From another site

[barretcreek]

Open letter to McAuliffe.

https://zulablaw.wordpress.com/2017/08/29/528/

[Vern Humphrey]

When Virginia elected that New York carpetbagger, I knew it was all over.

[Sunray]

Wonder if he's related to the U.S. 101st Airborne's Terry McAuliffe.

[TomSudz]

Wow. Hard to believe the author was born in Kalifornia or that he taught political science at a college! Well done, though, well done!

[TomSudz]

Wonder if he's related to the U.S. 101st Airborne's Terry McAuliffe.

It's Anthony, not Terry. General McAuliffe is buried in Arlington, as are his wife, son, and daughter.

[dave]

I do not condone taking all the statues down, however this guy states a lot of "facts" which would be mostly impossible to confirm. And that underlying meaning of 'they fought for states rights', that they fought for "Virginia"! Bull sh*t they fought to maintain the right of states to allow ownership of slaves, no matter how they treated them! Several of the states wrote articles of succession and they all gave the North's trying to end slavery as one of the reasons! Yes they were brave, honorable in battle perhaps, and gentlemen of their day, but they fought to uphold a vile and dishonorable practice! Many southerner's refused and even fought on the North's side!

[Vern Humphrey]

If you haven't read Bruce Catton's famous trilogy on the Army of the Potomac, you can't claim to know anything about the Civil War. In the last volume of the series, Catton tells how Lincoln once surprised his cabinet by proposing the government BUY the slaves and free them.

After the hubbub died down, Lincoln pointed out that the cost would equal about 4 months' cost of war. Imagine spending only 1/12th of what the war cost to solve the problem of slavery!

And ironically, Lincoln UNDERESTIMATED the cost of the war -- he was using figures from the Treasury, which didn't include expenditures by states, nor property loss and damage. And no value was assigned to lives lost and human suffering.

When talking about the Civil War, we should remember it COULD have been ended without firing a shot. And that the war DIDN'T solve the problem -- a century after the war, Jim Crow laws, segregation and sharecropping still kept Blacks in thrall.

[togor]

Seriously? Unless someone reads Book X they can't claim to know anything about a topic as sweeping as the Civil War? Seems a bit overstretched. Dave is right. The south faced economic devastation with the end of slavery and took up arms fundamentally for that reason. Other reasons great and small creep in, just as they do with any grand event.

As for Jim Crow, sharecropping, etc., I completely agree with you on its effects. Racism? Maybe, but definitely a desire to preserve economic inequality. Therein lies IMO a big difference between the north and south. The central Europeans and northern English in the north felt a lot stronger about the ordinary man getting his fair slice of the pie and were willing to uphold the picket lines or whatever else might be necessary to achieve it. Meanwhile in the south everything was fine so long as everyone knew their place--rich whites, poor whites, poor blacks. Don't need none of those northern union outside 'agitators' coming down to mess up the way of life. Anti-slavery sentiment in the north was very often about not wanting to compete against slave wages--a sentiment that still rings today re: Asian imports. Those Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin Germans had no desire to live among free blacks in the north--another sentiment still echoing.

Dang, the more things change the more they stay the same.

[Jiminvirginia]

Probably one of the best papers I have read in years.

[Vern Humphrey]

Seriously? Unless someone reads Book X they can't claim to know anything about a topic as sweeping as the Civil War? .

You've obviously never read the Catton trilogy.

[Sunray]

"...related to..." Doesn't mean you have the same given name. Means you share surnames.

[togor]

You've obviously never read the Catton trilogy.

True but nonetheless the claim seems stretched. I grew up in the north where the events of the 1860s were not as keenly felt in the 20th century, fair or unfair though that may be. But as Dave points out the Articles of Secession make for straightforward reading.

[Jiminvirginia]

I grew up in the North but have lived South for about 40 years. I heard. Both sides of this discussion. First, I have more racial bigotry and viciousness up north than I ever heard down south. It would make a klansman blush. That being said, the Southern states seceded to maintain the business of slavery. The wealthy to stay wealthy and the poor out of fear of a slave revolt. The South found themselves in a difficult position and in my opinion the North did not help.

[dave]

The North would have had to force the sale of slaves, the southern owners would never had sold them willingly. Lincoln making such a statement is another question, never read book X but have read much on the war, never ran into that 'fact'.

[Jiminvirginia]

The North would have had to force the sale of slaves, the southern owners would never had sold them willingly. Lincoln making such a statement is another question, never read book X but have read much on the war, never ran into that 'fact'.

Yup. If you look it up Lincoln did try to buy slaves but it was lmited to border states and they did not sell their slaves.