"Civil War" or "War of Northern Aggression"

[Hawkeye]

I think there's no right or wrong side. Humans have a nature and reality is not always compatible with having the ability to override some instincts and not others. So I think I prefer saying there was a righter and wronger side over saying the right or wrong side.

I think it's "rightish" vs "Wrongish"

 

[jamil]

I think it's "rightish" vs "Wrongish"

Meh, I like righter or wronger. It conveys the meaning. And if for no other reason, it doesn't **** off the spell checker.

 

[Hawkeye]

Meh, I like righter or wronger. It conveys the meaning. And if for no other reason, it doesn't **** off the spell checker.

But, ... is it "woker" or "more nearly woke"?

 

[jamil]

But, ... is it "woker" or "more nearly woke"?

I think woker works. It certainly would not be wokish, because that already has a distinct meaning. It's kinda like yiddish, except for woke people.

 

[Hawkeye]

I think all statues, paintings, pictures, or other references or representations of Federal/Union leadership should be demolished because they did not persecute, prosecute, jail, hang, draw and quarter or place in concentration or re education camps each and every Confederate politician, officer, and soldier for being in rebellion or committing various acts of treason. Unperson them all!

 

[Hawkeye]

I think woker works. It certainly would not be wokish, because that already has a distinct meaning. It's kinda like yiddish, except for woke people.

But can one ever, truly achieve a state of pure woke? It seems that its an unachievable goal that we all must strive for.

 

[jamil]

I think all statues, paintings, pictures, or other references or representations of Federal/Union leadership should be demolished because they did not persecute, prosecute, jail, hang, draw and quarter or place in concentration or re education camps each and every Confederate politician, officer, and soldier for being in rebellion or committing various acts of treason. Unperson them all!

I think that's how it would go down today. Jefferson Davis would be canceled. No Starbucks for him.

 

[Leadeye]

I am not convinced Calhoun's argument for states rights was based upon slavery.

I do think Calhoun understood the folly of expecting a central state to adhere to its limited delegated powers.

He made his position quite clear in his "A Disquisition of Government" which is well worth the read and study.

I'll give you that one, John Calhoun picked up slavery later in his career. I've always wondered if he had dinner with some plantation owners or somebody who brought this idea of connecting states rights and slavery to him.

The federal governmnet offering to buy the slaves and then free them along with providing capital for southern industrialization, railroad gauge standardization, and an American market for southern goods would disconnect the states rights and slavery connection and gone a long way to preventing the war from ever getting started.

 

[jamil]

But can one ever, truly achieve a state of pure woke? It seems that its an unachievable goal that we all must strive for.

There's actually a serious answer to that. No. That's by design.

I forget his name at the moment, but one of the prominent woke thinkers decades ago said something to the effect that identities have to be constantly fluid because when they become stable, new institutions will be formed around them. Then they will be the new oppressors. To avoid that identities can never be allowed to become stable. So progression ever lefter is the goal. And the place where they've progressed from always becomes the new right-wing, the new enemy of the left.

So there's hope! White people won't always be the oppressors if the new identities become stable. Someday Otherkins might be the new White!

 

[jamil]

I'll give you that one, John Calhoun picked up slavery later in his career. I've always wondered if he had dinner with some plantation owners or somebody who brought this idea of connecting states rights and slavery to him.

Calhoun was a slave owner himself. But it doesn't look to me like he took it up as a cause in his earlier political career. In his early career he was a big government guy, and close ally of John Quincy Adams, another proponent of a strong central government.

It looks to me like he started the rhetoric after being criticized by other Southern leaders for his support of a strong central government and having his wagon so tightly hitched with the likes of JQA. So he kinda switched his rhetoric from big government to pro-states rights, and switched his support to Andrew Jackson, who was more states rights oriented. But I don't think Calhoun switched allegiance at heart. It was political expedience to maintain his position as a southern leader.

I think as VP under Andrew Jackson, his involvement with the nullification crisis in SC over the tariffs kinda brought him into more ideological solidarity with the Southern causes. So in his heart, I think by then he was no longer a big government JQA acolyte. But, as he started taking up more causes of the South, his pro-slavery rhetoric and strong support of pro-slavery policies were undeniable. He resigned as Jackson's VP and became a Senator. As a Senator he pushed pro-slavery legislation as he argued for states rights. I think one has to deny clear facts to say that the right to own people was every bit a factor in the states' rights he fought for.

 

[Hawkeye]

I think that's how it would go down today. Jefferson Davis would be canceled. No Starbucks for him.

No, I'm talking about Grant, Lincoln, Johnson, etc. They should all be cancelled as they did not persecute the evil Confederate politicians and soldiers. They just sent most of them home with their firearms, horses and mules. Jeff Davis was incarcerated IIrC.

