Who Would Win 2018-09-24

[Bookworm]

The South had an industry disadvantage. Even if they had the plans, the factories of the North could out produce them.

That's a big part of what caused the secession. The south wasn't allowed to purchase the infrastructure, because that threatened the stranglehold on trade that the North had with Europe.

[jwhouk]

(inhales deeply, then begins patiently)

The reason why the southern states seceded from the union was because, with the election of Abraham Lincoln as president, there was an abject fear that the federal government was going to choose to disregard "states' rights" over abolition. And that abolition wasn't about "creating industrial areas" or "building buildings" or anything. It was over the abolition of slavery.

Period. End of sentence. Anything else is revisionism.

(Side note to bookworm: you really have to do something about the inability to use keyboard shortcuts for posting & editing.)

[Bookworm]

(inhales deeply, then begins patiently)

The reason why the southern states seceded from the union was because, with the election of Abraham Lincoln as president, there was an abject fear that the federal government was going to choose to disregard "states' rights" over abolition. And that abolition wasn't about "creating industrial areas" or "building buildings" or anything. It was over the abolition of slavery.

Period. End of sentence. Anything else is revisionism.

(Side note to bookworm: you really have to do something about the inability to use keyboard shortcuts for posting & editing.)

jwhouk - the only revisionism is the slavery excuse. That's it. Yes, it was a big part of it, but if you READ the various secession letters, it wasn't _abolition_ that was the problem, it was the violation of the Constitution by the "northern" states (repeatedly and publicly). There was a HUGE pile of other straws on that camel's back. Excessively liberal historians love to try to dumb everything down by rewriting history to say that there's only _one_ reason for anything - usually whatever their pet excuse might be. (note, the war by the north was NOT over slavery, as that wasn't even brought up until two YEARS into the war. The war by the north was over _power_, as they all tend to be.)

The same behaviour happens by blaming the Germans for WW-I and WW-II. If you want someone to blame for WW-I, you have to point to Bosnia (that area). You can blame France for WW-II, because they caused the economic destruction of Germany that led to the rise of the NAZI party. It's just easier to say "it's X's fault".

Heck, going further back, you have Irish who blame Cromwell for all of their historical problems, despite his not even _being in Ireland_ during the worst excesses.

----

Which keyboard shortcuts? I use ctrl-c, X, and v all the time.

[FreeFlier]

I watched the revision happen . . . in high school we went into all of the various things that fed into the civil war.

By the time I graduated college, nobody would admit anything but slavery.

--FreeFlier

[Atomic]

I watched the revision happen . . . in high school we went into all of the various things that fed into the civil war.

By the time I graduated college, nobody would admit anything but slavery.

Indeed. My early 70s High School history covered at least 5 different reasons - Taxation, Constitutional issues, Northern conceit, abolition (Great Britain ended their slavery in 1832), and industrial policy.

I am very wary of arguments resting on monocausation, and debates focused solely on a single facet of a larger set of issues.

[jwhouk]

Using keyboard shortcuts (ctrl-I, ctrl-B, ctrl-U, etc.) to change formatting. Think I may have made that request before.

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Bottom line is this: the Civil War (remember, I had family who fought in it) became all about slavery. There were other reasons why the war began, but the primary reason was slavery, and the abolition thereof.

The worst thing about the war, however, was that no one had a game plan for "what to do once we free all the slaves."

[lake_wrangler]

OK, now I'm confused...

Frankly, the War of Northern Aggression has always been a sore spot for me,

This would make me think you are a Southerner, as they are the only ones I have heard call it that. Northerners tend to simply call it the "Civil War" (though I fail to see wha's "civil" about war... - In French, we call it "the war of secession" la guerre de sécession...)

because I'm a believer in sticking to your contracts.

But with this statement, you make me wonder if by "sticking to your contracts", you mean not trying to secede (i.e. they should not have tried to secede)? If so, not a typical Southerner's position. Not sure whether I read you right or not, though...

