Cause of Civil War

I thought you did a fine job. There are holes in the majority view. Maybe Arti will get to them.If you are really interested in the subject, I'd recommend looking at Prof David Blight's lecture series on iTunesU. Blight does a good job of hashing out the causes of the civil war. You don't need to look at all 27 lectures, but I'll have to warn you that they are somewhat addictive.

I don't concede that. But it's a bit off topic IMO so I'll resist going there for now.

Yes.Lincoln used his authority as commander in chief to take away property of the enemy being used against the USA in a war. Slave labor was being used to build fortifications among other things. Further, slaves=property was pretty much established law.Emancipation Proclamation - Wikipedia

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Slaves had been part of the "engine of war" for the Confederacy. They produced and prepared food; sewed uniforms; repaired railways; worked on farms and in factories, shipping yards, and mines; built fortifications; and served as hospital workers and common laborers.

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Lincoln had no authority to free slaves in friendly states like Delaware or Kentucky.

Hi, NWR. We've subtlely switched from talking about whether the Southern cause was legitimately based on principles to talking about why they were unsuccessful.Your arguments seem to be leading to the conclusion that the war and its outcome were the result of the practical failures of the Confederacy in matters of politics, and their unwillingness to concede these practical failures.It's certainly a much less glamorous view of history than the other views from this thread, which deal wih the ideological failures, but I'm sure there's merit to your position as well.My only real complaint is that your argument tends to favor a "might makes right" principle, which I tend to view as a much poorer principle on which to base an argument than the "sore loser" principle.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

I don't think that is an objective issue. We can at best express our opinions. If you want to put it that way, then I think "inevitable failures" would be more accurate than "practical failures." They were on the wrong side of a moral argument. There was no way that they could win that argument, which had started in Britain (I think), and spread to USA.I am describing it in terms of politics for two reasons. Firstly, I don't want to impose 21st century moral views on their thinking, and secondly you compared it to the gay rights issue which is currently being argued as a grass roots campaign to capture the moral sensitivities of people.When a group is on the wrong side of a major moral issue, and they argue that is a matter of defending some principle rather than their position on that moral issue, that is bound to ring hollow.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

That pretty presumptuous...I participated in one of the gay marriage threads with the position that I didn't care if they got married or not but that the constitution didn't imply that they must have the right, and there were still assholes going all:ZOMG! U JUST HATE TEH GAYZ!!!So, whatever... rings hollow BFD

Okay. But weren't you just expressing an opinion? It doesn't seem comparable to secession.

That's so close to being a tribute.Yeah, I out-facted him. It wasn't difficult.

The truth hurts and evidently too much truth hurts some so much, the reptilian brain kicks in.Thanks for making my case for me.

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The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.
Salman RushdieThis rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. - the character Rorschach in Watchmen

But it seems obvious that their ideological failures had nothing to do with it.The South did not lose just by virtue of being in the wrong, because that is not the way that the Universe works. "I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree." (Ps. 37:35).No, they lost because the North kicked their butts. Their practical failure was in fact a practical failure, not a moral failure. Well, it did in this case. But that's not a principle, it's an observation. In this particular case, might made right. Hooray! This observation does not lead one to believe that it will always do so.

Hi, NWR. They would argue that they were on the right side of a different moral argument, and that the propaganda (what you called a "grass roots campaign") had convinced everybody that it was a less important moral debate than the one about slavery.That's why Southerners are still disgruntled about the whole thing today: they feel like Lincoln used a popular stance on one moral issue to hide the fact that he was trampling all over another, less popular and less well-known moral issue that they felt was nevertheless bigger and more important.Since the "confederation" concept---the "moral" states' rights issue---had not been a particularly successful one in the monarchical political climate that predominated in Europe over the past 200+ years, most of the international community was not convinced that it was worth defending, so the Confederacy never really had a hope of convincing anybody that states' rights was a moral issue.Granted, whatever moral issue one uses to justify slavery is going to have a hard time getting an audience over the glaring feedback noise that slavery is going to cause, just like whatever legitimate scientific issues one uses to justify creationism is going to have a hard time getting an audience over the glaring feedback noise that creationism is going to cause. That much is a given.But, to the descendants of the Confederates, that feedback noise effectively masks, even to today, the fact that a very important moral right was quashed in the process, defeating the entire point of creating the United States in the first place.-----My take on states' rights, however, is that it wasn't the escape from tyranny that modern Confederates pretend it was, but just an attempt to shift the tyranny one level down the totem pole. Citizens of, for example, Georgia, would be as subject to a the tyrannical rule of Georgia as they had before been to the tyrannical rule of the Union. Consequently, the whole issue is a vaguely academic study on where the proper balance of centralized order and diffused freedoms lies, and could hardly be argued to be a moral issue at all.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Well, sure, they would argue that. But it doesn't follow that we have to accept that argument.Humans have this remarkable ability, called rationalizing, whereby we invent explanation that put us in a good light. At the time of apartheid in South Africa, there was a lot of rationalization of that, too. The current Israeli government rationalizes its program of settlements in the Palestinian territories.To really settle the issue, you would have to be able to read minds. But I cannot not even trust my reading of my own mind about what I thought yesterday. So we have to accept that this not really a factual issue at all. It is an issue about which we have to make our own judgments, and those judgments are unavoidably subjective. You should take what I have posted in this thread as an indication of how I judge the issues - but with no guarantee that I won't have a different opinion next year. As I see it, they are disgruntled because they lost. And they rationalized as a way of dealing with their disgruntlement, then they chose to believe their own rationalizations.For myself, I was born and raised in Australia, so I am not part of this dispute. That is, I do not have any sense of belonging to either side. I did find the abolitionist case to be persuasive. The "States Rights" case rings hollow, particularly when I see it mainly being used to support racist attitudes (recently by Rand Paul, for example).

There was no trampling before the secession. The Lincoln election was just an excuse. They were losing on the political and social front in more and more of the country. The slave holding elites were also losing the lower and middle classes in their own states.I still do not see any huge "states rights" issue that Lincoln was responsible for, or that the slave holding states were having their "states rights" infringed upon any more than any pother state. They never gave the political process while Lincoln was President a chance. If there is a moral argument, they lose on the slavery issue and they lose on not even attempting to work with in the existing political framework.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

Had it been Bismarck, Roon, and Moltke instead of Lincoln, Halleck, and {insert name of favorite idiot Union general here}, I would have given the Confederacy about three months, and even that is probably generous.Had it been Napoleon, Talleyrand, and Nay - two months.Had it been Santa Ana - hello CSA today - evidently potty mouth's wet dream.Then again had it been Lopez of Paraguay, there would be no USA.Democracy is not necessarily the best system available in wartime, but as the aforementioned Bismarck said "there is a providence that protects drunks, children, idiots, and the USA."

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The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.
Salman RushdieThis rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. - the character Rorschach in Watchmen

Unfortunately for all involved, the North sure took their time about it.I agree with you, be it state's rights or suppression of first amendment rights, it all goes back to the issue of slavery as the overriding cause.I also add that IMO your performance in this thread has been exemplary.

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The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.
Salman RushdieThis rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. - the character Rorschach in Watchmen