The Terrible History Thread

Definitely.

That said, the southerners, at least taken as a group (there may or may not have been individuals who were not, it's beside the point) were racist. More so than most, in what was already a severly racist century overall.

However, that doesn't make the war a war about racial issues or racism - these were incidental to the civil war.
What was this a response to? It looks kinda weird coming immediately after the Domination "'we' weren't the aggressors lololol" post.
Domination's Second Law: As a history thread grows longer, the probability of a discussion involving the American Civil War or the Confederacy approaches 1.
Only ones he gets involved in.
 
Dachs - the "definitely" was in answer to you saying that one could be racist without benefiting form it. The rest was in answer to both you and Leoreth.
 
The North WAS the aggressor. Whether it was justified or not (And I'd say the argument in favor of it being justified pre-1863 is nationalist bullcrap, IMO) they DID invade the Southern country. Yes, the South shot first, because the Union was occupying government land. The North's response to wipe out the CSA WAS aggresssion.

Government land, but why would it be Confederate government's land? I'm not entirely sure that. Even if one were to concede the legality of secession under a theory of States retaining their sovereignty, I don't know why they're entitled to land given up to the federal government. Virginia isn't entitled to Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, etc. because they gave up this land.

The Union invaded the South because they had the better army that was capable of doing this. They did this after the Confederates opened fire. The Confederacy did invade the north. Notably twice on the east coast (Antietam and Gettysburg), but plenty of times with guerrilla warfare in Kansas and Missouri. I'm not sure why military success makes someone an aggressor. In World War II, the US wasn't an aggressor just because they were successful with island hopping against Japan.
 
The Union never "declared war" on anything.

There was no formal declaration of war, for the simple reason it would imply a recognition of the CSA as being a state.

A secession motivated... to protect slavery.

Insurrectionists occupied Federal installations, seized control of Federal territory, and fired on Federal troops in support of a secessionist cause that would not have existed without the rallying cry of slaveholding.

Which was part of the secession. However, 7 slave states did not join the CSA.

In what world does violent insurrection not constitute an act of aggression?

That was the Union view, i.e. the winner´s view.
 
There was no formal declaration of war, for the simple reason it would imply a recognition of the CSA as being a state.
There's no such thing as an informal declaration of war. What's your point?
JEELEN said:
Which was part of the secession. However, 7 slave states did not join the CSA.
If by "seven" you mean "four", then yes. Because they were coerced into not doing so, except Delaware, where slavery was basically economically and politically irrelevant and anachronistic anyway. Maryland was occupied by the Federal military, Kentucky attempted to claim "neutrality" (effective secession) and was also occupied, and Missouri's legislature broke up on regional lines with basically St. Louis (union) against the rest of the state (disunion). Large numbers of soldiers from Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri all served in the rebel military even after those states were occupied (and Missouri was never fully occupied until the waning days of the war).

I still don't see what point you're trying to make.
 
Louis XXIV said:
As far as northerners fighting to end slavery. There's no question that Lincoln was careful at first to say it wasn't about slavery.

Stop conflating the 'slavery' with 'abolitionism'. The two are totally different things. If we accept that, it becomes obvious that the ACW was all about the future of the peculiar institution. The traitors based their claim to secession on it and the United States was called on to preserve the Union because of it. Without the peculiar institution there would have been no ACW.
 
That's a little too materialist to be convincing. Plenty of people exhibit racism despite the lack of any real benefit accruing to them from it.
Depends on what you would call "real". Feeling superior to large segments of the population can be a benefit.
 
The North WAS the aggressor. Whether it was justified or not (And I'd say the argument in favor of it being justified pre-1863 is nationalist bullcrap, IMO) they DID invade the Southern country. Yes, the South shot first, because the Union was occupying government land. The North's response to wipe out the CSA WAS aggresssion.
Bullpies. Regardless of your opinion on the legality of secession, the war began when the CSA attacked and opened fire upon Union troops in Union territory. Either the CSA was an illegal rebellion, or secession was legal and they launched an unprovoked war of aggression on their neighbours. The Union certainly did not start the war and was not the aggressor. This is a demonstrably false statement.
 
