An Interesting read if nothing else.

Here's my take on Lincoln.

Agreed, Lincoln wasn't primarily concerned with freeing the slaves, though he was sympathetic to the abolition movement.  Reason whay is Lincoln didn't think pursuing freeing the slaves as a doable issue.  However, prior to the Emancipation proclimation, the north had been having a very bad go at it.  The had suffered a string of defeats and Lincoln was going through Generals to command the Army of the Patomic.  Moral was suffering in the north and Lincoln neede a moral imperative to cause the north to press on, that is the reason for the Emancipation Procalmation.

Now, the matter of slavery and how it plays in the Civil War is the stuff of debates.  As anyone interested in the war between the states from the south and you'll get one answer.  Ask anyone from the north and you'll get another.  Southernerers will say the war was fought over "states rights".  Northerners will say it was fought over slavery.  Well, both were right, IMHO.

There were several events leading up to the civil war, such as the John Brown rebellion, the Kansas-Nebraska act, the congressional battles over what sort of state such places as California would become, slave or free.  But to cut to the chase, northerners are correct the wqar was over slavery, and southerners are correct that the war was fought over state's rights.......the right of a state to keep slavery legal.

Lately, I've noticed in some circles the attempt to disparage Lincoln.  To me, this attempt has more to do with current political sensabilities than the actual history.

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I think the Snopes.com article basically agrees with your conclusions. Back on the odd 'coincidences', this seems to sum it up nicely.
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While slavery may have been a primary cause of the war, it was not why it was fought, no matter how you try to twist it.

As I've learned in my very enlightening historyy class this year, almost every (American) conflict wasn't black/white, everyone on this side believes and is fighting for this, and vice versa.  There was a very large portion of the nation during the revolutionary war that were completely against separating from Britian-the war wasn't "all Americans v. all British" (I'm not implying you didn't know this).

The same was true of the civil war.  The war was started, and primarily fought, to punish the south for secession.  Lincoln never had any intentions of freeing the slaves at wars start, when it did not appear to be a military objective. 

While in terms of the secession the beliefs were black/white, they were not in terms of slavery.  Many, many federal soldiers expressed disdain at the thought of fighting a war for blacks.  That was not why they signed up.  And even the most rabid abolitionists most likely had no intentions of making blacks their social equals.

In the end, I think it is folly to say the American Civil War was fought over slavery-as I would say that isn't true.  It sure helped to get them to the point of war, but it is not why the war was fought-not even after the emancipation proclomation.  It was always to bring the South back in to the Union.

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Nope.  As I stated as the south seceeded, the north fought to preserve the union.  But why did the south seceed?  Because of northern sympathies toward abolition.  The Kansas-Nebraska act was an issue over slavery, John Brown rebellion, which all historians attribute as a precursor to the actual war between the states was over slavery.  No matter how you slice it, ultimately, slavery was at the root of the events leading to the war.  And since you say the war was over secession, the $64 question is this:  Why did southern states feel the need to seceed?  The only consistant issue being fought in the halls of congress were matters pertaining to slavery and what to do with slaves.


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Lincoln wasn't trying to punish the south for secession, he was trying to preserve the integrity of the union.  In order to do that, he hd to defeat the secessionists.

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I know that, and I stated that.

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Rabid abolitionist?  History disagrees with you as shown by the Dred Scott case.

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Not folly at all.  I didn't just sit in a HS class being lectured about the civil war for a semester.  My library contains several volumes on the subject.  After WWII, the US Civil War is the conflict that I enjoy studying the most.  I've even began visiting Civil War battlefield sites.

Two summers ago, I was in Montgomery Alabama.  It is a fascinating place.  At the state capitol building, you can see the steps when Gov Wallace gave his infamous 1963 speech to defend segregation forever.  Right across the street from the capitol is the Dexter Ave Baptist church where Martin Luther King pastored, many say is the birthplace of the civil rights movement.  Around the corner from the church is the Southern White House, Jefferson Davis's resident.  Down the street from the church a couple blocks is the Winter Building.  The place where the telegraph was sent to bombard Ft. Sumter to start the civil war.

And for us avaiation folks, about 45 minutes out of Montgomery heading toward Atlanta is the Tuskegee airfield: Moton Field.

RitterKruez


Excellent point regarding who the slaveowners were in the south.

Regarding the Confederate Airforce, I understand , and agree with your assessment.  As most of you may have gathered from the pic assocated with my screen name, I'm black, even though that pic isn't me.  I'm quite a bit younger.  I've observed the goings on regarding the stars and bars and the controversy it causes.  From my perspective, the Civil War is a historical event.  The stars and bars is a historical banner.  Nothing more and nothing less.  BUT!!!!!  I've certainly noticed that racists have used the stars and bars as a symbol of their racism and others have viewed the stars and bars, both rightly and wrongly as a symbol of racism.  To me, it's just history.

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Don't understand what you mean here.  The Dred Scott case had nothing to do with social equlaity-matters like that weren't brought to the supreme court.  The Dred Scott case was about setting a man free, not making him a social equal.

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Careful.  You don't know where my info comes from, so please don't assume.  I've been a civil war buff since I was ten-and we don't "sit through lectures" in school, we actively investigate the matters for ourselves.  The majority of the  information I presented here I learned at a lecture at Haverford college.