 

[jamil]

No, I'm talking about Grant, Lincoln, Johnson, etc. They should all be cancelled as they did not persecute the evil Confederate politicians and soldiers. They just sent most of them home with their firearms, horses and mules. Jeff Davis was incarcerated IIrC.

They tried to cancel Johnson. One guy DID cancel Lincoln, though not for that reason. And Grant was too drunk to notice if he did get canceled.

 

[AndreusMaximus]

Hell, if lincoln was a hero for "saving the union" tough to blame China for reigning in a seceeding people.

Hell, unlike lincoln's union or the constitutuion of the States, China has a law against secession.

Anti-Secession Law - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

View attachment 215459

I saw this posted in another thread by @BigRed and it gave me cause for quite a bit of thought. After thinking about it for a while, I wanted to post a response, but rather than hijack the Taiwan thread I thought I'd bring it back here.

I think the above post really illustrates the main difference in our thinking that causes one of us to see Lincoln as a hero and the other as a villain: I don't see seceding or not seceding from an unwanted government as a fundamental human right. I don't see any inherent contradiction between cheering Taiwan if they are trying to secede from China while condemning the Confederate States for their attempt to secede. This is because in my mind the question of whether or not secession is justified does not hinge simply on the legalities, nor do I believe in some principle that states that any time a certain set of people all agree that they want to secede they should be able to.

Yes, "consent of the governed" is an important principle, but it is subservient to other, more important human rights. If 75% of the population want to enslave 10% of the population, but there is an unelected dictator ruling through pure military force who is stopping slavery from being instituted, I'm going to weigh the right of the 10% to not become slaves over the right of the 75% to elect their own government, and, absent any other violations of human rights, I'm going to give the moral high ground to the dictator.

Following from this, if you ask me whether or not such and such group is justified in seeking secession, my first question is going to be "Why are they seceding?" and not "Is it legal for them to secede?". Of course, the question of legality has it's place; if the reason they want to secede is not a matter of human rights, but merely a question of legal technicalities or preferences, then it is reasonable to ask whether or not secession is legal for them in order to determine whose side I support. But when the secession is directly linked to questions of basic human rights, then I'm going to side with whoever is in the right on these questions, regardless of the legalities.

The Confederate States went out of their way to openly state and make it as obvious as possible that their desire to secede was primarily based on their desire to preserve slavery. This is enough for me to automatically oppose their secession, and, absent any other blatant human rights violations, automatically support whomever seeks to stop their secession, regardless of any arguments about legalities or "union of consent."

If Taiwan wants to secede from China because China has a murderous communist regime that enslaves, falsely imprisons, tortures, and murders its citizens for political reasons, along with many other serious human rights violations, then I'm going to support Taiwan, regardless of the legalities.

Now, two final things that I need to add:

1) Everything above must of course be qualified that it depends on circumstances. In my hypothetical situation, I recognize that having a dictator impose morality through military force is not a sustainable form of government, so the situation would, in any real scenario, be more complex than simply giving full support to the dictator. Also, just because I support Lincoln and generally think he was justified in his actions, I certainly don't condone every single action, nor do I claim to be able to categorically state that every decision he made surrounding the war was the best one. In the case of Taiwan, they may be able to keep themselves free, to some extent, from the worst atrocities perpetrated by the Chinese government within mainland China even without declaring independence, in which case it might not be worthwhile for them to antagonize China by trying to further assert independence. Everything I stated above is extremely general in nature, and would need several qualifications tacked on in order to represent a well-rounded opinion on any given circumstance.

2) I still think that the question of the legality of the Confederate States seceding, as well as the nomenclature used for the war that followed, are both interesting questions, even though my view of the morality of Lincoln and the Union side doesn't hinge on either question. For the record, there's been quite a few interesting points made here that I wasn't aware of or hadn't considered before, particularly regarding how secession was viewed in times prior to the Civil War era, for which I have seen no refutation, which are leading me more so to believe that the attempts by the Confederate States to secede may actually have been, technically, legal. Of course there were still many important aspects that were legally speaking quite cloudy, such as what would happen to Federal properties like Fort Sumter, and given the fact that the Confederate States were, in fact, the ones to make the first attack, even if it was on a disputed property, I still find it difficult to describe the Union as the aggressor in the war.

TLDR: I would support Taiwan seceding because they'd be doing it to escape human rights violations perpetrated by the Chinese government. I think the Confederate States' attempt to secede was wrong because they were seceding primarily in order to be able to continue perpetrating their own human rights violations. I don't see any contradiction between these two positions because I don't have any overriding principle for or against secession, I think each case of secession depends on the reasons of the parties involved for seeking or opposing secession, and where basic human rights are involved, those human rights are more important to the question than the legality of secession is.

