Is it ironic that the finest speech ever delivered in the English language, still well remembered and revered almost 150 years after it was uttered, included the phrase "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here,"...or is that a part of the reason the speech was so great?
Nice speech; only problem is, it's only true if meant toward the Confederate dead. Otherwise, it's a damnable lie. The Federal Army was trying to quash independence, and ultimately succeeded.
You are buying into revisionary nonsense. How can you justify the existence of a state based on freedom for one race and slavery for another? How is it possible for you to argue for its legitimacy based on a social-contract argument, without dissolving into a puddle of shame on the floor?
The South was ruled by a class of essentially feudal lords, oppressing not only blacks but poor whites as well. It was to protect their power that they attempted secession. Are you seriously defending that?
Recall also that the Southern states only had the vast plantations in the first place because of British colonial grants, which enthroned British noblemen over their colonist subjects. My God, do you have no conception of WHY the Southern economy was structured differently from that in the North?
Once again, I'd like to thank the slave power for giving state sovereignty a bad name. Oh well, the fact that it was State sovereignty in the first place was the mischief.
Mastiff, I think you're really going to enjoy Our Enemy, the State. Nock discusses the colonial grant question with respect to the State system of land tenure.
Finally, there's no rule says a body can't give both sides in the Civil War the stink-eye. :)
It's far more complicated than Mastiff is allowing for... but he's essentially right.
But it's amazing to see the rationalizations that have jumped up around the Civil War and the Secession. (Which was most definitely legal at the time.)
I've had a Big-L R0n P4u1 Libertarian harangue me that if Lincoln had obeyed his oath, we'd have 50 states in the USA now all with free trade. (and flying cars and free ponys and free healthcare, woah, wait, that's Mark's line.)
Before Mark laughs too hard: that's because that's the sort of crap he was taught in school.
The concept that we'd certainly not be HERE, just gloriously better, had the South seceded, is quite patently ridicolous, and one need only look at WWI to see that the North and South would have picked opposing sides to ally with.....
Matt: Except it was delivered in the name of tyranny and not liberty...
Tennessee Budd : The Federal Army was trying to quash independence, and ultimately succeeded.
You guys might want to actually check out the Confederate Constitution. For one, it didn't allow Secession, and Davis threatened several states with the force of a centrally-directed Confederate Army if they didn't jump with his program.
The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.
No slave or other person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried 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 slave belongs,. or to whom such service or labor may be due.
In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.
The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States.
The other letters of secession are also worth reading before you make those sorts of comments.
I'm a born-and-bred Southerner. I'm proud of the martial prowness demonstrated by the Civil War, and for the multitude of reasons that the people on either side picked up weapons and fought. On an individual level, it wasn't just about slavery.
But on a governmental level, that's exactly what it was about, and Mastiff might have over-simplified, but he got the basic gist right.
And no, the "freedom" to enslave another person isn't about "Liberty"
I don't censor the comments on this blog, at least damned little. I've banned three, maybe four people in the past, and I've removed the ban on one of them. I do delete spam, but other than that, I let people have their say.
Having said that, here's my position on the Civil War:
Lincoln was elected President. The Southern states were certain that he would abolish slavery, thus ruining them economically. The first shots - for whatever reason, were fired on Ft. Sumter.
I have no doubt that Lincoln behaved tyrannically as President during the war, and violated the Constitution on several occasions, but here's where my inner Pragmatist comes out:
HE WAS RIGHT IN THE END.
Had the South seceded and divided this nation into two antagonistic halves (or more pieces), I am of the opinion that the 20th Century would have been entirely different, and not in a good way. The existence of a UNIFIED UNITED States meant the difference in WWII, and probably WWI as well. I would not be surprised if warfare on this continent would not have been as common as it was in Europe had the the Union fallen.
War sucks. No choices are good in war, there are just less-bad ones. Lincoln guided this nation through the worst period in its history, and in the end we remained a nation, not a gaggle of warring nation-states like Europe.
If you want to debate the Civil War, do it elsewhere. It's over. The Union won. So did the rest of the world.
Kevin, there isn't a single part of your statement I disagree with. However, there is one thing that is not included, and I think should be:
Regardless of the good and bad of the reasons why the Confederacy wished to secede and why the Union wish to prevent their secession, when the Union won the war, every state in the US, then and forevermore in the history of the republic, lost the right to tell the federal government "No, we're not gonna."
I agree absolutely as to the likely outcomes of a divided America. I'm not willing to commit an opinion as to whether they would have been better or worse results than the Eternal Battle Against The Universal State Whose Decrees Must Not Be Denied(tm) that we've been waging ever since, with still no end in sight.
You said it yourself: In war, there are no good decisions, only a choice among bad ones.
I agree completely, Kevin. It was the finest speech every written in the English language. I also agree with your further comments as well as Mastiff's.
And now back to the thread where we don't agree...
Kevin, just one thing. Lincoln was clearly NOT planning on abolishing slavery. He was deeply racist and did not want free blacks coming north. He would have liked shipping them all back to Africa, but it was budgetarily impossible.
However, he would continue tariff policies that were slowly strangling the South economically, and he certainly did intend to close off the plantation owners' last escape hatch as their land wore out - pulling up stakes and moving slaves and all to fresh lands in the west. After all, ending the expansion of slavery was the main point of his campaign platform, both for the Senate in 1858 and for the Presidency in 1860.
Once the South seceded, war was inevitable in the long run. Lincoln would not have allowed the Confederacy to claim Kansas or Nebraska or even Oklahoma without a fight. Even the Copperheads would have come around to fighting to prevent further truncation of the union. And the South would soon have realized that their only options were to fight for the west or sink into obscure poverty. The pigheadedness on both sides about Fort Sumter kicked the war off earlier, but it made no difference in the long run, except to deny both sides time to get their armies organized and trained before they were thrown into battle. (Since the South had far more than their share of the best officers, this gave them an initial advantage. Or maybe not - the North could replace men lost to bungling, the South couldn't, and the North won by attrition.)
Not exactly. The Southern states could've sought permission of Congress to secede (see Article I Section 10).
No state shall, without the consent of Congress, ... enter into any agreement or compact with another state
The South had a legal out, and did not use it - not even an attempt. Between that and the institution of slavery, whatever legitimate complaints they may have had were completely trumped.
Racist he may have been, but Lincoln was most definitely planning to abolish slavery. The whole platform of the Free Soil Party, which became the Republicans, was that slave labor would allow powerful land magnates to immiserate free farmers and craftsmen. The greatest danger was not that slavery would move North, but West, swallowing up the vast amount of open land that served as a check against worker exploitation.
I refer you again to Michael Sandel, "Democracy's Discontent."
On a related point, you guys really, really need to read James C. Scott's latest book, The Art of Not Being Governed.
I was in DC last weekend. I did a monument walk after a movie. It was 1AM when I got to the Lincoln Memorial, and all I could think, standing there, was that he was a complicated man. The most tyrannical American President by almost any yardstick, but also the great liberator. The one who provoked, by design or by his simple existence, the worst war this country has ever fault, and the one who forged the United States into America. He is rightly cursed, and rightly praised. I can start thinking about him, and call him hero then villain, back again, and back again and again. I can argue either side to shrugging silence then switch and do it again, and I still don't know where I come down on it. This is troubling to me, because I am a stubborn, opinionated, and decisive man. I have a stance on everything I've ever bothered to consider, and I only ever argue the way I believe.
With Lincoln though, I just don't know where to come down. He's Schrodinger's President. He really is both sides. He really is both the tyrant and the patriot.
The real problem is that he completely ruined the check on the federal government that the states were meant to survive. The precedents he set were dangerous ones, and everyone has lost liberty since then because of it.
I won't disagree. But had the South seceded, I fully believe that we - both North and South - would have lost a whole lot more than we have.
Maybe all.
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Maybe. Personally, I argue that the staunchly Republican Union that was left after the formation of the CSA would have repealed the Fugitive Slave Act, and unleashed the full force of the US Army in the West in order to keep slavery out of the West. Instead of the (rather fanciful) musings of Harry Turtledove, wherein the North and South ally themselves with various European powers during the wars, I think we would have seen either an uneasy containment of slavery in the South or a repeat of Kansas on a large scale in the West, with border skirmishes along the Mason Dixon. Slavery could never have survived in the long run. It is a completely unsustainable economic system. It's not as bad as socialism, but it's close. Something along the lines of the Cold War would have resulted, with the capitalist industrial north easily outrunning the quasi-feudal Southern economy. Then again, the South had valuable exports, something the Soviets never had.
I think that the American Civil War was a Cold War that turned hot more then anything else. Which makes me wonder about the actual Cold War. Had Truman kept going in 1945, and the American military machine overthrown Stalin, would we discuss whether or not that was the right call? I think so. The nature of historical study is to think about the roads not traveled. It's fun to speculate about what might have been.
Instead of the (rather fanciful) musings of Harry Turtledove, wherein the North and South ally themselves with various European powers during the wars, I think we would have seen either an uneasy containment of slavery in the South
While I agree that Turtledove is fanciful, and I agree that there would have been a race west - and south west into Mexico - that very isolation and containment would have prompted much more opposing alliances.
Slavery could never have survived in the long run. It is a completely unsustainable economic system.
That's a nice talking point.
But so far, it's survived for all of recorded history. We've not seen it's end, and I don't think we will in our lifetime. I think you're not counting that 2 things ( 1) White Christian Males and 2) petroleum) have made it extinct in our experience. But it's still quite in practice in much of the world, and if the moral horror subsides, or the ability to burn petroleum instead of working muscle power...
Slavery isn't "completely unsustainable" by itself. It's only so when there's a moral and a practical component. Steam *might* have superseded the "need" for slaves to work the plantations. But that wouldn't have dealt with the moral implications and vice versa.
Heck, our current economic policy is completely (and obviously) unsustainable. Try explaining that to Obama. Or Mark.
Yet they're both going to insist upon it, damn the consequences. Slaveholders would not have been greatly different, no matter what you see as the obvious failures and inability to sustain would have (and are) brushed aside as not germane to the system.
Heck, our current economic policy is completely (and obviously) unsustainable. Try explaining that to Obama. Or Mark.
Yet they're both going to insist upon it, damn the consequences.
____________
Yep. Just like the Soviets. But the beautiful, wonderful thing about reality is that it has a way of royally slamming into the illusions of those who attempt to argue against it. The market drives out inefficiency, and that would have happened in the South. Like the horse, the slave would have gone from a necessary driver of production to an extravagance of the rich.
You could already see free labor replacing slave labor in hazardous work in the South. Railroads used Irish, because the dangers involved made slave labor incredibly risky. Ditto for working with machinery. Irish are cheap, and it would have only been a matter of time before a planter hired Irish field hands instead of trying to make a slave work any harder then they absolutely had to to avoid a beating. Slavery works for an agricultural economy. Labor in a modern society involves knowledge, and you cannot educate slaves. Slavery in America would never have lasted, Civil War or not. Caught between the pressures of the market, the simmering resentment of poor whites (my ancestors), and the abolitionist political pressure, the institution was doomed.
Slavery in the world exists because there's nothing better. The more development, the less slavery. The main problem is sex slavery, and that is a sticky wicket indeed. Kind of makes you wish for a whole bunch of General Napiers to release upon the world.
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While I agree that Turtledove is fanciful, and I agree that there would have been a race west - and south west into Mexico - that very isolation and containment would have prompted much more opposing alliances.
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Possibly. It's hard to say, considering how far off the beaten path we have to go to consider the question. Ultimately, you bring in a foreign ally to break a stalemate or rescue you. Since no one will enter to rescue a doomed side, the loser has to prove worthy of support. That's what Lee tried to do whenever he entered the North: give the CSA a Saratoga that could bring in European allies. Specifically the CSA wanted the Royal Navy on their side to break the blockade. The issue in this scenario is of course the fact that England was very much against slavery, and I find it very difficult to believe them joining in with the CSA. The US is still a second rate nation at this point, so Britain isn't making any kind of power play. Post Revolution France certainly isn't going to jump in alongside the CSA. The "CSA gains foreign allies" scenario is based on 2 assumptions
1:Geopolitics is like a game of Risk. National attitudes make no difference, you take South America and then ally with Africa and move into North America. Attitudes matter, people matter. The CSA was an international pariah for a reason.
2: Everyone knows the future. If the Europeans had been able to forecast the dominance of America in the 20th century they might have made a spoiler play, but they could not know that a hundred years after Fort Sumter the US Navy would control the world, the European empires would be gone, etc. With no obvious benefit to fomenting a Civil War in a second rate nation, and remembering their various bad experiences at the hands of uppity Americans, the Europeans would have stayed out, as they did. The British don't want a repeat of New Orleans or Yorktown, and the French Army certainly remembers what Haiti did to them.
Slavery could never have survived in the long run. It is a completely unsustainable economic system.
So far as I can tell, slavery survives where, and only where, the need for raw labor, warm bodies, trumps every other economic consideration, where it is the primary limiting factor on development and growth.
This is predicated on the assumption that it's cheaper to pay someone the minimum the market will allow to do X job than to take personal responsibility for making sure he's alive and at least healthy enough to do the work. Yes, he's a slave, if he dies you can always replace him. But that costs money, you can only do that so much before you're losing your shirt.
In other words, the more populated and the more developed a stretch of country becomes, the more slavery becomes economically self-defeating.
That fact that southern plantation owners were looking at moving west suggests that economic factors were already beginning to solve the "slavery problem". To be sure, that was no comfort to the thousands of slaves wanting their freedom right now, rather than in their son's or granddaughter's time.
Moving west... the economy of the American West was predicated on 4 things, so far as I can tell: Cattle, mining, timber and fur.
Cattle and fur: Give slaves guns and (at least in the case of cowhands) horses and send them out over the horizon for days to do their work. How many do you think you'll get back?
Timber: Give slaves axes and send them out into the woods for days or weeks. How many do you think you'll get back?
Mining: Okay, this one could at least theoretically work. Give slaves picks and hammers and send them down a hole, while you guard the entrance. But I still think them having tools to break up rocks would have them escaping out the backside of the mountain pretty quickly, slave riots would take on a whole new terror, and let's not even explore the idea of giving slaves access to dynamite.
Please note that the above considerations are the same regardless of the skin color or ethnicity of the slave.
He is rightly cursed, and rightly praised. I can start thinking about him, and call him hero then villain, back again, and back again and again.
Sounds like Thomas Jefferson... or Andrew Jackson.
Ultimately, you bring in a foreign ally to break a stalemate or rescue you.
Not always. Or they join with you for an advantage in their struggles.
You're right about Lee, and trying to bring in the British, as far as that goes. Yes, that was the attempt. But that's some of the point. Had the war ended, with the CSA in existence, the blockade would be gone. Now there's no chance the CSA will be snuffed out, and you have to start factoring in European politics. Now the CSA counterbalances the USA, they've got the cotton and tobacco and...
Had the Civil War not been fought, or had it been ended with the CSA in existence, other states would have allied with the USA or CSA as part of who their enemies and rivals had allied with or for whom they needed trade goods or the like.
The issue in this scenario is of course the fact that England was very much against slavery, and I find it very difficult to believe them joining in with the CSA.
The anti-slavery activists had been successful, but it wasn't by any means widespread or overwhelming consensus. And politics are politics.
Furthermore, the USA retained the Navy - the Navy that threatened the UK lifeblood of merchant shipping and the Royal Navy. The CSA was no threat in that vein. The USA had the industrialized industries to compete (and in many cases had been stolen from the British) with the UK...
And all of that might pale if France allied with the USA. Or Spain. Or if the USA posed a threat...
Those are the what-ifs, at some point, there would have been offsetting (in political gaming theory) alliances made.
GOF:
So far as I can tell, slavery survives where, and only where, the need for raw labor, warm bodies, trumps every other economic consideration, where it is the primary limiting factor on development and growth.
Or when you find cultures who abase other people and don't see their worth as *people*. (I'm trying hard not to point out some parallels that will cause our resident aphasic fits.)
the more slavery becomes economically self-defeating.
Which doesn't mean it goes away. It's "retconned" to "make sense". Excuses are made. Insistence that it can't be any other way.
That's why the South was never going to end Slavery via the slaveowners deciding they could make more money. It might have been outvoted at some point in the future. Unlikely (even aside from all the protections against that in the CSA laws and government.)
I can't think of a single slave owning system that threw off the shackles without (the threat of) external force, and (some brands of) Christian morality.
Cattle and fur: Give slaves guns and (at least in the case of cowhands) horses and send them out over the horizon for days to do their work. How many do you think you'll get back?
Well, you wouldn't send the slaves - that you don't trust - out to do that work. And I guess it depends on if I make sure their women and children are secured. Or if there's no reliable sanctuary if they run. Just because all jobs might not be viable for forced labor, doesn't mean that the people who wanted slaves wouldn't have insisted on having slaves of some sort.
You might want to look at Australia and what happened with the indigenous aborigines as an example to your question. Forced labor was common well into the 1900s, and (depending on the allegation and the alligator) well into the 1900s.
People found a way to "make it work" to their minds. They might have been deluded, or sick or...
Sure. But don't underestimate the capacity for self-delusion when the end result has been fixed in someone's mind.
Unix-Jedi: I can't think of a single slave owning system that threw off the shackles without (the threat of) external force, and (some brands of) Christian morality.
Not knowing enough about the subject, what threat of external force made Britain abolish slavery?
Sure. But don't underestimate the capacity for self-delusion when the end result has been fixed in someone's mind.
Heh. Climate Change or Chattel Slavery. Like DJ said in the next thread, multiply by zero and add the desired result.
Whoops, I got writing a mite fast. That's the one example I'm aware of where external force wasn't used, instead, it was the external force, based upon the strong morals.
Or when you find cultures who abase other people and don't see their worth as *people*.
Yeah okay. Correct me if I'm wrong, aren't such cultures pretty uniformly imperialistic, attempted conquerors (military or economic) of those around them?
You might want to look at Australia and what happened with the indigenous aborigines as an example to your question. Forced labor was common well into the 1900s, and (depending on the allegation and the alligator) well into the 1900s.
