To those who say that the Civil War was about "State's Rights"...please answer me...

What rights of the states were being violated by the Federal Government that warranted secession?

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Sani-Hut: Serving the Jewish Community since 1933.

“The South will Rise Again, not by war nor opposition to anything, but by taking its rightful place as the wealthiest, most cultured, most honorable and most dignified section of the greatest nation on the Earth.”

Wrong Again

I feel that this is well-reasoned document concerning the reasons the Civil War occurred. Many people think the Civil War of 1860-1865 was fought over one issue alone, slavery. Nothing could actually be further from the truth. The War Between the States began because the South demanded States' rights and were not getting them.

The Congress at that time heavily favored the industrialized northern states to the point of demanding that the South sell is cotton and other raw materials only to the factories in the north, rather than to other countries. The Congress also taxed the finished materials that the northern industries produced heavily, making finished products that the South wanted, unaffordable. The Civil War should not have occurred. If the Northern States and their representatives in Congress had only listened to the problems of the South, and stopped these practices that were almost like the taxation without representation of Great Britain, then the Southern states would not have seceded and the war would not have occurred.

I know for many years, we have been taught that the Civil War was all about the abolition of slavery, but this truly did not become a major issue, with the exception of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, until after the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, when Abraham Lincoln decided to free the slaves in the Confederate States in order to punish those states for continuing the war effort. The war had been in progress for two years by that time.

Most southerners did not even own slaves nor did they own plantations. Most of them were small farmers who worked their farms with their families. They were fighting for their rights. They were fighting to maintain their lifestyle and their independence the way they wanted to without the United States Government dictating to them how they should behave.

Why are we frequently taught then, that the Civil War, War of Northern Aggression, War Between the States, or whatever you want to call it, was solely about slavery? That is because the history books are usually written by the winners of a war and this war was won by the Union. However, after following my family around since I was just a year old to Civil War Living History scenarios in Gettysburg and elsewhere, I have listened to both sides of the story, from those portraying historical figures, both Union and Confederate. Through listening to these people and also reading many different books, including some of the volumes of The Official Records of the Civil War, Death in September, The Insanity of It All, Every Day Life During the Civil War, and many others, I have come to the conclusion that the Civil War was about much more than abolishing the institution of slavery.

It was more about preserving the United States and protecting the rights of the individual, the very tenets upon which this country was founded. I personally think that the people who profess that the Civil War was only fought about slavery have not read their history books. I really am glad that slavery was abolished, but I don't think it should be glorified as being the sole reason the Civil War was fought. There are so many more issues that people were intensely passionate about at the time. Slavery was one of them, but it was not the primary cause of the war. The primary causes of the war were economics and states' rights.

Slavery was a part of those greater issues, but it was not the reason the Southern States seceded from the Union, nor fought the Civil War. It certainly was a Southern institution that was part of the economic system of the plantations, and because of that, it was part and parcel of the economic reasons that the South formed the Confederacy. The economic issue was one of taxation and being able to sell cotton and other raw materials where the producers wanted to, rather than where they were forced to, and at under inflated prices. Funny, it sounds very much like the reason we broke from Great Britain to begin with. The South was within their rights, but there should have been another way to solve the problem. If they had been willing to listen to Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the war could have been avoided. Lincoln had a plan to gradually free the slaves without it further hurting the plantation owners. He also had a plan to allow them to sell their products anywhere they wanted to and at a fair price. They did not choose to listen to the President, however, so they formed the Confederacy and the Civil War began.

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"I did but teach the age to quit their cloggs By the plain rules of ancient Liberty, When lo! a barbarous noise surrounded me, Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes and dogs." John Milton
The jews need to throw a holocaust, they owe us one.
http://zionistwatch.files.wordpress....ng-zionism.jpg

To say it would have happened with no Slavery is stupid. The Confederate Congress was pretty much bought and paid for by Slave owning wealthy farmers, and what little industrialists they had in the South.

Colloquially, you can say it was all about Slavery. Which is true. People just like to pretend to know shit when they knitpick about every little thing that was hardly a relevant issue or even a possible cause for the South's Seccession from The United States.

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"It is the Right of the People to alter or abolish the Government"
Declaration of Independence
"Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself."
Thomas Jefferson
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."
Milton Friedman

To put it another way. If the South had steady and large Immigration, if they industrialized and gave up the Slaves along with the North. They would have never seceded.

