Altra_Shadowstalker posted:

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Ok, nevermind the fact that the South attacked Fort Sumpter,

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Altra_Shadowstalker posted:

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So why was slavery and the production based on it, such a big issue that the North fought to destroy the very core of what the country stood for, in the name of preserving it?

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Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
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It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Ptilk posted:

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Your summation of the US before the civil war is flawed. It wasn't created as a loose conglomeration of different nations, it was created as a union of like minded people who happened to live in widely divergent locations and terrain whose dream of government and freedom for the average man linked them into a nation.

The COUNTRY was created, as said so eloquently above by Lincoln, to insure the freedom and equality of the common man. It was the duty and obligation of all citizens of that country to protect and cherish that.

When some citizens decided they would rather take what they want from others, ignore the founding tenets of their country, and spit upon the sacrifice of so many who died to create it, then it was the obligation of all other citizens to stop that from happening.

Slavery was the root of the problem, but the war didn't happen to free them. The war happened to keep obscenely wealthy oligarchs from creating a fiefdom that fit their vision of serfdom and oppression to maintain their immense land holdings at the cost of the common man. Slavery was only the most heinous symptom of that problem, not the problem in and of itself.

The US Constitution does not allow any parties of it to secede. It supplanted and wholly replaced the articles of confederation, which called for a loose alliance of separate sovereign nations. It is a Constitution of all people in all states that all have the same rights as every other citizen. Some of the citizens, even a majority of them, can not decide to take away the rights of others in their state and take the whole state into a different form of government. They do NOT have that right. All citizens everywhere are citizens of the USA.

Talk of secession is talk of high treason and the most despicable betrayal of all those who gave their lives to form the USA.

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__Bonk__ posted:

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Brother_Tempus posted:

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Altra_Shadowstalker posted:

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Ok, nevermind the fact that the South attacked Fort Sumpter,

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Actually Lincoln provoked the attack by lying to the the people of the North and South Carolina. For weeks before the Ft. Sumter incident he publicly stated that he would abandon Ft. Sumter [ Source - Providence Daily Post - 1861 ]

And while the official story presented by Lincoln was the ships he promised not to send were laden with food and supplies, they were in fact warships.

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Altra_Shadowstalker posted:

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So why was slavery and the production based on it, such a big issue that the North fought to destroy the very core of what the country stood for, in the name of preserving it?

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Brother Tedious posted:

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Actually slavery had very little to do about getting the North into war. It was about crony capitalism ( Thw Whig "American System" ) and the high tariffs placed on the South so that businesses in the North were protected from competition abroad.

Lincoln's acknowledges this in his Innaugual Address

"The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. "

For the South, the slavery issue was a constitutional issue. Article IV, Section 2 ( before its repeal by the 13th Amendment) stated

"No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

The use of "nullification" by Northern States to the Fugitive Slave Act which re-enforced the Constitution was the straw for the South since the Northern States were illegally confiscating private property ans wrong as that was becuase of the immorality of slavery but one has to think in the times when this happened to understand the causes of the Civil War...

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Kjarhall posted:

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Yeah, he should have sent cruise ships to pick up soldiers.

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Tych2 posted:

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Your side lost BT get over it.

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GrilledCheez posted:

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The South were evil oppressors and needed to be destroyed. Everything about their cause was backward and wrong, and like al evil it was eventually destroyed and things put right by the protectors of truth, freedom, and the american way.

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GrilledCheez posted:

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The South were evil oppressors and needed to be destroyed.

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GrilledCheez posted:

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Everything about their cause was backward and wrong

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Groucho48 posted:

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Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
.
.
.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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Walker_ID posted:

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just about every major power eventually fractures and splits into separate places....history has shown us that the US will be no different....all the civil war did was delay the inevitable

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Brother_Tempus posted:

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Walker_ID posted:

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just about every major power eventually fractures and splits into separate places....history has shown us that the US will be no different....all the civil war did was delay the inevitable

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The Civil War was the first sign that the Federal Government had ambitions of Empire

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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The problem was what to do about the west. If the south could have seceeded and disclaimed any claim to the west it could have happened. It would have been a cowardly thing to do to all the slaves but the U.S. government obviously has a long history of being cowardly about defending people it claims to protect.

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Sin_of_Onin posted:

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Saying the Declearation applies to blacks was a huge human rights statement for his time.

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Our movement may be one of a few days duration and full of pleasure—and it may be one of severe conflict and death to me. Not my will, but thine O God, be done. If it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing—perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt.

But, my dear wife, when I know that with my own joys I lay down nearly all of yours, and replace them in this life with cares and sorrows—when, after having eaten for long years the bitter fruit of orphanage myself, I must offer it as their only sustenance to my dear little children—is it weak or dishonorable, while the banner of my purpose floats calmly and proudly in the breeze, that my unbounded love for you, my darling wife and children, should struggle in fierce, though useless, contest with my love of country.

Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield.