I 'preciate all the love for our Southern cause from Joss & co.
SKMDC
that the War Between the States was about protecting our land and homes
from an aggressive North. That's usually met with the Slavery Argument
where the accuser assumes everyone south of West Virginia had hundreds
of tortured slaves, which is of course not true. The farmer who took
his squirrel gun to fight the invading army wasn't fighting for
slavery, he was fightin' for his life.
Now, Joss Whedon comes along and tells an allegory of this basic
premise, in much the same way Buffy was all allegorical for teen issues
and whatnot, and everyone suddenly "gets" the idea that the poor dirt
farmin' Southerners weren't nearly as bad as all that. Thanks Joss.
I've always known what being a Southerner means, but sometimes it's
tough to explain, and you've given me about 16 hours worth of visual
explanation... maybe it can supplant "Deliverance" as a
non-Southerner's notion of the South. :)
atlasbugged
news:1128628365.8...@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Now, Joss Whedon comes along and tells an allegory of this basic
> premise, in much the same way Buffy was all allegorical for teen issues
> and whatnot, and everyone suddenly "gets" the idea that the poor dirt
> farmin' Southerners weren't nearly as bad as all that. Thanks Joss.
It isn't sudden. This bit of mis-history has been gradually dying for over
a decade now thanks (I think) to Gore Vidal, who popularized (or made widely
known) Lincoln's quote about how keeping the Union together was his goal
even if slavery were to continue. I think this ball has been in play for 20
years, actually.
Yes, Whedon is continuing this trend with FIREFLY. I have come around
myself, and I truly think all monuments and holidays devoted to Lincoln
should be torn down and rejected. I also think it will happen because that
is the trend, however gradual it may be.
Mephij
question that the major issue which led up to the war was slavery. The
term "aggressive North" implies that they were some kind of imposing
evil empire threatening the very fabric of southern life; that the
yanks were marching over southern fields burning and rapeing at will.
That's simply not true: the issue which started the war was largely
whether new territories would become slave or free states once admitted
into the union. When the Republicans took power in 1860, southern
politicians recognized that the chances of getting new slave states was
highly diminished. And with fewer slave states, the better a chance
that an amendment to the constitution could be made to abolish slavery.
This fear tore through the south like wildfire. It was this panic, more
than anything else, which led to the secession of the states merely
months later. Llthough not all southerners were slave owners, many of
those in power (who made the decisions which lead to war) were.
One of the reasons why the United States prospered as a country for so
long was because the north and the south form a symbiant circle: with
the south suplying a large ammount of agriculture to support the
industrialized north which in turn produced exports which benefitted
the entire country. hen the Union split, it would have creatd a major
problem for the south: an economy based so largely on agriculture would
have a great deal of trouble staying afloat in the industrialized
world. And without the constant influx of cotton comming from the
south, the northern economy would also suffer (most of the norther
exports were textile at the time). Thus, it was in everyones best
interest to kep the union together: thats what the war was about. The
north wasn't on some power-hugry-kill-all-southerners mission, they
just wanted to keep things working. The south (well at least the people
in charge) wanted to keep their slaves at all cost. The southern farmer
who picked up his gun was doing so mostly out of a sense of
nationalistic pride, much as his cousin who lived above the
mason-dixon.
In short, no matter how you try to paint it, the civil war was fought
over the issue of slavery.
When I think about Mal and the Browncoats I'm thinking more along the
lines of the American Revolution: that was a *real* war for
independance against a tyranical empire.
No 33 Secretary
news:1128638486.5...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:
> Although the war itself was one to preserve the union, there is no
> question that the major issue which led up to the war was slavery.
"The major issue?" No. Certainly not. The major issue was states rights vs.
federal control, but both north and south. Once the war started, a - but
not the only - major issue was slavery, in the minds of the public. But
slavery itself was, at most, a contributing factor to _the_ major issue,
which was states rights.
> The
> term "aggressive North" implies that they were some kind of imposing
> evil empire threatening the very fabric of southern life; that the
> yanks were marching over southern fields burning and rapeing at will.
Pretty accurate implication, actually.
--
"So there is no third law of Terrydynamics."
