysis of all the above. It’s just too much of a quagmire. I will however, ask this: How Libertarian is Ron Paul? As far as I can tell, he’s very comfortable with the states exercising some very intrusive powers with regard to their citizens. If you don’t like an over-bearing, profit-driven capitalism now, wait till federal regulations and the Supreme Court are swept away . . .
January 13, 2008 at 1:10 pm
George
Bite me charlie! TELLEM! DODDY! (I’m on his side now. Why don’t you leave him alone yah big bully!)
January 13, 2008 at 9:28 pm
James Dodson
THANKS, GEORGE!!
More or less.
I tore up 4th grade- Ms. Vanderhoof was crazy about me, in a nice old-fashioned platonic schoolmarmy kind of way. Being known as a “good student” can have some drawbacks, like having a guy named Chuckie (and looks just like the movie Chuckie) wanting to feed you to the pet goldfish tank in the back of the class.
All I know is its a good idea to wear heavy boots and practice swinging pieces of furniture.
January 13, 2008 at 10:15 pm
George
Screw you Doddy you suck balls and so do yer screwy ideas about everything. The confederacy lost for obvious reasons. Quit jackin’ off yer money with that racist Ron Paul and spend it on Kucinich so’s he can get Bush/Cheney. Fuck that blimp bullshit too. Just spend your money right, go vote and before you cast your ballot you make sure that the vote people know that if they fuck with your ballot this time yer gonna cut their balls off.
Ari, You didn’t answer me yet, you fairy, why can’t you homos be men? Huh? Or is it because your bald? Asshole
January 13, 2008 at 10:33 pm
James Dodson
“I will however, ask this: How Libertarian is Ron Paul? As far as I can tell, he’s very comfortable with the states exercising some very intrusive powers with regard to their citizens.” says charlieford.
This is a good question. A lot of libertarians have problems with Ron Paul on some points. Most libertarians are for open borders or close to that as an ideal. If people are coming in peace, there is no good reason to treat them like criminals. I think it should be easier for people to emigrate here.
On the abortion issue, a lot of libertarians are pro-choice, but believe that the language involved with the prochoicers generally is out of whack. Nobody has a “right” to take another life- therefore there is no “right to have an abortion”. Women DO have unquestioned power over their own reproduction, and the state intervening forcefully is a bad idea- it is almost always bad. I think that Paul believes in the power to persuade people to do virtuous things, not force them. Ron Paul really believes in the oaths he has taken, whether to defend the Constitution (imperfect as it has obviously been from the beginning) or the Hippocratic Oath.
“If you don’t like an over-bearing, profit-driven capitalism now, wait till federal regulations and the Supreme Court are swept away . . .” says charlieford.
Again, there may be a problem with language and how words are defined. What Bush calls free market capitalism is actually mercantilism. With real free makets, you can choose not to buy certain products, and you can even boycott a company in an organized way until it either makes changes that the market demands or is forced out of business. With mercantilism you have companies that team up with government, get subsidies, and get regulations that destroy competition. You have major arms manufacturers with huge seemingly neverending contracts joined at the hip with the Pentagon. This is a presciption for eternal war, because it makes war very attractive and even more profitable than it always has been. I think that Kucinich sees the dangers with this, as does Gravel and Richardson. But none have much traction in this election. Richardson has flat pulled out, which is a shame, cause he seems like a pretty thoughtful guy. Leaving Paul. A lot of people are liking him sort of by default. I think a strong Paul showing is a good thing in a lot of ways.
It will be a big rolled up newspaper snap across the corrupt snoot of the mass media, which has become so tied up with government it may as well be an official part of it.
The Republican Party is now the War Party, or the Imperial Expansion Party, the Torture Party or the Authoritarian Party, depending. Whatever it is now, it has lost every principle. It is not mainstream, but a river that has jumped its banks to hookup with the Styx. Paul is the only major visible opposition to this. He is a guy who really reads the fine print. He was against the Patriot Act, and not because he is against patriotism. He was against the commemorative legislation honoring the Civil Rights Act, but not because he is against civil rights. He reads the fine print and has a good sense of the unintended consequences of legislation that may have a nice sounding title, but has worms in it, constitutional or otherwise. One consequence of the CRA has been the undermining and destruction of traditional Black colleges.
Legislation is often unwieldy, and voluminous- bills filling hundreds of pages of text are more the rule than the exception. Ron Paul actually reads the stuff he votes on, versus having a staffer do it (or pretend to do it). It is pretty common for our august legislators to not read bills at all, and just depend on a fellow member to know how to vote.
Our political elite is mostly a bad joke at the expense of the citizens.
January 13, 2008 at 10:49 pm
James Dodson
Good luck, George, charlieford, silbey, and whoever else has had the patience to write and/or read all the enlightening comments in this thread. Ari- thanks for the space. A lot of the “progressive” sites have really restrictive rules, which keep out all ideas that conflict. After reading the “democratic underground” rules, I saw that there is only a pretty narrow group permitted. It is sad that they really do not believe in using the First Amendment when the internet gives them such a great opportunity.
Ron Paul is just about the most principled supporter of a free internet you will find in the universe. By unjustly smearing his libertarian candidacy you are playing right into the hands of the authoritarians who want to tax and control the internet. When I wish you all good luck, I really mean it. You will need it.
Bye for now.
January 13, 2008 at 11:22 pm
ari
Yes: bald. And an ass. Good night, George. And good luck to you, James.
January 14, 2008 at 6:07 am
George
Nighty night Ari. Jerk
January 14, 2008 at 6:11 am
George
oooooooooh! He called Ari a jerk. Yeah it’s on now muthafucka.
January 14, 2008 at 6:24 am
silbey
“How Libertarian is Ron Paul?”
(several thousand words in response snipped)
Why? Why would you ask that question and give him an opening?
“By unjustly smearing his libertarian candidacy you are playing right into the hands of the authoritarians who want to tax and control the internet. ”
Possible personal slogan: “Owned by The Man since 1999”
January 14, 2008 at 6:24 am
James Dodson
George- I had hopes you could be an ally, seeing that Kucinich and Paul have been friends for about two decades. If Paul is such a bad guy, why does the good guy Kucinich hang out with him?
Is it just possible that they are both good, but both have very different ideas in some areas? The thing that surprises many is how much real overlap exists between these two.
January 14, 2008 at 6:37 am
charlieford
Paul supports the right of states to outlaw practices such as homosexuality or the use of birth control. Some liberty.
January 14, 2008 at 8:26 am
silbey
New campaign slogan: “Ron Paul: He’s friends with Dennis Kucinich!”
January 14, 2008 at 10:40 am
Buffalo George
Hey Ari I got it now. Tell everybody to back a Kucinich/Gravel ticket tell r.p. jock strap supporters to go suck eggs become EX r.p. supporters and give their money and vote to Kucinich/Gravel if they want to REALLY save their country. Kucinich’s only real failing is his nasty flirtation with that sack a shit r.p. Once he sees his supporters start supporting HIM he’ll be alright. Remember the guy is trying to keep doing his SENATOR’s job like he was elected to do and he’s doing the best he can with his tax payer paycheck and THEN he campaignskissesbabysdebatestakesshit. Ya need Gravel for the ZEN.
January 14, 2008 at 2:43 pm
George
Here’s the inaugaration song I’ll personally sing to the gentlemen and AMERICA!:
WELLLL da Eagle been flyin’ slow (near dead)
An’ tha flag been flyin’ low
WHOLE LOTTA people figgered ameriKKKa was fixin’ to fall
AWW But take it, not just from me, but my homeboy ARI see
Weeee gotta couple a things to tell y’all
The ol’ lady damn right stumbled – but she hain’t quite, yet, fell
AND IF BUSH/CHENEY TOO STUPID TO SEE THAT THEN THEY WILL WHEN WE PUTEM IN HELL!
WE GONNA PUT OUR FEETS BACK ON THE PATH OF
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND THEN
GOD BLESS, AMERICA, AGAIN!!!!!!
And ya never did think that it ever woulda happened again!
In AMERICA!
Ya never did thinks that we would EVER gets together again
WE DAMN SHOR’ FOOLED YOU!
WE WALKIN
REAL PROUD!
AND WE TALKIN’
REAL LOUD!
AGIIIIIIINNNN, in Amurika
Ya never DID think we could ever make it happen again
Now from the shores of Long Island
Round bouts to Frisco Bay EVERYTHING in between is OUR HOME
Now its TRUE we have our tussles now and then but you LYIN’ TRAITORS
BEST Leave us alone…
Cuz WE (the people) ALWAYS stick together
And you can take that to a REAL BANK!
That’s the Ari’s and the Georges, and the Silbeys(?), BUT HELL YEAH HANK!
Y’all just TRY to lay yo’ hand on a Buffalo Sabres fan and I THINK you would FINALLY understand
call Charlie’s lawyers…tellem ta sue me
KUCINICH/GRAVEL IF YOU GOT STONES
Holla
January 14, 2008 at 2:54 pm
eric
I think no greater contribution could be made to this thread. Unless it were a streaming mp3 of that.
January 14, 2008 at 6:11 pm
George
Signin’ up KUCINICH/GRAVEL Eric? Add ‘im to the list Ari
January 14, 2008 at 7:58 pm
George
Eric,
I’ll sing the mp3 for you if you vote Kucinich/Gravel. Tell Ari to give you my e-mail so he can e-mail me what to do, since he’s a world runnin’ jew and everything. Now I am a disreputable darky without a job or any connections so you’ll have to get Ari to pay a studio to hook me up in Buffalo. I’ll need a band too. Then I’ll send YOU a burned CD version first. You don’t like it tell me to give YOU Ari’s jew money back and stop wasting your time. If you like it go get a hunnert votes for KUCINICH/GRAVEL with it and then I’ll make you a video.
See you at the February caucuses suckers….
VOTE KUCINICH/GRAVEL
January 15, 2008 at 10:45 am
George
Here’s another song to take with you when you vote KUCINICH/GRAVEL in February:
See me comin’ at you suckas on yo’
PLASMA TV screen
Bout’ as HOT as ahma’ get
You know what I mean?
I MEAN You got “LIBERALS” to the left of me and
conservatives REAL far away on my right….
PUT down the gun
Fool FUCK YO’ KNIFE
Have the sense not to start no fight…
Yah wanna know why?
Do you WANT to know WHY?
Do you REALLY want to know WHY?
KUZZOM!!!
T N T
I’m DYNOMITE
T N T
America Gonna Win THIS Fight
T N T
I’m a powa load
T N T
Watch! Tic Tic Tic Tic Tic Tic Tic Tic
It’s too late too soon too late too soon tooo late tooo soon….
Or Is It? hmmmmm……..
Hear the sound of the fallen rain y’all?
COMIN’ DOWN! like an
AR MA GED ON FLAME!!!!
the shame
the ones who died without a name
HEAR DEM FUCKS SNARLIN’ OUTTA KEY?!!!!!
To THIER hymn called
“FOCK AND FOCK KER REE” HEY!! (MASH IT DOWN LION!!!)
And bleed
THE COMPANY LOST THEIR WAR TODAY!!!
CUZ!
I
Beg to Dream and Differ
from YO’ Fuckin’ liezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…………………
THIS IS THE DAWNING OF THE REST OF OUR LIVES HOLLADAY
FOR U.S. US SUCKERS
NOT YOU!
BAILIFF: ALL RISE! COURT IS NOW IN SESSION JUDGE BUFFALO GEORGE PRESIDING…..
