A Fiscal Quarrel

[Gary G]

http://takimag.com/article/a_fiscal_quarrel_called_the_civil_war

[subdjoe]

Well, we know how the apologists for St. Abe will respond to this well laid out piece:

SLAVERY!!!

PERPETUAL UNION!!!

That is the whole of their case against Secession, and their justification of why St. Abe was invading SC and the others which had left the Union.

[Brewster]

Just more Lost Cause SCV BS from the usual loser sources.

[williamlayton]

It's a view. I don't agree but it's a view.
Blessings

[Gary G]

Subjoe,
Sure, some won't agree. They prefer the 6th grade government propaganda that thousands of northern white men left their homes and their livelihoods to risk their very lives, to go to a place they had never been, to save people they did not even know, from a fate they had only heard about. 

[williamlayton]

Kinda reminds me of Korea and Viet Nam---Guadacanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Saipan, a few other.
Blessings

[ironfoot]

That article is so wrong it is hard to know where to start.

The author doesn't appear to have any credentials as an expert on the Civil War.:
http://takimag.com/contributor/Devika%20Patel/244

Here was one of the comments to the article:
"A well-written article.  Too bad the author knows almost nothing about the cause of the Civil War. Ms. Patel, please search the following declarations of secession for mentions of the word "tariff", "duty", or "tax" and see how many matches you get:"
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-w...
"It used to be much more difficult to refute nonsense like this article, but the Internet makes it OH SO EASY."



"Was the Morrill Tariff the Reason Southern States Seceded? No, the secession crisis really began in late 1860, and was sparked by the election of Abraham Lincoln. It is true that mentions of the "Morrill bill," as the tariff was known before it became law, appeared during the secession convention in Georgia in November 1860. But mentions of the proposed tariff law were a peripheral issue to the much larger issue of slavery and the election of Lincoln."
http://history1800s.about.com/od/civilwar/f/morill-tariff-civil-war.htm


Lincoln's anti slavery views were well known as result of the Lincoln/Douglas debates and Lincoln's Coopers Union speech. Lincoln was elected on an anti-slavery Republican platform. Lincoln was elected President of the whole country, not just the North. The South would not abide by the results of the presidential election, and engaged in armed revolt.  The North fought to preserve the Union and representative democracy. The South fought to perpetuate it's significant investment in "property" in  the form of human slaves.

I don't have any credentials as an expert on the Civil War either, which is why I provide cites for my declarations:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%E2%80%93Douglas_debates_of_1858

http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/cooper.htm

http://www.cprr.org/Museum/Ephemera/Republican_Platform_1860.html

http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html

http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html

http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html

http://americancivilwar.com/documents/index.html

http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm

http://www.filibustercartoons.com/CSA.htm

Lincoln's last speech:
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/last.htm
"For the first time in a public setting, Lincoln expressed his support for black suffrage. This statement incensed John Wilkes Booth, a member of the audience, who vowed, "That is the last speech he will make." A white supremacist and Confederate activist, Booth made good on his threat three days later."



"Libertarian historian and economist Thomas DiLorenzo asserts that the tariff was the primary cause of the Civil War. Nearly all Civil War historians disagree. Allan Nevins and James M. McPherson downplay the significance of the tariff dispute, arguing that it was peripheral to the issue of slavery. They note that slavery dominated the secessionist declarations, speeches, and pamphlets. Nevins also points to the argument of Alexander Stephens, who disputed Toombs' claims about the severity of the Morrill tariff. Though initially a unionist, Stephens would later cite slavery as the "cornerstone" reason behind his support of the secessionist cause."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_tariff

[BUGEYE]

but the slaves were so "happy".  how could the war have been about them?

[Brewster]

3 of my great-great grandfathers enlisted in the Union army, left their homes and families and marched off a 1000 plus miles to fight the secessionists.  I doubt that any of them had ever seen a black man prior to their service.  They were Irish protestants from Antrim Co and came to the US in the 1830's.

Bottom line is that it didn't matter why they fought.  They did.  And they won.  The Lost Cause bunch and the SCV can blow all the smoke they care to about the causes of the war and the brutality with which it was fought.  The Rebs lost and that's all that mattered to my ancestors, and to me.

[williamlayton]

I agree that  the protective trariffs of the early 1820's were harsh and overbearing but those corrections were completed by the end of the 1820's and at the time of the beginning of the Civil War the South had some of the lowest taxes in the nation.
DiLarenzo and, well, all Libertarian thought is a lot of rose colored glasses. It is romantic to say individual liberty. The end results of this is anarchy.
Now lets see how anarchy survives in a real world. Lets look to history.
No man is an Island---none can survive without others--stand alone or die is a death wish.
Pleople will band together, then tribes become armies and armies nations and nations---well here we go again.
A Republic is only as stable as the ties that bind it. Break it apart and here we go again.
The Civil war was about the Republic. The slavery issue was a dieng ember only fanned to a flame by self-centered/serving individuals who propogandized the "OLD SOUTH" as an ends to meet their desires. They killed the South--a few who would choose wealth from human slavery over a Republic that did not want it.
You boys that wish to glamorize the "Old Dominion" are too late--it is gone and well it should be.
Blessings

[Gary G]

DiLarenzo and, well, all Libertarian thought is a lot of rose colored glasses. It is romantic to say individual liberty. The end results of this is anarchy.

William, it appears that you, like many, confuse the Libertarian with the Libertine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertine).
The basic belief of a libertarian is that God gave us life and property and that we should do what is best with them while causing no harm to others. How is this different from Jefferson or Christianity? Admittedly, some libertarians do not believe in God and call these natural rights. Elitists (most government slugs) would say that the common people do not have enough sense to make wise decisions and they, the enlightened, should make them for us; and thus, they would say, Lincoln was right to murder his own people to keep the ruling class in power over us, or we would surely disintegrate and destroy ourselves as you say. The noble lie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_lie) is accepted by them. Leo Strauss was the father of the Neocons.

[williamlayton]

Gary
I say that because I take their own view of liberty to the eventual end of their thought.
Blessings

[DannyD]

I would like to thank all the northern blue state Yankee's for the country we have today.




                         The best Yankee's live at 401 National Ave.  Winchester Virginia 22601  "Google it"

[Casull]

A white supremacist and Confederate activist, Booth made good on his threat three days later."

Now that is hilarious.  Lincoln was a "white supremacist", as were most white folks in those days.  Sort of shows the bias of the author.

[Brewster]

LMAO@DannyD.  Your own state went blue.

[williamlayton]

No one had a lock on not being prejudiced.
Blessings