Yeah okay. But still, a situation where low population density is the limiting factor of growth. I see your point, that ways could and would have been found to propagate slavery in the west, at least as long as the population density was low enough to justify it economically.
What I'm saying is that slavery seems to work only in imperialistic cultures or areas of very low population density, and that while it's not a quick or pleasant solution, those issues eventually solve themselves. Populations grow. Empires fall.
In the end, it's all about the money, it's the common denominator of rich and poor alike, regardless of what Marky says. If enough people will be making themselves poorer (an entirely subjective and individual evaluation) by keeping to the "old ways", the "old ways" will give ground. Whether the people made poorer start out as wealthy or poverty stricken only affects how much time it takes for the old ways to give. And in Marky's defense, a person with a dependent family in a highly populated area, with no frontier to escape to, is "held hostage" by economic pressure just as certainly as the more traditional slave whose family is locked up back home while he goes out and works for Massa.
I can't think of a single slave owning system that threw off the shackles without (the threat of) external force, and (some brands of) Christian morality.
That doesn't make it impossible, nor, as we have seen, does Christianity keep you safe from falling into a slave based economy. Christian or not, I suspect it may be dependent on a worldview that says slavery not only devalues the slave, but also the slaver and the slaveholder.
I suspect it may be dependent on a worldview that says slavery not only devalues the slave, but also the slaver and the slaveholder.
Exactly Right.
If enough people will be making themselves poorer (an entirely subjective and individual evaluation) by keeping to the "old ways", the "old ways" will give ground.
Unless the old guard can handicap the race. As they usually do. That's my point. Once you've bought into a debased system, it's very hard to admit, even to yourself, how much you've debased yourself.
So people will continue to propagate the system, largely in order to save their own face.
No matter how economically ruinous it would have been, slavery was not going to change without application of force to the South.
Let's look to the North. Detroit's a good example. How obvious is the failed ideology that has brought Detroit and similar areas low?
And yet, the people in charge there, insist on not just continuing the failed policies, but doubling down on them and attempting to seize the moral high ground against those who demonstrate obvious solutions.
The slaveowners and those who aspired to those heights of society (in their mind), just like the Democrats that run the failed Liberal cities with ruinous taxes and impenetrable bureaucracies now, weren't going to suddenly say as a whole "this is really a bad idea."
If enough people will be making themselves poorer (an entirely subjective and individual evaluation) by keeping to the "old ways", the "old ways" will give ground.
Only if people act rationally in their situation. If not, all bets are off. Don't make the same mistake that Pericles did with the Spartans and assume that the other party will see the problem. (Spartans couldn't attack Athens because of the wall and Athens' vast naval power, and so had no real way of harming Athens except by destroy the countryside around the city. Pericles was convinced that the Spartans would become psychologically worn out and ask for peace talks. It didn't happen that way, Pericles counted on the Spartans to see reason and give up. The Spartans kept waging war.)
The issue in this scenario is of course the fact that England was very much against slavery, and I find it very difficult to believe them joining in with the CSA.
I'm reading The Education of Henry Adams. Adams was the private secretary for his father, Charles Francis Adams, Sr, and stationed with him when his father was the diplomat for Lincoln to England. Adams' view was that officially the British government was neutral, but a number of high ranking people were not, such as British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell, who, by their actions and at times inaction, allowed things like the British shipyard Laird and Sons to build two warships for the Confederacy. It seems cut and dried now, but Adams wasn't so sure at the time, and most of London society seemed to be for the South. British support could have tipped easily in support for the South.
A sad commentary on how far education has sunk in this country is how so many otherwise intelligent people are so certain the so-called "Civil War" was about slavery.
It wasn't. It was about money and power, which states would have that power to rule over the others.
Slavery was the excuse invented later to give a high-sounding moral patina to the invasion of one group of democratic states by another.
Today even people who consider themselves liberty-loving Constitutional conservatives, and who claim to revere the founders of the country, immediately and vehemently trash anyone who won't go along with the bogus narrative imposed by the left.
Hie thee to a library and check out the 30 March 1861 editorial of the New York Times; it expressed the real reason for invading the South.
Slavery was the excuse invented later to give a high-sounding moral patina to the invasion of one group of democratic states by another.
Democratic states? The ones where a black counted 3/5ths of a person for federal purposes, and 0/5th for all others? The ones that had committed rebellion?
Now, I'll admit there would've been no union to succeed the original confederacy had the true defenders of liberty not swallowed hard to compromise with the slave holders. But that was a patch on an irresolvable conflict - it was oil and water from the get-go. It would've been remarkable had it been settled peaceably. And it might have had it not been for Whitney.
Juris: The ones where a black counted 3/5ths of a person for federal purposes
Note that that was a enumeration pushed by the states without many slaves.
They were fine with the slaves having no rights, but they weren't going to let the slaveholders not have to pay taxes on the headcount.
The slave states fought hard for the slaves to be 0/5 for everything.
The slave states fought hard for the slaves to be 0/5 for everything.
Nope. They wanted them counted for representation purposes, otherwise the South would've been "under-represented" in the House and their influence only applicable in the Senate.
Quite simply it was an ugly compromise, but a necessary one to avoid an immediate fracture in the country. The Civil War was all but inevitable from the outset. It might have been avoided if not for the Cotton Gin, which caused an explosion in demand for slaves. Prior to the Gin, large-scale cotton wasn't economically viable even with slaves.
juris_imprudent's grasp of history neatly illustrates the first line of my earlier comment.
First some remedial background:
There were black slaves in both the North and the South (yes, more of them in the South). There were free black people in both the North and the South. Some free black people owned black slaves, in both the North and the South. The debate over slavery was a debate about economics, not morality.
Now to it: in the Constitutional Convention it was decided that each state's representation in the lower house of Congress would depend on its population as determined in the Census.
Northern states wanted to minimize Southern representation, so they argued against counting slaves in the Census. I guess this means that Yankees didn't believe slaves were people at all, right?
Southern states of course argued the opposite -- all slaves should be counted.
The "Three-Fifths Compromise" solved that impasse.
Northern merchants and manufacturers didn't need black slaves because they had white slaves. Indentured servitude was simply limited-term slavery, with a different name.
There was no economic incentive for masters to take care of servants, because the servants would be set free after seven years. So they were underfed and literally worked to death. Fewer than half lived to be free men in America.
But that can't be used as a rhetorical stick to beat up white Southerners, so you won't learn much about that sordid institution in schools.
Northern states wanted high tariffs to finance their infrastructure. Tariffs were collected in ports, and several very busy ports were located in the South. Southern states wanted lower tariffs.
When the Southern states seceded they lowered tariffs, all of which stayed in the South. Northern states couldn't bear to see that money slip from their grasp.
Not only that, Northerners realized that their own ports would lose traffic, as shippers with a choice would do business in Southern ports.
But government imposes onerous taxes upon New-York, none upon New Orleans, and destroys, at the same breath, our means of payment. If the importations of the country are made Southern ports, its exports will go through the same channel. ... With the loss of our foreign trade, what is to become of our public works, conducted at the cost of many hundred millions of dollars, to turn into our harbor the products of the interior? ... There never has been a time since the election when there was so much unity and conviction of purpose as at the present moment. ... We were divided and confused till our pockets were touched. ... Suppose we continue inert and inactive -- will the Confederate States? By no means. They are straining every nerve to gain standing before we move. If we allow the revenue laws to remain untouched, they will have a recognition in every Court in Europe -- all effected by a blunder, which is destroying our prosperity at home as much as it is undermining our position abroad. -- The New York Times, Saturday, March 30, 1861
After the War of Northern Aggression, Northern states limited or prohibited resettlement of former slaves. Not only did Northerners see black people as less human than whites (as did Southerners), but they feared that white unemployment would increase if blacks were allowed to compete equally for jobs.
I've read that the North and South were fundamentally incompatible, and war between them was inevitable. I suspect that's true.
I also read once that America has always had a Yankee problem, and I believe that's right as well. The totalitarian do-gooder impulse to force others to think, speak and live as Yankees wish (all for our own good of course) has been with us since colonial times and continues with us today.
Where is the bastion of leftism in the country today? In the Northeast. (It spread across the Northern states to the west coast as well.)
In which region of the country is it most difficult to keep and bear arms today? You got it -- the Northeast.
We know well how dishonest the left is about the history of arms in America. It's just as dishonest about the root causes of the war of 1861-1865.
As most remedial backgrounds are, it's simplistic.
There were a number of competing issues there, but at the time of the signing and through the ratification, representation wasn't the key concern.
Taxation was. One of the reasons the Articles of Confederation had fallen apart was the inability to finance the debt incurred in the Revolutionary War. That lack of actually paying the debt off had a number of negative effects and ended up directly affecting many "Founding Fathers".
This was a direct and motivating factor to fix the Articles and come up with something far more binding and useful. As a result, allocation of the "several colonies" debt was a huge concern.
The consideration for the census was therefore directly responsible for dividing the debt equally amongst the people. Slaves don't pay taxes. (Or vote, despite what Mark thinks.) So the slaveholders were looking at their states and interests being heavily taxed.
The non-slaveholders were needless to say, fine with allocating most of the debt to the Southern states. Not only did it leave them leeway and lessen their tax issues, it would discomfit the slaveholders, and that was even then a fine idea with most of them.
