James Taranto quotes from South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s plea to remove the Confederate battle flag from the state’s flag:
For many people in our state the flag stands for traditions that are noble. Traditions of history, of heritage and of ancestry.
The hate-filled murderer who massacred our brothers and sisters in Charleston has a sick and twisted view of the flag. In no way does he reflect the people of our state who respect, and in many ways, revere it.
Those South Carolinians view the flag as a symbol of respect, integrity and duty. They also see it as a memorial. A way to honor ancestors who came to the service of their state during time of conflict. That is not hate, nor is it racism.
If it’s not racism, it’s rebellion. The South rose in rebellion against the Republic to defend slavery. However you may twist it, that’s the bottom line.
The ancestors they’re revering were rebelling against the Republic which is ultimately to rebel against republican government itself. To see that as noble or a heritage worth preserving is mistaken.
Southerners are not the only ones who have ancestors. Today there are millions of Northerners who still bear the economic and social consequences of having lost fathers and brothers and, importantly, income or land as a consequence of the Civil War and many are not even aware of it. Honoring those who rose in rebellion means dishonoring those who defended the Republic. It is a zero-sum proposition.
Let the dead past bury its dead. The Confederate battle flag belongs in the past.
Even under a “heritage” interpretation, it’s not appropriate for the government to be so divisive as to commemorate one heritage, though I suppose under this angle, one might end up with a Confederate flag next to the Pan-African flag, next to the Scottish flag, etc. But I’m not as dismissive of the heritage angle, since that has been one long-standing interpretation of that symbol, and symbols can have many aspects. But it was an exclusionary heritage, that sought to define who was a real Southerner as whites whose ancestors lived in the South before the War.
Haley’s particular problem here is that the last time a South Carolina Republican governor publicly supported removing the battle flag from the State Capitol, the Democrats took the governorship partly based upon it. Link
My view is that every time the heritage issue is raised they should be reminded that it’s a heritage of treason.
I’m a bit concerned about the extent of the backlash here. I’ve long opposed the battle flag flying on government property outside of a clearly historical context. About 12 years, I was making travel plans to the low country and wanted to visit both Charleston and Savannah. I was thinking of a few days in each, or staying in one and driving to the other. There were African-American calls to boycott South Carolina at the time, so I decided we’d stay in Savannah and do a day-trip to Charleston. Not the tightest boycott, but I would like to visit Charleston again some time.
But I don’t equate the flag with Nazism, and don’t think the flags need to be removed from private commerce. For one thing, I was at a historical reenactment of Grierson’s raid last weekend. There are not many reenactments or battlefields outside the South, so the activity may not be appreciated everywhere. I hate these things to be so politicized that it’s hard to find people to dress up. And there are small confederate flags for kids sold at Lincoln historic sites.
I guess there are people who smell blood. That’s usually the cause of overreach. If people think they can secure an outright ban of the Confederate battle flag, they’re doomed to disappointment.
That shouldn’t be the objective anyway.
PD- While it should not be flown at publicly owned sites, like a state capital, I would oppose any attempts at stopping people from owning and displaying it privately (other than simple persuasion). People still have free speech rights. I do wonder if people will less likely to do so if it is banned at public places.
Steve
Hello Dave,
I’m afraid I’m not with you on this one. While slavery was undoubtedly an issue, the real cause of the war was Secession. Lincoln himself famously told Horace Greeley that if he could save the Union without freeing a singe slave, he would. The cynicism involved in saying this was just about freeing the slaves can be seen in the fact that no slaves in Federal territory were freed until the Civil War ended. And there were quite a lot of them in places like Maryland, DC, Kentucky, Missouri and places like southern Illinois, among others.
And in fact, he could have had both and without war, except for the fact that he was a minority president whose sole backing came from the Radical Republicans like Thad Stevens.
What the Southerners were presented with was an ultimatum not only to acquiesce to Federal confiscation of legally acquired property without compensation (in itself, unconstitutional), but to the destruction to their livelihood as well, since the crops couldn’t be gathered at that time without the existing labor.
Even more, the value of this property was frequently used as security for loans, debts and credit.
A good analogy would be if the federal government decided that people in a certain region would no longer be allowed to use private cars and must turn them in forthwith. Oh, you need your car to get to work? Tough. You’re a salesman and you need to visit clients? Too bad. You paid good money for it? You really need it? So sorry.
The majority of states voted for secession only after Lincoln called for an army to enforce this diktat.
