The Civil War

[denuseri]

Well as fun as it to speculate about what ifs: to think that the War wouldn't have happened and everyone would have gotten along peacable is obviously not something that had a chance, both sides depsite any attempts to the otherwise by some individuals who were few and far between did indeed go to war over and becuase of the main issue that divided them.

Additonally... I think the decendents of those who were slaves (not to mention their ancestors who were in fact enslaved whose effort to have their freedom eventually did pay off) would naturally be appalled that people are still around today who would suggest that the people who were enslaving them should have been allowed to blithely continue to do so.

[Thorne]

Well as fun as it to speculate about what ifs: to think that the War wouldn't have happened and everyone would have gotten along peacable is obviously not something that had a chance, both sides depsite any attempts to the otherwise by some individuals who were few and far between did indeed go to war over and becuase of the main issue that divided them.

Agreed. It does seem that the war was inevitable. But the "what ifs" are a lot of fun. One of my "guilty pleasures" is reading Alternate History, basically, "what ifs". Harry Turtledove did a very good series of books on "what if" the Confederacy won the war and remained an independent nation. Pure speculation, but a lot of fun!

Additonally... I think the decendents of those who were slaves (not to mention their ancestors who were in fact enslaved whose effort to have their freedom eventually did pay off) would naturally be appalled that people are still around today who would suggest that the people who were enslaving them should have been allowed to blithely continue to do so.

Well, being of Slavic descent, my ancestors were once slaves, too. At least as far as the Romans were concerned. And yes, I too am appalled that anyone can still believe that enslaving other people is a good thing. But we have to be careful of judging people in the past based on our modern interpretations of morality. Enslaving people now is obviously wrong, though there are still some who do so. But in the past, in many cultures, slavery was not only acceptable but an economic necessity. Who are we to judge those cultures? Just remember, in another thousand years people will be looking back at us and wondering just what made us so damned silly!

[thir]

Agreed. It does seem that the war was inevitable. But the "what ifs" are a lot of fun. One of my "guilty pleasures" is reading Alternate History, basically, "what ifs". Harry Turtledove did a very good series of books on "what if" the Confederacy won the war and remained an independent nation. Pure speculation, but a lot of fun!

Yes, indeed! :-))

But in the past, in many cultures, slavery was not only acceptable but an economic necessity.

Which is just another way to say that someone was chosen for pay for someone else's ideas and greed.

'Economic neccessity' is just a manipulative expression. Pretty much like 'you cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs'. But it is always somebody else's egss, and all it means is 'I am going to destroy you for me benefit.'

[thir]

[
Additonally... I think the decendents of those who were slaves (not to mention their ancestors who were in fact enslaved whose effort to have their freedom eventually did pay off) would naturally be appalled that people are still around today who would suggest that the people who were enslaving them should have been allowed to blithely continue to do so.[/COLOR][/B]

I don' tthink they would have been. Can you imagine independant southern states anno 2011 with slaves?

[denuseri]

I don' tthink they would have been. Can you imagine independant southern states anno 2011 with slaves?

Considering that in the south in most areas former slaves were litterally still kept in a state of official peonage right up into the 1960's and 70's; coupled with the fact that it wasn't until the Federal Government yet again was forced to deploy troops not once but several times to enforce the civil rights act when it finally made it through congress...which until then the south had for the most part only payed lip service too other laws concerning the equal treatment of blacks, (including amendments to the consitution garenteeing equal staus in the law) all the while continueing not only a tradition of mistreating blacks for their color alone but actually keeping entire poulations of former slaves in a state of fear and terror along with local law enforcment's good ole boy endorsment and encouragment, sometimes even direct support.

Things like water treatments, lynchings, cross burnings, rape, beatings, shootings, capturing of blacks to be tortured with a rowdy night of doing the"Nigga laundry" (a practice where a black man was sumerged in near boiling water and scrubbed with hard bristle brushes until his skin litterally came off) etc etc

(Some towns... one near here near where I live today even had signs up warning blacks that if they were cuaght in the city limits after dark they would be shot on sight)

One city in the south even had postcards made in the 1930's displaying blacks being strung up and hung to rot for days on end in the publoc square in front of their couthouse: touting that "this is what we do to "nigers" when we get our hands on them in our town".

Another town has fields of unmarked graves containing hundreds of remains of blacks who were kidnapped in the night and tortured to death in similar fashion, (last estimate was over 600)...that the south is up in arms about so much that they are refusing to allow any further digging in the area by the archeology students who found them only in the past decade.


So: Yes I can imagine all too well the horror that would have continued perhaps right on up to this day if allowed to go on and it were not impeded by outside force of arms.

