I think I have an interesting question for you US bods...

[ORANGE]

ORIGINAL: Reiryc

ORIGINAL: ORANGE

Yes, slander evil government. Job done. [:D]

BTW: Texas v. White Found that the Constitution did not permit states to secede from the United States, and that the ordinances of secession, and all the acts of the legislatures within seceding states intended to give effect to such ordinances, were "absolutely null". [:)]

Wow, what a shock... you mean after the civil war, it was found that states didn't have a right to secede? [8|]

They based their decision on the Constitution which may surprise you preceded the Civil War. [;)]

[Reiryc]

ORIGINAL: ORANGE

They based their decision on the Constitution which may surprise you preceded the Civil War. [;)]

Yeah, they usually say they do when they make decisions [8D]... but of course the constitution doesn't forbid secession.

[Reiryc]

ORIGINAL: ORANGE

You are right. You never said southern. You did say a few. We have two. Where is the third? [:D]

Yes, I am right.

Additionally I also said that you can look up the rest if you feel so inclined. [:)]

If you do feel inclined, then enjoy the learning experience. [8D]

[ORANGE]

ORIGINAL: Reiryc

ORIGINAL: ORANGE

They based their decision on the Constitution which may surprise you preceded the Civil War. [;)]

Yeah, they usually say they do when they make decisions [8D]... but of course the constitution doesn't forbid secession.

Well they said it does and why. Who am I to believe? Supreme Court Justices empowered by the Constitution to make the decision or some guy on a message board?

Supreme Court Justices|guy on a message board
guy on a message board|Supreme Court Justices

Hard to weigh that.

[ORANGE]

ORIGINAL: Reiryc

ORIGINAL: ORANGE

You are right. You never said southern. You did say a few. We have two. Where is the third? [:D]

Yes, I am right.

Additionally I also said that you can look up the rest if you feel so inclined. [:)]

If you do feel inclined, then enjoy the learning experience. [8D]

Case law says you are wrong. [:)]

[KG Erwin]

Judge, I'd recommend that you read James McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom" , which explains the development of the US in the years leading to the Civil War, and covers the war itself. This volume is part of the Oxford History of the United States, so it should be available in a local library.

This book is in my home library, and it is perhaps the best one-volume account of the Civil War ever written. It won a Pulitzer Prize for Dr. McPherson.

[Reiryc]

ORIGINAL: ORANGE

Well they said it does and why. Who am I to believe? Supreme Court Justices empowered by the Constitution to make the decision or some guy on a message board?

Supreme Court Justices|guy on a message board
guy on a message board|Supreme Court Justices

Hard to weigh that.

So then you think supreme court judges are infallible? Do you only think that some guy on a message board thinks this way and there are no examples from both folks in the north and south, persons in power, who felt differently?

I guess it's just easier for some to do away with thinking and just go with whatever those guys in black robes say... after all, they do get to wear the black robes, so that must mean they are right! [:D]

[Reiryc]

ORIGINAL: ORANGE

Case law says you are wrong. [:)]

Case law says that I said 'southern states'? Got a link to that? [8|]

[ORANGE]

I do not think that anybody is infallible but according to the Constitution the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of the law in the US. So either you believe in the Constitution or you do not. It seems you agree with it when it is convenient and abandon it when it says something you do not like.

Again I come to the decision of some guy one a message board|The United States Constitution and the Supreme Court. I go with the Constitution. [:)]

[Frido1207]

ORIGINAL: KG Erwin

... I'd recommend that you read James McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom" , ...

Hi Judge,
i can just strongly second KG Erwins recommendation. Been actually reading this book (in english, although not my mother tongue, there was no translated editon available here in Germany), I would say its one of the most informative & well written history books I´ve read so far. I got the paperback edition for about €18.-, thats almost nothing for this full package of information. (Oxford University Press, 1988, ISBN: 0-19-516895-X paperback edition)

[ezzler]

Have to agree Judge. It is a marvelous book. Look it up on amazon but for a UK resident who wants to know about the Civil War this is the one.
I have just today finished his Drawn with the Sword which has some great essays.

[ravinhood]

Actually it had a lot to do with slavery. It was just disguised as other things like states rights. The south wanted the right to "individual" slavery, whereas the Yanks wanted total slavery of the people. (just look at the issues of today on another thread here). Once the south was under controlled the Yanks turned their attention to the INDIAN Nations. Enslaved them and killed half of them in the process.

[Sarge]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

Actually it had a lot to do with slavery. It was just disguised as other things like states rights. The south wanted the right to "individual" slavery, whereas the Yanks wanted total slavery of the people. (just look at the issues of today on another thread here). Once the south was under controlled the Yanks turned their attention to the INDIAN Nations. Enslaved them and killed half of them in the process.

Ranthood is really off the meds this week ,this is getting more entertaining every post .

[JWW]

I think there are immediate causes and longterm causes.  I think it is a complex issue.  I think it is disengenious to deny the leading role of slavery as the major cause of the war and a gross oversimplificaiton to say it was the only cause.  There have been a lot of good points made already above regardiing this complex issue, but I still think slavery was the one issue overshadowing all, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly.  One can certainly look at the election of Lincoln and the perceived threat to the institution of slavery as an immediate cause of secession of the states of the lower South.  But then one can look back at the earlier secession crisis during Jackson's presidency to see that state's rights was a major issue.  Days of Defiance by Maury Klein is a good book that looks at the country in the months leading up to Ft. Sumter.  So those who say slavery was not the cause are just wrong, as are those who say slavery was the cause.  In my view the inability to settle the slavery issue was one of several causes and the most important one. 

[ravinhood]

It's best to not take things at face value when analyzing history and their causes. There are always underlying issues that are confidential and/or secret or top secret when it comes to reasons and causes. That's what I believe anyways.