The tragic thing is that there was a recent example to refer to on how to solve this problem without bloodshed and for the benefit of both slave and slave owner. It cost Britain 22 million pounds in today’s money and it was phased out over three years, but slavery was ended in 1840 without a drop of blood being shed.
Lincoln could have done that too, and may have even wanted to but his political backing was from hardline abolitionists whom insisted on imposing their will.
I am not a Southerner, and I have no sympathy for slavery which would have ended by necessity in less than a decade anyway. While I’m glad the Union was not divided, I can’t help but sympathize with people whom, having been pushed into a corner, finally decided that enough was enough and they would rather fight it out.
I honor them as brave men whom fought for the principles of freedom as they saw them, just as I honor the brave men whom fought to keep the Union together.
Both were pushed into a fight that need not have happened through no fault of their own.
I like the Stars and Bars, just as I revere the Gadsden flag and the original Old Glory. They’re all banners of people who finally said enough is too much and were willing to sacrifice to back it up.
If the Stars and Bars offends people and is now to be demonized because of it, then there are any number of things that offend me that I want banned.
Rest assured that this isn’t going to end with the Confederate flag, either. In California, U.S. flags have already been removed because they supposedly offend some of the students.
Rob Miller @ Joshuapundit
The one thing you’re missing, Rob, is that in 1860 the Republican Party was explicitly an abolitionist party. Pursuit of abolition was implicit in Lincoln’s election and that’s exactly the way the South interpreted it.
The issue of slavery wasn’t a new one in 1860. It had been a sticking point since the Revolution.
Rob Miller,
I appreciate your accurate/honest appraisal of historical events and timelines. This doesn’t happen frequently today, as people highlight their statements with political correctness, hyperbole, or just plain revisionism of past events in order to give present ones greater justification, validity or higher moral authority.
This whole flag issue, IMO, is a distraction from addressing the immediate behavior of a young misfit. Unfortunately this man has achieved part of his goal, to taint our prized cultural diversity even more, by people spinning undo racial impropriety into this tragedy, and turning the embodiment of a flag used during the Civil War as a wedge issue rather than what it is — a piece of cloth representing the folly of man’s inhumanity to man over 150 years ago. Nonetheless, I really don’t care if it’s taken down or remains, because ultimately it will not effect the tensions that are constantly stirred and simmered by those demanding our different hues be elevated to a higher power than the ethics and integrity exhibited in everyday actions.
Jonah Goldberg, of NRO, offered this overview of the Confederate Flag kerfuffle:
Earlier I didn’t have time to respond adequately to Rob’s comment, from which I respectfully dissent. Lincoln did indeed write what Rob ascribes to him in a famous response to Horace Greeley. What he intended by it we can only speculate. A month later he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Earlier Lincoln had also said this:
Lincoln’s purpose in that statement was to distinguish his views from those of Stephen Douglas, the states’ rights candidate.
Are we to conclude that Lincoln changed his mind between his debate with Stephen Douglas and his letter to Horace Greeley and then again a month later? For the answer I think we need to turn to the context of politics in Southern Illinois at the time, something with which I am familiar through family accounts. My great-great-grandfather was politically active at the time, was a firm abolitionist, and a founding member of the Republican Party. I think it’s obvious that Lincoln was elected expressly for the purpose of abolishing slavery and any other account is simply historical revisionism.
For additional context we can turn to the U. S. Constitution of 1787 and the debates that lead up to its ratification. There were three factions among the delegates: those opposed to slavery like Adams and Hamilton (both gradualists), those who supported it like John Rutledge, and the hypocrites like Jefferson, Madison, Mason, Franklin, and Monroe who were philosophically opposed to slavery but couldn’t bring themselves to abolish it outright. Statements from Adams, Jefferson, and Madison clearly suggest that they believed that the can-kicking strategy embodied in the Constitution would inevitably lead to gradual abolition. They were wrong. Slavery was more stubborn than they had believed.
One of the other ideas embodied in the subtext of the Constitution is that slavery was not to be considered solely as a matter for the states to decide as part of their sovereign authority. The Articles of Confederation did not mention slavery. If that had been the intention, the Constitution would not have mentioned it, either. My case that the issue of slavery was intended to go beyond states rights is that it is mentioned in the Constitution in three places: the enumeration clause, Article I, Section 9 which implicitly gave Congress the authority to ban the importation of slaves after 1808 (remember that they also believed that the end of importation also meant the end of slavery itself), and the fugitive slave clause.