[thir]

So: Yes I can imagine all too well the horror that would have continued perhaps right on up to this day if allowed to go on and it were not impeded by outside force of arms.[/QUOTE]

Actually, as far as I know it was not impeded much by outside forces, and, as you say, the problems continue today in varous forms in spite of a united America.

I am obviously not speaking for slavery (real slavery), but I am in doubt about how much difference it would have made. There is no country today, as far as I know, that have open slavery these day, however else things have happened with their history.

[denuseri]

So: Yes I can imagine all too well the horror that would have continued perhaps right on up to this day if allowed to go on and it were not impeded by outside force of arms.

Actually, as far as I know it was not impeded much by outside forces, and, as you say, the problems continue today in varous forms in spite of a united America.

I am obviously not speaking for slavery (real slavery), but I am in doubt about how much difference it would have made. There is no country today, as far as I know, that have open slavery these day, however else things have happened with their history.[/QUOTE]

lol you kinda sounded like your were trying to defend it as an institution there for a while hon.

I dont underrstand all the "selective" reading of my posts, ... the problems wouldnt have ended if it was not for the deployment of ouside forces (ie federal forces being used in not only the civil war era but also later during the civil rights movement era as well,, not just once or twice eaither, and they are "outside forces" becuase they are from outside the states in which the problems were still occuring and being supported by the internal authorities of said states) and the specific problems I mentioned very clearly are well documented, (as are the dates when they were dealt with) they are part of the public record.

Lincoln himself held the view that slavery would have eventually faded away, it was a naive view considering, but a noble one none the less, he held that view rather tenaciously despite all evidence to the opposite before the war started and well into it. Finally he eventually realized that no matter what he did to mullify or apease the South in an attempt to get them to reverse voluntaraly their succession that the South was in it to the end and was not going to give up their evil ways until they were forced to at the end of a gun.

If you really dig some and look at the history of real slavery in the world wide setting you will also see it is rife with wars over it of one kind or another.

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MMI those were a nice bunch of informative links about it all too, and for that I thank you!

[thir]

lol you kinda sounded like your were trying to defend it as an institution there for a while hon.

You know me better than that ;-)

I dont underrstand all the "selective" reading of my posts, ...

Selective? How so?

There seems to be at least 3 angles in this:

1) The problem if whether an area has a right to become independant. I have discussed this previously, as an discussion in general, and without looking at what would have happened with the slavery issue.

2) Is whether or not there would be slaves in the Southern states today if US had not been united.

Lincoln himself held the view that slavery would have eventually faded away, it was a naive view considering, but a noble one none the less, he held that view rather tenaciously despite all evidence to the opposite before the war started and well into it. Finally he eventually realized that no matter what he did to mullify or apease the South in an attempt to get them to reverse voluntaraly their succession that the South was in it to the end and was not going to give up their evil ways until they were forced to at the end of a gun.

I do not think it was naive to think that slavery would have faded away, for the same reason that is started. It payed to have slaves. But with the advancing of technology machines would be much cheaper.

I still and definitly do not think so - call it lack of imagination maybe, but no country has slaves in this day and age, and not, I think, for humanitry reasons.

As for the evil ways of the South, much of the world has engaged in slavery all over the world, including, and, as I am informed, the Nothern states, the latter just not in anything like the scale in the South. Not by way of excusing it, just to say that the South was the only place with this evil ways, and yet the world is free of it. At least officially.


3) The third question is how it would have gone for the freed slaves aftereards, without influence from outside the southern states.

the problems wouldnt have ended if it was not for the deployment of ouside forces (ie federal forces being used in not only the civil war era but also later during the civil rights movement era as well,, not just once or twice eaither, and they are "outside forces" becuase they are from outside the states in which the problems were still occuring and being supported by the internal authorities of said states) and the specific problems I mentioned very clearly are well documented, (as are the dates when they were dealt with) they are part of the public record.

Here I am more in doubt. I know of course about all the exploitation, the violence, and segragation, and so on. The whole world does. The men and women of the civil rights movement in the South have all my respect and admiration, I cannot think that I would ever have the courage to stand up to such violence and attitudes, and I would not have their courage forgotten or belittled. But maybe you are right that they were up against so much that they could not have come to where they are now without outside help.

It is a moot point. I am trying to think of other places where people have, or haven't, been able to be free on their own. Ireland comes to mind, they had to do it on their own since noone was very interested, and they managed. South Africa? They did have help. Could they have done it on their own, despite all their courage? I am not sure. Egypt did it themselves, if done it is. Lybia is getting help, and for a good reason. Native Americans? Didn't when it counted, what now?? Greenland? No help.

That is all I can think of now. It doesn't answer my question.