That's a little too materialist to be convincing. Plenty of people exhibit racism despite the lack of any real benefit accruing to them from it.

It sucks because it's not even a good materialist view.
 
Which was part of the secession. However, 7 slave states did not join the CSA.

You realize that the secessionist parts of our General Assembly were put under house arrest, our state garrisoned with ten thousand Federal troops, and our largest city had its central harbor held hostage by Union cannons for the duration of the war, right? We weren't given the option of joining Johnny Reb even if we wanted to. Not that that stopped traitors from crossing the Potomac anyway.
 
Stop conflating the 'slavery' with 'abolitionism'. The two are totally different things. If we accept that, it becomes obvious that the ACW was all about the future of the peculiar institution. The traitors based their claim to secession on it and the United States was called on to preserve the Union because of it. Without the peculiar institution there would have been no ACW.

I think this is being a bit nitpicky. What I'm referring to is his quote when asked if the war was to end slavery and he responded with "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union."

Since I already said that secession was motivated by slavery, I think I'm entitled to a little slack if I'm imprecise afterward. My sole point there was that Lincoln was a careful politician who knew that the majority of the north did not yet support Abolition. Therefore, his goal was not abolition of slavery, but preserving the Union. However, I do think many Americans did begin to see the war and the abolitionist cause as one and the same and, eventually, Lincoln had the support to end southern slavery. Keep in mind that even border states (Maryland and Missouri) ratified the amendment. This indicates that the defeat of the south had done more than just preserve the union, it discredited slavery as an institution.
 
That the war wouldn't have happened without slavery doesn't mean the war was about slavery for everyone involved.

IE, you cannot use it to make the northern cause more noble, unless they themselves saw the fight as being a fight about slavery. Which they didn't until several years into the war. For the north, the war was about keeping in the Union states that wanted out of it. It's a far better cause than fighting a war to preserve slavery, but nowhere near a noble cause in my opinion. (Again: see, Quebec, very unsupportive of any and all bullcrap about indivisible unions and unbreakable nations. Somehow.)

Trying to make the entire war about slavery is, again, misleading, because it makes the north's cause more than it really was.
 
Indeed.

The fact that I find the north's reason for fighting distasteful doesn't improve my view of why the south was fighting in any way. And still leave the north the better of two sides by far.
 
Considering the events happened over 150 years ago, it's sometimes useful just to examine things without having to make moral judgments of who was right. In that sense, the evolving intellectual justification for the north is historically interesting without having to say they were morally superior. It's part of the inherent tension between the ideals of the American Revolution and slavery that have been present throughout American history (states that did not rely on slavery passed abolitionist measures immediately after the war. Many southern founding fathers viewed slavery as an embarrassment, etc.).
 
Definitely so. It's one of the many reasons I prefer nuanced statements and making as many distinctions as possible to broad generalizations that often give a false impression.

Much easier to understand a conflict and follow the evolution of an idea if you're nuanced about your statements.
 
There's no such thing as an informal declaration of war. What's your point?

If by "seven" you mean "four", then yes. Because they were coerced into not doing so, except Delaware, where slavery was basically economically and politically irrelevant and anachronistic anyway. Maryland was occupied by the Federal military, Kentucky attempted to claim "neutrality" (effective secession) and was also occupied, and Missouri's legislature broke up on regional lines with basically St. Louis (union) against the rest of the state (disunion).I still don't see what point you're trying to make.

Kentucky was not coerced. Both Union and Confederacy respected KY's neutrality because initially no one wanted to risk driving them to the other side. What ended neutrality was Confederate Bishop Polk's occupation of Columbus, and the Unionist Kentucky legislature then asking Washington to repel the invasion.

If you want to claim Kentucky was treated as an occupied area later in the war,
I won't dispute that.
 