By 1860 three generations had passed since the Revolution. The abolition of slavery had not been imposed suddenly upon the South but had been under way for three generations. By 1860 it was clear that the Union would be preserved as all free.
Rob is a Republican while I am a Democrat. From a practical standpoint I think that Rob needs to recognize that if the Republican Party is to be anything other than a white regional party dominated by Southern social conservatives the party needs to end the Confederate battle flag as a wedge issue that discourages blacks or other minorities from joining their cause. The party would be much better off if it unequivocally advocated getting the Confederate battle flag out of public spaces.
You’ve been reading some weird stuff, Rob Miller. Let’s start with the tact that South Carolina seceded from the Union and began seizing federal property before Lincoln was inaugurated. Southerners weren’t faced with an ultimatum; seven states withdrew before Lincoln took the oath of office. They withdrew because they didn’t like the democratic process any more.
This notion of uncompensated emancipation is also imaginary. Representative Lincoln helped write a bill for compensated abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and when he became President he signed a bill for compensated abolition for the District of Columbia and tried to encourage border states like Kentucky to enact compensated emancipation, for which he promised federal money. Money was not the issue. They didn’t want money, plantation owners wanted the preservation of a way of life.
And this bit about challenging the authenticity of Lincoln’s election is right up there with claiming George W. Bush was not a true President, but only a “minority” President, whose “sole” backing were Republican appointees of the Supreme Court. Is that something you blogged about?
@steve, I largely agree with public/private distinction you draw, it’s the Constitutional line, but I’m still concerned that the “free expression” value at the heart of the First Amendment may require some degree of tolerance that goes beyond just what the Constitution protects. I’m not excited about the idea that large corporations like Walmart, Sears and EBay can be pressured like this. If I blogged, I think I would drive down to the President Lincoln Library and take pictures of Confederate flags being sold on things like Johnny Reb teddy bears. At some point, the feds will get complaints that even WalMart got rid of atrocities like that.
This I believe: Bo and Luke Duke were just good ol’ boys, never meaning no harm. They never collaborated with Colonel Klink, but were in trouble with the law from the day they were born.
Hello Dave,
Respectfully my friend, I feel like you didn’t address a serious point.
There was an existing and recent template, if you will, for solving this issue fairly, that of Britain. The Radical Republicans rejected it out of hand for exactly the reason you stated. They were an explicitly abolitionist party. Remember also that there were 5 candidates for president that year, so they were also very much a minority party whom squeaked by to win.
The Civil War need not have happened.
Southerners were faced with the following choice – having huge amounts of legally acquired property stolen from them, being pauperized, losing their livelihoods and submitting to an armed invasion to enforce it or to secede. Again, most of the Confederacy succeeded after President Lincoln announced that he was raising troops to invade them, and only when they were invaded did they fight back.
Sorry, I respect them for that even though I’m glad the Union stayed intact.. And once again, like the Gadsden flag and other similar flags in our history, the Stars and Bars are a reminder that a free people can resist tyranny.
The wise decision of our Founders to limit the counting of slaves to 3/5 of a man for apportionment purposes did in fact doom slavery, as did the 1804 decision to make the importation of saves illegal, which had the effect of skyrocketing the price what had become a scarce commodity overnight. But I don’t think you can say that the intent at that time was abrupt, uncompensated theft by government diktat.
Also, if the war was about slavery, why didn’t Lincoln free the slaves in Federal territory? He didn’t.
If we’re going to start making a fetish of removing the Confederate battle flag because it offends a certain group of folks, then I want my share.
For instance, Malcolm X was a vicious anti-Semite his entire life. Today, He’s lionized as some kind of hero, Spike Lee’s hagiography is shown and his speeches are taught in public schools I help pay for. And there are statues and memorials to him, as well as plenty of memorabilia and knickknacks for sale.
That offends me and I want it gone. Ditto with the Che, Mao and Soviet teeshirts and posters.
Every year on America’s pubic university campuses flags from an imaginary nation called ‘Palestine’ are waved to commemorate the so-called Nakba, the failed attempt at the genocide of every Jew in Israel. That offends me too, and I want them gone.
I think you see my point.
Fun fact, Dave…I grew up in a devoutly Democrat Household and I might still even be registered as one. The fact that I don’t vote as one has to do with where the party has gone and what it has embraced.
But I will say this. The key to winning minority votes is to actually go to their neighborhoods and talk about bread and butter issues like jobs, education and crime. The Dems at least make an appearance, even if they do squat except put out he usual applause lines. Far too many Republicans won’t even do that.
