allan2
Gone Fishing
Welcome to CFC. Glad you're taking the time to get to know us before you make such statements like that last sentence.
I HAVE read history books, and I know that there were other reasons for the Civil War than slavery. Yet, it was the issue of the supposed "rights" of the slave-owning gentry in the South that led to the "Missouri Compromise", a device which ensured that "slave states" would always have equal Senate votes to "free states", making any PEACEFUL resolution of the issue impossible, long after many other Western powers (like the UK) abolished it. I.e. it became an UGLY side of state's rights, and after the war I think this example of ugliness was what made the subsequent expansion of federal power more palateable to the people than perhaps it would have been otherwise. The Constitution overall was a very good recipe for a good limited representative government, but the allowing of slavery was, I think, its fatal flaw, and would lead thus to some of its undoing as that flaw was fixed. Unfortunately, the "undoing" process would not be limited to that area alone.
Which, had the real principles of the DofI and Constitution been adhered to for EVERYBODY, there would have been no room for slavery within that, and perhaps we would have averted the war. For although slavery wasn't the ONLY reason for the Civil War, it was the catalyst issue that would push the South over the edge when Lincoln called for its abolition.
Besides, if our country would have started out without slavery, perhaps the race issues that plague us to the present day wouldn't have been so pronounced, although I wouldn't say they'd be nonexistent entirely. Slavery DID end up creating an underclass in our country based on race, something we've been trying to undo since (although not much until the Civil Rights movement). But even the Civil Rights movement, noble as it was, ended up facilitating further expansions of the federal government. For MANY reasons, I wish it was never an issue to begin with, hence my "proposal" to go back and change it at its root, if I could.
Or perhaps, simply, two countries instead of one at the start. Although if I could have shown the southern interests that their way would end up in war, and that their agrarian slave economy would have had no chance in defending against the industrial north, maybe I could have talked them out of it. I know a few of them had to sense the irony of allowing it, when they were affirming that "all men are created equal" and all that. If I could only travel back in time as an observer, I would still have loved to have been a "fly on the wall" in those discussions.
I'd have instead gone back to the writing of the Treaty of Versailles, and tried to persuade the writers that punishing Germany too much would end up backfiring on them in a big way. Or maybe I would have intercepted the German letter to Mexico and kept it secret, perhaps preventing US entry into WWI and making that war a bit more balanced. Probably would have made the war end quicker, as both sides were getting very war-weary, locked in stalemate. Although Wilson really wanted to join the war anyway, so maybe stopping the catalyst wouldn't have been enough.
And I don't see what you all have about Sept. 11, compared to other crap that happened in the history of human kind, it was nothing. So I guess you might as well forget the (estimated) 30 million people killed by stalin, just to save the poor 2000 free americans. Please don't get me wrong though, I don't want to start an argument.
Well I myself DID make my intentions clear when I said I would also intervene in the Russian revolution on behalf of the more moderate Mensheviks. Stalin wouldn't have been able to rule as he did had Russia been democratic.
But 9/11 is still fresh in history, preventing that wouldn't have as many unknowable and potentially bad side effects as of 2003. It WOULD however have still saved some lives, and probably have stayed the hand of more beligerent elements of our administration and kept the country from going in the course it is, which is scaring a lot of our people. No "Homeland Security" policy or "Patriot Act" would have succeeded in congress either.
