Abraham Lincoln: American Dictator

[Agent23]

To put it bluntly, realism wasn't exactly a high priority for these guys either in domestic or foreign politics and if Britain demands that they abolish slavery after they've just won a war (and lost thousands upon thousands of their own people's lives) in defense of said Peculiar Institution™, I think the chance of them telling London to go fuck itself and damn the consequences is extremely high. As well they would apparently have been vindicated in their antebellum belief that 1 Stronk Norman-Blooded Southron Paladin can in fact whip 100 Weak Pseudo-Saxon Yankee Mudsills (and presumably 100,000 black slaves) in victory, even more reason for them not to be too concerned with a second round with the Damnyankees.

And how many Stronk Norman-Blooded Southron Paladins will it take to break through an Anglo-British naval blockade or fix lost access to European markets and financing?

To quote my sig:

We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

Ayn Rand

 

[Circle of Willis]

And how many Stronk Norman-Blooded Southron Paladins will it take to break through an Anglo-British naval blockade or fix lost access to European markets and financing?

To quote my sig:

More than the entire Confederacy had, not that the CSA is likely to live long enough to regret their mistake. But that's probably the single biggest problem with a surviving Confederacy that wins the ACW: in order to not die in the medium to long term, you would basically need their ruling class to pry their heads from their asses and not act like the increasingly delusional lunatics they'd been being for decades before any shots were fired at Fort Sumter (or the Star of the West before it). Nothing short of a miraculous personality transplant for at least a two-thirds majority of the plantocrats who also have a reasonable shot at getting into power not only on the Confederal level, but also the state level, basically - reasonable leaders like James Longstreet, Patrick Cleburne or even Nathan Bedford Forrest (you know it's gotta be bad when even the founder of the KKK is a more intelligent, less racist and less classist leader than the people who can actually take power in the CSA without a bloody revolution) would have otherwise been very much in the minority and in the latter two cases, not even likely to break into politics at all (Cleburne was an Irish immigrant, Forrest a poor white - both were a few steps removed from the blacks in the old Southern social order).

And if they weren't delusional about their abilities & chances they probably wouldn't have seceded at all (just as New England did not secede after Fremont got buried in the 1856 election) in favor of, oh, maybe using their existing Senate majority to stonewall Lincoln's frankly pretty modest 1860 agenda. Hell the Democrats would also have had a unified House majority if the extreme slavocratic elements hadn't been spazzing out so hard that they alienated Northern Democrats and gave former Southern Whigs a second wind as the 'Oppositionists' in 1858-9, only for those same elements to then walk out of the House in '60-61 after their home states seceded. (Until 1858, the Dems had controlled both houses of Congress for 12 years, and the slavers still managed to piss it all away in one election cycle!)

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

Southern serfdom was already done IRL with sharecropping, it sucked for both the freedmen and poor whites and its awfulness drove the blacks to go on their 'Great Migration' into America's inner cities. In an independent CSA this lack of a release valve and the further entrenchment of plantocratic domination will likely result in slave/peasant uprisings and a white-populist backlash along the lines of 'kill the planters and nationalize their slaves' instead.

I think you greatly overestimate just how grounded in reality the people who wanted to conquer everything down to Panama & the Venezuelan coast to form a slaving empire were. Davis himself at minimum wanted to take Cuba from Spain, whether by way of purchase or conquest, as made clear from his time as Franklin Pierce's Secretary of War. Also the Confederate Constitution expressly legalized slavery forever, forbade state governments from interfering with the movement of slaveowners with their slaves across state lines, and re-legalized the import of slaves from US soil despite the US (whose Constitution they were cloning in most regards, except to take a maximally pro-slavery position wherever possible) having banned the slave trade, period, in 1808 and Britain having made no secret of their taking an extremely dim view on said trade for decades as well. And it was designed to be even harder than the US Constitution to amend, quite possibly precisely to make it impossible to strike slavery down - their Congress couldn't propose amendments, state constitutional conventions had to do it.