If slaves were counted at a head apiece, that would shove the preponderance of debt repayment onto the slave states, which meant the biggest slaveholders, who were the "leading men", and the most prominent politicians. Their rivals, in other words.
That tells you right there that the classically-told story that the South wanted full headcounts and the North wanted none to be at odds with self-interest.
Never believe anything at odds with self-interest.
After the War of Northern Aggression
This would have more of a descriptive correctness had the war not started with the Confederates firing the first shot.
Also note where the greatest defeat of the Confederacy was. Gettysburg. Pennsylvania.
That's not exactly "in" the South, you realize.
Your "remedial history" is classic, and what is commonly repeated. As is often the case with the simplified history, it omits a lot of context. But it runs against immediate self-interest, and has more than a fair bit of retconning logic with hindsight built in.
at the time of the signing and through the ratification, representation wasn't the key concern.
The "key" concern. That's a nice bit of sophistry. There wouldn't have been a signing and ratification without getting the states to agree on the subject of representation. On that issue the Northern states didn't want slaves counted at all and the Southern states wanted all of them counted. Negotiations were stalled until the Three-Fifths Compromise, then discussion proceeded on other matters.
That's not revision; that's the actual history.
Playing word games about the first shot is another tool of dishonest discussion.
The fact is that Northern armies invaded Southern States. Would you argue that Hitler didn't invade France, because later in the war British and American troops won the battle for Berlin?
My comment concerned the cause of the war, and I quoted a primary source. I note you didn't even attempt to address it. Again, the War Between the States was about money and power, and about which states would rule over the others.
Lincoln's invasion of the Southern states wasn't an act of statesmanship. It was a repudidiation of the very principle this country was originally founded on:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, ... — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, ... -- The Declaration of Independence
The People of the Southern states concluded that union with the Northern states was no longer in their interests. They left that union and formed another which served them better.
So Northern states decided to force Southerners to accede to their domination by force.
Lincoln's speech about government "of the people, by the people, for the people" was a travesty -- he in fact sought government of the South, by the North, for the North. He believed in freedom for himself and his Northerners, but not for Southerners. In any intellectually honest discussion he would be denouned as the tyrant he was.
But say the Magic Word "slavery", and everyone else is expected to fall silent and accept the judgment of whoever invoked the Magic Word. "Slavery" is similar to "War on Drugs", "War on Terror", and "racist" in that way.
We can probably come up with some other Magic Words intended to silence intelligent discussion rather than facilitate it. How about "Global Warming", "avian flu", "HIV/AIDS" and "H1N1". What do these terms have in common? They are Magic Words invoked to justify greater expanded government, and rule by force by the enlightened few over people who don't accept their exalted vision.
The Gettysburg Address was a nice bit of wordsmithing but honest, informed, free people can't consider it great.
In Unix you may have The Force with you, but not in history.
The "key" concern. That's a nice bit of sophistry.
No, it's reality. You're talking about a period of time that literally covered years and involved literally thousands of people directly. The sophistry, such as there might be,is to look back with the hindsight of history and assign that knowledge to the people looking forward.
Representation was an issue, and there was by no means a single solitary viewpoint. But there was one that was more important than the others, and that was "Don't stick me with the bill."
There wouldn't have been a signing and ratification without getting the states to agree on the subject of representation. On that issue the Northern states didn't want slaves counted at all and the Southern states wanted all of them counted.
This is the simple story that's told, that's true. However, with the census came the bills. With "full counting" came the problems with the hypocrisy of slavery.
In that discussion, should you go research it, you'll also find that there were a great number of other ideas, largely to only count voters. Not women, not children, not Indians, not those who'd decided to hold English citizenship. There were a lot of other proposals, concerns. It wasn't simple, and it wasn't as pretty as the After-School TV Special.
Negotiations were stalled until the Three-Fifths Compromise, then discussion proceeded on other matters.
They were stalled, but they were stalled for many reasons, and the three-fifths compromise was also one needed for ratification. Going back to the home states with a huge part of the tax bill overhanging at that time would not have been popular. It was a compromise, in other words, for far more than 1 reason.
Playing word games about the first shot is another tool of dishonest discussion.
What's dishonest about the fact that the Confederates fired the first shot?
The fact is that Northern armies invaded Southern States. Would you argue that Hitler didn't invade France, because later in the war British and American troops won the battle for Berlin?
No, but apparently you'd argue that Germany didn't invade Poland. Or something. I'm really not sure what your point there is. South Carolina was trying to rally the other Slave states, who hadn't rallied immediately behind them and seceded, and decided that there was enough talking and attacked.
Period. The Confederacy initated hostilities. Everything after that starts to fall into "Shit happens in war".
The Japanese had no concept that trying to crippled the US Pacific fleet would mean that cities would be vaporized almost instantly 4 years later.
South Carolina was worried that talking would mean they'd be stuck pretty much on their own - so they decided to start with the violence.
My comment concerned the cause of the war, and I quoted a primary source. I note you didn't even attempt to address it.
I didn't disagree with it.
But no matter what they might have wanted, thought, or done, the fact is that in order to force the issue, South Carolina *started shooting*.
Again, the War Between the States was about money and power, and about which states would rule over the others.
I see nowhere where I've disagreed with that.
And..
The People of the Southern states concluded that union with the Northern states was no longer in their interests. They left that union and formed another which served them better.
Yep. I agree with you there, mostly. (When there weren't enough joining the Union fast enough, SC decided to start a little war.) But, I disagree with Juris' point above - I understand what he's saying there, but I think, as you just said, the states could withdraw at any time, just as you said.
So Northern states decided to force Southerners to accede to their domination by force.
They might have decided it, but they got cut off at the pass when SC started the party at Fort Sumter.
Lincoln's speech about government "of the people, by the people, for the people" was a travesty -- he in fact sought government of the South, by the North, for the North.
So, let's just be clear here. You believe in Negro slavery?
He believed in freedom for himself and his Northerners, but not for Southerners.
And freedom for those slaves? They don't count?
Fuck that right in the ear.
There is no freedom that allows you to enslave someone else. None. Saying that the South deserved "Freedom" to enslave others means you can take your "intellectually honest" argument and chain it and beat it like you'd like to beat your slaves. It's meaningless when you make intellectually absurd and insulting arguments like that.
In any intellectually honest discussion he would be denouned as the tyrant he was.
"Tyrant". I'll save what I originally was going to say, and just say, obviously, you don't know the meaning of the word.
The Gettysburg Address was a nice bit of wordsmithing but honest, informed, free people can't consider it great.
I'm a free person, and it's not just great, it might be the best speech ever given. Your reaction is more of a description of you than Lincoln.
If not, answer it. You're the one claiming that Lincoln was a "Tyrant", and that the Southern Rebellion was about freedom.
Go fuck yourself, and answer the fucking question, coward.
You're a coward if you will not integrate your beliefs and stand up and say what you mean. Be proud of your worldview. Defend it. Don't puss out just because it's unpopular. Where would the South be if they'd worried about popularity?
Do you believe in Negro Slavery?
If you do not, then your worldview is schizophrenic.
I'm pretty sure the answer is obvious from your anger and your rapid retreat.
Remedial History, coward.
Lincoln's speech about government "of the people, by the people, for the people" was a travesty
Travesty. Who was closer to government of the people, by the people, and for the people?
Who was a Tyrant?
Lincoln was many things. Flawed. He made many mistakes. But he was no tyrant.
Lincoln worked to re-integrate the South, to not demonize those who had fought, to not use force to destroy them.
It wasn't perfect. But a glance at 1920's Germany should show why Lincoln's methods - and followed by Johnson - was so much superior to the tyrannical alternatives.
One final note: The Civil War didn't really start in 1861 at Fort Sumter. It started about 1854 in Kansas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas
There was fault on both sides - John Brown was a mass-murderer who should have been buried in an unmarked grave and forgotten, not made an abolitionist hero - but it also seems clear that southerners started the violence in Kansas, not to mention in the Senate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Smith_Brooks
The fact is, the South wanted Kansas bad enough to kill for it. If South Carolina hadn't started the war, I'm sure it would have started in the west, with a group like the Border Ruffians raiding into Kansas or other free territory and Union troops following them home to Missouri. And once the war started, as Kevin says, shit happens. The obvious and logical way for the Union to win would have been to strike at Richmond, VA, which was the Confederacy's only industrial area as well as the capital. The Union probably still couldn't get closer than Manassas, but when relatively small Union armies proved they could gobble up Confederate territory west of the Appalachians, the North would still have stumbled into the strategy of taking the Tennessee and Mississipi rivers and then driving east through Georgia to the sea to divide and gut the South.
Yes, Lincoln violated the Southerners rights. I just don't get stirred up about the rights of men who enslave other men. Yes, Sherman's march to the sea was one long war crime by today's standards, but pretty unremarkable compared to how most European armies of the 19th Century behaved. Not to mention Rebel irregulars like Quantrill's Bushwackers, er, Raiders.
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Is it ironic that the finest speech ever delivered in the English language, still well remembered and revered almost 150 years after it was uttered, included the phrase "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here,"...or is that a part of the reason the speech was so great?
