A call to Civil War scholars

C Darwin

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is this guy full of sh*t?

Five myths about why the South seceded

By James W. Loewen
Sunday, January 9, 2011; 12:00 AM

One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War began, we're still fighting it -- or at least fighting over its history. I've polled thousands of high school history teachers and spoken about the war to audiences across the country, and there is little agreement even on why the South seceded. Was it over slavery? States' rights? Tariffs and taxes?


As the nation begins to commemorate the anniversaries of the war's various battles -- from Fort Sumter to Appomattox -- let's first dispense with some of the more prevalent myths about why it all began.

The rest of the article...
 

Colonel_Reb

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Yes, he is full of it on "myths" 1,2 and 3. He does a fair (at best) job on number 4. He leaves out a lot of info (which I have posted on here before), but he gets it right in that Lincoln didn't want to end slavery if he could first preserve the Union (and the North's profits). Number 5 is a subject of much debate amongst alternative history fans, but I do not believe he is correct about the South maintaining slavery well after 1950. Without the North as heavily involved in the workings of Southern slavery as they were prior to 1861, it probably would been in decline by 1900 if not before. His clear bias against the South keeps him from stating a lot of facts that show his stances to be incorrect, but I would expect nothing less in this age of political correctness. Southerners, along with Whites and Christians, is one group that it is still "ok" to make fun of and/or lie about without having to worry about suffering the consequences. Revisionist history is everywhere and it is hard to sift through, but it can be done.

Confederate General Patrick Cleburne had it right when he said "Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late...</span>Surrender means that the history of this heroic
struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be
trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school
books their version of the War; will be impressed by all the
influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as
traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision."
 

Menelik

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Colonel_Reb said:
Revisionist history is everywhere and it is hard to sift through, but it can be done.



There are plenty of primary sources about what the participants thought was the reason they were fighting.
 

Colonel_Reb

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That's true, Menelik. I usually mention the diaries of everyday soldiers as being a great way to find out why a lot of men were fighting. Thanks for reminding me! A lot of people these days would rather believe a lie than do a little research and discover the truth.
 

Jimmy Chitwood

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on a bit of a side note, it's amazing how many "poorly educated" soldiers wrote extensively (and very articulately, i might add) during both the Civil and Revolutionary Wars. the "fact" that educationhasmade major improvements in the last 40-50 years isanother myth that should never have gained any traction ... but sadly, the facts don't really matter in this instance, either.
 

Menelik

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Colonel_Reb said:
That's true, Menelik. I usually mention the diaries of everyday soldiers as being a great way to find out why a lot of men were fighting. Thanks for reminding me! A lot of people these days would rather believe a lie than do a little research and discover the truth.




Whenever I teach US History I try to use primary sources exclusively and let the students come to their own conclusion. Its works for me.
 

Menelik

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Jimmy Chitwood said:
on a bit of a side note, it's amazing how many "poorly educated" soldiers wrote extensively (and very articulately, i might add) during both the Civil and Revolutionary Wars. the "fact" that educationhasmade major improvements in the last 40-50 years isanother myth that should never have gained any traction ... but sadly, the facts don't really matter in this instance, either.

CORRECT! As I type this message I'm looking at a Algebra book for high school from the 1920s. All before graphing calculators, smart boards, ect. How many present day students do you think could master a slide rule as easy as they do a cell phone?
 

jaxvid

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Menelik said:
All before graphing calculators, smart boards, ect. How many present day students do you think could master a slide rule as easy as they do a cell phone?</div>

I showed my kids one of my old sliderulers and they looked at it like it was an instument of torture.

Re: the Civil War. Too many hyperaggressive people around in those days, they were itching for a fight and since there wasn't anyone else around they went at each other. Most Union soldiers signed up because they thought it would be an exciting change of pace from the farm and the Southerners signed up because people were coming into their neighborhoods and breaking sh*t up. Once it got started it was really really hard to stop.
 

Menelik

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j41181 said:
Two Words... JOHN BROWN



?

lies a mouldering in his grave?
 

Michael

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Since there were millions, tens of million of people involved directly and indirectly, the individuals may have many motives, so the real question may be what is the bases on which a nation fights for their freedom.

Years ago read a sidebar in a history book, it was an interview with an American Revolutionary veteran many years after the war.He was ask about all the reasons to fight and it turned he had never even seen a stamp and all the other reason given in textbooks hadn't effected him, and what he basically said was he didn't like to be ruled by outsiders. A history professor in college talked about an interview he did with a former Serbian revolutionary who fought against the Austria-Hungarian Empire,and he came out with it was a feeling he couldn't described but it appear to be again not wanting to be ruled by another nation. The Civil War history professor talked about mistrust between the regions and the John Brown incident was a big part in that mistrust.

The real question(s) maybe why does a nation want to be free and what makes a nation.

Clearly, the Southerners and the Yankees are two different nations like the Scottish and the English, very similar but different nations none the less. The Yankees wanted to leave the USA when the South was the dominate region but the South bribe them to stay and when the North became dominate the South wanted to leave but the Yankees had become dependent on the South's wealth and that is what lead to the War of Northern Aggression. The real reason for secession is likely that nations don't like being ruled by other nations and the reason for the war is the North wanted the South's wealth.