Be seated.
Sheriff Hank! Bring in the (sigh) Accused.
Prosecutor Ari!
Your honor!
Are the people ready to go forth with their case and have the accused been informed of their rights?
Prosecutor We ARE your honor! And they HAVE!
(Sigh) DeFENsive counsel The UNITED STATES OF AMERICA RESPECTS the RIGHTS of ALL accused. Have YOUR rights been respected?
Karl Rove Duh uh eehaaa duh ahhhh…..
Scooter We are prepared to mount a VIGOROUS defense.
THEN LET US RECORD THIS DAY !
THE TRIAL OF:
WE THE PEOPLE
VS.
GEORGE BUSH / DICK CHENEY et. al.
Shall NOW begin…..
March 14, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Jackuul
Actually, I wonder what the economic effect of the previous administration before Lincoln’s would have been if every slave had been bought by the federal government and freed. No new ones were coming in already, seeing how the trade itself was ended years prior, and only those born into it could be slaves.
If you look at the impact of what would have happened it would have prevented the deaths of 600,000 soldiers, and also tens of thousands of slaves. Without the war, what could have been?
Perhaps the civil rights movement would have come earlier, along with ammendments to the constitution to guarantee the rights of those. Perhaps We’d be a bit further on in our move to end the fallacy of racism (as there are really no other races except the human race), and maybe… a few more heros of the movement would still be alive today, or at least have lived past the 1960’s and 1950’s in a better world.
March 14, 2008 at 6:26 pm
charlieford
And I wonder what the effect of herds of flying pigs would be?
March 14, 2008 at 6:53 pm
ari
Or ponies? Maybe if every southern slaveholder had been given a really nice pony there would have been no treason. Plus: unicorns. With snowy white coats. Mmmmm. I love unicorns.
May 28, 2008 at 12:26 pm
LowLife
Why do people say that Lincoln didn’t want to free the slaves? Lincoln said he didn’t have the authority to free the slaves. That’s why we needed the 16th amendment and why the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in scope. But he believed, as expressed in his debates with Douglas, in a man’s right to benefit from his own labor. I take that to mean that he was against slavery. And I take that to mean he wanted to free them.
Lincoln thought blacks and whites could never live peacefully together. This notion may be informed by an incident that happened when he and a friend were shipping a barge of I don’t know what down to New Orleans. A group of blacks set upon them in the night and Lincoln thought himself lucky to survive the ordeal. Perhaps he feared that black resentment would cause endless social uprisings. But I think he feared for that safety of ex-slaves. I think he anticipated Jim Crow.
His solution was a back to Africa project. Liberia had already recieved some freed slaves and Lincoln was ready to expand the project. Nobody except the later Marcus Garvey thought this was a good idea.
And Lincoln did propose to have the Federal government buy slaves to free them. He offered this to a group of Kentucky leaders even after the Emancipation. They turned him down flat. Kentucky was on our side. They didn’t have near the percentage of slaves. They still turned him down.
May 28, 2008 at 12:43 pm
LowLife
Anyone read Audacity of Hope? Obama has a way of validating the feelings of those he doesn’t side with politically – before he gives his own side of things. It makes him sound damned reasonable. That’s what I think Lincoln does.
He debated Douglass in pubs and townhalls of copperhead/butternut country. He’s start out saying how inferior blacks were, to get everybody’s head nodding, and end up saying that everybody should have the opportunity to benefit from their toil. And those copperheads were freesoilers. They possessed the same mistaken race theories as most folks but still were against slavery. And whys that? Wages. They figured as long as they were competing against slaves their wages would be suppressed. I think this is what Christina meant when she said the southern economy was efficient. No wages.
May 28, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Vance Maverick
This thread has pretty impressive stamina, but it’s not a patch on this one chez Apostropher. (Via lefarkins, I think.)
May 28, 2008 at 4:15 pm
ari
Yeah, I saw that after I put up my antichrist game post. I tried to read all the way through, but I kept bogging down in the crazy talk.
May 28, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Vance Maverick
Oops, duh, it was here that I found the link. I’m too senile for blog-commenting (let alone Unfogged, the Olympics thereof).
July 2, 2008 at 11:13 pm
“We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution.” « The Edge of the American West
[…] closer to realizing the promise embedded in the 14th Amendment. Which is why, despite long odds, I still support Dr. Ron Paul for President. Courage, my friends. Courage in the face of […]
July 3, 2008 at 1:57 pm
The Velvet Howler › Blog Archive › YouTube Users, Meet Your New Big Other
[…] Some stupid judge has recently ordered that all of your (yes, you! the one in TIME’s shiny magazine reflection!) YouTube histories are now the property of the giant asshole company known as Viacom, even though this ruling explicitly violates the Video Privacy Protection act. But when have laws ever mattered when it comes to billion-dollar multinational media conglomerates? GO RON PAUL!!!!! […]
July 26, 2008 at 4:33 am
Illegal Immigration
Drugs have done a lot of good. A lot of good songs have been written. ‘Penny Lane’ is worth 10 dead kids. ‘Dark Side of the Moon?’ 100 dead kids. At least that many were conceived by people listening to that record anyway.BillMaherBill Maher
July 26, 2008 at 4:42 am
ari
I, like, totally hear you.
August 18, 2008 at 11:40 am
newsrackblog.com » Blog Archive » We had a deal: contra Henley and Ron Paul on the Civil War
[…] is as wrong as Ron Paul’s, and I’ll try to explain why. Others — see particularly Ari Kelman (”The Edge of the West”) — have rehearsed the events preceding the outbreak of […]
September 4, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Skydog
Hi Ari, thanks for acting respectfully to those you disagree with. That said, I take exception to a few of your biased comments (biased toward the Union). I won’t go into each but I’ll just take on your first. You said,
“Lincoln went to war to preserve the Union. That’s it. End of story.”
Yes, Lincoln went to war. Nobody else started it. Lincoln invaded the South. End of story.
Okay, why? Is preserving the Union “constitutional”? It seems to me that the evidence leans toward secession being more constitutional, than a President (not Congress) starting a war or police action under Marshall Law, suspending the Constitution and to kill civilians who have voluntarily (and constitutionally) opted out of the Union (not rebelled or tried to otherwise destroy).
To preserve and defend the Constitution (the rule of law in a Republic) is different than trying to preserve the Union (which expands, contracts, and changes as state constitutions change or as states are added or subtracted to the union). Who knows,? After secession, when slavery had eventually ended (as most other countries had ended it around that time), and the Union reversed its negative economic and constitutional policies toward the South, the Confederacy might have even rejoined (this time specifically adding the Right to Secede into an Amendment), and the Constitution would still be intact, without the need for 618,000 dead Americans. There was never a need for that war. It was a peaceful secession.
I say this to all who think that history is written and cannot be changed. It has been written by the victors of the war, and has stunning bias if you can see it. Something to keep in mind … you’ll be surprised at how much unconstitutional stuff you will notice in that kind of history.
Thanks for letting me post this. Oh, and yes Ron Paul was right.
September 4, 2008 at 12:06 pm
ari
Actually, Skydog, the batteries at Fort Sumter fired the first shot.
September 4, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Skydog
See, here is where that bias creeps in. Respectfully, it was a peaceful secession. Hostilities came about as a result of an act of war by Lincoln. You are not historically factual in implying that “the first shot” was the start of the hostilities. Reinforcement of Fort Sumter was an act of war against the sovereign State of South Carolina.
As of the date of its secession, Dec. 20, 1860, South Carolina had the right of eminent domain over the land. Sumtner, itself, was ungarrisoned and had been such for several years until South Carolina seceded. According to a 1805 statute the USA had to “keep a garrison or garrisons therein”; or “this grant or cession shall be void and of no effect.” So, by the law that allowed the garrison there it belonged to South Carolina.
On Dec. 26, 1860, U.S. Army abandoned the indefensible Fort Moultrie and secretly relocated 85 men to Fort Sumter without official authorization. South Carolina authorities considered this a breach of faith and demanded that the fort be evacuated. Pres. Buchanan refused their demand and mounted a relief expedition in January 1861, but shore batteries, manned by cadets from The Citadel, fired on and repulsed the Star of the West, a ship filled with troops and supplies.
Confederate forces seized all but four Federal forts within their boundaries and sent delegations to Washington and offered to pay for the federal properties and enter into a peace treaty with the United States. With Abraham Lincoln sworn in as President, Secretary of State William Seward engaged in negotiations. Lincoln openly offered to evacuate Fort Sumter if it would guarantee Virginia’s loyalty. Seward told the SC commission to Washington they were going to withdraw from the fort.
However, realizing the garrison would run out of food by April 15, 1861, Lincoln ordered a fleet of ships, under the command of Gustavus V. Fox, to attempt a forced entry into Charleston Harbor to reinforce Fort Sumter. Lincoln (it is known from his May 1, 1861 letter to naval commander Gustavus Fox) manipulated the Confederates into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.
Lincoln declared martial law and called for troops. Militia units rushed toward Washington and Baltimore and seized firm control of Maryland and the District of Columbia by arresting all the Maryland government members and holding them without trial. On July 21, 1861, THREE MONTHS after the taking of Fort Sumter, Lincoln invaded the sovereign State of Virginia and launched the first major land battle of the North’s war against Southern secession. If you can look at the facts, without the benefit of Northern bias, you can see how Union actions were unconstitutional.
Thanks again for allowing me to expand on American history.
September 4, 2008 at 2:17 pm
ari
You miss one important point: Sumter was a federal installation. And this: South Carolina committed treason. Oh wait, there’s another thing: I didn’t state, imply, or even subtly hint that the hostilities started with Fort Sumter. No, the origin of the hostilities is difficult to pinpoint. But I’d say the Kansas-Nebraska Act or the Dred Scott decision are decent places to look for proximate causes of the hostilities. In other words, once it became clear that the Slaveocracy would not accept anything short of the expansion of slavery into the West, the United States really was on the fast track to a crisis over the nature of the Republic.
September 4, 2008 at 2:19 pm
ari
The Compromise of 1850 might also be a good place to look. Or, as Jim McPherson suggests, the end of the US-Mexican War. Really, though, trying to find a precise event or series of events that touched off the hostilities is pretty hard.
September 4, 2008 at 2:30 pm
albiondia
Here’s a question: does it matter if the Union’s actions were unconstitutional? Or put differently, Skydog, it seems to me that it does matter to you. Why?
September 4, 2008 at 2:35 pm
silbey
Reinforcement of Fort Sumter was an act of war against the sovereign State of South Carolina.
What comes after farce?
In any case, I’ll repeat a remark I made up-thread:
How shocking! The President of the United States had a government fort within the United States resupplied? What a dastardly thing to do. Next, Lincoln had plans to order gardening in a national park!
September 4, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Skydog
I appreciate that this hasn’t devolved into name-calling here, as it usually does elsewhere when this topic is discussed. So, thank you!
Well, I made my comment about the first shot because you did, Ari. “The batteries fired the first shot”, you stated. Then when I went over the exact historical time-line, you said, “You miss one important point: Sumter was a federal installation. And this: South Carolina committed treason. Oh wait, there’s another thing: I didn’t state, imply, or even subtly hint that the hostilities started with Fort Sumter.”