To put it bluntly, realism wasn't exactly a high priority for these guys either in domestic or foreign politics and if Britain demands that they abolish slavery after they've just won a war (and lost thousands upon thousands of their own people's lives) in defense of said Peculiar Institution™, I think the chance of them telling London to go fuck itself and damn the consequences is extremely high. As well they would apparently have been vindicated in their antebellum belief that 1 Stronk Norman-Blooded Southron Paladin can in fact whip 100 Weak Pseudo-Saxon Yankee Mudsills (and presumably 100,000 black slaves) in victory, even more reason for them not to be too concerned with a second round with the Damnyankees.

Like I said The American experiment started to fail the moment wannabe kings and noblemen got greedy for land.

 

[The Immortal Watch Dog]

Lincoln is responsible for some of the earliest false flags, he turned the Pinkertons loose on his critics and then you had his whole "I'm gonna kill more Irish than Cromwell" and him literally wanting to exterminate an entire native American tribe because he didn't like the way their name sounded.

Sodomizing a bodyguard (As in he raped one of the young male soldier's he routinely slept with)...Threatening to have Supreme Court Justices assassinated and the Draft riots.

TBH...even setting aside Sherman, Razor is right. Lincoln set out to destroy the Union and replace a Republic with an oligarchy. He succeeded, and we're still suffering the effects of his evil to this day.

 

[Agent23]

More than the entire Confederacy had, not that the CSA is likely to live long enough to regret their mistake. But that's probably the single biggest problem with a surviving Confederacy that wins the ACW: in order to not die in the medium to long term, you would basically need their ruling class to pry their heads from their asses and not act like the increasingly delusional lunatics they'd been being for decades before any shots were fired at Fort Sumter (or the Star of the West before it). Nothing short of a miraculous personality transplant for at least a two-thirds majority of the plantocrats who also have a reasonable shot at getting into power not only on the Confederal level, but also the state level, basically - reasonable leaders like James Longstreet, Patrick Cleburne or even Nathan Bedford Forrest (you know it's gotta be bad when even the founder of the KKK is a more intelligent, less racist and less classist leader than the people who can actually take power in the CSA without a bloody revolution) would have otherwise been very much in the minority and in the latter two cases, not even likely to break into politics at all (Cleburne was an Irish immigrant, Forrest a poor white - both were a few steps removed from the blacks in the old Southern social order).

And if they weren't delusional about their abilities & chances they probably wouldn't have seceded at all (just as New England did not secede after Fremont got buried in the 1856 election) in favor of, oh, maybe using their existing Senate majority to stonewall Lincoln's frankly pretty modest 1860 agenda. Hell the Democrats would also have had a unified House majority if the extreme slavocratic elements hadn't been spazzing out so hard that they alienated Northern Democrats and gave former Southern Whigs a second wind as the 'Oppositionists' in 1858-9, only for those same elements to then walk out of the House in '60-61 after their home states seceded. (Until 1858, the Dems had controlled both houses of Congress for 12 years, and the slavers still managed to piss it all away in one election cycle!)

Well, the South either becomes the American Dominion of the British Empire or so much economic and political pressure is put onto them there they elect smart people.

Both work for me.


Also, tour analysis kindaruns counter to Sowell and RazorFist's,so I prefer to stick with them.

 

[S'task]

the time of Lincoln's election the Jeffersonian concept of slavery as a necessary evil which would be phased out over time was stone dead in the soon-to-be Confederate states, replaced pretty much entirely by the Calhounian concept of slavery as a positive good.

It's wasn't quite dead, many in Virginia still held to it. Some of the most revered Confederate generals from Virginia were much more in the Jeffersonian mold who saw it as a necessary evil. Lee in particular was, but then, Lee was also a bit of a man out of time, as he was in his 50s in the Civil War, and his FATHER (note note his grandfather or great-grandfather) was a veteran of the REVOLUTIONARY War. Thomas Jackson was another man who bucked at the Calhounian idea of slavery, going so far as to break the law and teach his slaves to read so that he could properly evangelize them into Christianity.

But they were the odd ones out... heck Virginia in general was the odd Confederate state out as unlike many of the other States they explicitly DID NOT secede over losing the election of 1860. In fact, the vote to secede on that matter explicitly FAILED.