[Capt. Harlock]

As luck would have it, I waded into this controversy a few years back. Rather than hash over the yes-it-was-no-it-wasn't argument, I tried to put something together using the words of the actual people of the time: their speechers, letters, newspaper editorials, etc. The result was a PowerPoint "slideshow" (which could be turned into a screensaver). Though I say it who shouldn't, the end product gives a nice overview of the rising tensions from event to event. Since Churchill already used the phrase "The Gathering Storm", I titled it "The Approaching Storm". For those who don't have PowerPoint, freeware viewers are fairly easy to obtain.

[Doggie]

The North had their own slaves - they were called "Irish immigrants".  And unlike slaves, they weren't required to be fed, clothed, or housed.  The Civil War was not as simple as 'freeing the slaves".  Slavery was already on it's way out.

[jnier]

ORIGINAL: Doggie

The North had their own slaves - they were called "Irish immigrants".  And unlike slaves, they weren't required to be fed, clothed, or housed.  The Civil War was not as simple as 'freeing the slaves".  Slavery was already on it's way out.

It's quite true that that the civil war was not as simple as freeing the slaves. But your other two statements are absurd. Slavery was not "on its way out." Its true that mechanization would eventually make slavery obselete, but this would not have happened for decades. And to equate the situation of slaves with Irish immigrants - who granted, worked under truly deplorable conditions - is ridiculous.

[Reiryc]

ORIGINAL: ORANGE

I do not think that anybody is infallible but according to the Constitution the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of the law in the US. So either you believe in the Constitution or you do not. It seems you agree with it when it is convenient and abandon it when it says something you do not like.

According to the constitution, they are the arbiter in certain cases, not in others. They assumed power in those 'other cases' with the madison vs marbury decision.

I believe in the constitution and not necessarily in a robed man's opinion of the constitution.

Again I come to the decision of some guy one a message board|The United States Constitution and the Supreme Court. I go with the Constitution. [:)]

I also go with the constitution which is why I don't always side with the supreme court.

I guess you're the type that would have agreed with the dredd scott decision of the supreme court given your argument above. The decision ruled that all blacks, slaves or free, could never become citizens of the US. I think the decision was wrong and was not constitutional. Oh well, given your line above: guy on message board|Supreme court and the constitution, I guess you would have just sided with the supreme court and the constitution. [X(]



In March of 1857, the United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared that all blacks -- slaves as well as free -- were not and could never become citizens of the United States. The court also declared the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, thus permiting slavery in all of the country's territories.

The case before the court was that of Dred Scott v. Sanford. Dred Scott, a slave who had lived in the free state of Illinois and the free territory of Wisconsin before moving back to the slave state of Missouri, had appealed to the Supreme Court in hopes of being granted his freedom.

Taney -- a staunch supporter of slavery and intent on protecting southerners from northern aggression -- wrote in the Court's majority opinion that, because Scott was black, he was not a citizen and therefore had no right to sue. The framers of the Constitution, he wrote, believed that blacks "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it."

Referring to the language in the Declaration of Independence that includes the phrase, "all men are created equal," Taney reasoned that "it is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this declaration. . . ."

Abolitionists were incensed. Although disappointed, Frederick Douglass, found a bright side to the decision and announced, "my hopes were never brighter than now." For Douglass, the decision would bring slavery to the attention of the nation and was a step toward slavery's ultimate destruction.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2933.html

[cdbeck]

JD,

I submit, a bit to the side of the previous posters, that the American Civil War occurs as part of a general movement in Western history. Sure, there are issues of State's Rights and Slavery at stake, but I would say... and people will probably disagree, that the ACW comes as part of transition in structures of power we see after the advent of Liberalism, L'aissez Faire economics and industrialization. The switch is from old power bases of local, rural, agricultural "plantation" (sort of an early modern "factory farm") groups to long distance, urban, industrial based power. You see this switch, which occurs after the 1st wave of the Industrial revolution in the late 1700s and then moreso as the IR expands in the early-mid 1800s, all over the Western world, with similar effects. I find it very telling that the ACW occurs after 1848, when the early industrialized European nations are forced to "deal" with the problem of liberalism (funny enough, most of Europe succeeds in holding on to agricultural "gentry" based power - particularly your United Kingdom - longer than the US).

I put the ACW along the same sort of trend as the Peterloo riots/massacres, the 1848 revolutions, the Chartist movement, the Anti-Corn League, etc. Slavery is often a huge issue with the Industrial (bourgeois, if you will) class, similar to how it is in England. There is a marked movement for substituting slavery for wage-pay among these urban factory folks (note that early modern wages are little better than wage slavery).

What makes America distinct, is that America's particularly open form of suffrage and the old, somewhat unanswered, question of Federalism, allow the ACW to grow much larger than the 1848 revolutions (basically you can think of this as the old aristocratic southern "gentry," agricultural-power class was "revolting" against the industrial North, who wanted a society wide "social contract" enforced by a powerful Federal government).

In all actuality, slavery in America was soon to be dead letter. Advances in agriculture, particularly the cotton gin, was going to make human labor mostly obsolete. With the UK promoting abolition, forcing some South American counries to abolish slavery and ending their own slave-trade about 20 years earlier, the United States was going to be harder and harder pressed to continue the slave business without fiding some alternative (Imperialism... for instance). Attention was being pointed West, further weakening the Southern Aristocrat's hold on "landed power."

I would say the ACW was inevitable, and call it the "birth pangs" of Industrial, urban, Liberal power in America (note: this is not "liberal" like today's democrats). It is funny, because the ACW pretty much destroyed the landed gentry class that had spearheaded the American Revolution a little over 100 years earlier.

SoM