-- William Hyde
Terry Austin
www.hyperbooks.com
Robert Uhl
>
> Now, Joss Whedon comes along and tells an allegory of this basic
> premise, in much the same way Buffy was all allegorical for teen
> issues and whatnot, and everyone suddenly "gets" the idea that the
> poor dirt farmin' Southerners weren't nearly as bad as all
> that. Thanks Joss. I've always known what being a Southerner means,
> but sometimes it's tough to explain, and you've given me about 16
> hours worth of visual explanation... maybe it can supplant
> "Deliverance" as a non-Southerner's notion of the South. :)
Ditto. And I like the fact that Whedon presents both sides of the
picture: there are advantages to defeat & being part of the Alliance,
just as there are advantages to our own defeat 140 years ago. Still,
it's quite remarkable to see anyone tell it like it is, or have any
sympathy for the patriots who lost their (perhaps misguided) bid for
freedom once upon a time.
--
Robert Uhl <http://public.xdi.org/=ruhl>
The failure was caused by the inability of bureaucrats to acknowledge the laws
of physics, followed shortly by their inability to change those laws, no
matter how many PowerPoint slides they threw at them. --Mary Shafer
Mephij
> "The major issue?" No. Certainly not. The major issue was states rights vs.
> federal control, but both north and south. Once the war started, a - but
> not the only - major issue was slavery, in the minds of the public. But
> slavery itself was, at most, a contributing factor to _the_ major issue,
> which was states rights.
Huh? States Rights? Yeah, the states' right to have slaves! That's a
high-school textbook answer. Throughout the 1850s tensions rose between
the states as the largely abolitionist north sought to make future
states free states and the south sought to make new states slave
states. Both sides were pushing their agenda trying to make it so
territories would be pushed one way or another when finding statehood.
the importance of all this? When a territory becomes a state it gets
two seats in the senate and some number of seats in the house. The
southern politicians feared that if these new votes in congress
happened to be abolitionist then that could sway the tide of the
country against slavery. And those same fears were mirrored by the
north if new territries were to become slave states. In the 1850s
several decisions from congress (such as the Kansass-Nebraska Act) as
well as landmark Supreme Court cases (such as Dred Scott) were
decidedly pro-slavery. This led to the formation in the north of the
Republican party which was able to take control of the executive branch
(this largely because the much denser population in the north gave the
Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln the majority of the electoral vote
in 1860). With the abolitionist Republicans now in power, chances of
seeing new slave states became scarce. This lead to a panic amoungst
the aristocrats and politicians in the south who feard that they would
lose their slaves. This is what led to the war. "States' Rights" was
little more than a battle cry to rally the southern masses to the
cause: "Fighting for Slavery" just doesn't sound as good.
> Pretty accurate implication, actually.
Actually, no. Perhaps you are referring to events such as the imfamous
"scorched earth" total war campaign led by Gen. Sherman? If so, then it
would be important to note that although cotroversial, "Sherman's march
to the sea" was not an attack to devastate the south just for the sake
of doing so: it was a completely logical strategy to win in a time of
war: limit your enemy's ability to wage war. Of course, war in itself
is an atrocity so atrocites which take place during war are merely part
of a larger crime which both sides take part in. I was not referring to
events which actually had taken place after war broke out. I was merely
pointing out that - contrary to what the original poster would have you
believe - the north was not a war-mongering band of militants bent on
southern destruction. They just wanted to keep their country in one
piece.
-Mephij
J. Clarke
> No 33 Secretary wrote:
>> "The major issue?" No. Certainly not. The major issue was states rights
>> vs. federal control, but both north and south. Once the war started, a -
>> but not the only - major issue was slavery, in the minds of the public.
>> But slavery itself was, at most, a contributing factor to _the_ major
>> issue, which was states rights.
>
> Huh? States Rights? Yeah, the states' right to have slaves! That's a
> high-school textbook answer.
Actually the high school textbook answer is that it was to free the slaves.
Try some college level books.
> Throughout the 1850s tensions rose between
> the states as the largely abolitionist north sought to make future
> states free states and the south sought to make new states slave
> states. Both sides were pushing their agenda trying to make it so
> territories would be pushed one way or another when finding statehood.
> the importance of all this? When a territory becomes a state it gets
> two seats in the senate and some number of seats in the house. The
> southern politicians feared that if these new votes in congress
> happened to be abolitionist then that could sway the tide of the
> country against slavery.
Actually this was settled by the Missouri Compromise IIRC.
> And those same fears were mirrored by the
> north if new territries were to become slave states. In the 1850s
> several decisions from congress (such as the Kansass-Nebraska Act) as
> well as landmark Supreme Court cases (such as Dred Scott) were
> decidedly pro-slavery. This led to the formation in the north of the
> Republican party which was able to take control of the executive branch
> (this largely because the much denser population in the north gave the
> Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln the majority of the electoral vote
> in 1860). With the abolitionist Republicans now in power, chances of
> seeing new slave states became scarce. This lead to a panic amoungst
> the aristocrats and politicians in the south who feard that they would
> lose their slaves. This is what led to the war. "States' Rights" was
> little more than a battle cry to rally the southern masses to the
> cause: "Fighting for Slavery" just doesn't sound as good.