It was, by most evidence caused at it's root by the institution of slavery. Of which your only finding asinine reasons to apologize for Slavery by saying the South Seceded for other reasons.

__________________
"It is the Right of the People to alter or abolish the Government"
Declaration of Independence
"Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself."
Thomas Jefferson
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."
Milton Friedman

I don't want stupid arguments...simply put...

If the Civil War were about STATE'S RIGHTS...what rights were infringed by the Federal Government et al. that warranted secession?

The only right I can think of...was the right to .... crap I can't think of a single one actually.

The right to own slaves was never threatened, the only thing threatened was Southern lust for power, by expanding the number of slave states into new territories, regardless of what the territories themselves wanted.

That was what caused "bloody Kansas"...the Kansans wanted to be a free state, the South pushed more pro-slavery citizens into Kansas to cause strife and try and force the state to accept slavery.

But then...what a territory should be, free or slave holding, is not a right....when that territory becomes a state whatever it chooses is a right to keep.

But the only governments that offended those rights were slave states trying to force free states to support slavery, and to become slave states (as we saw with Kansas).

The Federal Government never tried to force slave states to abolish slavery, nor did their policies in any way weaken slavery...

Ending the slave trade strengthened slavery by making slaves more valuable and the fugitive slave act spread the burden of cost of maintaining slavery to all the states of the Union, not to just slave states.

Meanwhile the South didn't want to pay taxes to pay for the maintenance of slavery, they wanted to be rather tax free.

The South long had practiced the art of making others pay for slavery...

Southern slaveholders didn't pay the costs of maintaining slavery, southern non-slaveholders did, in forced patrols that were mandated by the state governments...

As a white who did not participate in the patrols you were fined....an amount which slaveholders could easily pay...but which non slaveholders were obligated to participate in the patrols.

The patrols greatly reduced the likeliness of escaping slaves.

So I think I just destroyed the argument that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery.

It had everything to do with the South wanting their cake and eating it too....they wanted slaves, they wanted more slave states...they wanted non-slave states and non-slaveholders to pay the costs of keeping slaves...

And that's why they lost the civil war...

Because the greedy slaveholders didn't want to withhold the sale of cotton to force Britain to join the war...as a result cotton was cheap throughout the war even though the South was getting its ass handed to them.

I hate to say it...because I would have supported them, but they committed suicide by their own greed.

__________________
Sani-Hut: Serving the Jewish Community since 1933.

“The South will Rise Again, not by war nor opposition to anything, but by taking its rightful place as the wealthiest, most cultured, most honorable and most dignified section of the greatest nation on the Earth.”

I won't argue that slavery had nothing to do with it, but can you not see that holding slaves was indeed a states' rights issue? The north forced it's will, in contrevention of the constitution and in clear violation of the premises which preceeded the forming of the union in the first place. The north violated the soverignty of the southern states, a blow to the dignity and honor held by every state.

That war was about states' rights and economics, regardless of the revisionist history fairy tale you swallowed.

__________________
"I did but teach the age to quit their cloggs By the plain rules of ancient Liberty, When lo! a barbarous noise surrounded me, Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes and dogs." John Milton
The jews need to throw a holocaust, they owe us one.
http://zionistwatch.files.wordpress....ng-zionism.jpg

Your very pretentious when it comes to discourse. Did you go to Brown or something?

__________________
"It is the Right of the People to alter or abolish the Government"
Declaration of Independence
"Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself."
Thomas Jefferson
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."
Milton Friedman

I think it's obvious, given the ineffectiveness of slavery to compete in an industrializing world, that the South were masters of making other people pay for their costs....the US was extremely tolerant of Southern "Jooing"...

Why the Southrons did not give up slavery is because of social issues, the South could not tolerate the problems nor the costs of a freed but POOR and unskilled black population that in the North during Northern emancipation proved to cause a lot of crime, a lot of vagrants, and a fierce competition between white free labor and recently freed slaves.

The South chose the path of least resistance because of prejudice and cost...it was too costly to the Southrons to pay for slavery's abolition, because they could not have a society where blacks were equals (often slave states requested that blacks leave their state when freed); nor could they imagine bearing the actual monetary costs of emancipation.

The alternative? Make the federal government and free states pay for slavery, to make it more profitable, by reducing southern taxes, and increasing the level of responsibility that free states had in supporting slavery and making it cheaper.

