Who started the Civil War?

Started by taxed, February 10, 2012, 07:09:07 PM

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COVER D

Actually, Baltimore started the Civil War after the Washington Redskins
whacked them 38-0.  Seriously, DC did whack Bmore and here's how.

This is a little known fact because all the history books say the war started
at Ft Sumter.

Lincoln was getting worried about the South building an Army at his door step
so he ordered troops down from Philadelphia. When the train reached Baltimore's
Union Station they disembarked and had to walk about 6 blocks west to
another station called Camden Yards where Oriole Park and Ravens Stadium
are now. Back then it was a train station that went straight to DC. The rail road
tracks are still there and people use the light rail to go to the games.

Anyway, they had to march and met an angry mob that threw a lot of stuff at
them like beer bottles, much like they do today throwing them at Refs at
football games. They threw rocks and even some bullets.

The troops turned and fired on the mob killing 12 people on Pratt St. These were
the first of over 300,000 Americans to die during the war.

Lincoln was so appalled that he sent an Army to put the crowd down. General
Butler the Buthcer camped out on a high hill over looking the harbor a few
blocks down from Ft McHenry and pointed big guns facing the city.

He said you guys act up again and I'll level the city. The guns are still there on
federal hill named after federal day when our constitution was signed and folks
nearby marched up to the hill to celebrate it.

After Butler did that he went to Annapolis and stopped the legislators from
voting to leave the country. It leaders were arrested and spent the war at
Ft McHenry which was a prison during the war.

Lincoln imposed martial law on Baltimore and they never acted up again although
Harriet Tubman started the underground rail road nearby on the eastern shore
that went to Bmore with the help of many female citizens.

Some of my family were in on those riots as my family lived in that part of town and my grand father's uncles fought for Lee's Army at Antietem.

But that's how the civil war got started. Maryland was always a southern state
and over 100,000 southern sympathizers including John Wilkes Booth who
killed Lincoln. His family owned a home 10 mins from here that had slaves.

Just thought you'd like to know.


elmerfudd

Quote from: tbone0106 on June 25, 2012, 10:24:50 PM
Heh, heh. Hoo boy. "What he said." Such eloquence.

What Giles should have said and didn't probably because he was a bit upset was "It was all about slavery because the South could not survive economically without it." Giles has said the equivalent of those words several times elsewhere on this board.

The historic argument over the cause of the war is sprinkled with this phrase: "it was all about slavery." And every time, the writer is partly correct, as you are. For some, and in a rather obscure way, the issue was purely the existence of slavery and slaves; the lowest of low whites and other minorities were protected, you might say, by the existence of the black slave underclass below all. But those who were so protected had no say in how things got done. By definition, the only people who could benefit by the mere existence of a class of people who were ALWAYS at the bottom of the food chain are those who are just one step up from there, and they didn't call the shots.

The folks who called the shots in the South were slave-owners to a man, and heavily invested in the economic value of slave labor. They were estate owners, plantation owners, lumber barons, sugar cane and cotton millionaires, all of whom depended on the availability of slave labor, not for their souls or their dignity, but for their fortunes. States' rights was a rallying cry, but a weak one.

Secession wasn't quite like divorce. It meant crazy nation-building stuff like printing your own money (and finding something to back it up). It meant creating your own navy to protect your thousands of miles of shoreline. It meant finding folks overseas to replace the manufacturing capacity of the North that had just been seceded from. it meant finding a place to sell all that cotton and sugar cane and lumber that slaves produced -- other than the North. Secession was serious business, and was based, in the end, on business.

Yeah, it was all about slavery, because the agriculturally-centered southern economy was based on the existence of slavery.

I agree to a point.  It was definitely about the material wealth that slaves represented, but it was also about "equality."  More than a few of those fire eating slavers could not fathom a south where blacks would be equal to whites, and they feared it at least as much, if not more, than they feared losing their wealth.  All you gotta do is read the secession speeches for proof.

Shooterman

Quote from: elmerfudd on June 26, 2012, 10:56:43 AM
I agree to a point.  It was definitely about the material wealth that slaves represented, but it was also about "equality."  More than a few of those fire eating slavers could not fathom a south where blacks would be equal to whites, and they feared it at least as much, if not more, than they feared losing their wealth.  All you gotta do is read the secession speeches for proof.

The Yankees believed the same, Elmer. Racism was not confined to the South. In fact, the North was probably even more racist. Lincoln certainly had no use for the Blacks, whether free or slave. Hell, some of the larger owners of slaves were free Blacks. Were they racist as well?
There's no ticks like Polyticks-bloodsuckers all Davy Crockett 1786-1836

Yankees are like castor oil. Even a small dose is bad.
[IMG]

elmerfudd

Quote from: Shooterman on June 26, 2012, 12:31:36 PM
The Yankees believed the same, Elmer. Racism was not confined to the South. In fact, the North was probably even more racist. Lincoln certainly had no use for the Blacks, whether free or slave. Hell, some of the larger owners of slaves were free Blacks. Were they racist as well?
I dunno.  Probably not.  They probably considered the average slave beneath them, but obviously not for reasons of skin color or ethnicity.

Racism certainly existed then, as it does now, above the Mason Dixon line.  I agree Lincoln was a racist.  But that does not alter the fact that the southern slave owning aristocracy feared the wholesale freedom of slaves not just for economic reasons but for quality of life reasons.  They said so in their secession speeches.

And there is no doubt that the secession movement, already headed to critical mass, heated up mightily once Lincoln was elected.  While he was no supporter of equal rights, he certainly was perceived as a threat to the continued existence of legal slavery.  And that's what caused the fever to secede to increase so dramatically.  Not tariffs.  To assert otherwise is to ignore too much documented history. 

I read somewhere that Lincoln said his attitude toward blacks was that he could simply leave them alone, couldn't he?  He did not feel compelled to own them, marry them, socialize with them, or do anything to or for them.  He felt like he could just leave them be. 

COVER D

That is so true about blacks. In fact, most black historians hate
Lincoln. He was all for abolition when he visited his friend's
plantation and saw what they did in the 50s. His name was
Joshua Speed and they worked in the same law firm in Springfield.
They were also lovers. True.

Lincoln wanted to see the former slaves back to Africa and many
returned there. Liberia is a country formed by returning slaves
from America.

Lincoln also made racist remarks before the war too.

Blacks don't even celebrate the Emancipation Act but the date
the Yankee army drove the confederates out of town. Many
don't even know what the act is.


mdgiles

QuoteYeah, it was all about slavery, because the agriculturally-centered southern economy was based on the existence of slavery.
Most of the economy of the US was based on agriculture and the majority of the people in the country were engaged in agriculture up until about 1895 IIRC. The major problem the Free Soil North had with the South was the plantation system. In the South all the best land was taken up by plantations that grew the money crops.That was why the North grew by immigration and the South didn't. I don't believe anyone cared about slaves. As has been pointed out most people were casually racist. But they did care about being pushed to the margins in a plantation economy. Why non plantation owning whites would fight against their own interests is puzzling, unless the belief was that by seizing the Southern half of the Southwest - which the South tried - there would be enough plantations for everyone. And Northerners fought for both the Union and to make sure the "slave power" advanced no further. "Bleeding Kansas" was an eye opener, it showed that the South wouldn't be content with slavery just in the South. Lincoln was right, the country couldn't exist indefinitely half slave and half free, it must become all one thing or the other. On the South's side, John Brown must had made them realize that the Abolitionists in the North might finally agree with Brown and start arming slaves.   
"LIBERALS: their willful ignorance is rivaled only by their catastrophic stupidity"!