You didn’t imply or subtly hint that the hostilities started with Fort Sumter? Really? In my first comment I was agreeing with you that “Lincoln went to war to preserve the Union”. I simply added that had a peaceful secession been allowed, nearly 620,000 Americans might not have died “to preserve the Union”. In that light, it seems that you went out of your way to “imply or subtly hint that the hostilities started with Fort Sumter”. This sounds like a trap. So I’ll address the other arguments:
1. “It was a federal installation”. If you’ll read history you will see that South Carolina “seceded” meaning that it legally dissolved its ties to the Union and, by law, Fort Sumter, by virtue of it existing on South Carolina’s sovereign land was therefore owned by South Carolina (who actually took the right and legal step of offering to pay for it). I went into all of this above!
2. “The South committed treason”. This is factually incorrect. If the South had committed treason by seceding from the Union, and reclaiming a fort on its own sovereign land by law (that 1805 statute I went into above) then why was Jefferson Davis not convicted of treason? In fact, his indictment was dismissed on constitutional grounds. I don’t get, “treason”?
September 4, 2008 at 3:49 pm
silbey
If you’ll read history you will see that South Carolina “seceded” meaning that it legally dissolved its ties to the Union
Ah, yes, of course. If you could just show me the part of the Constitution labeled, ‘Secession, How To’ then we’ll be fine. Alternatively, an Act of Congress, signed by the President, which recognizes the secession of South Carolina would work as well. Until then, I’m sticking with the Ft. Sumter as a federal fort within the state of South Carolina.
September 4, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Skydog
albiondia said,
“Here’s a question: does it matter if the Union’s actions were unconstitutional? Or put differently, Skydog, it seems to me that it does matter to you. Why?”
I think anyone who is interested in history (that is, the correct story), would want to know where Big Government had its origin. As this thread started about Ron Paul, who is for smaller government, decisions like whether or not to take the country to war have significance. And therefore the one we vote for is significant.
I think the war of Northern aggression against the South was harmful to liberty because it centralized government beyond what was constitutional, and therefore beyond what was American. It matters to me because it reveals that unnecessary war is wrong. And I voted for Ron Paul because he was right on every count in that interview.
September 4, 2008 at 4:09 pm
ari
Given that you’re such a committed champion of truth, it’s odd, then, that you’ve chosen to ignore several rather direct challenges to your interpretation of events. Or maybe it’s not that odd at all. As to whether Dr. Paul was right or wrong in that interview, I suppose there’s no convincing you that his sense of nineteenth-century history is nearly as horrible as his grasp of the implications of twentieth-century social policy. Oh well, it never seemed likely that we’d convince you. Still, it’s always pleasant to chat.
September 4, 2008 at 4:38 pm
silbey
the war of Northern aggression
So, still no section of the Constitution under “Secession, How To”?
September 4, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Skydog
“If you could just show me the part of the Constitution labeled, ‘Secession, How To’ then we’ll be fine.”
Then read it.
The Founding Fathers believed secession to be a right. I believe the sovereign states existed before the Union and that the right of secession was implicit in the fact that the states created the federal government as their agent.
The Constitution had limited powers. The Declaration expressed natural rights. Governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed.
Every single Resolution for Constitutional Ratification included clauses declaring the Right of Secession if the federal government or a majority of the Several States did not adhere to the Articles of the Constitution. It was taught in every Military Institution in the country, including West Point.
Under the Constitution all powers not delegated to the federal government and not denied to the States are left to the states or the people respectively. The Constitution granted no method for secession because it was a presumed right.
In the Declaration of Independence, secession is justified because everyone has the right to liberty.
In the Constitution, Article VII.
In the Bill of Rights, Amendment X.
In Lincoln’s own words, “It requires “a long train of abuses and usurpations,” which reduce a government to “absolute despotism,” before secession is justified.”
September 4, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Jason B
The Declaration expressed natural rights.
But, unfortunately, the Declaration isn’t official policy of any country anywhere or at any time. It was a statement of intent written by a small group of people who acted without sanction of any governing body. The US didn’t exist for more than a decade after that. I mean, since we’re being all history-y here.
September 4, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Skydog
“I suppose there’s no convincing you that his sense of nineteenth-century history is nearly as horrible as his grasp of the implications of twentieth-century social policy.”
Thanks for keeping it civil, Ari!
I can’t respond to Ron Paul’s grasp of history unless you give some specifics. I don’t claim that he is the savior. If Lincoln can be flawed, then why not Paul? Right? So bring it on.
Yes, it is a pleasure to chat. But I’ve seen both sides of the skewing of history and accepted them both at one time or other. Have you guys?
September 4, 2008 at 6:22 pm
silbey
everyone has the right to liberty.
The irony of making this argument for a slave-holding Confederacy has apparently escaped, but I just thought I’d highlight it.
In the Constitution, Article VII.
There is no mention of secession in Article VII.
So we’re back to the whole treason thing again, and the South starting the Civil War by firing on a federal installation.
September 4, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Skydog
“January 5, 2008 at 6:44 am
silbey
“Both the North and the South were slave states; the Civil War was a war between two slave states”
*That* explains why–when the North won the war–they spread slavery throughout the United States. I had been wondering.
“The shelling caused exactly 0 (zero) casualties to the North, but resulted in the North surrendering the fort, and being allowed to return north.”
Treason: Okay As Long As You Cause 0 (Zero) Casualties.
More like 0 (Zero) understanding of the history of the United States!
This has become absurd. I saw how you treated James Dodson who was saying much the same thing I’m saying here. It is pointless being in a discussion with flamethrowers like yourself, so I won’t.
But there is no “irony of making this argument for a slave-holding Confederacy”. Please recall that the Union held slaves for 90 years while the Confederacy did so for only 4. Maybe THAT’S irony!
No mention of secession in the Constitution? Did you read the 10th Amendment? Oh, right, you’ll probably claim that the Bill of Rights is not part of the Constitution. Got me! Sorry I didn’t understand any of this. Glad you did!
Thanks for the hospitality Ari. See ya ’round.
September 4, 2008 at 8:24 pm
ari
Take care, Skydog. Peace out. (That just seems right somehow.)
September 4, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Ben Alpers
Is this the thread we use to request book reviews?
I’ve been reading this great little volume called Nixonland. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?
Any chance for a review, Edgies?
September 4, 2008 at 8:58 pm
silbey
Please recall that the Union held slaves for 90 years while the Confederacy did so for only 4
Uh, you are aware that the Confederate States were seceding *from* the Union? And thus had participated in that previous 90 years of history? No?
Did you read the 10th Amendment?
Yep, no mention of secession there, either.
I saw how you treated James Dodson who was saying much the same thing I’m saying here.
Hypothetically, if someone showed up at a doctor’s office and insisted that all the medicine the doctor knew was wrong and that antibiotics was part of a government conspiracy, what would you expect the reaction to be? If that someone kept insisting that regular medicine was a crock, even after having the reality thoroughly explained to them, would you expect anything but that they be shown the door?
The Ron Paul folks in this thread showed up in a gathering of historians and said embarrassingly inaccurate things. The offensiveness of telling those historians that they don’t understand their *chosen field of study* does not seem to have occurred to any of the Paulistas. That the worst happened to them has been some mockery seems to me a thoroughly gentle response.
September 5, 2008 at 6:13 am
Ben Alpers
Nicely put, silbey.
Shorter Paulistas.
September 5, 2008 at 7:13 am
silbey
Nicely put, silbey
Thanks.
September 5, 2008 at 9:54 am
Skydog
Then you and the other “historians” around here must be right, because that was sho nuff what I was taught in school! There never were any “so-called” states’ rights, turns out, because the Constitution doesn’t have a chapter called States Rights. The North never had “Slavery” because the federal government has always been based upon liberty and equality. Abraham Lincoln was the Gentle Abolitionist president (America’s greatest president, in fact). And the “Civil War” was fought to free the slaves (and therefore it was worth 618,000 fatalities). Yes, it appears the mockery was well directed toward us “Paulistas”. And I’ve suitably learned my lesson.
Thanks again for the hospitality shown here,
Stephen Colbert
September 5, 2008 at 10:04 am
silbey
And I’ve suitably learned my lesson.
You’re going to your doctor’s office to tell her about antibiotics, aren’t you?
September 5, 2008 at 10:23 am
Skydog
You know it;-)
September 5, 2008 at 11:06 am
Ben Alpers
FWIW, Skydog, the historians connected with this blog (indeed, I think, any competent U.S. historian) would say that Lincoln fought the Civil War in the first instance to preserve the Union, not to free the slaves. That the Constitution of course reserves rights to the states, but that one of those rights is not secession. And, as I noted on another of these Civil War threads, that conflict was fought over slavery not in the sense that Lincoln fought it to free the slaves, but in the sense that the Southern states attempted to secede entirely in order to preserve and spread the institution of slavery.
In addition, none of us would say that our federal government has always simply “been based on liberty and equality” (though both those principles were important to the founders, albeit in limited and often paradoxical ways). Nor, certainly, would any of say that Northern states never had slavery. That they had slavery is simply a matter of fact, though other than the border states of Kentucky, Missouri, Delaware, and Maryland, all had abolished the institution long before 1861.
So, no, we’re not defending the views that you say you were taught in school.
September 5, 2008 at 11:12 am
ari
I am! And also this: Lincoln was an alien (Have you seen pictures of the guy? I mean, come on.) sent to earth by the Venutians to destroy the United States and pave the way for an invasion. Which is why he was gay. But their plan didn’t work. Stupid Venutians: crafty but shortsighted.
September 5, 2008 at 11:44 am
parallelsidewalk
Neo-confederates are about this much better than Neo-Nazis. ‘The civil war wasn’t about slavery, but if it was than it should have been the states’ prerogative, and I’m against slavery but slavery wasn’t THAT bad, and the North had slaves at one point too ya know, and the free market is magic and would have abolished slavery even though it led to it in the first place, and besides all that, the resurgence of confederate sentiment sure wasn’t a response to the civil rights movement or desegregation.’ Such a confused, ugly, inconsistent philosophy based on anger over being on the wrong side of a war their great grandfathers didn’t see.
September 5, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Charlieford
“I think the war of Northern aggression against the South {sic] was harmful to liberty because it centralized government beyond what was constitutional, and therefore beyond what was American.”
Two issues: 1) the Constitution is not clear on what degree the govn. should be “centralized” or not. The federal (ie two tier, national government plus states governments) system it established is intentionally flexible. The founders were not ideologues on this matter: they knew they couldn’t foresee all contingencies, and they wanted our system to be able to meet them. 2) The equation of centralized government with loss of liberty is, or can be, real enough, but we shouldn’t forget (what the states’ rights crowd consistently does) that Madison was equally concerned, maybe more so, about the threat of local tyrannies to liberty (religion, eg). Tocqueville, who conservatives often claim for their own, had similar concerns.
September 5, 2008 at 12:44 pm
kid bitzer
agreed, c’ford:
the issue of libertarianism vs. totalitarianism is completely independent of the issue of state vs. federal.
we could have abolished states altogether and wound up with a highly non-intrusive federal govt., a libertarian paradise.
or we could have created a looser confederacy with a relatively weaker federal govt, and lived under totalitarian regimes in each of the fifty states.
there is just no necessary connection between the degree of intrusiveness exerted by the total governing superstructure, and the relative strength of fed vs. state within that superstructure.
you might as well argue that the pathway to a libertarian paradise is to make the counties much stronger than the states–it’s the same non sequitur.
or you might as well imagine that giving a lot of power to the government of a town of 9,000 would prevent that government from attempting to ban books, shower largess on corporations, abuse executive authority, and run up ruinous debts.
doesn’t matter: tyranny is tyranny whether at the federal, state, or local level. states rights has nothing, nada, to do with lessening the intrusiveness of government.