Except it was delivered in the name of tyranny and not liberty...
Nice speech; only problem is, it's only true if meant toward the Confederate dead. Otherwise, it's a damnable lie. The Federal Army was trying to quash independence, and ultimately succeeded.
Ye gods.
You are buying into revisionary nonsense. How can you justify the existence of a state based on freedom for one race and slavery for another? How is it possible for you to argue for its legitimacy based on a social-contract argument, without dissolving into a puddle of shame on the floor?
The South was ruled by a class of essentially feudal lords, oppressing not only blacks but poor whites as well. It was to protect their power that they attempted secession. Are you seriously defending that?
Recall also that the Southern states only had the vast plantations in the first place because of British colonial grants, which enthroned British noblemen over their colonist subjects. My God, do you have no conception of WHY the Southern economy was structured differently from that in the North?
Once again, I'd like to thank the slave power for giving state sovereignty a bad name. Oh well, the fact that it was State sovereignty in the first place was the mischief.
Mastiff, I think you're really going to enjoy Our Enemy, the State. Nock discusses the colonial grant question with respect to the State system of land tenure.
Finally, there's no rule says a body can't give both sides in the Civil War the stink-eye. :)
It's far more complicated than Mastiff is allowing for... but he's essentially right.
But it's amazing to see the rationalizations that have jumped up around the Civil War and the Secession. (Which was most definitely legal at the time.)
I've had a Big-L R0n P4u1 Libertarian harangue me that if Lincoln had obeyed his oath, we'd have 50 states in the USA now all with free trade. (and flying cars and free ponys and free healthcare, woah, wait, that's Mark's line.)
Before Mark laughs too hard: that's because that's the sort of crap he was taught in school.
The concept that we'd certainly not be HERE, just gloriously better, had the South seceded, is quite patently ridicolous, and one need only look at WWI to see that the North and South would have picked opposing sides to ally with.....
Matt: Except it was delivered in the name of tyranny and not liberty...
Tennessee Budd : The Federal Army was trying to quash independence, and ultimately succeeded.
You guys might want to actually check out the Confederate Constitution. For one, it didn't allow Secession, and Davis threatened several states with the force of a centrally-directed Confederate Army if they didn't jump with his program.
The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.
No slave or other person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried 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 slave belongs,. or to whom such service or labor may be due.
In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp
The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp
The other letters of secession are also worth reading before you make those sorts of comments.
I'm a born-and-bred Southerner. I'm proud of the martial prowness demonstrated by the Civil War, and for the multitude of reasons that the people on either side picked up weapons and fought. On an individual level, it wasn't just about slavery.
But on a governmental level, that's exactly what it was about, and Mastiff might have over-simplified, but he got the basic gist right.
And no, the "freedom" to enslave another person isn't about "Liberty"
Let me interject here.
I don't censor the comments on this blog, at least damned little. I've banned three, maybe four people in the past, and I've removed the ban on one of them. I do delete spam, but other than that, I let people have their say.
Having said that, here's my position on the Civil War:
Lincoln was elected President. The Southern states were certain that he would abolish slavery, thus ruining them economically. The first shots - for whatever reason, were fired on Ft. Sumter.
I have no doubt that Lincoln behaved tyrannically as President during the war, and violated the Constitution on several occasions, but here's where my inner Pragmatist comes out:
HE WAS RIGHT IN THE END.
Had the South seceded and divided this nation into two antagonistic halves (or more pieces), I am of the opinion that the 20th Century would have been entirely different, and not in a good way. The existence of a UNIFIED UNITED States meant the difference in WWII, and probably WWI as well. I would not be surprised if warfare on this continent would not have been as common as it was in Europe had the the Union fallen.
War sucks. No choices are good in war, there are just less-bad ones. Lincoln guided this nation through the worst period in its history, and in the end we remained a nation, not a gaggle of warring nation-states like Europe.
If you want to debate the Civil War, do it elsewhere. It's over. The Union won. So did the rest of the world.
Kevin, there isn't a single part of your statement I disagree with. However, there is one thing that is not included, and I think should be:
Regardless of the good and bad of the reasons why the Confederacy wished to secede and why the Union wish to prevent their secession, when the Union won the war, every state in the US, then and forevermore in the history of the republic, lost the right to tell the federal government "No, we're not gonna."
I agree absolutely as to the likely outcomes of a divided America. I'm not willing to commit an opinion as to whether they would have been better or worse results than the Eternal Battle Against The Universal State Whose Decrees Must Not Be Denied(tm) that we've been waging ever since, with still no end in sight.
You said it yourself: In war, there are no good decisions, only a choice among bad ones.
Even with previewing, I still managed to misspell "secede."
Sheesh. Some people's kids...
(Fixed. - Ed.)
I agree completely, Kevin. It was the finest speech every written in the English language. I also agree with your further comments as well as Mastiff's.
And now back to the thread where we don't agree...
And now back to the threadS where we don't agree...
Fixed it for you.
Well, I say this is a contender for the best speech ever given in any language.
Kevin, just one thing. Lincoln was clearly NOT planning on abolishing slavery. He was deeply racist and did not want free blacks coming north. He would have liked shipping them all back to Africa, but it was budgetarily impossible.
However, he would continue tariff policies that were slowly strangling the South economically, and he certainly did intend to close off the plantation owners' last escape hatch as their land wore out - pulling up stakes and moving slaves and all to fresh lands in the west. After all, ending the expansion of slavery was the main point of his campaign platform, both for the Senate in 1858 and for the Presidency in 1860.
Once the South seceded, war was inevitable in the long run. Lincoln would not have allowed the Confederacy to claim Kansas or Nebraska or even Oklahoma without a fight. Even the Copperheads would have come around to fighting to prevent further truncation of the union. And the South would soon have realized that their only options were to fight for the west or sink into obscure poverty. The pigheadedness on both sides about Fort Sumter kicked the war off earlier, but it made no difference in the long run, except to deny both sides time to get their armies organized and trained before they were thrown into battle. (Since the South had far more than their share of the best officers, this gave them an initial advantage. Or maybe not - the North could replace men lost to bungling, the South couldn't, and the North won by attrition.)
(Which was most definitely legal at the time.)
Not exactly. The Southern states could've sought permission of Congress to secede (see Article I Section 10).
The South had a legal out, and did not use it - not even an attempt. Between that and the institution of slavery, whatever legitimate complaints they may have had were completely trumped.
Markm,
Racist he may have been, but Lincoln was most definitely planning to abolish slavery. The whole platform of the Free Soil Party, which became the Republicans, was that slave labor would allow powerful land magnates to immiserate free farmers and craftsmen. The greatest danger was not that slavery would move North, but West, swallowing up the vast amount of open land that served as a check against worker exploitation.
I refer you again to Michael Sandel, "Democracy's Discontent."
On a related point, you guys really, really need to read James C. Scott's latest book, The Art of Not Being Governed.
I was in DC last weekend. I did a monument walk after a movie. It was 1AM when I got to the Lincoln Memorial, and all I could think, standing there, was that he was a complicated man. The most tyrannical American President by almost any yardstick, but also the great liberator. The one who provoked, by design or by his simple existence, the worst war this country has ever fault, and the one who forged the United States into America. He is rightly cursed, and rightly praised. I can start thinking about him, and call him hero then villain, back again, and back again and again. I can argue either side to shrugging silence then switch and do it again, and I still don't know where I come down on it. This is troubling to me, because I am a stubborn, opinionated, and decisive man. I have a stance on everything I've ever bothered to consider, and I only ever argue the way I believe.
With Lincoln though, I just don't know where to come down. He's Schrodinger's President. He really is both sides. He really is both the tyrant and the patriot.
The real problem is that he completely ruined the check on the federal government that the states were meant to survive. The precedents he set were dangerous ones, and everyone has lost liberty since then because of it.
The precedents he set were dangerous ones, and everyone has lost liberty since then because of it.
I won't disagree. But had the South seceded, I fully believe that we - both North and South - would have lost a whole lot more than we have.
Maybe all.
I won't disagree. But had the South seceded, I fully believe that we - both North and South - would have lost a whole lot more than we have.
Maybe all.
__________
Maybe. Personally, I argue that the staunchly Republican Union that was left after the formation of the CSA would have repealed the Fugitive Slave Act, and unleashed the full force of the US Army in the West in order to keep slavery out of the West. Instead of the (rather fanciful) musings of Harry Turtledove, wherein the North and South ally themselves with various European powers during the wars, I think we would have seen either an uneasy containment of slavery in the South or a repeat of Kansas on a large scale in the West, with border skirmishes along the Mason Dixon. Slavery could never have survived in the long run. It is a completely unsustainable economic system. It's not as bad as socialism, but it's close. Something along the lines of the Cold War would have resulted, with the capitalist industrial north easily outrunning the quasi-feudal Southern economy. Then again, the South had valuable exports, something the Soviets never had.
I think that the American Civil War was a Cold War that turned hot more then anything else. Which makes me wonder about the actual Cold War. Had Truman kept going in 1945, and the American military machine overthrown Stalin, would we discuss whether or not that was the right call? I think so. The nature of historical study is to think about the roads not traveled. It's fun to speculate about what might have been.
