Jeff Sessions Says Slavery Caused Civil War

[Fred]

I don't personally think the institution of slavery would've lasted past 1875 if even that long had the whole issue of Succession not come up. It should've never been allowed to get a foothold in New Amsterdam in the 1600's.
The entire Civil War didn't have to happen. 600,000 to 1,000,000 American lives is a poor and needless trade for anything.

[clintonhater]

Was the cause of ending slavery just or not?

By a devastating civil war, no. Certainly not until other serious solutions had been tried, such as making the cost of slave-owning too high to be profitable, or pressuring cotton mills in the North & Britain to stop buying slave-grown cotton.

But it can't be denied, unfortunately, that mindless crazys in S. Carolina started a fight any rational Southerner should have seen would be difficult, if not impossible, to finish. Sadly, by being first to open fire, they deprived themselves of the moral high ground.

[togor]

CH your premise is dead wrong. Had the south stayed in the union, they would have kept their institution, albeit under exactly the circumstances that you prescribe, that slavery as an institution face an increasing economic disadvantage, and eventual extinction by constitutional amendment, when enough non-slave states have entered the union. The South had what you would give them, but threw that away through secession, with big dreams of southward expansion after victory.

They chose the remedy of Sherman's famous quote, and lost it all. The cause is just. Moreover, a 19th century industrial Capitalism based on slavery would not have survived into the 20th.

[clintonhater]

CH your premise is dead wrong. Had the south stayed in the union, they would have kept their institution, albeit under exactly the circumstances that you prescribe, that slavery as an institution face an increasing economic disadvantage, and eventual extinction by constitutional amendment, when enough non-slave states have entered the union.

What is my premise? Didn't I say explicitly that it was a BIG MISTAKE to strike the first blow? Nothing, before that insane blow, had yet happened to threaten slave-holder's rights, except the election of Lincoln, who could have done nothing without a huge battle in Congress.

You show great skill in knocking down straw-men.

[S.A. Boggs]

From my Dad I inherited a series of Time-Life books on the Civil War [War of Northern Aggression] which are reprints of books written in the years after the war. They are fascinating reading, one strikes interest in our discussion. It was written by an Englishman engineer who was living in New Orleans and the conditions there prior to the start of the rebellion. He was of the opinion that slavery in a matter of years due to the coming of the machine was a dying institution. Why own slaves who are expensive to keep, do not live to the full potential of work? Purchase a machine and hire a man to operate the machine which will be more productive. Economic costs drive any business, I.E. CODB the Cost Of Doing Business. Slaves make some economic sense without machinery, no sense with machinery. Same goes today with the chant of $15.00 for a burger flipper, a machine has already been invented to replace a score of these workers and will. Look @ reloading, we have on one end the Lee hand loader which takes about 20 minutes to turn out a loader round to the Dillon which can turn out 1,000 rds per hour. If you were going to sale ammo which one would you want, same for slavery. By the way, slavery is a step up in intertribal warfare of just killing your enemy. We still have slavery in the U.S. today, it is called by two names...Welfare and our Drug Culture.
Sam

[togor]

What is my premise? Didn't I say explicitly that it was a BIG MISTAKE to strike the first blow? Nothing, before that insane blow, had yet happened to threaten slave-holder's rights, except the election of Lincoln, who could have done nothing without a huge battle in Congress.

You show great skill in knocking down straw-men.

I'll recap. The question posed was whether or not the cause of ending slavery was just. You said no, not at the cost of destruction of the south. (That puts you on the side of perpetuating slavery, but we leave that aside for the moment.) Better, in your view, to put the South on a path to winding down slavery. My observation was that this was already in the cards, for multiple reasons, some stated here. The South had in 1860 what you today would have given them.

The South chose war instead. So that brings us back to the question, was the cause of ending slavery just or not? I say it was. All can agree it wasn't the only motivation in the North for joining the war, and probably not even the primary one at the beginning. As you say, striking the first blow produced a predictable result. But all major wars need a deep moral purpose to sustain people through the difficult fighting, and in the North, ending slavery, over time, became a cause worthy of that purpose. One need not enjoy blacks to have a sense that enslaving them and treating them as property is deeply wrong.

[Vern Humphrey]

why didnt they buy them. fairly complex, but in short the south had vast farms, and the blacks were in effect their tractors. now would you sell your tractor if you were a farmer, and had no way to replace it? no you wouldnt.

In Bruce Catton's "A Stillness at Appomattox," he tells how Lincoln stunned his cabinet near the end of the war by proposing just that -- that the Government buy the slaves at market value and set them free. He pointed out that the cost would be the equivalent of four months of war. And Lincoln underestimated the cost of the war -- he was using Treasury Department figures, which did not include expenditures by states, property damage, or loss of life and limb.

One major problem was the abolitionists were adamantly opposed to buying the slaves -- slave owners shouldn't be allowed to profit from slavery. So solving the problem by purchasing the slaves was blocked on both ends -- the slave owners wouldn't sell, the Union wouldn't buy.

Interestingly enough, Brazil ended slavery by purchasing the slaves -- and the slaves paid for themselves. People born into slavery were free on their 28th birthday. It had been calculated that the slave would have done enough work by then to pay for his upbringing.

[JB White]

Brazil and other countries took note of what happened here. They didn't begin to end slavery until 20-25 years after the US Civil War. Some countries held on much longer by about 100 years. Tha last recognized nation in the world didn't truly end slavery until about 10 years ago when it was finally made a crime. Doesn't mean slavery no longer exists in many areas. The owners and traders are simply allowed to get away with it.