September 5, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Charlieford
Which brings us, kid, back to slavery–the real issue behind the facade of “states’ rights,” and the real cause of the Civil War.
September 5, 2008 at 12:54 pm
kid bitzer
ayup.
September 5, 2008 at 1:00 pm
silbey
Hey, Charlieford and kb, I was having a perfectly good time mocking the Ronbots and you had to go and get serious on me. I mean, really.
September 5, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Skydog
Hmmmmm. Nice redux of history, historians: Authoritarianism=Flexible Constitutional Republic? Interesting affirmation of our current form of government. Support Bush, too? So, let’s see, bottom line here: 618,000 American killings/600,000 maimings was okiedoke(sp). -Ari’s Apologists
September 5, 2008 at 2:05 pm
ari
Hey, Skydog, leave me out of this, okay? I tried to treat your requests respectfully, though I think your views strain credulity. And that you’ve dubbed other commenters “Ari’s Apologists” really doesn’t sit well with me. I say that because if you choose to spend any more time at this blog, you’ll note that all of the people above are perfectly willing to tell me I’m idiot.
I’m an island, Skydog, a lone wolf, fighting the righteous history fight wherever there is need for my services. I require no apologists for my righteousness.
September 5, 2008 at 2:10 pm
ari
Also, stop putting words in people’s mouths. That’s a very small form of argumentation. Nobody here said that the human cost of the Civil War was okay. Sheesh, if don’t want to fight, as you keep claiming, stop throwing bombs and participate in the discussion. That doesn’t mean agreeing with everyone here. But it does mean being willing to listen and assess the evidence that’s presented to you. And, if after you doi those two things you still disagree, you might want to recall that history is always a matter of interpretation.
September 5, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Charlieford
Sorry Silbey. I’m sure we’ll get back to that.
Well, Skydog, that’s the republic you live in, like it or not. The flexibility built into the system makes it quite likely that there will be over-reaching. That one recognizes that fact does not, of course, mean one must acquiesce to any particular over-reaching. That, to lift a phrase from you, wouldn’t be “American” either. Our system is one of checks and balances. Those kick in–I think this is obvious–precisely because there’s something that needs to be checked or balanced. Lincoln himself, for example, understood he was over-reaching in the example you mentioned. As for the carnage of the war, I think you know that war’s are chains of cascading events that no one can predict from the outset. To try to tie every question of Constitutional principle or Lincoln’s (or Davis’s, for that matter) character to the tragedy that ensued just isn’t a proper way to investigate these questions. But I’m sure you’re quite worked up over all those deaths, and perhaps your grief has clouded your judgment.
September 5, 2008 at 2:36 pm
silbey
Authoritarianism=Flexible Constitutional Republic?
See, this is the kind of stuff that causes eye-rolling. This is what actual authoritarian governments do. The United States isn’t anywhere near that, though it has shown the worrying tendency to pick up some unsavory habits over the last decade.
In fact, your comment comes dangerously close to a Reductio ad Hitlerum
618,000 American killings/600,000 maimings was okiedoke
Ari’s already pointed this out, but I’ll reiterate it. Nobody’s said anything at all like the above.
September 5, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Skydog
Okay then let me put it this way. I’ve given my version of history (which no one has disputed directly). If the only comebacks are of the “show me the Secession chapter” ilk, then I’ve got no one sufficiently knowledgeable to really discuss the causes of The Civil War(sp) here. You act as if you have never heard this version of history. Or when you do, you revert to Reductio ad Hitlerum with this from earlier today: “Neo-confederates are about this much better than Neo-Nazis.”
Really?
Really?
Maybe if you all are so “expert” in the field of history (in my estimation the official Northern version) maybe to conduct any kind of real debate, I should throw out the first pitch. Okay, here it comes. Ready? The reason the first states from the deep South seceded from the Union had to do with the issue of “slavery”.
There. Happy?
At least it should appease George who was wondering if anyone would concede that point. But for the record, I am not for slavery (of course) and never was.
September 5, 2008 at 6:28 pm
silbey
which no one has disputed directly
Did the doctor walk you through the development and proofing of antibiotics?
You act as if you have never heard this version of history.
We’ve heard this version of history before. It was pushed by Southern historians in the period immediately after the Civil War. It was a mythology that the southerners told themselves so as to reconcile themselves to the war, and came to be known as the “The Lost Cause.” It had a number of major facets:
1. A conviction that Lincoln had started the war
2. A conviction that secession had been legal
3. A conviction that the war had not been about slavery, but states’ rights.
Those aren’t the only ones, but they’re pretty major ones. If you’d like to know more about the version of the myth you’re espousing and its development, you can read the following:
Foster, Gaines M. Ghosts of the Confederacy : Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South, 1865 to 1913. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Gallagher, Gary W. Lee & His Army in Confederate History. Vol. Civil War America, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Gallagher, Gary W, and Joseph T Glatthaar. Leaders of the Lost Cause : New Perspectives on the Confederate High Command. 1st ed ed. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2004.
Gallagher, Gary W, and Alan T Nolan. The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.
Hill, Tucker. Victory in Defeat : Jefferson Davis and the Lost Cause. Richmond, Va: Museum of the Confederacy, 1986.
Osterweis, Rollin G. Judah P. Benjamin, Statesman of the Lost Cause. New York, London: G. P. Putnam’s sons, 1933.
Osterweis, Rollin Gustav. The Myth of the Lost Cause, 1865-1900. [Hamden, Conn.]: Archon Books, 1973.
Reardon, Carol. Pickett’s Charge in History and Memory. The University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
Simon, John Y, and Michael E Stevens. New Perspectives on the Civil War : Myths and Realities of the National Conflict. 1st ed ed. Madison, Wis: Madison House, 1998.
Wilson, Charles Reagan. Baptized in Blood : The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980.
If you’d like to read a fairly balance account of the coming of the Civil War and its progress, you can read:
McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom : The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
In addition, there are some specific works that have useful perspectives:
Fehrenbacher, Don E. The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in Law and Politics (New York,
1978).
Nevins, Allan. The Emergence of Lincoln, 2 vols. (New York, 1950).
___________. The Ordeal of the Union, 2 vols. (New York, 1947).
___________. The War for the Union, 4 vols. (New York, 1971).
Potter, David M., and Fehrenbacher, Don E. The Impending Crisis 1848-1861 (New York, 1976).
I mention all of these not simply to hit you with a lot of books to read, but to point out that I’m not just making things up when I say that your version of history is wrong. Historians have been writing and talking about this since 1865. There’s still a lot of discussion to be had, but the profession is pretty clear on what’s stone-cold wrong, and that includes the “Lost Cause.”
It’s not that we haven’t seen your version of history, it’s that it’s so old that we are in the position of doctors listening to people explain how useful bloodletting is.
September 5, 2008 at 6:54 pm
ari
Again with the putting words in people’s mouths. Nobody has accused you of being pro-slavery. And yes, everyone here has seen your arguments before. Which is why we know that there’s no middle ground between what you believe and what we believe. I said, above, that Fort Sumter was federal property, and therefore Lincoln had the right to resupply. I also asked you about the question of treason. Silbey, I think (I’m not going to bother re-reading this tired nonsense), echoed the point. You countered with the super-secret hidden right of secession in the Constitution. Sigh. Look, it’s not a matter of us knowing more than you (you seem very well read), or professional historians knowing more than non professionals. Actually, there are buffs who know more facts than me in my class every time I teach the Civil War. No, the real issue is that you believe that federal tyranny caused the war. And that’s just not the case.
September 5, 2008 at 6:57 pm
ari
And I see that I’ve been pwned by a far more thorough silbey, who’s taken the time to generate a reading list. I knew that I shouldn’t start writing a comment and then put it down to take care of my kids. That’s always a mistake.
September 5, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Charlieford
“If the only comebacks are of the “show me the Secession chapter” ilk, then I’ve got no one sufficiently knowledgeable to really discuss the causes of The Civil War(sp) here.” Personally, I’d love to see that.
September 6, 2008 at 9:28 am
Skydog
Glad you are up to speed. But you are wrong, not me. The Right of Secession was never questioned, not by the North when it wanted to, and not publicly by Lincoln that I’m aware of. The South did not spill any blood that I’m aware of. So there was certainly no forthcoming reason to go to war with your own citizens (there was no rebellion, insurrection, and nobody wanted to take over the U.S. govt.).
I have no wish to fight the War again. And I have no wish to run afoul of heir Bush’s wonderfully billowy Insurrection Act of 2006 (was that thing ever repealed?). So it comes down to opinions. Mine are no better than yours and vice versa. The First Amendment is still in force, right? Okay, for the purposes of illustrating the hypothetical legality of secession (back then), I’ll simply state that, in my opinion, I believe in the concept of state sovereignty (it’s well documented). The states existed before the Union. The states ratified the federal constitution. 3 states (you know ’em already) reserved their right to secede. The constitution was therefore agreed to, signed, ratified, made law, yippie! Secession was just allowed. Significantly, it was not forbidden in the constitution. And since it was not delegated to the United States, that power was reserved by the states in the Tenth Amendment. And more, the Second Amendment guarantees the right of armed secession. Moreover, it follows logically that if armed secession is allowed then surely peaceful secession is!
Seen all this before, have you? Wonderful. Too bad the bumpkin hadn’t. Or maybe he had his own clamouring cabal.
Lincoln invoked the Declaration of Independence in his December 10, 1856 Chicago speech. While it is not law as is the Constitution, the Declaration was our original notice of secession. The Declaration recognizes individual rights as inalienable under the natural rights principles the Constitution was founded on. The Declaration states that it is the people’s right (and their duty) to “throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” That is the Right of Revolution, reserved by the People, that can never be given up (especially to a government whose purpose is to protect that right) except under duress. They have the right “to alter or abolish”, so then why not the right to just leave peaceably? Finally, governments derived their powers from “consent” of the governed, not the other way around. If consent was withdrawn, the central government therefore no longer derived any powers to govern. The argument was not won by the North, just the war.
There you have it. The legal and moral justification for secession that an amateur (not even a civil war buff) can come up with off the top of his head with TS Hannah bearing down.
If you have a way of refuting this, I’d like to hear it. If all you have to say in my direction is, “treason”, then you are not serious and I’ve got no time for that. I made a serious effort here to stay on one subject. I hope you’ll respect it by doing the same. I am sincerely interested in all responses as I don’t consider myself biased toward the South. However, every piece of information I’ve been reading lately tells me they were right. As for your list, thanks but no thanks. Balanced? You missed a few like Harry Jaffa, George Fletcher and their Lincolnphile buddies.
“The freedom and happiness of man [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government.” –Thomas Jefferson
September 6, 2008 at 9:46 am
Charlieford
“I don’t consider myself biased toward the South.” Well, that settles it, then.
September 6, 2008 at 9:53 am
silbey
Finally, governments derived their powers from “consent” of the governed, not the other way around
Lot of those slaves give their consent, did they?
September 6, 2008 at 10:10 am
Charlieford
Don’t be silly, silbey. The whole point of secession was to ensure that not only slaves, but black folk in toto, would never have to give their consent (not being eligible for citizenship).
September 6, 2008 at 11:23 am
Skydog
“Lot of those slaves give their consent, did they?”
I see you have nothing to add. Nothing. Maybe what you have a problem with is the Constitution.