(Ask me in private and I'll send you something that you can use to drive so-called historians nuts, especially liberals)

Now, you have piqued my curiosity...

[lake_wrangler]

Using keyboard shortcuts (ctrl-I, ctrl-B, ctrl-U, etc.) to change formatting. Think I may have made that request before.

I don't know that CTRL has ever worked for formatting posts... On the other hand, I have been using ALT-I, ALT-B, ALT-U for all my formatting needs since day one... have you tried them?

(Just don't try ALT-Q... it won't quote anything, but it WILL close all your browser windows... )

[Bookworm]

OK, now I'm confused...

Frankly, the War of Northern Aggression has always been a sore spot for me,

This would make me think you are a Southerner, as they are the only ones I have heard call it that. Northerners tend to simply call it the "Civil War" (though I fail to see wha's "civil" about war... - In French, we call it "the war of secession" la guerre de sécession...)

because I'm a believer in sticking to your contracts.

But with this statement, you make me wonder if by "sticking to your contracts", you mean not trying to secede (i.e. they should not have tried to secede)? If so, not a typical Southerner's position. Not sure whether I read you right or not, though...

(Ask me in private and I'll send you something that you can use to drive so-called historians nuts, especially liberals)

Now, you have piqued my curiosity...

I'm Canadian, but I grew up in Texas. Noone on either side of my family, going back centuries, has ever owned a slave, as best as we can tell. Frankly, slavery is one of the most idiotic things that humans have come up with, but it seems to be endemic.

Contracts - the Northern states refused to abide by the contract that they signed. That is, the Constitution of the United States of America. (I'm skipping the hot button, but that's pretty plain) Nowhere in that contract does it say that a state can't leave. It was never even thought of by the original founders, apparently. Well, I take that back, it IS part of the Declaration of Independence, which is considered to be the founding document. If the government fails to protect you, you have the right to replace it. By that regard, the Southern states were following their original Contract.

This is also why I get REALLY incensed by people constantly passing gun laws. They're clear violations of the Second Amendment of the United States, and its meaning is clearly laid out in the Federalist Papers. If you don't like the Contract, you MUST follow the written ways to change that Contract. (Constitutional Convention) Not try to work around everything illegally, and claim it's legal because you're a government. I also detest the IRS because it's an unConstitutional body (it was never created by Congress). I pay my taxes, however, because that has nothing to do with the IRS.

As to why I call it the War of Northern Aggression? It's because that's EXACTLY what it was. Even if it _was_ about slavery (as I pointed out, it was NOT, because if it WAS, the Emancipation Proclamation would have been at the beginning, not halfway through), _war_ was not the way to deal with it. The only reason to wage war is to seize control over SOMETHING. The goal of the Northern states - and it wasn't "Congress of the States", it was -only- the Northern states - was to seize back control that they suddenly had lost. Control over cotton being a big one, but also control over trade with Europe. Note that I said the _states_. In that regard, I'm talking about the governments (i.e. the rich traders and bureaucrats). The _people_ may have thought they were fighting to end slavery - but they supposedly had no slaves.

Slavery? It was dying. I firmly believe that by the 1880's, slavery would have vanished. Few enough people would have cared enough about it to block abolition legislation. When you can have three $1600 machines do the work of 40 $400 slaves, only have to maintain them, and use them for two to four months out of the year, why would you want to feed, clothe, and house those 40 people? I grew up around farms and ranches, and we had a third acre truck garden that we used to feed ourselves. In non mechanized areas, you need a large labour force for about nine months of the year. Prepare the ground (often twice), plant, maintenance (weeding, etc), then harvest, and then preparing the ground again. (plow the old plants under for the winter so they can rot) If you have Cotton, you have another long period of time of pulling the seeds and hulls out of the fiber. (Then combing, spinning, weaving, and all that jazz).

