They had valid reasons to reject such, because it was obvious no scheme would ever work to their benefit. The total budget in 1860 was around $60 Million while the value of all chattel "holdings" was $3.5 Billion in the same year or thereabouts. Any scheme at market rates would thus bankrupt the United States.
As I said, I'm not very sympathetic to propertarian/financial arguments. If the Americans were so inclined they'd have to think up a scheme to get it done - maybe adding many fat zeroes to the national debt to pay off to the descendants of slaveowners. In any case, by the time Lincoln attained relevance I think the entrenchment of the 'slavery's a positive good' ideology and how slavocratic interests couldn't even accept lesser compromises like popular sovereignty in good faith indicates that they wouldn't have taken compensated abolition even if it were 100% feasible.
Notably, this view was shared by contemporary Europeans, and was thus not limited to Southerners.
Lincoln, at the time the Proclamation was issued, had spent the last year vehemently denying the war was about slavery, even when prodded by the Anglo-French. That it left slavery unmolested in the Border States and came on the heels of several costly defeats and a stalemate "victory" was seen as further proof in European eyes that it was, at best, a cynical ploy to deter intervention. Most, however, believed it to be meant to stir up rebellions in the Confederate rear given setbacks at the front; the British in particular were worried this would cause a genocide by the vengeful Confederate Army upon the revolting Slaves in response. So, no, this wasn't a view limited to Lost Causers after the fact, but considered a real concern by even those who were decidedly against the institution of Slavery itself.
Further, let's consider this in of itself: if not rebellion, then how exactly did Lincoln expect this move to weaken the Confederate cause?
As the Historytuber whose video I posted explains, Razorfist focused way too much on Fredericksburg. The Union's record hadn't been one of '15 straight months of defeat' by the time of the EP as he said, they had actually won a bunch of fairly important victories by then - New Orleans had been occupied by Butler & Farragut, Grant had taken Forts Henry & Donelson, and the Union had also won the Battles of Shiloh (in which the CSA suffered its highest-ranking casualty in the entire war, full-general A. S. Johnston) and Corinth. In general I find that people who take up the (again, overly common to genuine Lost Causers, of whom Razor insists he isn't one despite falling back on their arguments all too often) view, as Razorfist did, that the Union didn't know what it was doing and was getting whipped by Dixie all the time until like 1864 completely overlook developments in the West, where Union forces were winning much more frequently with Chickamauga being their only truly grave setback.
(On a similar note I found Razor's attacks on Lincoln's character disingenuous and reliant on taking his quotes out of context. When quoting Lincoln from the infamous Lincoln-Douglas Debate for example, he elects to leave out remarks like 'there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.' Or not bringing up his 1854 letter to Joshua Speed. Or again ignoring what he says at the end of his letter to Greeley before issuing the EP: ' I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.' I completely understand that Lincoln didn't have 21st century progressive views on race, but I think what Razor does in quoting the man out of context or leaving out entire segments of his quotes to try to make him look no better than the Confederates is deeply unfair.)
I mean, we can look at the practical results of the Emancipation Proclamation. The Union Army not only definitively liberated slaves when it advanced when it advanced further into Confederate territory, starting by freeing thousands of slaves in the Confed territories it had already taken up to that point, but the EP also got loads of slaves to escape and bolt for Union lines, weakening the Confederacy further without spiking anywhere close to the point of going full Haiti on their former owners. Frankly I think it's a massive & massively uncharitable logical leap to assume that the latter was Lincoln's goal and wish for the slaves, no matter whether it came from some Southern newspaper or a European one.
Holy wall of text, Batman...
Not at all. Unlike you, who is making excuses because you agree with what sanitized history has said this war was about, I am simply holding Lincoln to the same standard as I hold others. I also have yet to see a coherent argument as to why exactly arresting critics and shutting down newspapers for having the wrong opinion, or arresting a Federal judge for doing his job and holding all of those people without trial, or gunning down protestors was necessary in the furtherance of the stated goals you attribute to the war (or even those stated by Lincoln and his supporters at the time).
OK, so basically you do want nothing less than a libertarian Mary Sue, gotcha. Even the Constitution provides for the suspension of
habeas corpus in cases of rebellion, because holy shit, you may have to detain people during a
civil war. Now you may argue that only Congress could formally suspend
habeas corpus as the execrable Justice Taney did, but considering the extreme of wartime necessity in which the
Ex parte Merryman case came up (Maryland had been in serious danger of flipping to the Confederacy, with Lincoln having to dodge an assassination attempt in Baltimore and then that same city rioting against the entry of Union troops) and how the dysfunctional Congress failed to grant such authorization due to a filibuster by Southern Democrats in the Senate, I'm perfectly willing to accept the suspension on the grounds of military necessity as laid out by one of Lincoln's commanders:
William Morris said:
At the date of issuing your writ, and for two weeks previous, the city in which you live, and where your court has been held, was entirely under the control of revolutionary authorities. Within that period United States soldiers, while committing no offense, had been perfidiously attacked and inhumanly murdered in your streets; no punishment had been awarded, and I believe, no arrests had been made for these atrocious crimes; supplies of provisions intended for this garrison had been stopped; the intention to capture this fort had been boldly proclaimed; your most public thoroughfares were daily patrolled by large numbers of troops, armed and clothed, at least in part, with articles stolen from the United States; and the Federal flag, while waving over the Federal offices, was cut down by some person wearing the uniform of a Maryland officer. To add to the foregoing, an assemblage elected in defiance of law, but claiming to be the legislative body of your State, and so recognized by the Executive of Maryland, was debating the Federal compact. If all this be not rebellion, I know not what to call it. I certainly regard it as sufficient legal cause for suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus.