In 1861, “slavery” was secure. The 1857 Dred Scott decision had just ruled that slavery was constitutional. Lincoln in his 1st Inaugural Address quoted himself from an earlier speech where he reiterated that he had no inclination, purpose or right to interfere with it. So why are you pointing your contempt toward the South? African-Americans were not eligible for citizenship in the U.S. in 1861. Next.
September 6, 2008 at 11:26 am
Skydog
““I don’t consider myself biased toward the South.” Well, that settles it, then.”
This sounds like a smear to me and I’m not going to take it. If we can’t debate without acting childish, then I’m gonna secede right outta here.
September 6, 2008 at 11:30 am
ari
You’re citing the Dred Scott decision? Really? That’s what you’ve got? For shame. And that’s not a smear, by the way; it’s a comment on what you call a regionally biased approach to history. Seriously, Skydog, you’ll convince nobody here. We all had these arguments in graduate school. Ultimately, they’re boring and wrongheaded. The root rather than proximate causes of the war are clear. Trying to argue otherwise is a fool’s errand. And that, I suppose, was a smear.
September 6, 2008 at 11:40 am
Charlieford
“So why are you pointing your contempt toward the South?” Perhaps because Lincoln, in his unwillingness to interfere with slavery where it was established, was reluctantly bowing to Constitutional necessity. The South, in seceding from the Union, was reacting to no provocation. They had already seceded from the Democratic Party because of its unwillingness to oppose popular sovereignty and instead embrace slavery without qualification, and this second secession followed from that. There was no litany of tyrannies perpetrated by the Lincoln administration they could point to to justify their actions, in the way Jefferson had in the Declaration. Rather, their honor was affronted by the fact that the presidency–which they had controlled for so long–had slipped from their grasp. For that reason alone, secession could not have been allowed to stand: “preserving the Union” meant not only preserving the geographical and economic integrity of the nation, but also of the electoral process and majority rule, apart from which no nation would have been possible.
September 6, 2008 at 11:42 am
Charlieford
“I’m gonna secede right outta here.” Keep hope alive!
September 6, 2008 at 11:53 am
silbey
I see you have nothing to add.
Now this is getting interesting, actually. I take this to mean that you don’t include slaves among the ‘governed.’ So what were they, exactly? Property?
Two further things:
1. The Supreme Court has, actually, ruled on your legal interpretation: http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0074_0700_ZS.html
2. Why go after the Civil War and Lincoln? Why not go after the original Constitution? The legal status of 1789 is much murkier than of 1861, and since so much of your argument is based on drawing on the Declaration of Independence, why not go back to it? You have a much stronger legal case based on the Declaration and the Articles of Confederation than on the Constitution.
September 6, 2008 at 11:54 am
Skydog
Ari, you’ve offered nothing. I appreciate that you don’t intend to smear. No smear taken. However, all you’ve offered is that you already went through this.
Charlieford, thanks. That was something. I don’t agree with the assessment in the quote but it was an actual response. So there were no tyrannies by the North (I know you said Lincoln, but the South didn’t secede from Lincoln). “The South was reacting to no provocation”. Hmmmmm. You’ll have a hard time selling that to anyone who has studied history. So you really expect me to spend the whole day building a huge list of the provocations? Ask Ari, he says he knows American history. But again, thanks!
September 6, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Skydog
Silby, I’ll have to read this but so far its not looking good with inaccurate words like, Rebellion, Insurrection, and perpetual and indissoluble. And it was 1868! None of this applies immediately to this particular circumstance. But I’m reserving judgment because I’m not biased … as I said above.
Regarding the legal status of African slaves in 1861, I don’t know. Maybe you can tell me. I’ve got a lot of reading to do. And thanks for providing a decent response. I’ll tell you now. If you can provide a good case, I will change my mind because I’m not biased … as I said.
As for the Declaration, that’s all I got. The Constitution holds water better legally, doesn’t it? But that Supreme Court case you provided actually invokes the Articles of Confederation so who knows? I’m not as well-read as Ari gave me credit for.
September 6, 2008 at 1:30 pm
silbey
And it was 1868! None of this applies immediately to this particular circumstance
Sure it does, because it reflects an attempt to actually *use* the legal argument that you’ve been putting forward, an argument that was found without merit.
So, essentially, you’re picking and choosing which Supreme Court decisions you find valid. Dred Scott: good. Texas v. White: bad.
Regarding the legal status of African slaves in 1861, I don’t know
Don’t hide behind the “legal status.” You used “consent of the governed” in the context of natural rights, not legal ones:
The Declaration expressed natural rights. Governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed.
So, let me ask again: were the slaves members of the ‘governed’ as the Declaration of Independence meant it? If so, did they give their ‘consent’ to the governments of the states?
September 6, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Skydog
Haven’t had a chance to read Texas v. White. It will be a while, too. [i]Maybe you can summarize the main points you took from it?[i] My point about it was “look at the date”. Do you think there might be some bias toward the Federal Government (judicial activism)? Those 8 years might have affected whatever decision they made. Dred Scott was never overturned, was it?
Did slaves give their ‘consent’ to the governments of the states? While I restate that I don’t think “slavery” was ever moral (as Christians did at that time … I’m not a Christian), I’m trying to see the way “Citizens” viewed slaves, not the way slaves viewed themselves at this very moment. If I recall, they were officially considered “things” not “persons” in the U.S.A.
From Wikipedia: The idea of awarding rights to animals has the support of legal scholars such as Alan Dershowitz and Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School. Steven Wise, also of Harvard Law School, argues that the first serious judicial challenges to what he calls the “legal thinghood” of animals may only be a few years away.
Based on the above, the 14th Amendment would have to be modified or else animals would need to be given “privileges” as well as rights. They would become “citizens” I presume and be the beneficiaries of the government dole. But remember, the word “equality” is not in the Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson: The best Jefferson could come up with was a plan to take slave children from their parents and put them in schools to be educated and taught a trade at public expense. Upon becoming adults, they would be transported to a colony somewhere and given tools and work animals to start a new life as a “free and independent people.”
You asked, “You don’t include slaves among the ‘governed.’ So what were they, exactly? Property?” No I don’t believe in people owning people. But it has been a reality from Biblical times up until the 13th Amendment was in force in the U.S.A. The best I can do is to guess that every “Citizen” in America AT THAT TIME believed they were either free or owned, except for the few people called Abolitionists.
September 6, 2008 at 3:09 pm
silbey
you can summarize the main points you took from
Look for “perpetual states in a perpetual union”
Do you think there might be some bias toward the Federal Government (judicial activism)?
Are you interested in the issue or not? You made a legal argument and I pointed you to the guiding legal precedent. If you wish to dismiss it as ‘judicial activism’ then you’re beyond being interested in discovering what the actual legal issues are, and more interested in sticking with your preconceived notions.
Dred Scott was never overturned, was it?
They’re called the 13th and 14th amendments of the Constitution.
’m trying to see the way “Citizens” viewed slaves, not the way slaves viewed themselves at this very moment. If I recall, they were officially considered “things” not “persons” in the U.S.A.
You’re missing the point. Your argument (and the argument of the Confederates) is, at least partly, based on the Declaration of the Independence and the idea of natural rights.
But you can’t just pick and choose natural rights. If the South has the right to secede based on the Declaration of Independence, then “all men are created equal” and governments are based on the “consent of the governed.”
The Confederates got around that by saying that slaves were not men, but property. You can use the same argument, but that would require you to declare that African-American slaves were not human beings.
And that’s what I’m asking you, a person of the 21st century: do you believe that African-Americans are human beings and thus part of the “governed” of the Declaration of Independence?
It’s a yes or no question and it should be easy to answer.
September 6, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Mike
May I join in the fun? Skydog, I am confused. You argue that the right of secession was never questioned, and “not publicly by Lincoln,” that you are aware of. Later, you cite Lincoln’s First Inaugural in support of your (correct) contention that Lincoln neither intended nor had the legal authority to interfere with slavery where it already existed. If you’ve read the First Inaugural, how could you possibly make the first assertion? Much of that speech is devoted to a rather devastating legal argument against the supposed right of secession. Lincoln begins by pointing out the truism that all governments are founded with perpetuity in mind. To paraphrase Lincoln, name me one government whose organic law contains a provision for its own destruction? Lincoln follows this by arguing that the Union was prior to the states–the 1774 Articles of Association created the Union when the states were still colonies, and it was the Continental Congress that called on the former colonies to write constitutions and form new governments, not the other way ’round. He then changes course and adopts your position–again, to paraphrase–let’s assume that the states are prior, and that the Constitution represents a compact, or contract, and further, that the right of secession exists. Where in the law of contract is there a provision allowing one party to rescind the contract arbitrarily? A party may break a contract and accept penalties for doing so, but no contract may be annulled without the consent of ALL parties involved. Lincoln even addresses your contention that the Founders all believed secession to be legal. The Preamble to the Constitution describes its purpose as an effort to create a “more perfect union.” But, as Lincoln points out, “if destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the States be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution…”
Again, I am confused.
September 6, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Charlieford
Skydog, you have me pulling books off the shelf, now. Thanks. in response to your contention, “The Founding Fathers believed secession to be a right. I believe the sovereign states existed before the Union and that the right of secession was implicit in the fact that the states created the federal government as their agent,” allow Mr. Madison (who knows something about founders and their intent) speak. Says he (to Edward Everett 8/28/30), the Constitution was formed “by the same authority that formed the State Constitutions. Being thus derived from the same source as the Constitutions of the States, it has within each State, the same authority as the Constitution of the State; . . . it cannot be altered or annulled at the will of the States individually, as the Constitution of a State may be at its individual will.”
September 6, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Skydog
Looks like I’m going to be pulling books out too, Charlieford! I’ll have to go dig up quotes from Madison for bolster my side too.
Mike, welcome to the discussion. No need to be confused. You make a valid point, and I may have been in error! I will have to clarify my position in good time. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. And thanks especially for keeping this on my point of secession. For now, let me say that the Union I’m speaking of is the political organization described in the U.S. Constitution, not Articles of Confederation or Articles of Association. If we bring that in as justification we might as well admit the The State of Franklin, and The State of Jefferson. Wikipedia explains thusly (sorry, no citations but pretty commonly understood):
“Opponents of Lincoln’s claim argue that the states, in forming the union of the Constitution, each seceded from the prior Confederated union of 1781, thereafter nine of them joined in Constitutional union on June 21, 1788 – when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution, thereby establishing it among those nine states as per Article VII; meanwhile other states refused to ratify until various conditions were met – including the addition of the Bill of Rights, ultimately ratifying by 1790. Therefore, their argument proceeds, both unions continued to exist in perpetuity between 1788 and 1790 (whereupon the final state of Rhode Island likewise joined the Constitutional union, thus ending the original confederated union. For this reason, the United States could not have been a single sovereign nation at any time prior to the Constitution, if ever.”
silbey, I’ve already given you my personal opinion so I don’t see a need to make this debate personal. This history happened before I was born, so I can’t take credit for any of it. I brought up the Declaration because Lincoln did. If “perpetual states” or “perpetual union” is what your point was regarding Texas v. White, then I can say right now that appears to be in error. It seems we both have cherry picked opinions: I use Dred Scott (which you disagree with) and you use Texas v. White (which I disagree with). There’s just too many problems with it. But my main point is it did not exist in isolation. It was part of the post-civil war (so called). I can’t go an apply the 15th Amendment to an 1850’s reality. Another thing I have a problem with: it was not even a civil war. And Mike, the claims about the Union’s destruction from the mere act of secession by Lincoln were specious. Friggin’ Republicans have been doing that a LONG TIME.