By the 1880's, large plantation sized farms would start to use steam tractors. These eliminated the huge labour force needed for preparing the ground, general weeding maintenance (running between the rows of crops), and plowing the fields under at the end of the year. You still needed huge harvesting groups, but we have that now. They're generally referred to as migrant labour. Even harvesting of some crops became easier and easier (maize corn and tall grains, for example). The Cotton Gin had already cut down the need for as many people to work through the winter months cleaning cotton.

Did they know this? Well, anyone paying attention would have figured it out. The first useful steam locomotive (Road locomotive) was 1858 by Thomas Rickett. I'd point to that as being the first 'Tractor'. Here's an article about farming and steam - https://www.jstor.org/stable/3740967

Anyway -I'm a firm believer in contracts and calling things what they are. Anyone observing 'Reconstruction' would have realized that the people sent from the North to the South had NO craps to give about the former slaves, other than as excuses. "Oh, we stole all your belongings, raped your family, impoverished you, and killed half your children for THEM (pointing finger at the negros)" My black friends don't disagree with that reasoning for the development of the institutionalized racism that enveloped the south after the battles. Prior to that, nobody really hated them. They just weren't really seen as 'people'. The folks from the North were just sent down to seize control of as many resources as they could manage. That's it. There wasn't really any Reconstruction going on, except in the minds of historical revisionists.

Even more fun? "Negro Only" water fountains, bathrooms, etc, lasted FAR longer in states like Massachusetts than they did in, say, Virginia. Why? I haven't a clue. People being people, maybe? (which is to say, hypocrites. All humans do that, except for me, because I'm humble that way) *ducks*

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I'll probably put up another forum/thread that can be used for political rants, or historical rants like this.

[jwhouk]

A Politics-Only forum might be a good idea (but it might need to be post-number-limited as well, so we don't have people signing up just to stir up $#!+).

[Bookworm]

Well, I'm planning on leaving the posts on moderation for the first five. Yes, it'll be slow, and annoying to moderators, but it'll put an absolute kibosh on shit-stirrers and spammers. They'd actually have to contribute first.

BTW - I don't get really angry over the Civil War stuff - absolutely nobody is alive now that made any decisions back then. Well, that we know of.

My point is simply that refusing to actually look at what went on at the times, AND the contracts that they had agreed to, is absurd. Anyone that just screams 'It was slavery, and the South was in the wrong' is an absolute ignoramus. Slavery, to me, is wrong. In the context of the time, it was how it was. It wasn't right OR wrong, to most people - it just was.

Teachers like to ignore the facts that there were white slaves - just not as many. They hate being reminded that slavery still exists in a large chunk of the world, and there's at least one major religion that has it enshrined in their holy book. They hate being reminded that many of the enslaved Africans would never have been alive if it weren't for the slavers. They REALLY hate it being pointed out that the original slave takers were usually...... black. (Standard tribal behaviour, including that of the native Indian tribes. When resources get tight, there's a combat. Boys under X age, women of breeding age and younger, are kept. Old women and men, often infants, and men of fighting age are put to death. (by the victors) It's a standard way to conserve resources while replacing casualties, and also tends to help with genetic diversity. When the slavers started showing up, it was a 'Hey, instead of killing them, we'll trade you knives, axes, and cloth for them!' It's not nice, it just is. )

Heck, if you go back into history, you find lots of examples of people writing it the way they wanted. Mostly religious based, I'll admit. The King James version of the Bible was written because he was in a dispute with the Pope. (The amazing thing isn't that it has different political bias, it's how MUCH of it stayed true to what we think of as the original meaning.)

The winners write the histories.

[Warrl]

I occasionally annoy people by claiming that if you go back far enough, EVERYONE has ancestors who were slaves, and EVERYONE has ancestors who were slave-owners.

There's also not a single significant piece of inhabited land on the planet that is verifiably controlled by the descendants of the first people to settle there or their successors by fair and consensual trade and peaceful intermingling. The overwhelming majority of places have verifiably been taken by violence at least twice.

[Drakkenmensch]

"What was the cause of the Civil War?"
"The causes for the Civil War were many, both political and economic..."
"Just say slavery."
"Slavery it is!"