Any comments, anyone?

[denuseri]

You know me better than that ;-)



Selective? How so?

Selective in that you seem to be ignoring some things to focus on others in my posts is all, like your filtering what you dont want to see or somthing, which I am sure isnt the case so much as we are hitting that same cultural comunication barrier you and I hit every so often and for that I apologize.

There seems to be at least 3 angles in this:

1) The problem if whether an area has a right to become independant. I have discussed this previously, as an discussion in general, and without looking at what would have happened with the slavery issue.

They wouldnt have wanted to seperate if it were not for the slavery issue though. You dont have one with out the other, its a cause/effect relationship. Like does generic group A have the right to seperate itself governmentally from the pact it made with generic group B? Well, the answer to that of course allways must depend on the reson why the seperation is desired, and what the outcome of such seperation will be, does it not?



2) Is whether or not there would be slaves in the Southern states today if US had not been united.

I believe that alltough slavery retarded modernization during the industrial era, that eventually the south would eaither have had to modify what slavery was (ie converting it into peonage -which they did after the war in some areas of the south, or as was done in Russia under the Tzars with the serfs which such situations still often were not resolved without violence) or it would have remained from the modernized point of view to be allmost "frozen in time" as it were, like so many other places that became isolated and "fell behind". It most likely would have looked a lot like South Africa did during Apartide. Not pretty by any means huh?



I do not think it was naive to think that slavery would have faded away, for the same reason that is started. It payed to have slaves. But with the advancing of technology machines would be much cheaper.

In the case of the south it was the aquisition of such a machine (the cotton gin) that made slavery so profitable to begin with. Before that slavery in the south was rather numerically on the way out the door and looking to transit as it had all over the world into a different form of "economic" control such as was done with serfs and other places where peonage continued right into the modern era. The reason it was niave for Lincoln to feel that way is obvious...every sign around him was pointing to a war occuring Lincoln just coundnt understand how the Southerner's could maintain suh a fanatic hold on something he saw as so moraly reprehensible as to be unchristian. In a way his own ethical perspective made him blind to how human beings no matter how evil their actions always seem to find a way to self justify those actions. Kinda like Chamberline being so blind and accomadating twords Hitler before the outbreak of WW2.



I still and definitly do not think so - call it lack of imagination maybe, but no country has slaves in this day and age, and not, I think, for humanitry reasons.

Well this is after all 150 years later. But you will find that if you really look, that what happened was people started calling slavery something else to make it more acceptable as the enslaved populations became interbread with them in areas where racial bigotry didnt develope. And violence and violent protests against conditions of servitude were often the only way that these conditions of servitude were overcome.

Without the threat of force to back it up, "humanitarian ideals" are just so many empty words in the wind.

As for the evil ways of the South, much of the world has engaged in slavery all over the world, including, and, as I am informed, the Nothern states, the latter just not in anything like the scale in the South. Not by way of excusing it, (sure sounds like it) just to say that the South was the only place with this evil ways, and yet the world is free of it. At least officially.

Which Northern States? It had been abolished allready for the vast majority of the north just as in the rest of the world as you mentioned. The North and the South technically allready had a division in place over which states had slavery and which did not and which new states coming in would be "slave states" and which would not.

3) The third question is how it would have gone for the freed slaves aftereards, without influence from outside the southern states.

See my comments made earlier in this post on Apartide and or where I talked about Russian serfs (which ened in a revolution btw, more violence).



Here I am more in doubt. I know of course about all the exploitation, the violence, and segragation, and so on. The whole world does. The men and women of the civil rights movement in the South (they were not just southerners btw, in fact a lot of the cicil rights movements greatest proponents were from northern states and a lot of them physically went to the south to help the southern people who were still being oppressed at the time) have all my respect and admiration, I cannot think that I would ever have the courage to stand up to such violence and attitudes, and I would not have their courage forgotten or belittled. But maybe you are right that they were up against so much that they could not have come to where they are now without outside help.

History speaks for itself on that point...becuase they did in fact get said help, becuase the people of that time did in fact not stand idely by, they went and helped them. And not just becuase they had "oil" in their country eaither.

It is a moot point. I am trying to think of other places where people have, or haven't, been able to be free on their own. Ireland comes to mind, they had to do it on their own since noone was very interested, and they managed. South Africa? They did have help. Could they have done it on their own, despite all their courage? I am not sure. Egypt did it themselves, if done it is. Lybia is getting help, and for a good reason. Native Americans? Didn't when it counted, what now?? Greenland? No help.

That is all I can think of now. It doesn't answer my question.

Any comments, anyone?

I didnt know Greenland was having a slavery issue?