But I’ll be happy to bring more on secession next time. Til then here’s what Wiki has to say (not that he can be considered an expert:). “According to the theory of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John C. Calhoun, the states had entered into an agreement from which they might withdraw if other parties broke the terms of agreement, and they remained sovereign. These individuals contributed to the theoretical basis for acts of secession, as occurred just before the American Civil War. However, they propounded this as part of a general theory of “nullification,” in which a state had the right to refuse to accept any Federal law that it found to be unconstitutional, regardless of judicial review.
September 6, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Ben Alpers
But you can’t just pick and choose natural rights. If the South has the right to secede based on the Declaration of Independence, then “all men are created equal” and governments are based on the “consent of the governed.”
The Confederates got around that by saying that slaves were not men, but property. You can use the same argument, but that would require you to declare that African-American slaves were not human beings.
Actually at least some Confederates got around this by simply denying that all men were created equal.
Here’s Confederate VP Alexander Stephens:
The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition.
And Stephens argument was anticipated by John C. Calhoun, who famously wrote in A Disquisition on Government that “nothing can be more unfounded and false” than the “prevalent opinion that all men are born free and equal”: “[I]nstead of being born free and equal, [men] are born subject, not only to parental authority, but to the laws and institutions of the country where born, and under whose protection they draw their first breath.”
In short, both the Confederates themselves and the political theorists they admired rejected many of the fundamental principles of the Declaration of Independence.
September 6, 2008 at 6:13 pm
silbey
silbey, I’ve already given you my personal opinion so I don’t see a need to make this debate personal
You still haven’t answered the question. I’ll quote it back at you, just to make sure we’re clear:
“And that’s what I’m asking you, a person of the 21st century: do you believe that African-Americans are human beings and thus part of the “governed” of the Declaration of Independence?”
Why are you having trouble answering this?
September 6, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Charlieford
“However, they propounded this as part of a general theory of “nullification,” in which a state had the right to refuse to accept any Federal law that it found to be unconstitutional, regardless of judicial review.” This is a common, but severe, confusion of what was occuring re the Alien & Sedition Acts. It is reading them in light of the nullification crisis in South Carolina, which is also being read in light of the secession of 1860-61. And then the VA resolution gets read as a basis for secession! Not a good way to procede! Here’s Madison again, from the same letter (intended for distribution): “the [VA] legislature cd. not have intended to sanction such a doctrine [as nullification] is to be inferred from the debates . . . the tenor of the debates . . . discloses no reference whatever to a constitutional right in an individual State to arrest by force the operation of a law of the U.S.” The aim was rather to encourage other states to agree on the unconstitutionality of the Alien & Sedition Acts–to establish what Madison calls “a Concert” of opposition to them, which might then reverse them by Constitutional means. To ensure there was no misunderstanding, the VA legislature itself, says Madison, struck out from their description of the Acts the phrase “not law, but utterly null, void, and of no force or effect,” which in one proposal had followed the charge that they were “unconstitutional.” This was “to guard against a misunderstanding of this phrase as more than declaratory of opinion . . .”
In addition, this–“So there were no tyrannies by the North (I know you said Lincoln, but the South didn’t secede from Lincoln). “The South was reacting to no provocation”. Hmmmmm. You’ll have a hard time selling that to anyone who has studied history. So you really expect me to spend the whole day building a huge list of the provocations?”–is called bad faith. Tyranny, not mere difference of opinion over, say, a tariff, is what the common sense of mankind at the time considered a justification for asserting independence. Real acts of tyranny don’t take all day to document. They’re usually pretty blatant. Tendencious arguments woven from gossamer filaments, however, do take some time.
September 8, 2008 at 10:58 am
Skydog
Justification of Secession (or Gossamer Filaments for the Church of Lincoln)
This is in response to the question of secession I was asked. Sorry if long.
Massachusetts disobeyed the Union when the state refused to send troops for the War of 1812, effectively seceeding. No one had ever seriously disputed the right of a state to secede before Lincoln (not counting Andrew Jackson’s emotional proclamation in 1832).
Lincoln’s revisionism of the right of secession was quite creative. The right never inhered in the states, he argued, because the federal government had, in fact, created the states. This revisionist view, or misunderstanding, would be the basis of his circular logic.
The claim that the Union was older than the Constitution as far back as the Articles of Association of 1774 does not respond to the secessionist argument rooted in Article VII where the Constitution implicitly affirmed a right to secede from the Union, regardless of the pre-Constitution character of the Union.
History does not bear Lincoln’s assertion out: July 2, 1776 – By the votes of 12 of the 13 colonies, with New York not voting, Congress adopts the Lee Resolution (“Resolved: That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”) and begins consideration of the Declaration of Independence, written by the Committee of Five. Congress declared the British Colonies to be “independent States”.
The birth of the Union was the day the Constitution was in force as Law. On March 4, 1789, the government under the Constitution began operations. 11 of the 13 States had ratified it, and it only applied to those States that ratified it. Due to anti-Federalist sentiment, Rhode Island didn’t ratify until 1790, when it reserved its right to secede.
The decision of Texas v. White, established that states do not have the right to secede without the consent of the other states. But it is untested, and it is based on the notion of permanence as found in The Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1781. This is in error. The Articles established a confederation of Sovereign States in a permanent union. The “permanence” lasted only until 1788, when 11 states voluntarily withdrew from the confederation then ratified the new Constitution.
[Similarly, the decision of Dred Scot v. was also in error in failing to distinguish the difference between property in slaves and other types of personal property. Personal property is a Natural Law while the right to own slaves is municipal law by which slaves were confined to the States and not the Territories. Chief Justice Taney was also in error when he declared that all Negroes could not be citizens: there were already many black citizens when the Constitution was created.]
Were there any Sovereign States? North Carolina and Rhode Island, which did not ratify the Constitution until after President Washington was inaugurated, were treated by the new national government as foreign sovereigns until they formally accepted the Constitution. That treatment indicates that all the States were in an important sense sovereign when they entered into the Constitution. The mere existence of slaves and Indians indicated that America was an aggregate of peoples, living in different climates, and having different pursuits of industry and institutions, not one organic people, therefore not deriving sovereignty from national government.
While there is a procedure for adding States, nowhere in this Constitution is there any mention of the union of the States being permanent. This was not an oversight. When New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia ratified the Constitution, they made the right to withdraw from the union explicit in their acceptance of the Constitution. If they were merely “conditions”, those states’ ratifications would have been rejected, as per Madison’s letter saying that Congress would not consider a conditional ratification to be valid. Their claim to the right of secession was understood and agreed to by the other ratifiers, including George Washington, who presided over the Constitutional Convention and was also a delegate from Virginia.
Hamilton was the founding father of constitutional subversion through what we now call “judicial activism. How did he re-mold the Constitution into an instrument of national supremacy? He began by inventing a number of myths about the American founding. Before the Constitution was even ratified, he said that the sovereign states were merely “artificial beings” that had nothing to do with creating the union – despite the fact that the Constitution itself (in Article 7) declared that the document would be ratified by the citizens of at least nine of the thirteen States. He told the New York State Assembly that the “nation,” and not the states, had “full power of sovereignty,” clearly contradicting the written Constitution and actual history.
Chief Justice John Marshall, in Gibbons v. Ogden wrote “What would have been the point of the foregoing proposed amendments to the Constitution of the United States prohibiting or limiting the right of secession if under the Constitution the unfettered right of secession did not already exist? Why would Congress have even considered proposed amendments to the Constitution forbidding or restricting the right of secession if any such right was already prohibited, limited or non-existent under the Constitution?
The Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union states that the agreement between South Carolina and the United States is subject to the law of compact, which creates obligations on both parties and which revokes the agreement if either party fails to uphold its obligations. Tyranny, not a difference of opinion.
For forty years the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue — to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures.
The people of the Southern States were not only taxed for the benefit of the Northern States, but after the taxes are collected three-fourths of them are expended at the North. This cause, with others connected with the operation of the General Government, provincialized the cities of the South. Their growth is paralyzed, while they are the mere suburbs of Northern cities. The bases of the foreign commerce of the United States are the agricultural products of the South; yet Southern cities did not carry it on. Foreign trade was almost annihilated.
The July 4, 1789, tariff reduced by 10 percent or more the tariff paid for goods arriving in American craft. Navigation acts in the same decade which stipulated that foreign-built and foreign-owned vessels were taxed 50 cents per ton when entering U.S. ports, while U.S.-built and -owned ones paid only six cents per ton, effectively blocked off U.S. coastal trade to all but vessels built and owned in the United States.
The navigation act of 1817 made it official, providing “that no goods, wares, or merchandise shall be imported under penalty of forfeiture thereof, from one port in the United States to another port in the United States, in a vessel belonging wholly or in part to a subject of any foreign power.”
The war ended in 1815, and American markets reopened to the cheaper, better made British products. In spite of the protective Tariff of 1816, the American economy collapsed in 1819. Fortunes vanished. Recovery took years. And Northern capitalists vowed never again to be without protection. From then on, they used political power for protection purposes; they convinced the voters that the crumbs that dribbled from the industrialists’ tables were their essential interests, and had to be protected at all costs.
Northern entrepreneurial elites needed the state to guarantee property; to enforce contracts; to provide infrastructures; to mobilize society’s resources as investment capital. Protective duties accounted for an estimated three-fourths of textile manufacturing’s value added. It took until the 1840s sectional divergence of the boom-bust cycle was apparent by 1825-6, when cotton prices tumbled and the North suffered no ill effects. Southerners had supported the Tariff of 1816 as a fair recompense to New Englanders but without reciprocity.Economically, America was two nations at war with one another from this point on.
The manufacturing interest of Eastern and Middle non-slaveholding States clamored for Government dole they received for many years enormous bounties from the Treasury. But when the Act of 1846 was passed free-trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was was settled. By successful war with Mexico; Congress had to govern it, how — in relation to slavery — was the question, that demanded solution. This state of facts gave form and shape to the anti-slavery sentiment throughout the North, and the conflict began.
Northern anti-slavery men asserted the right to exclude slavery from the territory by legislation, and demanded the prompt and efficient exercise of the power to that end. This unconstitutional demand was met with great moderation and firmness by the South which had shed its blood and paid its money for its acquisition; they demanded a division of it, on the line of the Missouri restriction, or an equal participation in the whole of it. These propositions were refused.
Robert Toombs said, “The South at all times demanded nothing but equality in the common territories, equal enjoyment of them with their property, to that extended to Northern citizens and their property — nothing more.” The South relied economically on the institution of slavery, and the North benefited from it even more. Just dropping it as Republicans proclaimed they would do, would have brought on open war between blacks and whites it was feared like Haiti; slave rebellion that would wipe one or the other race clean off the earth of the Deep South.
Northern Personal Liberty Laws that, in effect, nullified the Fugitive Slave Law of the Compromise of 1850 as well as Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution, which dealt with fugitive slaves, is a constitutional tyranny, not a difference of opinion. At least ten Northern states had statutes that nullified the two aforementioned laws and the federal government refused to compel them to uphold these laws.
Other breaches of the Constitution included, as stated earlier, the harboring of fugitives from justice in the North, specifically two of John Brown’s sons who were with Brown at Harpers Ferry and were wanted in Virginia for murder, but were being harbored in Ohio and Iowa.