No... what drove Virginia to secede was how Lincoln handled crisis and how he did multiple things outside the Constitution. For instance, Lincoln tried to nationalize and call up the militia without any authorization from Congress... BEFORE any hostilities had broken out. Further he attempted to insist those nationalized militia would be housed in states against their will. When he finally managed to provoke Ft. Sumpter into being fired upon, that's when Virginia finally had enough and voted to secede SPECIFICALLY because Lincoln was acting like a dictator and ignoring the Constitution.

 

[Circle of Willis]

It's wasn't quite dead, many in Virginia still held to it. Some of the most revered Confederate generals from Virginia were much more in the Jeffersonian mold who saw it as a necessary evil. Lee in particular was, but then, Lee was also a bit of a man out of time, as he was in his 50s in the Civil War, and his FATHER (note note his grandfather or great-grandfather) was a veteran of the REVOLUTIONARY War. Thomas Jackson was another man who bucked at the Calhounian idea of slavery, going so far as to break the law and teach his slaves to read so that he could properly evangelize them into Christianity.

But they were the odd ones out... heck Virginia in general was the odd Confederate state out as unlike many of the other States they explicitly DID NOT secede over losing the election of 1860. In fact, the vote to secede on that matter explicitly FAILED.

No... what drove Virginia to secede was how Lincoln handled crisis and how he did multiple things outside the Constitution. For instance, Lincoln tried to nationalize and call up the militia without any authorization from Congress... BEFORE any hostilities had broken out. Further he attempted to insist those nationalized militia would be housed in states against their will. When he finally managed to provoke Ft. Sumpter into being fired upon, that's when Virginia finally had enough and voted to secede SPECIFICALLY because Lincoln was acting like a dictator and ignoring the Constitution.

My understanding is that the first hostile action to have ever happened in the lead-up to the ACW was not actually the attack on Fort Sumter, but South Carolina firing on the Star of the West supply ship - on January 9, 1861, months before Lincoln had even been inaugurated. In sight of such aggression I can't really fault Lincoln for calling up the militias ASAP, Southern states had seceded before he was even sworn in and made it quite clear they were ready to fight if he didn't let them leave (which he equally clearly was not going to).

I maintain that literally all of Lincoln's authoritarian and controversial decisions would not have been possible if the Southern fire-eaters had expressed a modicum of common sense and not tried to bolt after losing an election, following decades of increasing aggression in the 'defense' of slavery. No secessions, no civil war, no room for Lincoln to do any of what he did, the slavocrats probably could've even kept slavery going into the 1870s or early 1880s.

 

[StormEagle]

The thing of it, no one here is arguin that the Confederates were the good guys here. We are however, asking people to stop making excuses for Lincoln’s actions and acknowledge that he committed many heinous crimes against the people of the United States and the Constitution itself.

I’d also ask if the people defending Lincoln actually watched Razor’s video or if, perhaps, they’re kneejerking to defend a man that has been almost outright deified in contemporary American politics.

His abrogation of habeus corpus, his imprisonment or exile of journalists who publicly disagreed with him, destruction or confiscation of the printing presses of those reporting harshly on his administration, his harassment or imprisonment of his political opposition, his outright assault upon the judiciary and the rights and powers of congress itself, his allowing and outright approval of war crimes in the form of Sherman’s march, his actual murder of people protesting the draft, paint him as a man that, in other time or context, would make him one of the single greatest homegrown tyrants and villain within the American system of governance.

He may not have been a dictator on the level of Hitler or Mussolini, not for lack of trying, but he still all but outright instigated the civil war by denying the god given right of a people to secede from a union that they no longer wished to voluntarily participate in.

Yes, what many in the south were fighting for, the preservation of the plantocracy and its attendant problems and cruelties, was evil. But it was their right, as a sovereign people, to decide whether or not they wanted to continue as part of this country or go their own way.

And we will never and can never know whether the civil war was necessary for the abolition of that peculiar institution, or if the south would have been brought by degrees to abolish it itself via the pressure of interested European parties and the realities of the coming economic revolution.

But we must acknowledge that the abolition of slavery was not what the north fought for. What the north fought for was the economic, diplomatic, and industrial subjugation of the south and the permanent yoking of their interests to the interests of the north. Nothing more and nothing less.