Instead of the (rather fanciful) musings of Harry Turtledove, wherein the North and South ally themselves with various European powers during the wars, I think we would have seen either an uneasy containment of slavery in the South
While I agree that Turtledove is fanciful, and I agree that there would have been a race west - and south west into Mexico - that very isolation and containment would have prompted much more opposing alliances.
Slavery could never have survived in the long run. It is a completely unsustainable economic system.
That's a nice talking point.
But so far, it's survived for all of recorded history. We've not seen it's end, and I don't think we will in our lifetime. I think you're not counting that 2 things ( 1) White Christian Males and 2) petroleum) have made it extinct in our experience. But it's still quite in practice in much of the world, and if the moral horror subsides, or the ability to burn petroleum instead of working muscle power...
Slavery isn't "completely unsustainable" by itself. It's only so when there's a moral and a practical component. Steam *might* have superseded the "need" for slaves to work the plantations. But that wouldn't have dealt with the moral implications and vice versa.
Heck, our current economic policy is completely (and obviously) unsustainable. Try explaining that to Obama. Or Mark.
Yet they're both going to insist upon it, damn the consequences. Slaveholders would not have been greatly different, no matter what you see as the obvious failures and inability to sustain would have (and are) brushed aside as not germane to the system.
Heck, our current economic policy is completely (and obviously) unsustainable. Try explaining that to Obama. Or Mark.
Yet they're both going to insist upon it, damn the consequences.
____________
Yep. Just like the Soviets. But the beautiful, wonderful thing about reality is that it has a way of royally slamming into the illusions of those who attempt to argue against it. The market drives out inefficiency, and that would have happened in the South. Like the horse, the slave would have gone from a necessary driver of production to an extravagance of the rich.
You could already see free labor replacing slave labor in hazardous work in the South. Railroads used Irish, because the dangers involved made slave labor incredibly risky. Ditto for working with machinery. Irish are cheap, and it would have only been a matter of time before a planter hired Irish field hands instead of trying to make a slave work any harder then they absolutely had to to avoid a beating. Slavery works for an agricultural economy. Labor in a modern society involves knowledge, and you cannot educate slaves. Slavery in America would never have lasted, Civil War or not. Caught between the pressures of the market, the simmering resentment of poor whites (my ancestors), and the abolitionist political pressure, the institution was doomed.
Slavery in the world exists because there's nothing better. The more development, the less slavery. The main problem is sex slavery, and that is a sticky wicket indeed. Kind of makes you wish for a whole bunch of General Napiers to release upon the world.
________________________________
While I agree that Turtledove is fanciful, and I agree that there would have been a race west - and south west into Mexico - that very isolation and containment would have prompted much more opposing alliances.
_______________________
Possibly. It's hard to say, considering how far off the beaten path we have to go to consider the question. Ultimately, you bring in a foreign ally to break a stalemate or rescue you. Since no one will enter to rescue a doomed side, the loser has to prove worthy of support. That's what Lee tried to do whenever he entered the North: give the CSA a Saratoga that could bring in European allies. Specifically the CSA wanted the Royal Navy on their side to break the blockade. The issue in this scenario is of course the fact that England was very much against slavery, and I find it very difficult to believe them joining in with the CSA. The US is still a second rate nation at this point, so Britain isn't making any kind of power play. Post Revolution France certainly isn't going to jump in alongside the CSA. The "CSA gains foreign allies" scenario is based on 2 assumptions
1:Geopolitics is like a game of Risk. National attitudes make no difference, you take South America and then ally with Africa and move into North America. Attitudes matter, people matter. The CSA was an international pariah for a reason.
2: Everyone knows the future. If the Europeans had been able to forecast the dominance of America in the 20th century they might have made a spoiler play, but they could not know that a hundred years after Fort Sumter the US Navy would control the world, the European empires would be gone, etc. With no obvious benefit to fomenting a Civil War in a second rate nation, and remembering their various bad experiences at the hands of uppity Americans, the Europeans would have stayed out, as they did. The British don't want a repeat of New Orleans or Yorktown, and the French Army certainly remembers what Haiti did to them.
Slavery could never have survived in the long run. It is a completely unsustainable economic system.
So far as I can tell, slavery survives where, and only where, the need for raw labor, warm bodies, trumps every other economic consideration, where it is the primary limiting factor on development and growth.
This is predicated on the assumption that it's cheaper to pay someone the minimum the market will allow to do X job than to take personal responsibility for making sure he's alive and at least healthy enough to do the work. Yes, he's a slave, if he dies you can always replace him. But that costs money, you can only do that so much before you're losing your shirt.
In other words, the more populated and the more developed a stretch of country becomes, the more slavery becomes economically self-defeating.
That fact that southern plantation owners were looking at moving west suggests that economic factors were already beginning to solve the "slavery problem". To be sure, that was no comfort to the thousands of slaves wanting their freedom right now, rather than in their son's or granddaughter's time.
Moving west... the economy of the American West was predicated on 4 things, so far as I can tell: Cattle, mining, timber and fur.
Cattle and fur: Give slaves guns and (at least in the case of cowhands) horses and send them out over the horizon for days to do their work. How many do you think you'll get back?
Timber: Give slaves axes and send them out into the woods for days or weeks. How many do you think you'll get back?
Mining: Okay, this one could at least theoretically work. Give slaves picks and hammers and send them down a hole, while you guard the entrance. But I still think them having tools to break up rocks would have them escaping out the backside of the mountain pretty quickly, slave riots would take on a whole new terror, and let's not even explore the idea of giving slaves access to dynamite.
Please note that the above considerations are the same regardless of the skin color or ethnicity of the slave.
He is rightly cursed, and rightly praised. I can start thinking about him, and call him hero then villain, back again, and back again and again.
Sounds like Thomas Jefferson... or Andrew Jackson.
Britt:
Ultimately, you bring in a foreign ally to break a stalemate or rescue you.
Not always. Or they join with you for an advantage in their struggles.
You're right about Lee, and trying to bring in the British, as far as that goes. Yes, that was the attempt. But that's some of the point. Had the war ended, with the CSA in existence, the blockade would be gone. Now there's no chance the CSA will be snuffed out, and you have to start factoring in European politics. Now the CSA counterbalances the USA, they've got the cotton and tobacco and...
Had the Civil War not been fought, or had it been ended with the CSA in existence, other states would have allied with the USA or CSA as part of who their enemies and rivals had allied with or for whom they needed trade goods or the like.
The issue in this scenario is of course the fact that England was very much against slavery, and I find it very difficult to believe them joining in with the CSA.
The anti-slavery activists had been successful, but it wasn't by any means widespread or overwhelming consensus. And politics are politics.
Furthermore, the USA retained the Navy - the Navy that threatened the UK lifeblood of merchant shipping and the Royal Navy. The CSA was no threat in that vein. The USA had the industrialized industries to compete (and in many cases had been stolen from the British) with the UK...
And all of that might pale if France allied with the USA. Or Spain. Or if the USA posed a threat...
Those are the what-ifs, at some point, there would have been offsetting (in political gaming theory) alliances made.
GOF:
So far as I can tell, slavery survives where, and only where, the need for raw labor, warm bodies, trumps every other economic consideration, where it is the primary limiting factor on development and growth.
Or when you find cultures who abase other people and don't see their worth as *people*. (I'm trying hard not to point out some parallels that will cause our resident aphasic fits.)
the more slavery becomes economically self-defeating.
Which doesn't mean it goes away. It's "retconned" to "make sense". Excuses are made. Insistence that it can't be any other way.
That's why the South was never going to end Slavery via the slaveowners deciding they could make more money. It might have been outvoted at some point in the future. Unlikely (even aside from all the protections against that in the CSA laws and government.)
I can't think of a single slave owning system that threw off the shackles without (the threat of) external force, and (some brands of) Christian morality.
Cattle and fur: Give slaves guns and (at least in the case of cowhands) horses and send them out over the horizon for days to do their work. How many do you think you'll get back?
Well, you wouldn't send the slaves - that you don't trust - out to do that work. And I guess it depends on if I make sure their women and children are secured. Or if there's no reliable sanctuary if they run. Just because all jobs might not be viable for forced labor, doesn't mean that the people who wanted slaves wouldn't have insisted on having slaves of some sort.
You might want to look at Australia and what happened with the indigenous aborigines as an example to your question. Forced labor was common well into the 1900s, and (depending on the allegation and the alligator) well into the 1900s.
People found a way to "make it work" to their minds. They might have been deluded, or sick or...
Sure. But don't underestimate the capacity for self-delusion when the end result has been fixed in someone's mind.
Unix-Jedi: I can't think of a single slave owning system that threw off the shackles without (the threat of) external force, and (some brands of) Christian morality.
Not knowing enough about the subject, what threat of external force made Britain abolish slavery?
Sure. But don't underestimate the capacity for self-delusion when the end result has been fixed in someone's mind.
Heh. Climate Change or Chattel Slavery. Like DJ said in the next thread, multiply by zero and add the desired result.
perl:
Whoops, I got writing a mite fast. That's the one example I'm aware of where external force wasn't used, instead, it was the external force, based upon the strong morals.
Or when you find cultures who abase other people and don't see their worth as *people*.