[GlytchMeister]

I’m gonna avoid, in broad strokes, debate about the civil war A: because I’m not a history buff and B: because I’ll miserably fail the will save dice roll that I’ll have to make to keep myself from getting irritated.

My only comment here is in response to the latter bit of Warrl’s last comment about how almost every location has been taken by violence at least twice:

Humans are a warring people. There’s a fair bit of writing out there that attempts to look at humans from the viewpoint of aliens, and the end result is we look like how we imagine Space Orcs are like. We can largely ignore injuries that would cripple most other mammals, we stick pins and rings into our skin for fun, we drive ink into our skin for fun, we literally inject dead pathogens to enhance our immunity, and we kill each other in droves over peanuts and books. We also have some REALLY messed-up fetishes, and our original manner of hunting was “persistence hunting.” Aka, we are Terminators, or Jason Vorhees. We just walk nonchalantly after whatever it is we want to eat until it collapses from exhaustion.

One of our favorite pets are domesticated wolves, one of the few animals that could kinda keep up with us.

Oh, and we have glands that excrete a hormone that turns us into berserker monsters that are capable of holding back entire armies until they get speared in the balls. Sometimes we take drugs that do this to us for fun.

And finally, we’re so murderdrunk we can’t keep ourselves from killing one another, so of course we’re gonna kill every damn thing that looks or acts even a little bit different from us, to say nothing of the aliens that don’t look at all like us.

[Bookworm]

Well, for part of that, it's a survival characteristic. "Don't judge a book by it's cover" is an abysmally stupid piece of drivel. Different means dangerous, at least in terms of survival. We're not going to be able to get away from that, without some serious genetic meddling in the RNA. I'd vote against it anyway, because you WANT to notice things that aren't right - especially in space. So, I wouldn't worry so much about attacking things that are different. We've been doing it since the early humans in africa drove out those who had too light of skin. All we can do is be aware of it, and work with it.

What's amazing is all the people that keep trying to claim that we're inherently peaceful - like Ghandi. Talk about oblivious to reality. Anyone who has put two toddlers in in a room of toys will know that within minutes, one WILL whack the other with something. "He stole my toy!" Violence is built in, and we're better served to train and channel it than try to repress it.

Also, our second favorite pet is a self-domesticated feline that likes to try to gut us when we pet it.

[Hansontoons]

Whether you prefer War of Northern Aggression or Civil War, I have experienced both sides of the view. I will say that the Southern folks are a bit more emphatic on their name for the conflict.

My European forebearers settled north of the Mason-Dixon line. One side showed up in the late 1600's in the Boston area. The other at the start of WWI in northern Iowa. My grandmother told me stories of their crossing- she remembers the ship zig-zagged to avoid the U-boat threat. I have no history of any participation in any local conflicts. I have a distant relative that was collecting family info on the Boston side, but he passed and attempts to contact his widow have not been successful. So the Civil War has never been a serious subject of any family discussions.

My ex's side arrived from Europe and settled south of the Mason-Dixon, not sure when, but the first time I ever mentioned the Civil War I was immediately corrected that it WAS the War of Northern Aggression. Her mother supposedly has a stash of family tree info, I need to ask her about it one day and see if she would allow me to make copies. We are still on a friendly basis.

One of my sisters married into a long-time Texas family. Her mother-in-law has a family lineage chart that hangs in her home office. I have read over it, it is fascinating (to me) to see the family history back to Europe. They too align with the Southern side and speak of the WoNA. They had a family member that owned slaves and participated in the attempt to maintain their way of life. The last footnote on that period is that the person "stood with Lee at Appomattox". There's another bit of history to research- was that actually being there in the same room, same building, same area, or was it figurative- fought on that side so therefore "stood" with Lee at the end.

And to be clear, neither of the Southern sides go around waving the stars and bars while wearing white hoods. One side does drive pickup trucks.

[Bookworm]

I think that's part of what keeps being forgotten, or trodden on in the desire for politically correctness.