The northern cause was the cause of the British in the revolutionary war or the cause of any other colonial power against an unruly populace. It was no grand crusade against the myriad evils of slavery, though certainly some in the north may have believed it to be such.

If we acknowledge that all distinct peoples, whether they be distinct via ethnicity, culture, religion, or creed have a right to self-determinism and to their own sovereignty, than we must acknowledge the south’s right to secession from a north that was increasingly hostile to its interests.

To do otherwise would be hypocrisy.

Or, as another man may put it:

“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.” - Abraham Lincoln, 1848.

 

[Circle of Willis]

The thing of it, no one here is arguin that the Confederates were the good guys here. We are however, asking people to stop making excuses for Lincoln’s actions and acknowledge that he committed many heinous crimes against the people of the United States and the Constitution itself.

I’d also ask if the people defending Lincoln actually watched Razor’s video or if, perhaps, they’re kneejerking to defend a man that has been almost outright deified in contemporary American politics.

His abrogation of habeus corpus, his imprisonment or exile of journalists who publicly disagreed with him, destruction or confiscation of the printing presses of those reporting harshly on his administration, his harassment or imprisonment of his political opposition, his outright assault upon the judiciary and the rights and powers of congress itself, his allowing and outright approval of war crimes in the form of Sherman’s march, his actual murder of people protesting the draft, paint him as a man that, in other time or context, would make him one of the single greatest homegrown tyrants and villain within the American system of governance.

He may not have been a dictator on the level of Hitler or Mussolini, not for lack of trying, but he still all but outright instigated the civil war by denying the god given right of a people to secede from a union that they no longer wished to voluntarily participate in.

Yes, what many in the south were fighting for, the preservation of the plantocracy and its attendant problems and cruelties, was evil. But it was their right, as a sovereign people, to decide whether or not they wanted to continue as part of this country or go their own way.

And we will never and can never know whether the civil war was necessary for the abolition of that peculiar institution, or if the south would have been brought by degrees to abolish it itself via the pressure of interested European parties and the realities of the coming economic revolution.

But we must acknowledge that the abolition of slavery was not what the north fought for. What the north fought for was the economic, diplomatic, and industrial subjugation of the south and the permanent yoking of their interests to the interests of the north. Nothing more and nothing less.

The northern cause was the cause of the British in the revolutionary war or the cause of any other colonial power against an unruly populace. It was no grand crusade against the myriad evils of slavery, though certainly some in the north may have believed it to be such.

If we acknowledge that all distinct peoples, whether they be distinct via ethnicity, culture, religion, or creed have a right to self-determinism and to their own sovereignty, than we must acknowledge the south’s right to secession from a north that was increasingly hostile to its interests.

To do otherwise would be hypocrisy.

Or, as another man may put it:

“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.” - Abraham Lincoln, 1848.

Honestly it might be because I'm approaching this from the perspective of a non-American outsider (although I've been studying American history since I was young because it's frankly vastly more interesting than Canadian history, hah) but I look at even Sherman's March to the Sea and I'm left thinking, 'seems pretty soft tbh'. I mean, in this same timeframe the Prussians were killing French civilians & destroying villages left & right in reprisal against franc-tireur (French guerrilla) activity, the French themselves killed like a third of the Algerian population while colonizing that place, the Russians were deporting thousands upon thousands of Poles to Siberia after suppressing yet another Polish rebellion, the British were being the world's biggest and meanest drug cartel over in China, and where I was from the Dutch wouldn't even let our indigenous elites kill themselves - even in 1906, decades after the ACW, they insisted on massacring the local princes and their families (who were already in the process of committing suicide!) with their own hands.

The number of countries, formal empires or otherwise, that let even their colonies - much less bits of them which they consider to be integral territories - to just walk away without a fight throughout history can be counted on one hand. Perhaps that is only natural for states in general, while the application of the ideal of self-determination is vanishingly rare in practice. But whatever the case, Lincoln at his worst really did seem to me like an absolute wimp compared to what the contemporary European powers were doing both in their colonies and to each other. I assume it's much worse from an American perspective because you guys actually had constitutional freedoms to lose in the first place and such, but were I a Chinese guy in the 1800s I'd definitely rather have dealt with Lincoln than Lord Palmerston, and were I Indonesian instead in the same timeframe I'd sooner put up with the Union Army of Sherman and Sheridan than the KNIL as well.