The whining and complaining about slavery in the USA has gone on longer than it existed. Slavery only lasted in the USA for about 80 or so years. One lifetime! WW1 began five decades after slavery ended. WW1 ended 100 years ago.
Doesn't matter what happened over 150 to 230 years ago and who did what to whom. British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese..... The question is when to move on and make it just another part of history.

However, when you have people who don't mind/enjoy pointing fingers and stirring up crap it will never end. I ask of those people:
"How old are you today, and would you like to be constantly punished/scolded for mischief back when you were in fourth grade? What about having to pay for something your ancestors did? What about being forced to listen to and be blamed for crap that ended 50+ years before anyone in your family tree ever set foot in North America?"

I'm tired of it.

[togor]

Brazil and other countries took note of what happened here. They didn't begin to end slavery until 20-25 years after the US Civil War. Some countries held on much longer by about 100 years. Tha last recognized nation in the world didn't truly end slavery until about 10 years ago when it was finally made a crime. Doesn't mean slavery no longer exists in many areas. The owners and traders are simply allowed to get away with it.

The whining and complaining about slavery in the USA has gone on longer than it existed. Slavery only lasted in the USA for about 80 or so years. One lifetime! WW1 began five decades after slavery ended. WW1 ended 100 years ago.
Doesn't matter what happened over 150 to 230 years ago and who did what to whom. British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese..... The question is when to move on and make it just another part of history.

However, when you have people who don't mind/enjoy pointing fingers and stirring up crap it will never end. I ask of those people:
"How old are you today, and would you like to be constantly punished/scolded for mischief back when you were in fourth grade? What about having to pay for something your ancestors did? What about being forced to listen to and be blamed for crap that ended 50+ years before anyone in your family tree ever set foot in North America?"

I'm tired of it.

Fair enough, JB, but moving on is moving on...for everybody, right? A colorblind society doesn't happen by government decree. People have to commit themselves to it, because it is the right thing to do, not necessarily the easy thing.

[S.A. Boggs]

Fair enough, JB, but moving on is moving on...for everybody, right? A colorblind society doesn't happen by government decree. People have to commit themselves to it, because it is the right thing to do, not necessarily the easy thing.

True, there are racist and freeloaders on both sides of the race issue. For me there is only one important race and that is the human race.
Sam

[steelap]

Fair enough, JB, but moving on is moving on...for everybody, right? A colorblind society doesn't happen by government decree. People have to commit themselves to it, because it is the right thing to do, not necessarily the easy thing.

But it will never happen, because it takes two to make a peace, but only one to start a war. And the war has begun. The antifa terrorists, the BLM terrorists, and the other terrorists, supported by the left/Democrats, have declared war on the United States, or at least on the basic freedoms enshrined by the Constitution. And when those on the right defend themselves, they are vilified by the Left Wing Propaganda Machine, dba the Press.

And fellow travelers, those called by Lenin "useful idiots", will wring their hands and say "Oh, but they (peaceful protesters and demonstrators on the right) should not have provoked our peace loving violent terrorists! It's all the Right's fault!"

Hopefully soon there will be good men with guns to protect peaceful demonstrators from leftist terrorist thugs. As the damned soul Obama said, "If they bring knives, we'll bring guns." even a broken clock is right twice a day.

[clintonhater]

But all major wars need a deep moral purpose to sustain people through the difficult fighting, and in the North, ending slavery, over time, became a cause worthy of that purpose.

"Over time"; in other words, a rationalization & justification for the hugely underestimated (at the beginning) loss of life & property.

Wonder what would have happened if the South had lost the 1st Battle of Bull Run, and then totally capitulated, & tried somehow to make amends for the stupidity of attacking Ft. Sumpter? Actually, something like that was anticipated by the North, so the shock was profound when it didn't happen. But had it happened, the slave question would have gone to the back burner.

That "moral purpose," by the way, didn't seem deep enough to avoid the necessity of a draft. There ought to be a monument to the thousands of ordinary working men of NYC who, in July of '63, told Lincoln & the Generals "hell, no, we won't go!"

[togor]

Yes it's true the war could have ended differently, and the slave issue resolved differently, but would any of those alternative outcomes have carried less passion on the topic? I have a hard time seeing how that would be. Going forward we just have to do the best we can in the timeline we're in, I guess.

[JB White]

Colorblind society? I've been told we should look at one another and see no difference. Guess what? I look at my friends, they look at me, and we all know what color we are. So give me a break on this colorblind society crap. It's been preached since at least the 60's and it's nothing more than a load of starry-eyed hogwash. Those of us with thicker skins laugh at it no matter where we're from or what color we are.
A polite society, yes. Colorblind..HAH..stuff it!

The war didn't end any other way than it did. Nothing is going to change it. A segment of the population clings to the past and teaches hatred to their young, thus making themselves culturally retarded by their own hand. It doesn't mean all the rest should be forced to cater to their whims.

[togor]

JB I never took the idea of "Colorblind Society" to literally mean that you can't tell if someone is black, American Indian, Korean, etc. I mean, we have eyes. To me it's a matter of deciding what I do with the difference I see. Knowing nothing about a person other than skin color, hair style, clothing, manner of speech, what do I decide to read in? The choice I make for myself is to try not to be burdened with a great mass of stereotypes as I go through life. It's not always easy, but for me it's the right road.