Interestedly, a similar pattern can be seen in the old British empire, the Scots provide the soldiers, the Welsh coal and other minerals and the Irish the food, even during the potato famine large amounts of food were shipped out of Ireland, for the British Empire. The Yankees and their Zionist allies have use the South and the rest of the USA much the same. The Legend of the South estimates that the South still produces massive wealth for the USA far disproportional to its population.If the South was a burden, the Yankees would, probably, not have object to it leaving with or without slaves.

The question about what would have happen with black slaves, since even in the 1850/60's according to Mr. Helper slaves were a prestige symbol with White labor doing the hard work while most slaves were given easy jobs like being house slaves.With blacks today having to have Affirmative Action to get jobs even one can't say that they would be very valuable without being a prestige symbol, which would have meant their only value would have been as house and other show slaves. Likely, slowly but surly black slavery would have been outlawed starting probably in the border states then in other states with masters selling their slaves until only one or two states likely Mississippi and/or Alabama would have ended up with massive numbers of blacks slaves and very few Whites leading to a Haiti style revolt that would have had to be crushed by the Confederate Army coming in from other states. The black survivors would have likely been deported and blacks ban from the CSA.
 
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The cause of the war is very simple. The United States invaded the Confederate States. While it is possible to argue about why the Southern States seceded or why the United States launched an invasion the simple fact remains that is the U. S. had not launched this invasion there would have been no war. Mr. Louwen is also incorrect in his statement that none of the seceding states listed "states Rights" as a reason for secession. North Carolina felt that Mr. Lincoln's war was a violation of the Constitution IE the "states Rights" of any state to secede under the 10th amendment and it was so stated in out declaration of secceesion.
 

j41181

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So the true essence of the US Constitution died in 1865?

A guy by the user name "RonPaulHatesBlacks", would laugh at your statements...

Ron Paul on American Civil War

Listening to Ron Paul, he makes some valid points about the Civil War, but in the end, history written by the winners. Only Revisionists (like DiLorenzo), can shed some truth behind so many lies.
 

Bronk

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Lorenzo's response:

Another Court Historian's False Tariff History
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

The only thing worse than a historian who calls himself a "Lincoln scholar" is a sociologist who does the same. This truth was on display recently in a January 9 Washington Post article entitled "Five Myths about Why the South Seceded" by one James W. Loewen.


In discussing the role of federal tariff policy in precipitating the War to Prevent Southern Independence Loewen is either grossly ignorant, or he is dishonest. He begins by referring to the 1828 Tariff of Abominations, which led to South Carolina's Ordinance of Nullification, whereby the state rightly condemned the 48 percent average tariff rate as a blatant act of plunder (mostly at the South's expense) and refused to collect it at Charleston Harbor. Loewen writes that "when, after South Carolina demanded the right to nullify federal laws or secede to protest, President Andrew Jackson threatened force." That much is true. "No state joined the movement, and South Carolina backed down," Loewen then writes. This is all false. It is not true that "no state joined the movement." As historian Chauncy Boucher wrote in The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, and Alabama joined South Carolina in publicly denouncing the Tariff of Abominations, while the Yankee bastions of Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Indiana, and New York responded with their own resolutions in support of political plunder through extortionate tariff rates.

Nor is it true to say that "South Carolina backed down." South Carolina and the Jackson administration reached a compromise in 1833: Jackson "backed down" by not following through with his threats to use force to collect the tariff, and South Carolina agreed to collect tariffs at a much lower rate. Jackson "backed down" as much (or more) as South Carolina did, but the Official Court Historian's History of the War, as expressed by Loewen, holds that only South Carolina retreated. The reason for this distortion of history is to spread the lie that tax protesters such as the South Carolina nullifiers, or the Whiskey Rebels of an earlier generation, have never successfully challenged the federal government's taxing "authority." But of course they have succeeded; The Whiskey Rebels ended up not paying the federal whisky tax, and the Tariff of Abominations was sharply reduced over a ten-year period.


Loewen next spreads an egregious falsehood about the tariff: "Tariffs were not an issue in 1860, and Southern states said nothing about them," he writes. "Why would they? Southerners had written the tariff of 1857, under which the nation was functioning. Its rates were lower than at any point since 1816." Every bit of this narrative is false.


Tariffs certainly were an issue in 1860. Lincoln's official campaign poster featured mug shots of himself and vice presidential candidate Hannibal Hamlin, above the campaign slogan, "Protection for Home Industry." (That is, high tariff rates to "protect home industry" from international competition). In a speech in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ("Steeltown, U.S.A."), a hotbed of protectionist sentiment, Lincoln announced that no other issue was as important as raising the tariff rate. It is well known that Lincoln made skillful use of his lifelong protectionist credentials to win the support of the Pennsylvania delegation at the Republican convention of 1860, and he did sign ten tariff-increasing bills while in office. When he announced a naval blockade of the Southern ports during the first months of the war, he gave only one reason for the blockade: tariff collection.