As an aside, I actually do think Razor's argument that secession is not morally wrong in & of itself (and that it had been tried before, not over slavery, in the decades preceding the ACW) holds water. If the CSA hadn't explicitly seceded to defend slavery, as said not only in various declarations of secession but also enshrined in their constitution, I don't believe they'd have even close to the odious reputation they do now. The whole slavery business is also like 90% of what gets mentioned/taught about Lincoln abroad, so without it, he wouldn't be considered heroic not just by a lot of modern Americans but also on an international scale as well. But, it is all what it is.

 

[f1onagher]

Honestly it might be because I'm approaching this from the perspective of a non-American outsider (although I've been studying American history since I was young because it's frankly vastly more interesting than Canadian history, hah) but I look at even Sherman's March to the Sea and I'm left thinking, 'seems pretty soft tbh'. I mean, in this same timeframe the Prussians were killing French civilians & destroying villages left & right in reprisal against franc-tireur (French guerrilla) activity, the French themselves killed like a third of the Algerian population while colonizing that place, the Russians were deporting thousands upon thousands of Poles to Siberia after suppressing yet another Polish rebellion, the British were being the world's biggest and meanest drug cartel over in China, and where I was from the Dutch wouldn't even let our indigenous elites kill themselves - even in 1906, decades after the ACW, they insisted on massacring the local princes and their families (who were already in the process of committing suicide!) with their own hands.

The number of countries, formal empires or otherwise, that let even their colonies - much less bits of them which they consider to be integral territories - to just walk away without a fight throughout history can be counted on one hand. Perhaps that is only natural for states in general, while the application of the ideal of self-determination is vanishingly rare in practice. But whatever the case, Lincoln at his worst really did seem to me like an absolute wimp compared to what the contemporary European powers were doing both in their colonies and to each other. I assume it's much worse from an American perspective because you guys actually had constitutional freedoms to lose in the first place and such, but were I a Chinese guy in the 1800s I'd definitely rather have dealt with Lincoln than Lord Palmerston, and were I Indonesian instead in the same timeframe I'd sooner put up with the Union Army of Sherman and Sheridan than the KNIL as well.

As an aside, I actually do think Razor's argument that secession is not morally wrong in & of itself (and that it had been tried before, not over slavery, in the decades preceding the ACW) holds water. If the CSA hadn't explicitly seceded to defend slavery, as said not only in various declarations of secession but also enshrined in their constitution, I don't believe they'd have even close to the odious reputation they do now. The whole slavery business is also like 90% of what gets mentioned/taught about Lincoln abroad, so without it, he wouldn't be considered heroic not just by a lot of modern Americans but also on an international scale as well. But, it is all what it is.

Its fair to say that Sherman was an amateur compared to authoritarian crackdowns elsewhere in the world, but in my experience there's been a lot of work done to whitewash or sand the edges off the crimes he and his men did commit. Crimes against humanity are crimes against humanity regardless of how brutal or widespread they are and Sherman's march undeveloped and depopulated an entire region just in time for winter. Causing an unknown number of noncombatants, including slaves, to die of starvation and exposure. And do note, this was after the north started winning the war. This stunt might have been excusable earlier on when the outcome was in question, but by the time Sherman marched to the sea he wasn't doing it for strategic purposes. It was to rub the south's nose in its defeat and keep them from getting ideas ever again.

Its important to remember that Dixieland would remain a resource extraction colony for the north until after World War 2. That's what Lincoln and his backers wanted out of the region and they could care less what happened there so long as the south provided resources and didn't break federal controls. The reason the planters were allowed back into power to terrorize blacks with Jim Crow was because they learned their place. They got to keep their fiefs so long as they never challenged the industrial and finance barons of the north. Like most wars this one was ultimately about economic concerns and the north couldn't afford to let the south break their tariff and taxation monopoly.