While all of this is Politically Correct and all, slavery did not become an
issue until the war was already in progress and was made one by the North,
which freed everybody's slaves but their own.
The Southern leadership was well aware that slavery was on the way out, and
one of the issues was how best to transition from a society that kept
slaves to one that did not. Some held that the slaves should just be cut
loose to fend for themselves as best they could, others felt that they were
at leased owed an education before being cut loose, others felt that
existing slaves should be kept in slavery while their children should be
freedmen. It's not a simple issue at all if one hopes to do right by the
slaves. It ended up that they were just cut loose with all the
conditioning that had been applied to keep them in line intact, which was
the worst of all possible worlds and the country is still, a century and a
half later, in the process of recovering from that choice.
Further, the secession was well underway in an orderly fashion in Congress
and looked likely to succeed in its entirety when the shooting started.
>> Pretty accurate implication, actually.
>
> Actually, no. Perhaps you are referring to events such as the imfamous
> "scorched earth" total war campaign led by Gen. Sherman? If so, then it
> would be important to note that although cotroversial, "Sherman's march
> to the sea" was not an attack to devastate the south just for the sake
> of doing so: it was a completely logical strategy to win in a time of
> war: limit your enemy's ability to wage war. Of course, war in itself
> is an atrocity so atrocites which take place during war are merely part
> of a larger crime which both sides take part in. I was not referring to
> events which actually had taken place after war broke out. I was merely
> pointing out that - contrary to what the original poster would have you
> believe - the north was not a war-mongering band of militants bent on
> southern destruction. They just wanted to keep their country in one
> piece.
>
> -Mephij
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
Mark Healey
> Now, Joss Whedon comes along and tells an allegory of this basic
> premise,
Not really. In the 'Verse the independents started that way and were
taken over by the Alliance. The confederates were already part of the
Union.
> I've always known what being a Southerner means, but sometimes it's
> tough to explain,
It means prayer in school, Jim Crow, the Ten Commandments in
courtrooms, and Creationism taught as science. These are just a few of
the things off the top of my head right now.
I hadn't met many southerners until I joined the military. What I
discovered is that the stereotypes are largely true. The vast majority of
the people I've met who believe that the bible is true are southerners
(the rest being from the lower mid-west).
If the south were allowed to secede it would have an economy and culture
resembling that of Mexico more that the rest of the U.S.
Maybe someday I'll post what's wrong with the north-east.
--
Mark Healey
marknews(at)healeyonline(dot)com
J. Clarke
> On Thu, 06 Oct 2005 12:52:45 -0700, SKMDC wrote:
>
>> Now, Joss Whedon comes along and tells an allegory of this basic
>> premise,
>
> Not really. In the 'Verse the independents started that way and were
> taken over by the Alliance. The confederates were already part of the
> Union.
>
>> I've always known what being a Southerner means, but sometimes it's
>> tough to explain,
>
> It means prayer in school,
Actually that's the Damnyankee Republicans.
> Jim Crow,
You mean like Robert E. Lee?
> the Ten Commandments in courtrooms,
????
> and Creationism taught as science.
Damnyankee Republicans again. Note the recent battlegrounds for that sort
of thing. Michigan, Pennsylvania, . . .
> These are just a few of
> the things off the top of my head right now.
> I hadn't met many southerners until I joined the military. What I
> discovered is that the stereotypes are largely true. The vast majority of
> the people I've met who believe that the bible is true are southerners
> (the rest being from the lower mid-west).
And of course none of the Roman Catholics in New England believe that it is
true.
> If the south were allowed to secede it would have an economy and culture
> resembling that of Mexico more that the rest of the U.S.
Or it would have put a man on the moon.
> Maybe someday I'll post what's wrong with the north-east.
--
Charles Lincoln
news:di4l1...@news1.newsguy.com...
> Mephij wrote:
>
>> No 33 Secretary wrote:
>>> "The major issue?" No. Certainly not. The major issue was states rights
************[snipped for brevity]***************
When a territory becomes a state it gets
>> two seats in the senate and some number of seats in the house. The
>> southern politicians feared that if these new votes in congress
>> happened to be abolitionist then that could sway the tide of the
>> country against slavery.