Kentucky was not coerced. Both Union and Confederacy respected KY's neutrality because initially no one wanted to risk driving them to the other side. What ended neutrality was Confederate Bishop Polk's occupation of Columbus, and the Unionist Kentucky legislature then asking Washington to repel the invasion.

If you want to claim Kentucky was treated as an occupied area later in the war,
I won't dispute that.
Yes, the lead-up to the Battle of Belmont was significantly more complicated in detail than what I said, but the particulars don't really challenge my basic point. Neither the federal government or the traitor states particularly respected Kentucky's neutrality before the occupation of Columbus; they simply lacked the ability to launch an all-out invasion until the fall. So instead there was a slower lead-up to the fighting there: the escalation and counter-escalation made famous by Polk. (First the establishment of Confederate recruitment pipelines, then the creation of a Federal training camp in Kentucky itself, then Polk's invasion of western Kentucky, then Grant and Sherman's counterattacks.) And, yeah, Kentucky was pretty much an occupied area later in the war, although to be entirely fair, it wasn't as though Kirby Smith and Bragg commanded a whole helluva lot of support there in the Heartland Campaign, either.

Strictly speaking, no, the whole thing cannot be described as outright coercion on the part of the federal government as in Maryland, but neither could the events in Missouri; the point was that there were extenuating circumstances for why the border slave states did not join the Confederacy. Therefore JEELEN's objection, that these border states' lack of secession meant that slavery was not a true motivator for the secession of other states, is unsound.
 
Government land, but why would it be Confederate government's land? I'm not entirely sure that. Even if one were to concede the legality of secession under a theory of States retaining their sovereignty, I don't know why they're entitled to land given up to the federal government. Virginia isn't entitled to Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, etc. because they gave up this land.

The Union invaded the South because they had the better army that was capable of doing this. They did this after the Confederates opened fire. The Confederacy did invade the north. Notably twice on the east coast (Antietam and Gettysburg), but plenty of times with guerrilla warfare in Kansas and Missouri. I'm not sure why military success makes someone an aggressor. In World War II, the US wasn't an aggressor just because they were successful with island hopping against Japan.

It was south carolina's land because it was right smack in the middle of south carolina. NOT destroying the fort would have been consenting to being occupied by a foreign power.

That said, I THINK the US planned to attack the CSA anyway, and I think Lincoln was clear about that. If I'm wrong the Union might have been able to be portrayed in a better light.

You realize that the secessionist parts of our General Assembly were put under house arrest, our state garrisoned with ten thousand Federal troops, and our largest city had its central harbor held hostage by Union cannons for the duration of the war, right? We weren't given the option of joining Johnny Reb even if we wanted to. Not that that stopped traitors from crossing the Potomac anyway.

And when we discuss Lincoln historically, he should be held accountable for these things.

Well, again, two sides don't need to be diametrically opposed; that Northern aims were not completely noble (by modern standards) doesn't say anything good about Southern aims.

True. The South sucked. I don't even argue that the South didn't suck. The South was full of racist aristocrats that wanted to hold onto slavery.

That said, the war as related to slavery had nothing to do with racism, but everything to do with the economic institution. Free-soilers were just as racist as southern slave owners, they just didn't want slaveowners to be able to compete with them.
 
You realize that the secessionist parts of our General Assembly were put under house arrest, our state garrisoned with ten thousand Federal troops, and our largest city had its central harbor held hostage by Union cannons for the duration of the war, right? We weren't given the option of joining Johnny Reb even if we wanted to. Not that that stopped traitors from crossing the Potomac anyway.

Which again points to secession being the issue. Which, as I already stated in my badly read original post, is the point.

Lincoln effectively refused to negotiate with the CSA, because, as said, that would imply recognition of the CSA as an independent state. And, again, slavery was only abolished reluctantly, during the war. Lincoln himself was a slaveholder and his views on the matter were ultimately governed by how abolition would affect the war. (As it turned out, it hardly did.)

If slavery was the main issue for the South (which, again, is debatable), it wasn´t for the war itself: the Union did not recognize the CSA, ergo it had to be brought back into the Union.
 
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