Brown himself had been encouraged by Northerners and financed by Northern money. Certain Northern leaders, again, with the acquiescence of states like Massachusetts, tried desperately to destroy “domestic Tranquility” in the South by sending incendiary abolitionist material in the mail encouraging slaves to revolt and murder. Lincoln’s own Republican Party published 100,000 copies of Hinton Helper’s The Impending Crisis, which called for slave revolt, and Republicans in Congress endorsed the book and used it as a campaign tool.
In the GOP party platform of 1860: That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions (slavery) according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of powers on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.
Lincoln and his Party wanted to keep slavery, just keep it in the Southern States. Why did the South believe the new administration was going to take steps to abolish slavery? Maybe because the party platform additionally declared its intention to prevent any new States from choosing to adopt its own domestic institution (slavery): and therefore limiting States Rights (not to mention the Constitutionally guaranteed 3/5s representation the South needed to keep a balance of (dwindling) political power. As soon as the GOP gained enough power, the first thing it did was to get the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the protectionist Morrill Tariff during the 1859–60 session.
The North invaded to regain lost federal tax revenue by keeping the Union intact by force of arms. In his First Inaugural Lincoln promised to invade any state that failed to collect “the duties and imposts,” and he kept his promise. On April 19, 1861, the reason Lincoln gave for his naval blockade of the Southern ports was that “the collection of the revenue cannot be effectually executed” in the states that had seceded. Lincoln himself stated that if the South was allowed to secede: “What then will become of my tariff?”
The Northern States pasted exclusion laws that made it hard or impossible for freed Slaves to enter or settle in their jurisdictions. Massachusetts passed laws that allowed the flogging of blacks that remained in the State over 2 months, Indiana’s constitution stated, “no negro or mulatto shall come into or settle in the state. Most of the Northern States crafted similar laws and imposed harsh penalties on freed or runaway Slaves. John Sherman, William Tecumseh’s brother declared in 1862 that: “We do not like the negroes. We do not disguise our dislike. As my friend from Indiana said yesterday: The whole people of the Northwestern States are opposed to having many negroes among them and that principle or prejudice has been engraved in the legislation for nearly all the Northwestern States.” There were actually far more beatings and lynching in the North during that period then in the South during the “Jim Crow” period.
The act of secession itself was not the cause of the War, nor was Lincoln a dye-hard Unionist prior to the events that lead up to Secession. Lincoln and indeed, the entire country was well aware of the Right of Secession because it had been taught and espoused by just about every educational institution and politician, save a few Whig lawyers like Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and Story. It is significant that no Confederate leader was ever brought to trial for treason. A trial would have brought a verdict on the constitutional legality of secession.
On April 13, 1861 Virginia’s Committee on Federal Relations learned of the attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. The members of the convention saw this as an act of coercion by the North they could not tolerate. On April 15, Lincoln calls for 75,000 troops to suppress the “insurrection”. Virginia would be required to send 8,000 soldiers to kill Carolinians. This proved to be the breaking point for delegates, and the convention chose to stand with other southerners and vote for secession. On April 16, the convention went into secret session and on the following day passed an ordinance of secession uniting their state’s destiny with that of the Southern Confederacy. The public vote will take place May 23rd. May 24, 2AM, Union forces
April 19, the anniversary of first shot of the American Revolution, the Union invades Maryland killing numerous Marylanders defending their State. April 27, Lincoln blockades the still-Union States, Virginia and North Carolina. May 3: Federal troops occupy Arlington Heights in Virginia. May 23, the Virginia public votes: most counties vote by a margin of 6 to 1 to secede (in 49 counties the vote to secede is unanimous). May 24, 2AM, Federal forces invade Virginia, seizing the city of Alexandria. The initial Federal invasion of Virginia (and initial aggression against a civilian home) resulted in two casualties, a Union Colonel and a Virginia civilian shot in the face emerging from his bedroom. But none of this was constitutional.
But then, it’s “just a god damned piece of paper.” – Bush
On March 4, 1861, the President of the United States took a solemn Oath of Office. The Civil War was fought as “total war” as memorialized (justified) in The Lieber Code of April 24, 1863. Lincoln and his generals abolished all distinction between military and civilian persons. This had been taught in West Point as a violation of International Law and and the military’s own rules of military combat. Waging Total War to stop a peaceful secession. Shame, shame, shame. A textbook used at West Point before the Civil War, A View of the Constitution, written by Judge William Rawle, states, “The secession of a State depends on the will of the people of such a State.”
The centralization of governmental power not only leads to the looting and plundering of the taxpaying class by the parasitic class; it also slowly destroys freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas. One of the first things every tyrannical government does is to monopolize the educational system in order to brainwash the young and bolster its political power. As soon as Lee surrendered at Appomatox the federal government began revising history to teach that secession was illegitimate.
The Jeffersonian interpretation of the Constitution was all but wiped out by Lincoln’s war, after which Hamiltonian hegemony prevailed. Slowly but surely, virtually all vestiges of Jefferson’s strict constructionism were swept away so that by the 1930s the “principles of nationalism and broad construction expounded by Hamilton and his disciples” finally monopolized constitutional law in America, wrote Rossiter. Between 1937 and 1995, not a single federal law was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. Now we get to fight unnecessary wars that kill innocent civilians (like in Afghanistan in the news today) and bail out big business (like private firms like Fannie and Freddie in the news today). Happy now, Imperialists?
September 8, 2008 at 12:16 pm
silbey
Happy now, Imperialists
No. You still haven’t answered my question: were slaves, in your opinion (not of the Confederates), part of the “governed” and thus able to give or not their consent to their government?
September 8, 2008 at 12:43 pm
silbey
Interesting comments. This, for example,
The North invaded to regain lost federal tax revenue by keeping the Union intact by force of arms. In his First Inaugural Lincoln promised to invade any state that failed to collect “the duties and imposts,” and he kept his promise. On April 19, 1861, the reason Lincoln gave for his naval blockade of the Southern ports was that “the collection of the revenue cannot be effectually executed” in the states that had seceded. Lincoln himself stated that if the South was allowed to secede: “What then will become of my tariff?”
was even more interesting when Lew Rockwell wrote it in 2003:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo44.html
You’ve copied it, essentially verbatim, without noting where it came from.
This:
The July 4, 1789, tariff reduced by 10 percent or more the tariff paid for goods arriving in American craft. Navigation acts in the same decade which stipulated that foreign-built and foreign-owned vessels were taxed 50 cents per ton when entering U.S. ports, while U.S.-built and -owned ones paid only six cents per ton, 1effectively blocked off U.S. coastal trade to all but vessels built and owned in the United States. The navigation act of 1817 made it official, providing “that no goods, wares, or merchandise shall be imported under penalty of forfeiture thereof, from one port in the United States to another port in the United States, in a vessel belonging wholly or in part to a subject of any foreign power.” 1The war ended in 1815, and American markets reopened to the cheaper, better made British products. In spite of the protective Tariff of 1816, the American economy collapsed in 1819. Fortunes vanished. Recovery took years. And Northern capitalists vowed never again to be without protection. From then on, they used political power for protection purposes; they convinced the voters that the crumbs that dribbled from the industrialists’ tables were their essential interests, and had to be protected at all costs. Northern entrepreneurial elites needed the state to guarantee property; to enforce contracts; to provide infrastructures; to mobilize society’s resources as investment capital. Protective duties accounted for an estimated three-fourths of textile manufacturing’s value added. It took until the 1840s 1sectional divergence of the boom-bust cycle was apparent by 1825-6, when cotton prices tumbled and the North suffered no ill effects. Southerners had supported the Tariff of 1816 as a fair recompense to New Englanders but without reciprocity
Economically, America was two nations at war with one another from this point on. The manufacturing interest of Eastern and Middle non-slaveholding States clamored for Government dole 1they received for many years enormous bounties from the Treasury. But when the Act of 1846 was passed 1free-trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was was settled. 1By successful war with Mexico; Congress had to govern it, how – in relation to slavery – was the question, that demanded solution. This state of facts gave form and shape to the anti-slavery sentiment throughout the North, and the conflict began. Northern anti-slavery men asserted the right to exclude slavery from the territory by legislation, and demanded the prompt and efficient exercise of the power to that end. This unconstitutional demand was met with great moderation and firmness by the South which had shed its blood and paid its money for its acquisition; they demanded a division of it, on the line of the Missouri restriction, or an equal participation in the whole of it. These propositions were refused.
is from http://www.etymonline.com/cw/economics.htm
This
Northern Personal Liberty Laws that, in effect, nullified the Fugitive Slave Law of the Compromise of 1850 as well as Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution, which dealt with fugitive slaves, is a constitutional tyranny, not a difference of opinion. 2At least ten Northern states had statutes that nullified the two aforementioned laws and the 12federal government refused to compel them to uphold these 2laws. Other breaches of the Constitution included, as stated earlier, the harboring of fugitives from justice in the North, specifically two of John Brown’s sons who were with Brown at Harpers Ferry and were wanted in Virginia for murder, but were being harbored in Ohio and Iowa. Brown himself had been encouraged by Northerners and financed by Northern money. Certain Northern leaders, again, with the acquiescence of states like Massachusetts, tried desperately to destroy “domestic Tranquility” in the South by sending incendiary abolitionist material in the mail encouraging slaves to revolt and murder. Lincoln’s own Republican Party published 100,000 copies of Hinton Helper’s The Impending Crisis, which called for slave revolt, and Republicans in Congress endorsed the book and used it as a campaign tool.
is from http://www.bonniebluepublishing.com
Those are the largest ones, but by my rough count about 50% of this consists of passages lifted from other web pages without acknowledgment (including, of course, wikipedia). At my college, this would likely get a student convicted of an honor code violation and possibly expelled. If you want to be treated seriously in a historical discussion, you should write your own words.
September 8, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Skydog
silbey, I am answering your questions again just so you won’t think I somehow support modern racist organizations.
My feeling is that Lincoln said admirable things early on about wanting to end slavery and then never freed any slaves in his lifetime. Jefferson said admirable things against slavery in the Declaration yet put forth the novel idea of equality. Both used slaves. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t know how they thought of African Americans, and I certainly don’t know as far back as the Declaration. But it is well documented that in the history of slavery, slaves were always considered personal property. In the United States, as far as slaves (and not indentured servants) goes, it is clear that they the founders were willing to consider them 3/5s persons. You asked another question, “you don’t include slaves among the ‘governed?’ So what were they, exactly? Property?” They definitely were considered property in the Confederacy. But in the Constitution, I don’t know what federal status, other than non-citizen (by a reading Taney’s opinion in the Dred Scott case), forced laborers had.
But I do know that I disagree with slavery, and yes African Americans are human! Regarding your Jaffa-esque trap of asking if they were among the governed in the body politic, again, I’d have to say I don’t know how to answer that because the authority of the consent of the governed came from the delegating of individual sovereignty of the Citizen. That’s probably how they worked it out in their minds, but as you can see from my first 2 sentences, what they said and what they did were two different things. My contention is that Lincoln’s unconstitutional war and attendant decisions by the court and the congress have changed State Sovereignty, Citizen Sovereignty, Centralized Federal Authority, and forced enslavement of the nation with unconstitutional taxes and maintaining a standing Army, and the replacement of Common Law with Roman Law (rules). We have a Police State. Lincoln did not free the slaves, he made everyone slaves to what is fast becoming One World Government.
September 8, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Skydog
“If you want to be treated seriously in a historical discussion, you should write your own words.”
