Actually, they weren't. The Democrats of the south simply managed to cloak their fight for slavery behind a viel of "states rights" and "small government". they did a good job of it too. Republicans, on the other hand, stuck to conservative ideals by insisting that no man, woman, or child should be kept in bondage.

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Success is measured in blood; yours or your enemy's.

Oh and incidentally ...

I chose the North. I have a great deal of admiration for Lincoln. And despite my support of state's rights and dislike of the federal government, I have trouble sympathizing with the South ... who only had a problem with the federal government in regards to slavery, and only threw their big hissy fit after the election of 1860 didn't go their way. Bad precedent. If states were able to secede from the Union every time an election didn't go their way, we'd have 50 little countries and the USA would have never existed.

Queshank

Hmm. Methinks you're attempting to apply modern definitions of terms retroactively.

In fact, simply reading the Republican Party Platform of 1860 ... with it's support of Congress using appropriations for "improvemens" are "justified by the obligations of Government to protect the lives and property of its citizens". And it's support of taxation and using economic policy to secure "to the working men liberal wages, to agriculture remunerating prices, to mechanics and manufacturers an adequate reward for their skill, labor and enterprise" ... could almost be considered Democratic party planks today.

Oh and let's not forget about how they were "... opposed to any change in our Naturalization Laws or any State legislation by which the rights of our citizenship hitherto accorded to immigrants from foreign lands shall be abridged or impaired; and in favor of giving a full and efficient protection to the rights of all classes of citizens, whether native or naturalized, both at home and abroad."

They sound like damned socialists!

Queshank

Wait a minute, since when have liberals been screaming about "state's rights" and "small government"? No man woman or child being kept in bondage is very much a liberal point of view. Conservatives even tried to use religion to justify their morally bankrupt ideas and terrorist behavior.

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Is our children learning? -George W. Bush

"I think—tide turning—see, as I remember—I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of—it's easy to see a tide turn—did I say those words?"—Washington, D.C., June 14, 2006

"[T]he illiteracy level of our children are appalling."—Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004

Not being American, it doesn't have the same resonance for me....but I voted for the union.

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England has no eternal friends and no eternal enemies, only eternal interests - Palmerston

Absolutely correct, mawg !!!!

Also, someone should have ask the question; ' Why has the animosity of the War Between the States' lasted so long'?

IMO, it is because we Southerns are the only citizens of these now United States who have ever been attacked by and killed by our own government to forcibly break the will, steal the land and access to our resources by our own government....and then requisition it all for over 100 years.

Frankly, that pissed off a lot of folks down here. They've told their children and they've all told theirs, all about it down through the generations.

......and we're ready to take it all back now.

It's colder than a witches booby up north right now. Chilly down South too.

Could I interest ya'll in a little patch of sunshine?

It's gonna cost ya'.

When someone says "liberal", individual rights is the first thing that pops up my mind. Did republicans back then call themselves mostly liberal or mostly conservative (whatever conservative may mean).

What animosity?

You might have a point if it was 1868 instead of 2008, but the fact of the matter is that there is absolutely nobody left alive from that time. From that time we've intermingled with them damn Yankee's and moved into their states. So what exactly qualifies you as a true southern? Just living in a southern state? Birth in a southern state? Blood ties leading to the confederacy?


Again though, if anyone is still pissed off about the Civil War I'm sure they're a very very very very small minority.

Take what back?

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I don't pretend to know everything, educate me, and I'll try to educate you. Shouting matches and insults aren't going to convince me.

Bill Maher said something I've thought was both profound and entertaining as hell a while ago.

Paraphrasing from a couple years old memory.

In response to a "conservative" southerner about him criticizing the people still claiming Gore won the 2000 election.

"Tell you what, we'll get over the 2000 election when you get over the election of 1860."

Heh. I still smiled typing that out.

Queshank

The Republicans were radicals back then, supporting government intervention in the marketplace, deficit spending, public financing of railroads, and a little later breaking up big business trusts and introducing the estate tax to soak the rich.

Now they just stand for deficit spending, but it's good to know some things never change.

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“The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine.”

Senator Thad Cochran, Mississippi (R)
on McCain

“I decided I didn’t want this guy anywhere near a trigger.”
Senator Pete Domenici, New Mexico (R)
on McCain

“My anger did not help my campaign ... People don’t like angry candidates very much.”

McCain on McCain

I think "Internal Improvements" was the catchphrase of the day for republicans back then. Damns, bridges, roads, canals, railroads, harbors, there never was a public works project they didn't think should be publicly funded. It's no accident that so many prominent republicans of the civil war era were railroad lawyers since the railroads spent so much time in court fighting to get and keep those grants of public land and money.

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The most important political office is that of private citizen.
Louis D. Brandeis - First Jewish Supreme Court Justice

Neither. I'd avert the entire war by giving Congress a video tour of modern day Detroit.

Hundreds of thousands of lives saved.

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"Compassionate Conservatism"?!?! That is a stupid phrase. Conservatism is inherently compassionate. It is liberalism that is cruel for the sake of maintaining a constituency.

I don't get it, then again I'm a southern.

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I don't pretend to know everything, educate me, and I'll try to educate you. Shouting matches and insults aren't going to convince me.

I'm just saying that given such information, they might tend to come up with a better, less violent, compromise solution.

Perhaps something involving Liberia being 10x the size it turned out to be.

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"Compassionate Conservatism"?!?! That is a stupid phrase. Conservatism is inherently compassionate. It is liberalism that is cruel for the sake of maintaining a constituency.

For the North- absolutely. I have no use for those who think they have the right to enslave others just in order to enrich themselves.

Gem

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There is no political solution to our troubled evolution.

"Reality, the left-wing liberal conspiracy. "
Credited to Angry American.