At any rate, based on how the party’s leadership has been acting, they have far worse problems than attracting black votes.
“That offends me and I want it gone. Ditto with the Che, Mao and Soviet teeshirts and posters.”
Which state capital has those hanging up? I suppose you can find a few people who think the flag should outlawed, but most people are really just calling for it to not be displayed on government property. Still, I am firmly on your side and will be glad to support all efforts to remove flags depicting Che, Mao, etc. from all Federal, state and municipal facilities. (I would also add the Kardashians.)
Also, I think it pretty clear that the South went to war to preserve slavery. It is in the recession statements and it is hard to ignore the Cornerstone speech. I think you can pretty safely say that the North went to war initially to try to preserve the Union. For many people it was about freeing the slaves from the very beginning, but it took a while for that to become a primary reason.
Steve
Rob Miller: “Also, if the war was about slavery, why didn’t Lincoln free the slaves in Federal territory? He didn’t.”
You mean like “An Act to secure Freedom to all Persons within the Territories of the United States,” which was approved June 19, 1862. Link
Also, the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, signed by Abraham Lincoln April 16, 1862, which is still celebrated as Emancipation Day in D.C.
Also relevant, Treaty between the United States and Great Britain for the Suppression of the Slave Trade, concluded April 7, 1862 and ratified by the Senate April 25, 1862. This constituted a reversal of U.S. foreign policy in that it would aid the U.K. in suppressing the slave trade.
PD- Free speech goes both ways. I think people get to fly that flag if they want. I also think that groups get to pressure WalMArt to not carry them. If Walmart decides to not sell them and there is a demand for them, someone else will sell them.
Steve
Also, Congressional Joint Resolution on Compensated Emancipation, approved April 10, 1862, by which Congress commited “to cooperate with any State which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State in its discretion, to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system.”
My,my….
1) Lincoln was indeed a minority president. He won by only 39.7% of the vote in a field of four presidential candidates. Saying that is different then contesting the election itself.
2) Neither of the ‘acts’ to free slaves in Northern territories PD Shaw mentions were actually implemented. That’s why slaves in Virginia were freed much earlier than slaves in Kentucky, or New Orleans, which was captured by the Union early in the war.
3) There was never a comprehensive bill actually implemented and passed by congress to compensate the slave owners for their property, or to provide for a transition period for them to adjust to non-slave labor and rework the various financial dealings that used the value of saves as whole or partial collateral. A vague Joint Resolution constructed in the heat of war in 1862 that was not even specifically offered to the Confederate states (in fact, it was mainly directed at Union controlled border states) is not exactly an actual proposition or attempt at negotiation.
Nor were all the slaves in DC freed, since the Fugitive Slave Laws remained in effect until almost the end of the War and Maryland was one of those border states where slavery remained intact.
My statement , “Also, if the war was about slavery, why didn’t Lincoln free the slaves in Federal territory? He didn’t†is substantially correct. The Emancipation Proclamation ONLY applied to slaves in rebel territory.
BTW, a delegation of Southern politicians attempted to meet with Lincoln in early 1864 including Alec Stephens of Georgia to try and negotiate something substantial. He refused to meet with them, just as he earlier refused to entertain proposals to work out a resolution coming from NY Governor Horatio Seymour, which would have shortened the war, ended slavery and alleviated the sectional bitterness that resulted. I don’t blame Lincoln for this,,he had little political leeway to do anything else.
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Steve, the flags I mentioned are being displayed on public universities, who receive tax dollars. The merchandise is freely available. The film ‘X’ has been screened in public schools, the subjects I mentioned are being taught so as to make Malcolm X out a hero and there are public statues of Malcolm X. They’re racist and offend me. I want them gone..quid pro quo.
FACTS are such a problem gentlemen. aren’t they?
Oh, one more thing..Rush Limbaugh predicted on June 23 that this assault wouldn’t be limited to the Stars and Bars.
He was right, and here’s the opening salvo. Do watch the video and see how the crowd reacts.
American flags have already been taken down in classrooms in California because the ‘help’ felt they might be culturally offensive to certain member of the student body.
This is just the beginning. And it’s designed to provoke a reaction that can be demonized and used by the usual suspects to rally the radicals and low information voters.
With Charleston, the angry Left has acheived what they failed to get in Florida or Ferguson…The Great White Defendent
1) Merchandise is merchandise. I believe that falls under free speech. As I said, I think people should be able to buy and privately display what they want. It saddens me to see that you appear to disagree.