As I have written numerous times, in his first inaugural address Lincoln announced that it was his duty "to collect the duties and imposts," and then threatened "force," "invasion" and "bloodshed" (his exact words) in any state that refused to collect the federal tariff, the average rate of which had just been doubled two days earlier. He was not going to "back down" to tax protesters in South Carolina or anywhere else, as Andrew Jackson had done.

The most egregious falsehood spread by Loewen is to say that the tariff that was in existence in 1860 was the 1857 tariff rate, which was in fact the lowest tariff rate of the entire nineteenth century. In his famous Tariff History of the United States economist Frank Taussig called the 1857 tariff the high water mark of free trade during that century. The Big Lie here is that Loewen makes no mention at all of the fact that the notorious Morrill Tariff, which more than doubled the average tariff rate (from 15% to 32.6% initially), was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives during the 1859â€"60 session of Congress, and was the cornerstone of the Republican Party's economic policy. It then passed the U.S. Senate, and was signed into law by President James Buchanan on March 2, 1861, two days before Lincoln's inauguration, where he threatened war on any state that failed to collect the new tax. At the time, the tariff accounted for at least 90 percent of all federal tax revenues. The Morrill Tariff therefore represented a more than doubling of the rate of federal taxation!

This threat to use "force" and "invasion" against sovereign states, by the way, was a threat to commit treason. Article 3, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution defines treason as follows: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort" (emphasis added). Lincoln followed through with his threat; his invasion of the Southern states was the very definition of treason under the Constitution.


The words "Morrill Tariff" do not appear anywhere in Loewen's Washington Post article despite the fact that he portrays himself as some kind of "Keeper of The Truth" regarding "Civil War" history. (And where were the Washington Post's "fact checkers?!) It was the Morrill Tariff that Lincoln referred to in his first inaugural address, not the much lower 1857 tariff, as Loewen falsely claims.

Abraham Lincoln was not the only American president who believed that the tariff was an important political issue in 1860. Contrary to Loewen's false claims, Jefferson Davis, like Lincoln, highlighted the tariff issue in his February 18, 1861 inaugural address, delivered in Montgomery, Alabama (From The Papers of Jefferson Davis, vol. 7, pp. 45â€"51). After announcing that the Confederate government was "anxious to cultivate peace and commerce with all nations" Davis said the following:

An agricultural people, whose chief interest is the export of a commodity required in every manufacturing country, our true policy is peace, and the freest trade, which our necessities will permit. It is alike our interest, and that of all those to whom we would sell and from whom we would buy, that there should be the fewest practicable restrictions upon the interchange of commodities. There can be but little rivalry between ours and any manufacturing or navigating community, such as the Northeastern States of the American Union. It must follow, therefore, that a mutual interest would invite good will and kind offices. If, however, passion or the lust of dominion should cloud the judgment or inflame the ambition of those States, we must prepare to meet the emergency . . .

Thus, Loewen's statement that the Southern states said "nothing" about tariff policy is unequivocally false. Jefferson Davis proclaimed here that the economy of the Confederacy would be based on free trade. Indeed, the Confederate Constitution of 1861 outlawed protectionist tariffs altogether, and only allowed for a modest "revenue tariff."


When Davis spoke of a "passion or the lust for dominion," he was referring to the constant attempts, for some seventy years, of the Northern Whig and Republican parties to plunder the South with the instrument of protectionist tariffs, as was attempted with the 1828 Tariff of Abominations. In other words, he declared here that, in his opinion, Lincoln was deadly serious (pun intended) about enforcing the newly-doubled rate of federal tariff taxation with a military invasion of the Southern states, and was preparing for war as a result. Contrary to Loewen's ignorant diatribe, both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis announced to the world in 1861 that tariff policy was indeed a paramount political issue: In their respective inaugural addresses, Lincoln threatened "invasion" of any state(s) that failed to collect his tariff, while Davis promised to defend against any such invasion.

Before the war, Northern newspapers associated with the Republican Party were editorializing in favor of naval bombardments of the Southern ports because they knew that the South was adopting free trade, while the North was moving in the direction of a 50% average tariff rate (which did in fact exist, more or less, from 1863 to 1913, when the federal income tax was adopted). These Republican party propagandists correctly understood that much of the trade of the world would enter the U.S. through Southern ports under such a scenario. Rather than adopting reasonable tariff rates themselves, they agitated for war on the South.

The tariff controversy was not the only cause of the war, and I have never argued that it was (despite lies to the contrary told about me by such people as historian Jeffrey Hummel). But it was obviously an important cause of the decades-long conflict between North and South.

The rest of Loewen's Washington Post article is about as accurate as his uninformed rantings about tariff policy. This was the Post's second attempt to "correct the record" of the "Civil War," which began 150 years ago this year, in the first nine days of 2011. The government's company newspaper is apparently terrified that the public will get wind of the truth and begin questioning the foundational myth of the federal Leviathan state.

January 18, 2011

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo199.htmlEdited by: Bronk
 

Colonel_Reb

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I wondered if Tom might not rebuff the clown who write that piece. Good for him!
 
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