The 'Stars and Bars' weren't a sign of slavery. They were a sign of solidarity - just like the original 13 state flag, and the adding of stars as they went along.

I believe that if a KKK member is holding a Confederate flag, they're dishonoring it more than burning a US flag would be.

As an example of how bad the politically correctness has gone, there's a high school here that was named 'John H. Reagan High School' a century ago. Now it's Heights High School, because of carpetbaggers from California and New York who have moved down here for work, and suddenly having a school named after a Confederate Postmaster General is EEEEVIL... The fact that he also served as a US representative -after- the Civil War is completely ignored.

Needless to say, the people that _grew up_ here didn't give a crap about the history and wanted to keep the name. All the people who migrated here were desperate to force the school district to spend all the money on the renaming. Sometimes I wish we could just take everyone from California and push them back there. That state is a poison to the rest of the country. (Mind you, I feel similarly about Austin, TX, so it's obviously my personal opinion only)

[FreeFlier]

We had to change the Jefferson Davis Highway here . . . it was named after him because he pushed the funding to build it through congress back when he was Secretary of War in the mid-1850s.


As far as ancestors . . . great-great-great grandpa lost his ship to the Union Navy early in the war . . . theoretically he gave it to the navy, but he was supposed to either get it back after the war, with cash money for wear & tear, or get cashed out . . . neither happened, and he was never able to get enough money together to own his own ship again.

As far as I know, I have no ancestors that have owned slaves in North America, though a couple were indentured servants at one time or another. (We don't know much from the Olde Country(s), except that the englishman was an accused horse thief.)

--FreeFlier

[Hansontoons]

I think that's part of what keeps being forgotten, or trodden on in the desire for politically correctness.

The 'Stars and Bars' weren't a sign of slavery. They were a sign of solidarity - just like the original 13 state flag, and the adding of stars as they went along.

I believe that if a KKK member is holding a Confederate flag, they're dishonoring it more than burning a US flag would be.

As an example of how bad the politically correctness has gone, there's a high school here that was named 'John H. Reagan High School' a century ago. Now it's Heights High School, because of carpetbaggers from California and New York who have moved down here for work, and suddenly having a school named after a Confederate Postmaster General is EEEEVIL... The fact that he also served as a US representative -after- the Civil War is completely ignored.

Needless to say, the people that _grew up_ here didn't give a crap about the history and wanted to keep the name. All the people who migrated here were desperate to force the school district to spend all the money on the renaming. Sometimes I wish we could just take everyone from California and push them back there. That state is a poison to the rest of the country. (Mind you, I feel similarly about Austin, TX, so it's obviously my personal opinion only)

I did not know Reagan had been renamed. I moved back to Houston earlier this year (after 24 years in Conroe) into the Heights area. A group of long-time residents congregate in a driveway around the corner from my place almost every night. I’ve stopped to visit and they’ve decided to tolerate me since I’ve made the effort to say hello. They do talk often about all the changes in the area, and not all for the good in their view.

Change, whether you like it or not, is inevitable. But I do agree that change should be reasonable and not because “that’s not the way we did it where we came from”.

Peace.

[Bookworm]

Needless to say, the people that _grew up_ here didn't give a crap about the history and wanted to keep the name. All the people who migrated here were desperate to force the school district to spend all the money on the renaming. Sometimes I wish we could just take everyone from California and push them back there. That state is a poison to the rest of the country. (Mind you, I feel similarly about Austin, TX, so it's obviously my personal opinion only)

I did not know Reagan had been renamed. I moved back to Houston earlier this year (after 24 years in Conroe) into the Heights area. A group of long-time residents congregate in a driveway around the corner from my place almost every night. I’ve stopped to visit and they’ve decided to tolerate me since I’ve made the effort to say hello. They do talk often about all the changes in the area, and not all for the good in their view.

Change, whether you like it or not, is inevitable. But I do agree that change should be reasonable and not because “that’s not the way we did it where we came from”.

Peace.

I'm on the other side of 45 from the Heights. Hello, neighbor!