2) I have to agree with you on Malcolm. I still can’t figure out why he hated white people just because he had family killed by whites. Because he couldn’t eat in restaurants or hold jobs due to his color. Heaven knows those great Confederate leaders had to suffer at the hands of blacks. Sometimes they got sassed and had to beat them. Quite tiring. Sometimes they tried to run away and had to be tracked down. Time consuming. We should just accept that both sides had to put up with problems dealing with the other race and leave the statues were they are or get rid of all of them.
3) Which university flies a Che/Mao flag on its admin building? Did a search and can’t find any. Urban legend? Anyway, I would also oppose that. They do it so we can do it also isn’t much of an argument in my book.
4) Farrakhan? Really? An omen of things to come? LOL
Steve
I don’t think that Nazi, Che, Soviet, black separatist, Red Chinese, or the like memorabilia should be displayed in federal or state government buildings other than in an historic context. Other than that I don’t much care.
Rob Miller: You are moving goal posts. You are the one arguing that Southerners had no choice but to secede because they were faced with an ultimatum of uncompensated emancipation. That never happened. Everyone interested in the slave issue knew that the way slavery was abolished was through some form of gradual, compensated emancipation. That’s how it was done in the Northern colonies, British territories, Dutch territories, etc. That was what the Republicans supported.
The Republican Party did not believe the federal government had authority to ban slavery in states where it existed. Lincoln’s first inaugural tried to calm Southern paranoia on this issue: I have “…no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” See also Corwin Amendment.
The federal government did have authority over the District of Columbia, and they passed compensated emancipation. Lincoln spent the next few years trying to get border states to adopt compensated emancipation plan, which the federal government would fund. Lincoln asked Delaware to pass a 30 year plan, which couldn’t get enough support in the state to get a vote. Lincoln spent a lot of time on this issue because he thought Southern states would stop fighting if they saw their position becoming more isolated. So even in states with relatively few slaves, there was no interest in compensation for slaves; the slave owners wanted the slaves and they had enough political influence to prevent compensated emancipation from happening.
“My great-great-grandfather was politically active at the time, was a firm abolitionist, and a founding member of the Republican Party. I think it’s obvious that Lincoln was elected expressly for the purpose of abolishing slavery and any other account is simply historical revisionism.”
Lincoln himself, though, was not an abolitionist, in the full sense of the movement’s intense focus. He did, however, believe that slavery was morally, legally and economically wrong. But he also didn’t necessarily support giving slaves full social rights either. Basically, his views on slavery seemed much more convoluted and less exacting than were those of the abolitionists.
One of his major goals, in fact, was to stop the spread of slavery rather than give slaves absolute freedom. He even courted the idea of colonization as a means of solving the differences that stirred so much animosity between whites and blacks. These views were made public as early as 1852, followed up as late as 1862 when Lincoln hosted a delegation of freed slaves at the WH, in hopes of garnering their support to colonize in Central America. He argued it would be “better for us both, therefore, to be separated.” Such a plan, though, angered both black leaders and abolitionists. Consequently, when the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was issued such a plan was never discussed again by Lincoln.
In essence one can say that Lincoln’s feelings and approach to addressing slavery “evolved” over time. However, his personal opinions certainly did not originate as entrenched and deliberate as the viewpoints held by the abolitionists of that era.
There is little that is revisionist about how changes of leader’s minds and policy happen over the years.
Steve, I am not arguing against the free speech position on selling merchandise. Quite the contrary. I merely stated that if the new guidelines on such things is to ignore freedom of speech and prohibit certain items simply because they offend a certain group of people, I want them enforced equally …and I have my own list, thanks.
I’m going to treat your remarks on Malcolm X with the contempt they deserve.
I would also say you either haven’t been on a college campus lately or are simply seeing what you choose to see. And I have a perfect right to demand the exclusion of these items from pubic universities or city streets..if this is the new criteria.
PD Shaw, you seem to be indulging in the ‘everyone knows’ style argument popular in certain circles these days.
The fact remains that no concrete, detailed proposal for compensated, graduated emancipation and anoffer of negotiations backed by both congress and the president was made to the Southern states prior to Lincoln calling for troops to invade them. If it had, over half of the states that only seceded after Lincoln announced the raising of an army to invade the South would have stayed with the Union, and the others might have returned as negotiations proceeded.
So the South was indeed faced with an ultimatum, and they reacted the way free men sometimes do when they’re pushed to the wall by what amounts to government tyranny.