Yeah okay. Correct me if I'm wrong, aren't such cultures pretty uniformly imperialistic, attempted conquerors (military or economic) of those around them?
You might want to look at Australia and what happened with the indigenous aborigines as an example to your question. Forced labor was common well into the 1900s, and (depending on the allegation and the alligator) well into the 1900s.
Yeah okay. But still, a situation where low population density is the limiting factor of growth. I see your point, that ways could and would have been found to propagate slavery in the west, at least as long as the population density was low enough to justify it economically.
What I'm saying is that slavery seems to work only in imperialistic cultures or areas of very low population density, and that while it's not a quick or pleasant solution, those issues eventually solve themselves. Populations grow. Empires fall.
In the end, it's all about the money, it's the common denominator of rich and poor alike, regardless of what Marky says. If enough people will be making themselves poorer (an entirely subjective and individual evaluation) by keeping to the "old ways", the "old ways" will give ground. Whether the people made poorer start out as wealthy or poverty stricken only affects how much time it takes for the old ways to give. And in Marky's defense, a person with a dependent family in a highly populated area, with no frontier to escape to, is "held hostage" by economic pressure just as certainly as the more traditional slave whose family is locked up back home while he goes out and works for Massa.
I can't think of a single slave owning system that threw off the shackles without (the threat of) external force, and (some brands of) Christian morality.
That doesn't make it impossible, nor, as we have seen, does Christianity keep you safe from falling into a slave based economy. Christian or not, I suspect it may be dependent on a worldview that says slavery not only devalues the slave, but also the slaver and the slaveholder.
GOF:
I suspect it may be dependent on a worldview that says slavery not only devalues the slave, but also the slaver and the slaveholder.
Exactly Right.
If enough people will be making themselves poorer (an entirely subjective and individual evaluation) by keeping to the "old ways", the "old ways" will give ground.
Unless the old guard can handicap the race. As they usually do. That's my point. Once you've bought into a debased system, it's very hard to admit, even to yourself, how much you've debased yourself.
So people will continue to propagate the system, largely in order to save their own face.
No matter how economically ruinous it would have been, slavery was not going to change without application of force to the South.
Let's look to the North. Detroit's a good example. How obvious is the failed ideology that has brought Detroit and similar areas low?
And yet, the people in charge there, insist on not just continuing the failed policies, but doubling down on them and attempting to seize the moral high ground against those who demonstrate obvious solutions.
The slaveowners and those who aspired to those heights of society (in their mind), just like the Democrats that run the failed Liberal cities with ruinous taxes and impenetrable bureaucracies now, weren't going to suddenly say as a whole "this is really a bad idea."
If enough people will be making themselves poorer (an entirely subjective and individual evaluation) by keeping to the "old ways", the "old ways" will give ground.
Only if people act rationally in their situation. If not, all bets are off. Don't make the same mistake that Pericles did with the Spartans and assume that the other party will see the problem. (Spartans couldn't attack Athens because of the wall and Athens' vast naval power, and so had no real way of harming Athens except by destroy the countryside around the city. Pericles was convinced that the Spartans would become psychologically worn out and ask for peace talks. It didn't happen that way, Pericles counted on the Spartans to see reason and give up. The Spartans kept waging war.)
The issue in this scenario is of course the fact that England was very much against slavery, and I find it very difficult to believe them joining in with the CSA.
I'm reading The Education of Henry Adams. Adams was the private secretary for his father, Charles Francis Adams, Sr, and stationed with him when his father was the diplomat for Lincoln to England. Adams' view was that officially the British government was neutral, but a number of high ranking people were not, such as British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell, who, by their actions and at times inaction, allowed things like the British shipyard Laird and Sons to build two warships for the Confederacy. It seems cut and dried now, but Adams wasn't so sure at the time, and most of London society seemed to be for the South. British support could have tipped easily in support for the South.
A sad commentary on how far education has sunk in this country is how so many otherwise intelligent people are so certain the so-called "Civil War" was about slavery.
It wasn't. It was about money and power, which states would have that power to rule over the others.
Slavery was the excuse invented later to give a high-sounding moral patina to the invasion of one group of democratic states by another.
Today even people who consider themselves liberty-loving Constitutional conservatives, and who claim to revere the founders of the country, immediately and vehemently trash anyone who won't go along with the bogus narrative imposed by the left.
Hie thee to a library and check out the 30 March 1861 editorial of the New York Times; it expressed the real reason for invading the South.
Slavery was the excuse invented later to give a high-sounding moral patina to the invasion of one group of democratic states by another.
Democratic states? The ones where a black counted 3/5ths of a person for federal purposes, and 0/5th for all others? The ones that had committed rebellion?
Now, I'll admit there would've been no union to succeed the original confederacy had the true defenders of liberty not swallowed hard to compromise with the slave holders. But that was a patch on an irresolvable conflict - it was oil and water from the get-go. It would've been remarkable had it been settled peaceably. And it might have had it not been for Whitney.
Juris:
The ones where a black counted 3/5ths of a person for federal purposes
Note that that was a enumeration pushed by the states without many slaves.
They were fine with the slaves having no rights, but they weren't going to let the slaveholders not have to pay taxes on the headcount.
The slave states fought hard for the slaves to be 0/5 for everything.
The slave states fought hard for the slaves to be 0/5 for everything.
Nope. They wanted them counted for representation purposes, otherwise the South would've been "under-represented" in the House and their influence only applicable in the Senate.
Quite simply it was an ugly compromise, but a necessary one to avoid an immediate fracture in the country. The Civil War was all but inevitable from the outset. It might have been avoided if not for the Cotton Gin, which caused an explosion in demand for slaves. Prior to the Gin, large-scale cotton wasn't economically viable even with slaves.
juris_imprudent's grasp of history neatly illustrates the first line of my earlier comment.
First some remedial background:
There were black slaves in both the North and the South (yes, more of them in the South). There were free black people in both the North and the South. Some free black people owned black slaves, in both the North and the South. The debate over slavery was a debate about economics, not morality.
Now to it: in the Constitutional Convention it was decided that each state's representation in the lower house of Congress would depend on its population as determined in the Census.
Northern states wanted to minimize Southern representation, so they argued against counting slaves in the Census. I guess this means that Yankees didn't believe slaves were people at all, right?
Southern states of course argued the opposite -- all slaves should be counted.
The "Three-Fifths Compromise" solved that impasse.
Northern merchants and manufacturers didn't need black slaves because they had white slaves. Indentured servitude was simply limited-term slavery, with a different name.
There was no economic incentive for masters to take care of servants, because the servants would be set free after seven years. So they were underfed and literally worked to death. Fewer than half lived to be free men in America.
But that can't be used as a rhetorical stick to beat up white Southerners, so you won't learn much about that sordid institution in schools.
Northern states wanted high tariffs to finance their infrastructure. Tariffs were collected in ports, and several very busy ports were located in the South. Southern states wanted lower tariffs.
When the Southern states seceded they lowered tariffs, all of which stayed in the South. Northern states couldn't bear to see that money slip from their grasp.
Not only that, Northerners realized that their own ports would lose traffic, as shippers with a choice would do business in Southern ports.
After the War of Northern Aggression, Northern states limited or prohibited resettlement of former slaves. Not only did Northerners see black people as less human than whites (as did Southerners), but they feared that white unemployment would increase if blacks were allowed to compete equally for jobs.
I've read that the North and South were fundamentally incompatible, and war between them was inevitable. I suspect that's true.
I also read once that America has always had a Yankee problem, and I believe that's right as well. The totalitarian do-gooder impulse to force others to think, speak and live as Yankees wish (all for our own good of course) has been with us since colonial times and continues with us today.
Where is the bastion of leftism in the country today? In the Northeast. (It spread across the Northern states to the west coast as well.)
In which region of the country is it most difficult to keep and bear arms today? You got it -- the Northeast.
We know well how dishonest the left is about the history of arms in America. It's just as dishonest about the root causes of the war of 1861-1865.
With the history lesson out of the way:
Despite the fact that it was written and delivered by a tyrant, the Gettysburg Address is indeed a fine speech.
First some remedial background:
As most remedial backgrounds are, it's simplistic.
There were a number of competing issues there, but at the time of the signing and through the ratification, representation wasn't the key concern.
Taxation was. One of the reasons the Articles of Confederation had fallen apart was the inability to finance the debt incurred in the Revolutionary War. That lack of actually paying the debt off had a number of negative effects and ended up directly affecting many "Founding Fathers".
This was a direct and motivating factor to fix the Articles and come up with something far more binding and useful. As a result, allocation of the "several colonies" debt was a huge concern.
The consideration for the census was therefore directly responsible for dividing the debt equally amongst the people. Slaves don't pay taxes. (Or vote, despite what Mark thinks.) So the slaveholders were looking at their states and interests being heavily taxed.
The non-slaveholders were needless to say, fine with allocating most of the debt to the Southern states. Not only did it leave them leeway and lessen their tax issues, it would discomfit the slaveholders, and that was even then a fine idea with most of them.
If slaves were counted at a head apiece, that would shove the preponderance of debt repayment onto the slave states, which meant the biggest slaveholders, who were the "leading men", and the most prominent politicians. Their rivals, in other words.