 

[StormEagle]

Honestly it might be because I'm approaching this from the perspective of a non-American outsider (although I've been studying American history since I was young because it's frankly vastly more interesting than Canadian history, hah) but I look at even Sherman's March to the Sea and I'm left thinking, 'seems pretty soft tbh'. I mean, in this same timeframe the Prussians were killing French civilians & destroying villages left & right in reprisal against franc-tireur (French guerrilla) activity, the French themselves killed like a third of the Algerian population while colonizing that place, the Russians were deporting thousands upon thousands of Poles to Siberia after suppressing yet another Polish rebellion, the British were being the world's biggest and meanest drug cartel over in China, and where I was from the Dutch wouldn't even let our indigenous elites kill themselves - even in 1906, decades after the ACW, they insisted on massacring the local princes and their families (who were already in the process of committing suicide!) with their own hands.

The number of countries, formal empires or otherwise, that let even their colonies - much less bits of them which they consider to be integral territories - to just walk away without a fight throughout history can be counted on one hand. Perhaps that is only natural for states in general, while the application of the ideal of self-determination is vanishingly rare in practice. But whatever the case, Lincoln at his worst really did seem to me like an absolute wimp compared to what the contemporary European powers were doing both in their colonies and to each other. I assume it's much worse from an American perspective because you guys actually had constitutional freedoms to lose in the first place and such, but were I a Chinese guy in the 1800s I'd definitely rather have dealt with Lincoln than Lord Palmerston, and were I Indonesian instead in the same timeframe I'd sooner put up with the Union Army of Sherman and Sheridan than the KNIL as well.

This is an argument of perspective and degrees I suppose. From an outside looking in, Lincoln is no great monster when compared to the monsters of the world, certainly.

But from the American perspective, he can be argued to be the first great monster that set the stage for even more abuses of the executive branch that we still suffer from to this day and heaped abuses upon people he supposedly considered his countrymen. Yankee and Southerner alike.

Sherman too, on the global stage, is nothing special. But under the microscope of the American system, he becomes something grotesque.

A man that unleashed his troops upon a civilian population with minimal if any actual efforts to rein them in. Cities were burnt, villages wiped off the map, many, many women raped and brutalized, slaves ironically freed from plantations only to be forced into labor for the union army or abandoned on the march.

His wife admitted, in a note to him, to her arousal at the thought that such a campaign would be carried out against the whole of the south and that they might be wiped out totally.

Sherman was a terrorist and a war criminal cut from the same cloth as all such men, and Lincoln unleashed him upon the southern states that he was supposedly fighting to bring back into the union.

“We have for years been drifting towards an unadulterated democracy or demagogism. Therefore our government should become a machine, self-regulating, independent of the man.” - William Sherman

Ultimately the northern elites were authoritarian in nature, desiring to finally squash the question of secession and, indeed, the very idea of states rights possibly superseding the rights of the federal government. The consequences of that can be seen to this day in America, even down to something as basic as how we speak about the country we inhabit.

As Razorfist put it, when an American is asked by a foreigner where they are from they will inevitably and inexorably say the United States. Not Texas or California or any of the myriad other states or even territories within the union.

Pre-civil war the answer was the opposite. You identified with your state government first and the federal government second if at all. We were a union of independent states bonded together through shared culture, brotherhood, and the constitution handed to us by our founders.

Most importantly, it was a voluntary union, not something forced upon us at bayonet point. Indeed, if I’m remembering correctly, several states only joined with the tacit understanding that they could leave if they so desired.

Because of Lincoln’s administration, and the following Wilson and FDR (may they also rot in the deepest bowels of perdition), the stage was set for ever increasing totalitarian federal control of the country.

War time presidential powers were not even understood to be a thing pre Lincoln, and his assumption of them in the face of the constitution and congressional power is only one of the myriad of things that have effected the office of the presidency in negative ways.

 

[StormEagle]

“I hope this may not be a war of emancipation but of extermination, & that all under the influence of the foul fiend may be driven like swine into the sea. May we carry fire and sword into their states till not one habitation is left standing.” - Eleanor Boyle Ewing, wife of General Sherman.

Why The War Was Not About Slavery – Abbeville Institute

www.abbevilleinstitute.org

The above article is where I got the quote, and I feel that it gives some insight into the mindset of much of the northern leadership.