I’m a woodworker, not a writer. Please feel free to dispute the facts if you are able. The facts don’t belong to anyone.
September 8, 2008 at 1:13 pm
ari
The facts don’t belong to anyone.
This is true, of course. But a writer’s words are, in fact, his or her intellectual property. Thanks, silbey, for providing sources that underscore the obvious: our interlocutor is a fraud.
September 8, 2008 at 1:29 pm
kid bitzer
eh. i think skydog is tedious, tone-deaf, and tendentious, but i don’t really take the charge of fraud seriously.
it was obvious to me that his 10:58 was a pastiche of quotations from elsewhere, and i assumed it was obvious to others, and obvious even to him that it would be obvious to others.
yeah, he should have cited. but i’m not sure the mens rea was there for fraud.
we should tear him for his bad arguments, but i don’t think he’s in the same position as an undergrad trying to pass off stuff as his/her own.
September 8, 2008 at 1:45 pm
silbey
Thanks, silbey
You’re welcome.
September 8, 2008 at 1:55 pm
ari
We’ve already torn him down for lousy arguments. He won’t respond to our critiques. And really, if one’s going to present other people’s stuff, absent quotations or citations, as one’s own, that’s not great form, even on a blog. All of that said, I stand by my earlier point: this is not an argument that can be won. Skydog is an idealogue; he’s not genuinely interested in constructive debate or inquiry. The stuff with plagiarism, then, is a symptom of a much more deeply rooted disease.
September 8, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Skydog
Hi, I’m back! Thanks for the polite responses. If an apology is needed I will provide one. Just sayin’.
But I have a few questions. Throwing off the disease comment, for a moment, does posting on a blog confer upon a person the title of author? Credentialed journalist? What? Seriously, if it is against Board Policy and I need to make amends somehow, then I will.
(Since I’m not a writer) I don’t claim this writing as my own even if some of it was. I also don’t make any profit from it, btw. If it is STILL bad form, then is it possible to concede the “facts” I listed (from sources like About.com, Wiki, and some Neo-Confederate type sites, as well as some classic, dead writers like Charles Dickens and Orestes Augustus Brownson) and then DELETE the post?
That way it won’t be on this site for perpetuity. If that is your concern. I don’t know what it is. Or maybe a simple apology is enough. I was simply trying to convey a timeline, but it seems like you “historians” already know these “facts”.
Additionally I have been trying to address your critiques (or questions?) one by one, but I don’t have a lot of time and I already spent most of Saturday trying to accumulate a complex story with readily available material. That and trying to proofread took a long time! So I am still interested in trying to make arguments that aren’t “lousy”. I can only do so much. For this I was trying to stay centered on the topic of Secession.
Is this wrong form as well? I mean, we could just as easily dart back and forth between talking about Ron Paul, but I got the sense that he was old news around here. Anyway, I don’t take the charges of “not responding to y[our] critiques” (Ari boardkeeper guy) … see I cited your work … seriously. Or the “idealogue” thing. I am however idealistic.
It still remains that I have presented the dominant FACTS of the legality of secession (minus the BS theories that really stretch logic), and not more than Mike and Charlieford have really contested the FACTS. So again, by all means please do. Or maybe stipulate they are FACTS, you just have a different interpretation.
Also kindly advise me if I need to do something to reconcile the discomfort caused by not citing all my sources (I did cite many quotations). Or remind of Board Policy, that kind of thing.
September 8, 2008 at 3:28 pm
ari
you just have a different interpretation
Skydog, you should let me know how many times I have to say the above before you’ll accept that I’ve said it. As to what’s considered good form in terms of citations, direct quotes should be placed within quotation marks. Or, failing that, you should use block quotes, which is complicated in a blog comment, and include a link to the original source and/or note that you’re quoting. I don’t think this is a convention peculiar to this blog, or blogs more broadly, by the way.
silbey offered you some suggested reading above. That was very generous of him. If you’re interested, I suggest you take a look at some or all of those books. I very much doubt they’ll change your mind, as your mind is pretty much made up (in fairness, the same is true for me). But those books will, nevertheless, give you some sense of how professional historians approach these questions — if that’s something you’d like to know. And with that, I’m going to bow out now, if that’s okay.
September 8, 2008 at 5:15 pm
tpb
I always tell my students that beyond the immorality and criminality of plagiarism, it is just flat lazy and the plagiarist learns nothing. The facts, if facts they are, contained within plagiarized essays and blog posts do not, in fact, speak for themselves. The hard graft the original author took to embed the facts in a narrative, analytical, or argumentative structure is what gives the facts their cogency. Taking the time to unpack and then repack the argument and its facts in one’s own words, with proper citation, forces the reader to think through the argument and, often, in that process find the errors of analysis and interpretation. Seeking and sometimes finding facts left out of this or that narrative allows the reader to call bullshit on this or that narrative. Responding to arguments with the undigested arguments of others is the best method of ensuring that one will never be able think a problem through.
Duane Allman would be ashamed of his namesake.
September 8, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Skydog
Gosh, Ari, you are just the master of understatement, aren’t you. I’ve been searching for the BIG POINT you made to me that I just don’t seem to get. FYI, it is also good form to repeat the question if it was not heard. I can guess, I guess! Was your point that all the facts are in, as well as all possible interpretations of American History? That mine is classified as that mythical Lost Cause theory that was invented after the war(sic)? And therefore it is pointless to study on my own and simply buy everything you and this den of Lincoln-lovers are telling me to accept, even though this extremist version you are selling is considered way out of the mainstream by now (that Lincoln was the Christ)?
If that is your point, then … I beg to differ. You are out of the mainstream, dude! Yes, my take on this subject is diametrically opposed to yours and so is equally out of the mainstream. But that has been the point I’ve tried to reconcile by coming here. Why were we taught a false version of Honest Abe? So we will become a Marxist state that indoctrinates the youth into a falsehood to aggrandize the militaristic view of the government having supreme authority? I look at Wikipedia, and it is so skewed in Abe’s favor that it is just silly to read! I could cite examples but I would think anyone could amble on over there and see for himself. I don’t need to spend hour upon hour doing research on something I already have seen for myself.
And maybe that is your point, Ari. You’ve already seen “my facts” (not claiming them as my intellectual property) in Grad school. You just chose to interpret them differently. Ah! But I see, you don’t like your interpretation to even be on the same plane as a layman’s. Maybe that’s the problem. You are not in academia on this Board … and I’m not one of your students. So the challenge for you then is: can you communicate effectively with the common man? I came here with a pure heart, earnestly looking for answers and presenting the cognitive dissonance I have been experiencing over the two conflicting Lincolns for everyone to see. I freely offered to anyone the opportunity to correct my mistakes. I even made a list of statements I had accepted and provided them to others to disprove.
While I did transgress morally by not providing citations that are customary, I think kid bitzer was most accurate when he wrote, and I quote, “it was obvious to me that his 10:58 was a pastiche of quotations from elsewhere, and i assumed it was obvious to others, and obvious even to him that it would be obvious to others.” [Thanks, kid bitzer. Eloquent.] Even though this is not academia, and I am not a published author, nor do I make my money in the field of writing, and didn’t represent the words as my own, I did offer to apologize. Again, no response. It was just more “See the above”. So again, I say, please feel free to tear me on content. It seems like the others were about to pounce, silbey had something up his sleeve, Charlieford was about to tear into me. I welcome hearing other’s viewpoints. Yes, like you, I kind of have my mind made up. Then again, I hear something nice about Lincoln like he “evolved”. Nice. So did Southerners, BTW. But I’m no idealogue.
So while I get that the Lincolnphiles on this Board see the way I’ve painted Lincoln as having come from out of left field, I have yet offered to give them a chance to improve the painting. I’m an old guy. I have seen this country turn into a sort of Gattaca, an authoritarian police state. We think that just because we have the right to speak (so-called) we are living in some kind of paradise. Boy, it sure doesn’t compare to when Citizens were treated as Sovereigns, now we are treated as chattel. Maybe ending slavery had a trade-off. That would be something to discuss! But your facts are probably much better than my interpretations. So I will understand if you “bow out”. Real historians don’t have time to sit on message boards all day anyway, do they? But thanks for keeping it civil!
tpb, I don’t represent myself as the namesake of brother Duane, though I did grow up in central Georgia and got fed all the same false crap about the “so-called” Civil War that you did wherever you grew up. Got any content to add? When you say, and I quote, “beyond the immorality and criminality of plagiarism, it is just flat lazy and the plagiarist learns nothing”, you make a good point actually. However, I don’t believe plagiarism is a crime (see below). Nor do I think it immoral how I presented my collection of facts (see above). And yes, I’m lazy, thus on this Board. However, I’m not a student and I’m not a producer of intellectual property, so there is no conflict with those that are. And I didn’t take credit for that sh*t I posted. It was a friggin’ list. No need to get anyone’s authoritarian panties in a wad. But your point is well taken regarding learning something from analysis. I just don’t have that much time. So cutting and pasting was the best way to go.
Hey maybe the problem is that all your ideas are intellectual property and that is why you won’t debate me on the merits but pick away at any other thing you can find wrong about me personally. In that light I wouldn’t want to talk with anyone either, for fear they were going to take my ideas and write the next *** pablum *** cough *** book on Lincoln!
And here I thought the insults and cruel talk would get the best of me! When it is really all of you intellectuals who are insecure! Wow!
Skydog (I do not claim ownership of the post I’ve just written; it is for all:)
“It is important to reiterate that plagiarism is not the mere copying of text, but the presentation of another’s ideas as one’s own, regardless of the specific words or constructs used to express that idea.” – Wikipedia
September 18, 2008 at 10:58 am
Skydog
While everybody is yammering about trifles like working the refs, late last night a federal judge legally conferred upon John McCain, the status of “natural born citizen”. In case you are not up to speed on this issue, McCain was born outside the legal and constitutional definition in 1936, but a “statute” passed by Congress 11 months later in 1937 made him a citizen, “retroactively”. This, and the the way in which the 14th Amendment was rammed through some 60 years earlier, gives some indication of the damage done to the Constitution because of Lincoln and his War Against the South. I wonder in which state McCain had State Citizenship at birth?
Skydog
“Few ideas in American history are more reviled today than states’ rights. The very concept, we are told, is inherently bound up with slavery and racism, such that anyone who so much as raises the idea renders himself morally suspect …
The Principles of ’98 raise timeless questions that deserve to be asked and debated rather than suppressed and ignored. If liberty is our desired end, is it more likely to arise in an order of competing jurisdictions – where the people’s right of exit serves as a check on the local government, anxious not to lose its tax base – or in a single gigantic jurisdiction?”
Thomas E. Woods Jr. (from “33 Questions about American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask”)
September 18, 2008 at 11:31 am
Charlieford
Skydog, once you’ve spent some serious time in self-reflection (and after a professional adjusts your meds), I may find the idea of discoursing with you attractive. As it is, I regret to say you’re simply too obsessed, too ill-informed, and too unskilled in analysis to make it worthwhile to even refute all this nonsense. Again, regrets.
September 18, 2008 at 11:48 am
Skydog
Nice!
Ah, to be young, and carefree, and smarter than everyone else. I remember it well. No regret necessary. I didn’t really believe anyone here could debate me anyway.
Best!
September 18, 2008 at 12:32 pm
silbey
anyone here could debate me anyway.
We weren’t debating you. We were debating all the people whose work you copied.
February 22, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Charlieford
No irony here. Too bad.