Lincoln’s rhetoric notwithstanding, no such offer was made because he had no political backing for such an offer. Thad Stevens and the other Radical Republicans who controlled congress were hard core abolitionists whom would not allow it.
Delaware, BTW, was a border state like many others in the Union where slavery was winked at until the wars’ end. It was not part of the Confederacy. And as I pointed out, not only were many slaves in DC not freed, but the ones that were – mostly nannies, cooks and butlers – hardly represented the economic impact to the DC elites that owned them that it would have to the South.
Still burden-shifting. YOU claim the South was justified based upon “an ultimatum not only to acquiesce to Federal confiscation of legally acquired property without compensation (in itself, unconstitutional), but to the destruction to their livelihood as well, since the crops couldn’t be gathered at that time without the existing labor.” Where is this ultimatum you invented? Where is this “abrupt, uncompensated theft by government diktat”? Point to some piece of evidence other than your fevered imagination.
If it doesn’t exist, your justification is full of crap.
“I would also say you either haven’t been on a college campus lately or are simply seeing what you choose to see. ”
Visit my son at his school once every couple of months. Wife goes more often. No Che or Mao flags. Since you are unable to name any schools I will treat this as urban legend. AS to Malcolm, while I am not really a fan, I guess there has always been contempt for any minority that has dared to hate or fight back.
Steve
BTW, no one prohibited WalMArt from selling flags.
Rob,
Have you actually read Malcom X’s book? It’s not quite the same as the movie.
Long story short, Malcolm undergoes a transformation during his Hajj where he realizes that his own prejudice against “whites” was wrong. Personally, I have a lot of respect for the man he became, not the man he was infamous for. It’s unfortunate he was assassinated for, essentially, heresy soon afterward as he could have been a powerful force for positive change.
Anyway on the Civil War, it’s important to remember that war is, fundamentally, armed and organized violence between political communities or alliances of political communities. In the case of the Civil War, the cause was two main political disputes – the status of the institution of Slavery in the USA and balance of political power within the USA – balance of power was the proximate cause and slavery was the distal cause. These two are obviously intertwined to a great degree and thus people who try to focus on one to the exclusion of the other are probably pushing an agenda. Said another way, while slavery was the root cause, it was the inability to achieve a peaceful political solution that ensured conflict. Once Lincoln was elected (a candidate and President who did not even appear on the ballot in the southern states), it became clear to the South that their choices were to secede from the Union or become the minority faction in a hostile pro-abolitionist federal government leading to the inevitable and continual erosion of influence in the existing federal power structure causing, in their minds, economic and social ruin.
As an aside, there is some interesting research regarding such decisions historically. I can’t find it at the moment, but the essence is that political communities usually choose paths with greater uncertainty and greater risks than paths with a quantifiable downside. Neither side really understood what the costs of succession would be; for the South, the cost turned out to be much greater than the unchosen alternative.
So, Rob is right, IMO, that the Northern abolitionists were not interested compromise or accommodation but then the Southern elites weren’t interested either. So all of Rob’s criticisms of Lincoln can be reversed to point directly at the Confederacy and the State leaders who chose succession.
I guess it’s been about a decade now, but over at Pat Lang’s place long ago he posted a proposal that the Civil War could have been avoided if only the North had, essentially, purchased the South’s slaves. There is a lot of similar “coulda shoulda woulda” when it comes to the Civil War but I think it was inevitable.
Purchasing the South’s slaves would be like purchasing Delta Airline’s planes. There would be no way for them to move passengers from point A to point B. Transforming your business model is not easy – ask McDonald’s.
Throughout human history, wealthy land barons do not just change because somebody finds their actions immoral. They change because a more powerful somebody makes them change or takes away their wealth. Usually, the more powerful somebody is not an improvement.
To my knowledge, slave economies do not change internally until they become wealthy enough to transition off of the slave labor. This includes feudal systems with serfs who are tied to the land. While not technically owned, they are not free.
This is not a justification of slave economies, but it is a recognition that most people who are against them today would not be against them if it meant they were deprived of their luxuries. The US today was built upon the past 400 years, and those 400 years were built upon 600 years of Norman history. Need I mention the previous Angles, Saxons, or Picts, and I have not even left one little bitty island.
When you get on your high horse and start cherry picking history, you had better have a damn good understanding of history. One day you will be “on the wrong side of history”.
The Civil War was necessary based upon previous human history not upon present human emotions.