 

[LordsFire]

“I hope this may not be a war of emancipation but of extermination, & that all under the influence of the foul fiend may be driven like swine into the sea. May we carry fire and sword into their states till not one habitation is left standing.” - Eleanor Boyle Ewing, wife of General Sherman.

Why The War Was Not About Slavery – Abbeville Institute

www.abbevilleinstitute.org

The above article is where I got the quote, and I feel that it gives some insight into the mindset of much of the northern leadership.

With an article title like that, they're establishing that they're not trustworthy right off the bat.

I can respect some level of argumentation that the war was not only about slavery, but slavery was absolutely an integral tenet of the conflict.

 

[StormEagle]

With an article title like that, they're establishing that they're not trustworthy right off the bat.

I can respect some level of argumentation that the war was not only about slavery, but slavery was absolutely an integral tenet of the conflict.

Did you actually read the article, or did you take one look at the title and reflex post?

And I didn’t say that slavery wasn’t an aspect of the war. I said what I found interesting in the article in my post.

 

[Agent23]

My understanding is that the first hostile action to have ever happened in the lead-up to the ACW was not actually the attack on Fort Sumter, but South Carolina firing on the Star of the West supply ship - on January 9, 1861, months before Lincoln had even been inaugurated. In sight of such aggression I can't really fault Lincoln for calling up the militias ASAP, Southern states had seceded before he was even sworn in and made it quite clear they were ready to fight if he didn't let them leave (which he equally clearly was not going to).

I maintain that literally all of Lincoln's authoritarian and controversial decisions would not have been possible if the Southern fire-eaters had expressed a modicum of common sense and not tried to bolt after losing an election, following decades of increasing aggression in the 'defense' of slavery. No secessions, no civil war, no room for Lincoln to do any of what he did, the slavocrats probably could've even kept slavery going into the 1870s or early 1880s.

In relation to your previous comment I would also like to add that you are forgetting the existing social struggle between industrial, entrepreneurial, managerial and financial capitalism and it's various representatives on the one hand and the "landed gentry" on the other.

That fight played out in Industrialized Europe, and the gentry lost.

Why do you think that the gentry will win in the South?

 

[Buba]

if the Southern fire-eaters had expressed a modicum of common sense and not tried to bolt [...] the slavocrats probably could've even kept slavery going into the 1870s or early 1880s.

At least.
As the Beloved Leader Great Emancipator Lincoln had signed the Corwin Amendment to enshrine slavery into the Constitution.

 

[Circle of Willis]

In relation to your previous comment I would also like to add that you are forgetting the existing social struggle between industrial, entrepreneurial, managerial and financial capitalism and it's various representatives on the one hand and the "landed gentry" on the other.

That fight played out in Industrialized Europe, and the gentry lost.

Why do you think that the gentry will win in the South?

Well, if the Confeds win the ACW, then by default they will have already achieved that rare triumph of the landed gentry against finance & industry (as represented by the Union), since that was pretty much the basic dividing social line between the Southern & Northern elites directing the fight. Having thereby defended their way of life and the Slave Power ideology which had horribly metastasized as of 1860 by force of arms, I see no good reason as to why they would give it up except under extreme duress (ie. outright occupation or collapse) - we didn't exactly see the Soviet Union being in a hurry to embrace capitalism between its victory in the Russian Civil War and its imminent implosion (and even then Gorbachev's reforms were pretty limited, IMO too mild for the circumstances all things considered) despite Communism's woeful economic failure and horrific human costs IRL after all.

At least.
As the Beloved Leader Great Emancipator Lincoln had signed the Corwin Amendment to enshrine slavery into the Constitution.

Lincoln nothing, William Seward - the guy the fire-eaters feared Lincoln would be, and who was too much of an overt abolitionist for the Republicans to accept in their convention (so they nominated Lincoln instead) - was the Senatorial co-sponsor of that amendment while Corwin pushed for it in the House. I think this episode really goes to show how unfounded Southern fear of Northern abolitionism actually was, and how easily the Southern planters could've gotten what they wanted if they had exercised a modicum of common sense in the aftermath of the 1860 election instead of jumping the gun with secession (and before that, engaging in a purity spiral that tore apart the Democratic Party and practically guaranteed Lincoln's victory, despite him being banned from the ballot in all the future CS states except Virginia). Ironically uncompensated abolition via the real 13th Amendment, like pretty much all of Lincoln's other controversial actions in relation to the ACW, would have been impossible without secession and the resulting Civil War.

