Good post.

I would add an "In the fourth place..." to wit, it would have been prohibitively expensive to transport roughly of 5 million blacks from the United States to Africa. Expensive to the tune of $250 million dollars or therebouts. And that's just for passage on a freighter, essentially a backwards middle passage. Transporting the freemen and recently freed slaves as though they were actual human beings could have doubled that cost.

And all of this assumes that 5 million people were willingly going to get on ships and sail of to God knows where. With very few exceptions no African in America in 1865 had ever seen Africa. The problems inherant in forcibly deporting 5 million unwilling people would have been tremendous.

All of this after America (collectively) had just spent something between $8 and $10 billion on the prosecution of the war and suffered something like a million casualties.

Colonizationism was a crazy f*ucking idea under the best of circumstances. Following thew Civil War it was literally an impossibility.

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...Old Europe, a once-dominant region now reduced to sucking at the geopolitical teat of America... they spent the better part of the last millennium conquering the world and taking the good stuff home with them... And what do they get for their troubles? Ungrateful colonies demanding their independence. And after you taught them how to play cricket!...

-Jon Stewart

I've read some of the debates of the 1862 yankee congress, and if this was 1862 then I'm not sure that slavery would be the issue yet. I have read that the US promised to pay slave owners in "loyal" States to send slaves into the US Army, and it's kind of hard for me to picture how you can pay for slaves and have them fight against slavery when they themselves are slaves. And in 1862 the yankees were still clinging to the hope of colonization, and the yankee congress was discussing the possibility (or rather impossibility) of rounding up all the negroes and shipping them away.

Anyway ... I'm a Virginian, and I could never take part in what yankees did.

A bargain at twice the price...

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"Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves." ~ Lord Byron

Nevermind

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...Old Europe, a once-dominant region now reduced to sucking at the geopolitical teat of America... they spent the better part of the last millennium conquering the world and taking the good stuff home with them... And what do they get for their troubles? Ungrateful colonies demanding their independence. And after you taught them how to play cricket!...

-Jon Stewart

Union had Zouaves, while both sides had them the Union kept their uniforms throughout the war, the Confederates did not.

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And I think I'd be a Blockade runner, I heard they did all right.

Though I doubt if anyone really gives a damn.

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There was nothing 'cool' about the Zouaves uniforms. They should have been shot for just wearing that crap.

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"Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves." ~ Lord Byron

Slavery had been an issue since the Declaration of Independance was written and ratified.

With the passage of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 the stage for the future sectional argument over slavery was set.

By 1854 with the Kansas-Nebraska Act's nullification the Missouri Compromise (1820) and Compromise of 1850 prohibitions against extending slavery into newly admited states and the subsequent emergence of the Republican North and Democratic South the nation was primed politically for war.

Google any of the proper nouns in this post and you'll see that by 1862 slavery was already a very entrenched issue and literally the cause of the Civil War.

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...Old Europe, a once-dominant region now reduced to sucking at the geopolitical teat of America... they spent the better part of the last millennium conquering the world and taking the good stuff home with them... And what do they get for their troubles? Ungrateful colonies demanding their independence. And after you taught them how to play cricket!...

-Jon Stewart

If you're suggesting that the Declaration's "all men are created equal" regards racial equality or slavery, I completely disagree.


Sort of ... the US Constitution protected the States' right to slavery, yankees turned against this aspect of the US Constitution, and that justified secession. But I believe that the Southern States were attacked for seceding, not for having slaves. And I believe that the US still had slavery in 1862. Does it make sense that a country with slavery was fighting a war against slavery?

I'm not suggesting that at all.

I'm suggesting that slavery was a devisive issue dating back to the nation's founding and that even then it was clear that eventually it would be something that would lead to a fight. If you read the paapers of Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Jay, and many other of the most influential founding fathers you'll see the slavery issue pop up again and again.

Sort of.

Nothing justified secession. As Lincoln said, the Constitution provided for a more perfect Union, membership in which was legally binding and perpetual. The Constitution nowhere provides for the option of secession and it certainly doesn't provided for secession complete with a state's right to assume control or possession of all Federal properties and installations within a given state.

The southern states weren't attacked for seceding but rather in self defense after southern troops prevented the resuply of Ft. Sumpter and later took the Fort under fire. The government of the United States preserved the union in the face of an attack by domestic enemies. Nothing more, nothing less.

And I never said that the Civil War was a war against slavery. I said that slavery was the cause of the war.

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...Old Europe, a once-dominant region now reduced to sucking at the geopolitical teat of America... they spent the better part of the last millennium conquering the world and taking the good stuff home with them... And what do they get for their troubles? Ungrateful colonies demanding their independence. And after you taught them how to play cricket!...

-Jon Stewart

I disagree. If a contract is broken, then it is no longer binding. For instance, if I agree to pay you to cut the grass, and you don't cut the grass, then I am not longer obliged to pay you, and the deal is off. Likewise, when yankees ratified a Constitution which protected the right to slavery, and then turned against the right to slavery, specifically defying that part of the US Constitution which said that runaway slaves must be returned, then they broke the contract, and the deal was off. Even the federalist Daniel Webster said that the South had a right to secede if the North defied the Constitution in such a manner.

The US Constitution enumerates federal powers, not States' rights. Since it says nothing about secession, then it does not prohibit secession. Several States, including my State of Virginia, declared when ratifying the US Constitution that the delegated federal powers may be resumed. And besides, the Declaration of Independence says that the right to alter/abolish government is unalienable, and that specifically means secession.

No, South Carolinians were not domestic enemies of the US they were separate from the US, and they attacked a foreign fort within their sovereign territory.

Wasn't there a deal over Sumpter that the South would not attack and the North would not reinforce, and then yankees sent in reinforcements and the South attacked? Yankees always seem to think that they can make a deal and defy it and that the other party is still bound to uphold his end.



Some folks were saying that they would fight for the North to fight against slavery, or that they would not fight for the South and fight for slavery ... it was my intent to question whether in 1862 the war was over slavery.

I don't know if we expect the other party to uphold their end so much as we know we can kick their asses into doing what they're told. The south being a case in point.

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...Old Europe, a once-dominant region now reduced to sucking at the geopolitical teat of America... they spent the better part of the last millennium conquering the world and taking the good stuff home with them... And what do they get for their troubles? Ungrateful colonies demanding their independence. And after you taught them how to play cricket!...

-Jon Stewart

That's nonsense. Most of the original thirteen states had set up the right to secession in their articles of confederation when the colonies joined together as a union.

It was implicitly stipulated that they had the right to break away from the union if they felt it was in the states best interests.

Lincoln changed all that by winning the civil war.

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"Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves." ~ Lord Byron

What a typical yankee response ... first trying to assert that the North was in the right and that it was a war of Southern aggression ... LOL ... and then being reduced to claiming "we can kick their asses", as if might makes right.

I suggest you take a look at the confederate constitution we had prior to the U.S. Constitution being adopted, called the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. That document included this language:

(Emphasis added.) There was no right of secession under the Articles of Confederation any more than there is under the Constitution; indeed, the Articles went one step further and implicitly banned unilateral secession by any state. The Constitution does not. However, given that the right of one part of a nation to dissolve its connection with the rest and go its separate ways has never been recognized as legitimate, all such desires requiring the acquiescence of the main body, whether acquired peacefully or otherwise, the Constitution would have had to state unequivocally that a right of secession DOES exist. The default position is not that it does, but that it does not.

Lincoln merely clarified the question. There were also changes made in the Constitution and in the way the U.S. defends itself after the war to prevent a recurrence. We no longer use a militia system of self-defense, because the seceding states' militia became the Confederate army.