 

[rob63]

If you go to various Civil War forums, you can find endless arguments about the legality of secession. I have never really made up my mind, largely because absent anything in the Constitution that clearly states the case one way or the other, I have never found the other arguments to be compelling.

Here are a few of the more common arguments that can be easily found:

A) American law is based upon English Common Law. One of the basic principles of said law is that parties to a legal agreement cannot unilaterally withdraw from that agreement. Thus, secession could only be legal if the other states agreed to it.

B) A basic principle of law is that you can't be guilty of breaking the law unless there is a law that specifically makes something illegal. Thus, secession is legal since it isn't expressly prohibited.

C) There was a legal process for admittance to the Union that depended upon the approval of the other states. Secession would naturally require the reverse process.

Article IV, section 3:

"New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State."

D) The constitution includes a process to amend the constitution. Thus, if you want to secede amend the constitution to create a process for that.

E) The constitution includes a process to amend the constitution. Thus, if you want to prohibit secession amend the constitution to say so.

F) The Supreme Court ruled that secession was illegal in Texas vs. White. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/74/700/

G) Article 1, Section 10 specifically says: "No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation;" and "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State,"

If the constitution specifically prohibits states from these actions, it is clear that the states are not sovereign entities under the constitution.

H) The actions of Washington and Jackson during the Whiskey Rebellion and the Nullification Crises already established the precedent that rebellion and secession were illegal.

That is only a small sampling. You can get into all of the various letters written during the debates over the constitution and it gets endless. One thing to keep in mind is the simple fact that when the constitution was adopted, the principal aim was to find a workable form of government that would unite the nation. Thus, it is perfectly reasonable that they didn't bother to address the issue of how to legally break up that nation.

 

[IronHammer]

... in my mind the question of whether or not secession is justified does not hinge simply on the legalities, nor do I believe in some principle that states that any time a certain set of people all agree that they want to secede they should be able to.

Utterly fascinating thread. I believe that secession hinges not on legalities but on basic human principles of freedom and the right of a people to decide their own path forward (in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence). Justification doesn't enter into it. For obvious reasons, secession should happen peacefully wherever possible.

 

[BugI02]

I don't see Lincoln as tyrant, but more as a politician in a new party being carried away by foolish rhetoric and not having the courage or maybe the ability to change direction. He did speak to the best military man available and sound his opinions. Winfield Scott understood early on that the war would be long and costly, just based on the logistics involved in projecting the power needed to achieve victory into the southern states. He also understood that it was going to have a huge butchers bill, just looking at the people involved and the advances in military technology. That Lincoln chose to follow the advice of abolitionists who thought that the war was just going to be a matter of marching to Richmond and planting a flag was one of the many tragic mistakes of the conflict.

I would like to think that he learned something as the war went on and that it had an affect on his decision to simply bring the vanquished southerners back into the union rather than persecute them for treason. I see him as a rather poor president early in his term, but improving.

I see Lincoln as someone ahead of the curve, who clearly saw the importance of preserving the union and that the balkanization of America was a recipe for slow death and the squandering of our national promise

He was correct when and where it counted

 

[BugI02]

The federal governmnet offering to buy the slaves and then free them along with providing capital for southern industrialization, railroad gauge standardization, and an American market for southern goods would disconnect the states rights and slavery connection and gone a long way to preventing the war from ever getting started.

Quite possibly so, but then what would they have done with the freedmen? I doubt that southern states would have wanted them as citizens and I know that most northern states did not want them either until urbanization had gone far enough to make their labor in manufacturing necessary and useful

I see things just ending up at Jim Crow, or something worse, a little sooner

 

[Hawkeye]

Quite possibly so, but then what would they have done with the freedmen? I doubt that southern states would have wanted them as citizens and I know that most northern states did not want them either until urbanization had gone far enough to make their labor in manufacturing necessary and useful

I see things just ending up at Jim Crow, or something worse, a little sooner

What would the South have done for labor? I think they'd have had to accept the freed Blacks as they did after the War ended. (With much the same results, I'd imagine.)

 

[Leadeye]

Quite possibly so, but then what would they have done with the freedmen? I doubt that southern states would have wanted them as citizens and I know that most northern states did not want them either until urbanization had gone far enough to make their labor in manufacturing necessary and useful

I see things just ending up at Jim Crow, or something worse, a little sooner

I concur with Hawkeye, they would have been absorbed into the paid labor force of the newly industrializing south. Working in the new fabric and garment factories or upgrading infrastructure.

I'll grant you that it wold not have been an easy existence, but a first step up from being property.

 

[grillak]

i love the history lessons on this forum.

they prove not every conversation devolves to b++++.

please continue....