>
> Actually this was settled by the Missouri Compromise IIRC.
the Dred Scott case held that the entire Missouri Compromise was
unconstitutional and every action taken pursuant to it therefore illegal,
and this decision contributed more than anything else to the increasing
tensions of slavery in the settlements than anything else (and also for the
record, yes I'm very distantly related to the more famous person of my last
name relevant to this topic but all of my immediate ancestors fought for the
South---in fact, of course, Lincoln was born in Kentucky and more of his
relatives fought his regime than supported it, and more of his wife's
relatives, also....).
Although I'd agree that "Browncoat rebels" sound kind of like
"Greycoat rebels" (crossed or confused with "Brownshirts = Nazis?" maybe?),
I can't say I see much evidence that Joss Whedon is a Confederate
sentimentalist or sympathizer---and I say that as someone with a LOT of
southern family heritage at stake here....
It's even farther off topic from Joss Whedon but relevant to whether
the "pro-Southern" position was racist or not to keep clearly in mind that
the author of the "key opinion" (every Justice wrote a separate opinion in a
severely divided court) in the Dred Scott case was Chief Justice Taney, who
(alone among the justices) wrote that Black Africans could never be citizens
of the United States and should never be given full civil rights---even
though some southern States such as Louisiana had a separate class of Black
African citizens who not only voted but had full property-owning
rights---including the rather ironic right to own Plantations and Slaves
(but then, think of the reality of independent Black Plantationholding
societies in Revolutionary Haiti and even Repatriated American Blacks in
Liberia---who were the last "official" slaveholders in the world according
to the League of Nations in the 1920s....since they had enslaved the local
blacks on their return to Africa after being themselves emancipated in the
U.S.).
Now, relating to the racism of the Southern position, and the
southern political economy, it was Chief Justice Taney, who as Andrew
Jackson's Attorney General, had overseen the removal of the Southern "Five
Civilized Tribes" (especially the Georgia Cherokees) along the trail of
tears in DEFIANCE of the 1830s Chief Justice Marshall's unequivocal Supreme
Court rulings to the contrary, in favor of the Cherokee and their right to
maintain sovereign and independent "National Enclaves" within Georgia,
[along with the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Alabama, and
Mississippi, and Florida).
So as much as I take pride in my Southern heritage and Confederate
military and political ancestry, I'm afraid it's pretty undeniable that the
primary emotional and economic impetus in the 1850s-1860s, as well as the
1950s-1960s, for advocating "States Rights" was racism and the desire to
keep the blacks down. Now, Joss, CLEARLY doesn't feel that way or he
wouldn't have Zoey as Captain Malcom's second-in-command on Serenity or Gunn
as Angel's top legal mind at Wolfram & Hart (after becoming one of the
original "muscle" trio at Angel Investigations). Gunn's speech to the
Grusalag at the end of Angel Season II in Pylea about how "saying people
free doesn't make them free" was one of the most poetically beautiful
descriptions of the whole "reconstruction" process that I've ever
heard/read. Southern Civilization was a very interesting phenomenon, but as
a Great-Great Grandson of several Confederate Veterans, including one
wounded on Cemetary Ridge at Gettysburg in Pickett's charge, I can tell you
for sure that the only way the South could ever have won the war was if it
had never fired a single cannonball at Fort Sumter. That was their key,
fatal mistake---starting the war. Rhett Butler's speech at the party at 12
Oaks in GWTW was a pretty good summation of reality---as was Ashley Wilkes'
for that matter.
>
>> And those same fears were mirrored by the
>> north if new territries were to become slave states. In the 1850s
>> several decisions from congress (such as the Kansass-Nebraska Act) as
>> well as landmark Supreme Court cases (such as Dred Scott) were
>> decidedly pro-slavery.
This led to the formation in the north of the
>> Republican party which was able to take control of the executive branch
>> (this largely because the much denser population in the north gave the
>> Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln the majority of the electoral vote
>> in 1860).
majority---the Democrats committed suicide in 1860 by splitting the party
not just in half but (really) three ways---between Stephen Douglas of
Illinois and John Breckenridge of Kentucky (who both ran as Democrats) and
John Bell of the "Constitutional Union" party which syphoned off even more
votes. Abe Lincoln won not by a majority but by a very weak plurality (even
in "minor" northern states such as New York)---the lowest percentage vote of
any president ever actually elected before or since if I'm not mistaken. If
the Democrats hadn't split three-ways (you could call the "Constitutional
Unionists" the "heirs of the Whig Party"---but in essence it was the
non-Republic block that Lincoln had to beat to win). The Republican Party
had only been formed in 1854 by John C. Fremont of "California Bear Flag
Republic" fame---and even Southern California was "pro Southern" during the
war---it was a very bad time (The New York Times had an article just this
past Sunday recalling how the Mayor of New York wanted the City to Secede
and in effect ally itself with the Confederacy---and there were strong
anti-war and pro-Confederate sentiments [and riots, throughout the war] in
NYC).
