"Dan/W4NTI" w4nti@get rid of this mindspring.com wrote in message link.net...
"N2EY" wrote in message
om...
"Dwight Stewart" wrote in message
link.net...
"Larry Roll K3LT" wrote:

(snip) If the Civil War wasn't about racism and slavery,
then (snip)


If the Civil War was about slavery, then why was there a war at all?

Because the states with the most slaves could see that eventually they
would either have to face the complete abolition of slavery *or* leave
the Union.

Prior
to the war, the slave states were the majority in both the House and
Senate,
insuring no legislation could be passed to end slavery.

When? Check a map of 1860. There were 19 slave states, of which 4
stayed in the Union. Delaware was a slave state but it did not secede.

Slavery was only
abolished after the war by not allowing the former Confederate States
(which
included several, but not all, of the slave states) to participate in
that
vote.

The Emancipation Proclamation was written in 1863. It legally freed
most (but not all) of the slaves.

The South has a lot to answer for, IMHO. (snip)

Why would they have any more to answer for than the Northern states
that
profited from the sale of slaves?

Which states were they? Slavery was abolished in the North by 1804. In
many northern states it was abolished before the Constitution was
written.

Or more to answer for than those who used
indentured or bound black workers in the North, even into the early
1900's?

Where was that done?

Indentured servitude is in no way comparable to slavery, btw.
Indentured servants *voluntarily* agree to work for a specified period
of time, usually as payment for training or a debt.

Or more to answer for than the many countries around the world which
practiced slavery in this last century (the 1900's), the previous
century,
or in the many centuries before that?

(snip) Modern-day Rebels with the Confederate flags on
their pickup trucks don't do much to heal the wounds of
the past. (snip)

Perhaps because they have absolutely no responsibility for what
happened
in a past long before they were born.

All depends on what that flag is meant to symbolize.

--

Here's what I learned about the War Between the States:

First off, it didn't start as a war to end slavery, but rather as a
war to keep the Union together. Lincoln's early (1861-1862) writings
make it clear his focus *at that time* was on preserving the Union at
almost any cost.

The Constitution, for all its wisdom, did not have any clear provision
for what should be done if one or more state(s) decided that they
simply wanted out of the Union at one point or another.

When the Constitution was written, there was a fairly even balance
between slave and free states. Compromises were reached in order to
get the new Union formed as a country rather than a confederation.
These were compromises with evil, and they could not last forever.

But over time the two parts of the US developed in such radically
different ways that the compromises and balance could no longer be
maintained. It was clear by 1855 or so that slavery's days were
numbered because eventually the abolitionists would reach enough of a
political majority to simply outlaw it everywhere. The trend was clear
- it was only a matter of time. Revolts like John Brown's and the
strengthening abolitionist movement made the moral issue unavoidable,
and the Supremes were starting to come around, too.

So, given the choice between leaving the Union or abolishing slavery,
15 states tried to leave. Some outside the 15 states said "Let them
go", but it was clear to Lincoln and others that if even one state was
allowed to secede, the Union would eventually fragment - and those
fragments would be ripe for takeover from other countries, many of
whom were patiently waiting for the "American experiment" to fail.

Once the war began, however, it slowly became clear to Lincoln and
many others that what had caused the split in the first place was the
idea that a country could proclaim itself "free" and yet allow
slavery. It became clear to him that the only way to preserve the
Union was to abolish slavery completely. Thus the Emancipation
Proclamation and the constitutional amendment.

Is any of the above incorrect?

What's interesting is that Great Britain, from whom the colonies split
on the issue of "all men [sic] are created equal", abolished slavery
years before the USA did.

73 de Jim, N2EY

Jim,

Much of what you seem to believe is based on the falsehood that the
Emancipation Proclamation
actually freed slaves. The proclamation ONLY APPLIED to those states in
rebellion against the Union.

That's why I wrote:

"It legally freed most (but not all) of the slaves."

It did not free any slaves in the states that didn't secede, but those
states didn't have many slaves anyway. And although it declared most
slaves to be free, in practice almost none of them were actually freed
because the union did not control the land where the slaves actually
were.

Unfortunately those same states were not a part of the union at the time the
proclamation was issued.

That can be argued both ways. Unionists would say they were in
rebellion, secessionists would say they had seceded and were defending
themselves against invasion from a foreign country.

Thus the proclamation applied to no one under the authority and/or control
of the then fragemented Union.

The slavery issue was indeed a major part of the root cause of the war
between the states. BUT a major other cause was that of states rights.

Besides the "right" to have slaves, what rights did the seceding
states want that the Union denied them?

And
whether we would be a republic or a federalist government. The struggle
continues to this day.

We are called a constitutional government, or a republic, or a democracy.
The reality is we are none of , and all of that.

We're not a democracy, because that oft-misused word means that issues
are directly decided by vote of the people. That's not the case for
most issues.

We are a constitutional republic, because the power rests primarily
with elected representatives but is limited by the Constitution.

The founding fathers NEVER
intended for the federal government to have so much authority and control
over the states.

How do you know what they intended?

Even if the folks who came to Philadelphia in 1787 did not intend for
the federal government to have as much power as it grew to have, one
thing is certain: They did not intend for the Constitution to remain a
static, unchangeable document.

Do you really think that a country which proclaims "all men are
created equal, with certain inalienable rights" could long endure if
certain men were allowed to *OWN* certain other men? Particularly when
those *OWNED*, or their ancestors, had been kidnapped?

Even back then, in the case of anything other than a human being, such
actions would be declared "dealing in stolen property" and the goal of
law enforcement would be to return the stolen property to its rightful
owner. Why were human beings treated differently? How can *anyone*
argue that an innocent human being not own his/her own life?

That was a major reason the Southern states left.

So it is claimed. But which rights were they concerned about? Did they
not want to pay federal taxes?

Lincoln
had NO RIGHT, or authorization to FORCE the South to rejoin the union. The
whole war was a major mistake, and to the victors go the spoils, and the
ones that write the history.

That's one interpretation of the Constitution. Another is that states
did not have the right to unilaterally secede from an agreement that
they had voluntarily entered into with the other states.

The US had already tried to operate under a looser system (the
Articles of Confederation) and had found them unworkable.

You may ask how, or why, do I say these things? Because I was raised in the
North, a world class Yankee state of Ohio. I was educated by the
Northerners on this subject. And before I came to Alabama I too believed it
hook line and sinker. No longer.

Then what should Lincoln have done? Simply let the seceding states
leave the Union?

Once that precedent was set, how long before the "United States" split
into more and more fragments? How long before the various fragments
were taken over by other world powers, such as England?

The South was right. We all lost that war, look at the mess we have in DC
now. Think about it.

It certainly would have been better if there could have been a
nonviolent resolution, but I don't see how that could have happened
other than to allow the Union to fragment - and the crime of slavery
to continue.

By compromising with the evil of slavery, the founders delayed the day
of reckoning - and made it that much worse.

And I'll ask again: What rights were the seceding states so adamant
about keeping that they were willing to fight a war in an attempt to
preserve them?

73 de Jim, N2EY