Also, the South wanted to reduce their import costs by going for the cheaper buyer...Britain...which hurt the US industry.

That's like someone today saying the US should buy all their weapons from Russia, and do away with our own defense industry...that is sacriledge, if Obama said that we'd tar and burn him and hang his burning effigy...that's how VILE the Southerners were.

Just have to be honest...

But the Southerners were vile, sneaky, bastards who wanted to ruin America because of their false belief that COTTON (of all things) would rule the global markets....

Yet they were as wrong as OPEC was (if you didn't notice OPEC no longer has the ability to set global oil prices, they are influential...but not supreme...).

Southern Slave Holders were the George Bush's of their time...ruining the US by running it head first into a dirt pile.

__________________
Sani-Hut: Serving the Jewish Community since 1933.

“The South will Rise Again, not by war nor opposition to anything, but by taking its rightful place as the wealthiest, most cultured, most honorable and most dignified section of the greatest nation on the Earth.”

Economics sure but that's a vague argument...every war is about economics, someone wants something "economical".

The South actually had a large hand in the creating of the Constitution (3/5ths compromise anyone? How fair is it that your slaves are counted as population to be represented when the interests of slaves are not represented?)

And I clearly asked HOW did the North violate the sovereignty of the southern states?

I clearly have argued that the North, of anyone, was the one being violated.

Let's say you were an abolitionist...you are living in a free state.

But...your home-town's steel mill is going out of business because a slave state won't pay tariffs for importing cheaper steel? That same slave state is forcing YOU to return any slave you find...which means you have to catch the bugger if you don't because the recent fugitive slave act means that if you saw the bugger and did nothing, someone else could report you and you'd be fined or go to jail (read the fine print). Meanwhile...that same slave state is demanding more slave states be made...if slavery were popular wouldn't territories be begging to become slave states?

Seriously...I cannot think of a single instance where Southern rights were being violated.

It's like, some bully on the playground going too far, trying to take candy from the new kid, getting his ass kicked, then telling everyone that he was just defending himself and that he is actually the victim in all this.

No...

Nooooo....

Honestly I wish I thought of this simple question when in high school, it would have saved me embarrassing enlightenment in college "American Political Theory" classes...though actually I was smart enough to hold my "the South was Right" mouth shut long enough to actually understand the error of my logic.

I say error of my logic, because my heart's still with the South...I would have probably fought for the South....even though I know they were not right...but wrong.

The mighty do not have to be right....

__________________
Sani-Hut: Serving the Jewish Community since 1933.

“The South will Rise Again, not by war nor opposition to anything, but by taking its rightful place as the wealthiest, most cultured, most honorable and most dignified section of the greatest nation on the Earth.”

The only thing I can find devious is the formation of the 14th Amendment...there's only 2 books on the subject...actually...in the whole of the subject. Both are titled essentially "the ratification of the 14th Amendment".

The reason is it is such a convoluted and hard to understand topic - being that the 14th Amendment was passed in a way so anti-American and yet the result of the 14th Amendment is as I mentioned elsewhere(?) ... before the 14th Amendment the States upheld the Bill of Rights as they saw fit.

The Federal Government had no say.

So if a State wanted to outlaw public speaking...they could...the South actually banned a number of pro-abolitionist news papers from being printed or circulated in the South...

Today that is unthinkable...in swoops the ACLU, with the Federal Government to smash the right of that state to oppress their people by denying them the 1st Amendment.

That's because of the 14th Amendment.

That is the only way the Federal Government "infringes" on state's rights (through the enforcement of the Bill of Rights)....and it didn't exist until AFTER the Civil War.

As State governments relinquished powers in some areas...the Federal Government has taken them over, but in theory the States can reserve those powers should they want to .... such as Highways.

States do not need to adhere to drinking laws or speed limits, you could drive on a street at 110 with blood alcohol of 0.2 if a State wanted to allow it...the Federal Government has NO say...unless that State wants Federal money to build those highways.

So there is the way that the Fed and States blur responsibilities post civil war.

Wow what a rant, but anyway...just illustrating the perceived "lost rights" by the losing of the Civil War, in reality...probably nothing was lost, but the aristocratic slaveholders.

__________________
Sani-Hut: Serving the Jewish Community since 1933.

“The South will Rise Again, not by war nor opposition to anything, but by taking its rightful place as the wealthiest, most cultured, most honorable and most dignified section of the greatest nation on the Earth.”