That tells you right there that the classically-told story that the South wanted full headcounts and the North wanted none to be at odds with self-interest.
Never believe anything at odds with self-interest.
After the War of Northern Aggression
This would have more of a descriptive correctness had the war not started with the Confederates firing the first shot.
Also note where the greatest defeat of the Confederacy was. Gettysburg. Pennsylvania.
That's not exactly "in" the South, you realize.
Your "remedial history" is classic, and what is commonly repeated. As is often the case with the simplified history, it omits a lot of context. But it runs against immediate self-interest, and has more than a fair bit of retconning logic with hindsight built in.
inability to finance ^ [ and service] the debt incurred in the Revolutionary War.
The "key" concern. That's a nice bit of sophistry. There wouldn't have been a signing and ratification without getting the states to agree on the subject of representation. On that issue the Northern states didn't want slaves counted at all and the Southern states wanted all of them counted. Negotiations were stalled until the Three-Fifths Compromise, then discussion proceeded on other matters.
That's not revision; that's the actual history.
Playing word games about the first shot is another tool of dishonest discussion.
The fact is that Northern armies invaded Southern States. Would you argue that Hitler didn't invade France, because later in the war British and American troops won the battle for Berlin?
My comment concerned the cause of the war, and I quoted a primary source. I note you didn't even attempt to address it. Again, the War Between the States was about money and power, and about which states would rule over the others.
Lincoln's invasion of the Southern states wasn't an act of statesmanship. It was a repudidiation of the very principle this country was originally founded on:
The People of the Southern states concluded that union with the Northern states was no longer in their interests. They left that union and formed another which served them better.
So Northern states decided to force Southerners to accede to their domination by force.
Lincoln's speech about government "of the people, by the people, for the people" was a travesty -- he in fact sought government of the South, by the North, for the North. He believed in freedom for himself and his Northerners, but not for Southerners. In any intellectually honest discussion he would be denouned as the tyrant he was.
But say the Magic Word "slavery", and everyone else is expected to fall silent and accept the judgment of whoever invoked the Magic Word. "Slavery" is similar to "War on Drugs", "War on Terror", and "racist" in that way.
We can probably come up with some other Magic Words intended to silence intelligent discussion rather than facilitate it. How about "Global Warming", "avian flu", "HIV/AIDS" and "H1N1". What do these terms have in common? They are Magic Words invoked to justify greater expanded government, and rule by force by the enlightened few over people who don't accept their exalted vision.
The Gettysburg Address was a nice bit of wordsmithing but honest, informed, free people can't consider it great.
In Unix you may have The Force with you, but not in history.
Kevin, a humble request -- would you consider moving to a blog engine that allows editing posts?
No.
HaolScan promises to "upgrade" me, like it or not, to the new "Echo" comment system. Sometime.
When that will be and what that will actually entail, I don't know.
The "key" concern. That's a nice bit of sophistry.
No, it's reality. You're talking about a period of time that literally covered years and involved literally thousands of people directly. The sophistry, such as there might be,is to look back with the hindsight of history and assign that knowledge to the people looking forward.
Representation was an issue, and there was by no means a single solitary viewpoint. But there was one that was more important than the others, and that was "Don't stick me with the bill."
There wouldn't have been a signing and ratification without getting the states to agree on the subject of representation. On that issue the Northern states didn't want slaves counted at all and the Southern states wanted all of them counted.
This is the simple story that's told, that's true. However, with the census came the bills. With "full counting" came the problems with the hypocrisy of slavery.
In that discussion, should you go research it, you'll also find that there were a great number of other ideas, largely to only count voters. Not women, not children, not Indians, not those who'd decided to hold English citizenship. There were a lot of other proposals, concerns. It wasn't simple, and it wasn't as pretty as the After-School TV Special.
Negotiations were stalled until the Three-Fifths Compromise, then discussion proceeded on other matters.
They were stalled, but they were stalled for many reasons, and the three-fifths compromise was also one needed for ratification. Going back to the home states with a huge part of the tax bill overhanging at that time would not have been popular. It was a compromise, in other words, for far more than 1 reason.
Playing word games about the first shot is another tool of dishonest discussion.
What's dishonest about the fact that the Confederates fired the first shot?
The fact is that Northern armies invaded Southern States. Would you argue that Hitler didn't invade France, because later in the war British and American troops won the battle for Berlin?
No, but apparently you'd argue that Germany didn't invade Poland. Or something. I'm really not sure what your point there is. South Carolina was trying to rally the other Slave states, who hadn't rallied immediately behind them and seceded, and decided that there was enough talking and attacked.
Period. The Confederacy initated hostilities. Everything after that starts to fall into "Shit happens in war".
The Japanese had no concept that trying to crippled the US Pacific fleet would mean that cities would be vaporized almost instantly 4 years later.
South Carolina was worried that talking would mean they'd be stuck pretty much on their own - so they decided to start with the violence.
My comment concerned the cause of the war, and I quoted a primary source. I note you didn't even attempt to address it.
I didn't disagree with it.
But no matter what they might have wanted, thought, or done, the fact is that in order to force the issue, South Carolina *started shooting*.
Again, the War Between the States was about money and power, and about which states would rule over the others.
I see nowhere where I've disagreed with that.
And..
The People of the Southern states concluded that union with the Northern states was no longer in their interests. They left that union and formed another which served them better.
Yep. I agree with you there, mostly. (When there weren't enough joining the Union fast enough, SC decided to start a little war.) But, I disagree with Juris' point above - I understand what he's saying there, but I think, as you just said, the states could withdraw at any time, just as you said.
So Northern states decided to force Southerners to accede to their domination by force.
They might have decided it, but they got cut off at the pass when SC started the party at Fort Sumter.
Lincoln's speech about government "of the people, by the people, for the people" was a travesty -- he in fact sought government of the South, by the North, for the North.
So, let's just be clear here. You believe in Negro slavery?
He believed in freedom for himself and his Northerners, but not for Southerners.
And freedom for those slaves? They don't count?
Fuck that right in the ear.
There is no freedom that allows you to enslave someone else. None. Saying that the South deserved "Freedom" to enslave others means you can take your "intellectually honest" argument and chain it and beat it like you'd like to beat your slaves. It's meaningless when you make intellectually absurd and insulting arguments like that.
In any intellectually honest discussion he would be denouned as the tyrant he was.
"Tyrant". I'll save what I originally was going to say, and just say, obviously, you don't know the meaning of the word.
The Gettysburg Address was a nice bit of wordsmithing but honest, informed, free people can't consider it great.
I'm a free person, and it's not just great, it might be the best speech ever given. Your reaction is more of a description of you than Lincoln.
We're done.
F*ck you.
Mariner:
We're done.
F*ck you.
So, Yes, you do support Negro slavery?
If not, answer it. You're the one claiming that Lincoln was a "Tyrant", and that the Southern Rebellion was about freedom.
Go fuck yourself, and answer the fucking question, coward.
You're a coward if you will not integrate your beliefs and stand up and say what you mean. Be proud of your worldview. Defend it. Don't puss out just because it's unpopular. Where would the South be if they'd worried about popularity?
Do you believe in Negro Slavery?
If you do not, then your worldview is schizophrenic.
I'm pretty sure the answer is obvious from your anger and your rapid retreat.
Remedial History, coward.
Lincoln's speech about government "of the people, by the people, for the people" was a travesty
Travesty. Who was closer to government of the people, by the people, and for the people?
Who was a Tyrant?
Lincoln was many things. Flawed. He made many mistakes. But he was no tyrant.
Lincoln worked to re-integrate the South, to not demonize those who had fought, to not use force to destroy them.
It wasn't perfect. But a glance at 1920's Germany should show why Lincoln's methods - and followed by Johnson - was so much superior to the tyrannical alternatives.
You need to go look up Tyrant.
And freedom.
Remedial English.
You don't know what they mean.
One final note: The Civil War didn't really start in 1861 at Fort Sumter. It started about 1854 in Kansas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas
There was fault on both sides - John Brown was a mass-murderer who should have been buried in an unmarked grave and forgotten, not made an abolitionist hero - but it also seems clear that southerners started the violence in Kansas, not to mention in the Senate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Smith_Brooks
The fact is, the South wanted Kansas bad enough to kill for it. If South Carolina hadn't started the war, I'm sure it would have started in the west, with a group like the Border Ruffians raiding into Kansas or other free territory and Union troops following them home to Missouri. And once the war started, as Kevin says, shit happens. The obvious and logical way for the Union to win would have been to strike at Richmond, VA, which was the Confederacy's only industrial area as well as the capital. The Union probably still couldn't get closer than Manassas, but when relatively small Union armies proved they could gobble up Confederate territory west of the Appalachians, the North would still have stumbled into the strategy of taking the Tennessee and Mississipi rivers and then driving east through Georgia to the sea to divide and gut the South.
Yes, Lincoln violated the Southerners rights. I just don't get stirred up about the rights of men who enslave other men. Yes, Sherman's march to the sea was one long war crime by today's standards, but pretty unremarkable compared to how most European armies of the 19th Century behaved. Not to mention Rebel irregulars like Quantrill's Bushwackers, er, Raiders.
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