 

[Largo]

Its fair to say that Sherman was an amateur compared to authoritarian crackdowns elsewhere in the world, but in my experience there's been a lot of work done to whitewash or sand the edges off the crimes he and his men did commit. Crimes against humanity are crimes against humanity regardless of how brutal or widespread they are and Sherman's march undeveloped and depopulated an entire region just in time for winter. Causing an unknown number of noncombatants, including slaves, to die of starvation and exposure. And do note, this was after the north started winning the war. This stunt might have been excusable earlier on when the outcome was in question, but by the time Sherman marched to the sea he wasn't doing it for strategic purposes. It was to rub the south's nose in its defeat and keep them from getting ideas ever again.

Yeah, duh. Of course it was. That's the point.

The Allies were clearly winning by the time Dresden or Hiroshima happened, the March to the Sea is no different. Being in the process of winning a war doesn't mean that you for some reason have to start playing nice. When a war is going on, you keep fighting and do whatever is necessary to bring an end to the war until it is over, and then you can be generous. That's the playbook used by Caesar and every conqueror in history, and it's more or less what Sherman explicitly said was his policy in contrast to the modern freaks who fantasize about murdering every white Southerner during Reconstruction.

Hell, the March to the Sea is pretty comparable to Hiroshima. While there was some military value, the primary value was making it clear to the enemy "We can do whatever the fuck we want to you at this point at practically no cost, so get your head out of your ass and surrender already."

 

[ShadowArxxy]

One thing I'll disagree with him on right out of the gate is the importance of slavery to the conflict. It might not have mattered to Lincoln, but it certainly mattered to the South, or all the various declarations and state constitutions would not have made such a point of preserving the institution, and would not have stressed the importance of it in their reasons for seceding from the Union. The documents simply do not support his argument there.

Agree 100%. In essence, the position of Lincoln was to preserve the Union at all costs, but the position of the South was to preserve the institution of slavery at all costs.

Hell, the March to the Sea is pretty comparable to Hiroshima. While there was some military value, the primary value was making it clear to the enemy "We can do whatever the fuck we want to you at this point at practically no cost, so get your head out of your ass and surrender already."

Not even remotely true. Sherman's March to the Sea fell entirely within the rules of war; the "scorched earth" policy involved not indiscriminate destruction, but the comprehensive yet selective destruction of transportation networks and other infrastructure vital to the Southern war effort. The military value of cutting that infrastructure was incalculable, and was the primary purpose of the campaign.

 

[StormEagle]

Agree 100%. In essence, the position of Lincoln was to preserve the Union at all costs, but the position of the South was to preserve the institution of slavery at all costs.



Not even remotely true. Sherman's March to the Sea fell entirely within the rules of war; the "scorched earth" policy involved not indiscriminate destruction, but the comprehensive yet selective destruction of transportation networks and other infrastructure vital to the Southern war effort. The military value of cutting that infrastructure was incalculable, and was the primary purpose of the campaign.

Show me a Sherman apologist and I’ll show you a liar.

Sherman and his men raped, plundered, and torched as they went. They very much were not selective in their destruction and depredations. Hell they used the torching of civilian homesteads as signal fired for the rest of the column and Lincoln delighted in tales of Sherman’s”Bummers”.

And again, you people are not engaging with the arguments put forward here. That, while the south was bad for its desire to uphold the institution of slavery, that does not make the north, or Lincoln and Sherman, somehow good.

I again question if any of the people arguing against me and others in the thread, actually bothered to watch Razor’s video?

Or are people just reflexively posting because “South Bad. Therefore Lincoln and Union Good.”

For my money, your blatant excusing of war crimes and the purposeful targeting of civilians is rather questionable if not actually disgusting. Hiroshima can be argued to have had an actual purpose, as it’s unlikely that the Japanese would have surrendered without it.

Sherman’s March was pointless in its aims, as the south was already almost forced to the negotiating table by Grant, and malicious in its hatred.