Nobody though? Not even to have some fun and kill some Yankees?
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Well, okay. I’m sure some people did. And I’m sure some people were happy to send those people to die for them. That’s always been the case. But war is expensive. It costs in many, many ways. And to act like Trump is, like the North just chose to go to war because they didn’t negotiate is a lie in multiple forms.
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Yeah, as everyone has said. I’m just not sure why you would reflexively declare the same about the armed rebellion of slavers that actually chose to start said war.
Somebody decided to start shooting at their fellow citizens – “seizing forts, arsenals, mints, custom-houses, etc., etc., long before Mr. Lincoln was installed” – and it’s not like there are no records of their plans and intentions. Not every belligerent movement in history has actually wanted peace. This one wanted slavery and white supremacy.
Hell, people like the one I was quoting decided to keep going after the war ended. You do know Forrest, right? Went on to help found one of the world’s longest running terrorist organizations to continue the Confederacy’s fight? When you only talk about good faith and nobody wanting war, that’s what you’re erasing.
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Look, if Trump was in charge there probably wouldn’t have been a civil war. Because he’s uncivil!
BOOM got him!
Or more seriously, he’d be all like “okay. My voters don’t want slavery moving westward. You want it to do so. So how about… How much westward are we talking about? Coast to coast? Yeah that’s fine, but what’s in it for me…”
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So, Don Junior?
Haiti, I suppose? But the world forced them to pay reparations to France, after.
And sure, the US civil war could have been prevented by negotiation. Just not by the North.
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Meanwhile, his cabinet would be moving things around to benefit the south when the war would happen anyway.
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The North didn’t even repeal the Fugitive Slave Law until 3 years into the war. Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863. So, first, go to war. Two years later, Emancipation Proc. which actually only freed slaves in those states in revolt. Then a year after that, repeal fugitive slave laws. The North wasn’t exactly trying alternatives to war. Fugitive slave law repeal could have made slavery uneconomic but we’ll never know.
AGAIN, the United States did not “go to war” against the Confederacy. The Confederacy went to war against the United States. You seem utterly committed to misrepresenting this fact.
As for the question of why the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the states that were in rebellion, the answer is simple. Abraham Lincoln did not have the Constitutional authority to unilaterally end slavery in the United States. The legal theory behind the Emancipation Proclamation was that it stemmed from the President’s broad authority to wage war as Commander-in-Chief, because the Confederacy’s war effort was dependent on slave labor. This is why the 13th Amendment was required to end chattel slavery in the United States once and for all.
ETA: This is also an insane bit of reasoning:
The Fugitive Slave Law was a concession made to the slavers, so if anything repealing it probably have hastened the rebellion. The idea that repealing it would have made slavery “uneconomic” is also bonkers. “Free labor” is always more economical to those who reap its benefits than paid labor is.
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But…but… BOTH SIDES ARE BAD!!! /s
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I’m trying to wrap my head around your thought process on this one. You believe that if the Northern states had repealed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (which is exactly what abolitionists wanted) that that would somehow make the slavers in the South less likely to secede? The passage of that act in the first place was a huge compromise that was an attempt to appease the slavers, and it enraged abolitionists. It takes some serious mental gymnastics to think that repealing that would have prevented the war.
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The argument is like saying “the Allied forces caused World War II by refusing to seriously negotiate with Hitler, and also they shouldn’t have ceded Poland to Hitler.”
Total bananas logic.
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I sure don’t. So I’m confused that when I point out that Trump is pandering to his right wing fascist base with stuff that they are going to latch on to, you say we should ‘not give a shit’ about it.
It seems we should care a lot about it, and start planning how to prepare for that threat, rather than just dismissing it. I mean, there were lots of signs in December 2020 that Jan 6th was going to be ‘different’. But lots of people said “who give’s a shit what Trump is telling his mob? It’s just ranting of crazy people”, and so the nation was unprepared.
touché
Obligatory:
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If you re-read what I wrote, you will see that I was saying is that people living in areas historically on the side of ‘The South’ in the Civil War will gladly take up this Trumpian “pro-Union” mantle (i.e. align themselves with ‘The North’ of the Civil War). It is a misreading to think I was saying that only people in the modern South support Trump. It’s an endemic problem in all states. Have you been to the California central valley?