I've been to Gettysburg (three times) and a reenactment of Bull Run, where have you been to? (I mean this as a genuine question, not an attack)

And Ritter, only about 25% of white southerners owned slaves-it is indeed a very important distinction to make.

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Perhaps you should study up some more about the Dred Scot case.  Then centeral argument was about whether Dred Scott was a citizen or not, and if proven so, is eligible to file suit in court for his freedom.  And in order to prove his lack of citizenship, therefore status being as property, part of the findings that went into the ruling was that Dred Scott was "biologically" proven to be 3/5th of a man.  It was all about his status of being an equal or not.


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I'm still not impressed.  But we should not make this personal, so you refrain from suggesting my arguments are folly, and I'll keep my posts impersonal as well.

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Lexington, Chicamaga.

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But is has no bearing on the debate, nobody's arguing that fact.

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When has it been any different? Compare a modern dictionary to one published a century ago and see what's happened to meanings; often to compensate for changing social attitudes so that certain actions were "morally" acceptable amongst the masses. Sometimes one doesn't even know why the word offends, to begin with. To speak of derogatory, throughout my life I've heard, "Sure, hire the handicapped!" when something was done wrong; never did I hear, "Hire the crippled!" (although it may have been said ???). I have a cousin who's lost the use of his legs so now it's mandatory to derogatively label him handicapped -- and I don't think he ever played golf! His sister is blind: everyone is black to her, not just her husband. All I care is that he treats her well no matter who in the family may wish to 'disown' her for it (like, for why?). Mentioning that, how many blacks are actually black -- or whites, white?
What this little rant refers to is that, for whatever purpose a person wants to proliferate, they'll not only use whatever they can as excuses but make excuses for the excuses, altering accordlingly. Then there are the many who just take up a cause just to be a part (as they say, doing their part), never really comprehending its true reality. This also applies to the 19th century United States.
Due to my time of birth, I was short on people at hand who had lived through WW1, let alone the Spanish-American War and say nothing of the Civil War, so this was hand me down information. However, I've distant relatives in the south (some were shooting at each other back then) and most in these parts (NH) were known to be fighting against slavery, not a personal family feud. True, there were very few blacks at the dinner table -- but, if anything, that only added to the fact there were few to vie for slavery or that blacks were some subhuman race. The Mason-Dixon line was a long ways off -- if those south of it didn't want to be part of the Union, so be it, but we didn't need slave trade next door. Neither did we need our ships being used for it or British (et. al.) slavers stopping at our ports. I'll make a little insertion here that many slaves were 'acquired' out of Africa via other blacks and shipped over by various nations. You're right, we had no tarriffs to gain by this trade; it doesn't mean we had no one here involved in it but relatively few to gain by such commerce.

Although it appears to have wandered off-topic this has turned into a very interesting discussion. Maybe I missed the significance of a seemingly innocent piece of superstitious nonsense & it has some deeper meaning for the average American.

Several very good points have been made & the British slave traders are often blamed for the predicament of the black slaves in America & the social problems this caused. While I find the whole concept of slavery abhorrent it should be remembered that this was common in some parts of the world like Africa where the slave traders were themselves black & the slaves came from different tribes. It seems human nature to treat anyone different with suspicion & sometimes regard them as being subhuman purely on the basis of their physical appearance. I'm sure this discrimination applies to people of a similar ethnic background as much as Europeans or whites towards African & Asian races. Slavery is still gong on today & while I'm not trying to defend them the white slave traders in the 18th Century were simply taking advantage of it.

I don't know if this was so blatant until recently but history now seems to be regularly rewritten to suit various agendas. While some of this might be done with the best of intentions it often gives a distorted view of the actual events, especially when taught in schools. It seems to me that this is designed to give the younger generation a feeling of guilt & they are expected to feel ashamed of what their ancestors & countrymen did in the past. Unless you try to look at this from how things actually were at the time it seems completely wrong to me to judge it by current moral & social standards which are often very different to how they were only a comparatively short time ago.

I was around in the 1960s when the events that dcunning mentions were taking place. I think that like most people in my country we couldn't believe what we were seeing on our TV screens & how terribly black people were being treated in a great & supposedly democratic country like America in the Swinging Sixties. This was comparable with the Apartheid regime in South Africa which was at the same time being condemned by the international community - including the US! You only have to read the biographies of world-famous black musicians like Louis Armstrong & Nat King Cole (to mention only two examples) to realise just how bad things were until only recently. It seemed the old attitudes were still very much alive & I suspect are still alive & well in some parts of the US today. This is one reason people try to change it by teaching distorted history to their children but I feel it's not the right way of going about it. I won't pretend we never had racial discrimination in Britain but it was never anything like as bad as it was in some parts of the US. I've found a complete change of attitude when meeting black people in the US when they realise I'm British.

I could go on but I'll leave it there.

This rather interesting list of similarities/coincidences has one error:  from Wikipedia and several other googled sources: John Wilkes Booth was born on May 10, 1838, not in 1939.  The other dates given throughout check out, and the other coincidences (most, anyway), are easily verifiable.