Don't like it, tough shit, don't start a civil war and attack federal troops. I'd say the same to the 'protesters' who got shot in Baltimore and New York, and who were at best as 'mostly peaceful' as BLM - in actuality they aggressively fought federal troops and, in the case of the New York draft rioters, also went around murdering civilians (mostly blacks, including an attempt at children in an orphanage which they burned down & killed an NYPD officer over).
The difference here is that you can't see the excuses in both cases for what they are. I also seem to hold a much higher value on civil liberties than you do. Which is interesting given some of your other views when it comes to our current troubles.
You can refer to my first few posts in this thread as to why I have a much less rigid view on upholding civil liberties at all costs in times of crisis, to a much broader scope than what Lincoln did if I deem it necessary (as it turned out to be in many a 20th century civil war/rebellion).
This is immaterial to the point, which is basically that every time someone whines about insurrections or rebellions, I feel they need to be reminded of how exactly this country was formed.
So other people did bad things, thus, it is okay when your people do bad things?
Well, I certainly object to the notion that all causes for rebellion are morally equivalent. To be blunt, some rebellions are more justified and more deserving of success than others.
In general that's how war works, if the enemy commits war crimes you must respond - even if not with equal ferocity (as can be seen from other industrial wars like the World Wars) you have to give a hard line. Frankly in many regards the Union wasn't as cruel as they could have been while still remaining fully within the line of acceptable behavior for the time period, when the Confederates murdered surrendering black Union troops on sight the North responded by refusing to exchange prisoners any longer instead of shooting Southern prisoners in reprisal, much less destroying random villages and massacring everyone they saw as armies like the Prussian one did.
The point I'm making is that your rationale for not wanting to simply let the South go was because of your moral objection to something else they were doing, which is upholding the institution of slavery. Ergo, if one has a moral objection to something another country is doing, why is it not okay in that case to invade and conquer them, and force them to live how you see fit?
And they weren't by the South, which was the entire real point of the war, which was about states being allowed to leave the Union. If they had been allowed to leave, that would make them a different country. But by what you have written here, you also apparently view might as making right, which again contradicts some of your other stated views given our current troubles.
You can gloss over Lincoln's crimes all you want, that doesn't make him any less of a tyrant - the man's actions and those of his subordinates speak for themselves.
The South did not constitute a separate country from the Northern Union states in anyone's eyes (hence all those games they played trying to secure foreign recognition) except their own. Their secession certainly wasn't legitimate even in the eyes of many Southerners, because again, slaves and Southern Unionists existed and went unheard in the Confederacy for obvious reasons. Whatever's going on in Saudi Arabia (which BTW didn't even exist as we know it in the time of the ACW, the Saudis at this time were chastised Ottoman vassals after having been crushed by Turko-Egyptian forces earlier in the 19th century and didn't even control half of modern Saudi territory) has got no bearing whatsoever on what the Union was doing about slavery on territories recognized as its own by literally everyone in the country and world except the secessionists (again, not all Southerners) themselves, which they had both the ability and increasing will to make moves on. To sum this up, Saudi Arabia and the South are not in a remotely comparable situation.
I am not 'glossing over' Lincoln's 'crimes' incidentally, I am arguing they're not crimes at all but necessary wartime measures. And might does fundamentally make right, that's the most ancient truth of the world and will remain as such until the Second Coming - you can and should try to work around it where possible, which is a marker of civilization, but even libertarians acknowledge this, it's why using force in response to someone breaking the NAP is generally considered acceptable in their circles. I for one do not identify myself as a libertarian even if I am in sympathy with some of their stances, and consider using overwhelming force to suppress armed threats in way more contexts than that to be acceptable. Like stopping a bunch of secessionist slavers from walking out of one's country and taking their slaves with them, for example.
We're having an argument on an internet board, dude.
Come now, you know I'm referring to the game of geopolitics, which the Union and Confederacy played to the latter's detriment.
Simple - because they wanted to leave from what was and should have been a voluntary association. I don't have to agree with their reasons for wanting to fuck off. Hell, I'd love it if the commie parts of the country fucked off right now.
Well then once again we find ourselves at an interminable loggerheads. Because if in 2061 California & the PNW states tried to secede to uphold endstage wokeness (mandatory reparations, making whites second-class citizens at best, de-facto outlawing of Christianity, legalized pedophilia, etc.) after decades of increasingly violently trying & failing to export it to the rest of the country, I'd absolutely be rooting for the feds to shut that shit down with extreme prejudice, with the understanding that such endstage-wokeness is certain in the eventuality of a federal victory (just a question of when, not if). And then recognizing the states of Jefferson, Lincoln and Eastern California as parts of the Union as well.
