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Southern Secession Was One Thing — and the War to Prevent It Was Another


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Southern Secession Was One Thing — and the War to Prevent It Was Another

20 HOURS AGORyan McMaken

There's an old saying that "he who distinguishes well teaches well." In other words, if one's going to talk about an important subject, one should be able to define his terms and tell the difference between two things that are not the same. 

This wisdom, unfortunately, is rarely embraced by modern pundits arguing about the causes of the American Civil War. A typical example can be found in this articleat the Huffington Post in which the author opines: "This discussion [over the causes of the war] has led some people to question if the Confederacy, and therefore the Civil War, was truly motivated by slavery."

Did you notice the huge logical mistake the author makes? It's right here: "...the Confederacy, and therefore the Civil War...."

The author acts as if the mere existence of the Confederacy inexorably caused the war that the North initiated in response to it. That is, the author merely assumes that if a state secedes from the United States, then war is an inevitable result. Moreover, she also wrongly assumes that the motivations behind secession were necessarily the same as the motivations behind the war. 

But this does not follow logically at all. If California, for example, were to secede, is war therefore a certainty? Obviously not. The US government could elect to simply not invade California in response. :snip: 

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Draggingtree

In Defense of Lee And Jackson

Published: Thursday, August 24, 2017

Ever since the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, took place, memorials and statues of the great men of the Confederacy--along with the flags of the Confederacy--are being vandalized or taken down by municipal governments.

 In 1864, Confederate General Patrick Cleburne warned his fellow Southerners of the historical consequences should the South lose their war for independence. He said if the South lost, “It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision.” No truer words were ever spoken.

 History revisionists flooded America’s public schools with Northern propaganda about the people who attempted to secede from the United States, characterizing them as racists, extremists, radicals, hatemongers, and traitors.

 Folks, please understand that the only people in 1861 who believed that states did not have the right to secede were Abraham Lincoln and his radical Republicans.

 To say that Southern states did not have the right to secede from the United States is to say that the thirteen colonies did not have the right to secede from Great Britain  :snip: 

http://chuckbaldwinlive.com/Articles/tabid/109/ID/3640/In-Defense-of-Lee-And-Jackson.aspx

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12 minutes ago, Draggingtree said:

In Defense of Lee And Jackson

Published: Thursday, August 24, 2017

 

 Folks, please understand that the only people in 1861 who believed that states did not have the right to secede were Abraham Lincoln and his radical Republicans.

 

 

I noticed no sources were cited for this. By the summer of 1861 there were around 186,000 federal troops, many volunteers, I wonder if Chuck thinks they might have had a thought or two on whether states could secede or not. 

 

As a friend of mine once said "Opinions are like A**holes, everybody's got one...and most of them stink." This one is a classic example.

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  • 2 months later...

The Extreme Northern Position

 By Brion McClanahan on Nov 16, 2017

If you listen to the modern historical profession, Southern secession in 1861 represented “treason.” David Blight, Professor History at Yale University, has made this belief the part of the core of his attack on Confederate symbols. If we should not take them down because they represent “white supremacy,” then they should be removed because Southerners were “traitors.”

Traitors to whom or what?

Certainly this was an open question in 1860 and 1861. Secession–political, economic, social–had been advanced by various groups since the founding. The very act of independence in 1776 was an act of secession. Secession had been an American principle and an American tale for generations.

It was not until the War that secession became synonymous with treason and even that was the extreme Northern position. The majority of Americans thought otherwise. How do we know this? Clearly the vast majority of the South believed that secession was legal and justified. The several State secession conventions elected to leave the Union by crushing majorities. Nearly seventy-five percent of the Southern white male population fought for independence (secession) and their enthusiasm was only trumped by Southern women who would shame the men into joining the cause.       :snip: 

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Chris Calton: The March to America's Civil War

11/17/2017Chris CaltonJeff Deist

Chris Calton, host of the Mises Institute's Historical Controversies podcast, is back with a second season. If you enjoyed his revisionist view of America's drug war during the first season, you'll love his take on U.S. history during the latter 1800s. This episode, titled "The March to America's Civil War", is a fascinating account of the antebellum era.      :snip:         

https://mises.org/library/chris-calton-march-americas-civil-war

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The Christiana Resistance: The First Shots of the Civil War

11/22/2017 Chris Calton

Chris Calton looks at one of the first episodes of armed resistance to the Fugitive Slave Acts. He explains how abolitionist William Parker, a free black man, changed America forever.

https://mises.org/system/tdf/Historical Controversies Episode 16.mp3?file=1&type=audio  :snip: 

https://mises.org/library/christiana-resistance-first-shots-civil-war

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Did Tariffs Really Cause the American Civil War?

11/25/2017 Chris Calton

In the first episode of the new season of Historical Controversies, which will focus on the sectional crises that led to the Civil War, I gave a brief explanation of my problem with the “Tariff Thesis” for the cause of southern secession. My arguments on the subject were the primary subject of criticism for the episode, and I feel it may be worth offering a more detailed explanation as to why I reject this popular interpretation for the cause of secession.

It is worth mentioning that although this article is only intended to address the tariff thesis for southern secession, there is also a separate tariff thesis — the “Tariff War Thesis” — which states that tariff revenues were the reason for Lincoln’s desire to wage the war. Although I reject both tariff theses, Tariff War Thesis is, at least, more plausible. Although many people combine both tariff theses into a single interpretation of secession and the war, some historians only maintain one while rejecting the other. :snip: https://mises.org/wire/did-tariffs-really-cause-american-civil-war

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Slavery and the War

By Michael Armstrong on Nov 27, 2017

The recent apoplexy over White House Chief-of-Staff John Kelly’s comments about Robert E. Lee and the Civil War have revealed on ongoing problem in the thinking of many Americans when it comes to history and politics in general – the inability to see any issue or event in anything but the most oversimplified terms.  In the particular context of the criticism of General Kelly’s comments on the Civil War, the South as a region and the Southerners as individuals could not possibly have had any other motivation to fight than the protection of slavery (in the eyes of the media).  For example, witness Paul Begala’s tweet made in response to Kelly’s comments:

“The Civil War was fought over slavery
The Civil War was fought over slavery
The Civil War was fought over slavery.
This will be on the test.”

Unfortunately, history does not ordinarily give us such neat little packages of information to digest, memorize, and repeat like a mantra, and the history of the Civil War is not an exception.  In order to understand history in general (and the Civil War in particular) one must first read extensively,          :snip:  https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/slavery-and-the-war-2/

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