With the abolitionist Republicans now in power, chances of
>> seeing new slave states became scarce. This lead to a panic amoungst
>> the aristocrats and politicians in the south who feard that they would
>> lose their slaves. This is what led to the war. "States' Rights" was
>> little more than a battle cry to rally the southern masses to the
>> cause: "Fighting for Slavery" just doesn't sound as good.
Flag, "We are a band of brothers.....fighting for the property we won by
honest toil....Hurrah, Hurrah, for Southern Rights Hurrah....Hurrah for the
Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star." This was an irony not lost on
either Mark Twain (through the mouths of Tom Sawyer and "Nigger Jim") in
Huckleberry Finn or on Scarlett O'Hara in GWTW (She and Rhett named their
only child Bonnie, after that Flag of South Carolina, and then Scarlett and
Ashley had that argument about slave-labor on the plantations before the war
vs. chain-gang forced labor from prisons at the sawmill after the war.)
>
> While all of this is Politically Correct and all, slavery did not become
> an
> issue until the war was already in progress and was made one by the North,
> which freed everybody's slaves but their own.
>
> The Southern leadership was well aware that slavery was on the way out,
> and
> one of the issues was how best to transition from a society that kept
> slaves to one that did not.
imprecise but long period of years in Brazil (to which a large number of
Southern Slaveholders fled after the war, including some relatives/ancestors
of later Georgia Governor/President Jimmy Carter). Brazil did have a
superior method of emancipation from the standpoint of the
Plantationholders/Slaveowners: The last Empress of Brazil decreed that after
a certain date no person could be "born" a slave or otherwise become a
slave---that all persons would be born free. One of my son's Godmothers is
Brazillian, however, and she recalls that when she was a little girl there
were still some very old men and women working for her family who were
technically slaves because they had been born slaves---but the system itself
had long since died. The destruction of the Southern economy was a bad
thing for black and white people, and not among the most positive results of
the War....but the war itself was mostly the result of the anti-slavery
movement on the one hand and Southern hotheadedness in going to war
unprepared on the other.
[************snipped for length again*************]
tria...@aol.com
SKMDC wrote:
> It strikes me that for years us Southerners have explained ad nauseum
> that the War Between the States was about protecting our land and homes
> from an aggressive North. That's usually met with the Slavery Argument
> where the accuser assumes everyone south of West Virginia had hundreds
> of tortured slaves, which is of course not true. The farmer who took
> his squirrel gun to fight the invading army wasn't fighting for
> slavery, he was fightin' for his life.
We're going to ignore this general stupidity.
> Now, Joss Whedon comes along and tells an allegory of this basic
> premise, in much the same way Buffy was all allegorical for teen issues
> and whatnot, and everyone suddenly "gets" the idea that the poor dirt
> farmin' Southerners weren't nearly as bad as all that. Thanks Joss.
> I've always known what being a Southerner means, but sometimes it's
> tough to explain, and you've given me about 16 hours worth of visual
> explanation... maybe it can supplant "Deliverance" as a
> non-Southerner's notion of the South. :)
And focus on your Bizarro world interpretation of a war which doesn't
involve a civil war, states rights, or any of the issues which led the
South to secede, fire the first shots, and start he Civil War being an
"allegory" for the Civil War.
--
Justin Alexander Bacon
http://www.thealexandrian.net
Mephij
> Actually the high school textbook answer is that it was to free the slaves.
> Try some college level books.
Actually, High School textbooks are much more likely to pull out the
"States Rights" argument. Why? Because a textbook company trying to
sell books to public shools doesn't want to offend anyone, and to say
the civil war was to free the slaves may offend Dixies. It's the same
reason why some high-school science textbooks still list creationism as
a valid scientific theory: uninformed school boards don't buy books
which contradict their uninformed beliefs. It's the College textbooks
which acurately outline the causes of the war as being slavery related.
I would like to see any college textbook anywhere that doesn't say that
the outbreak of the civil war was mostly caused over tensions rising
out of the slavery issue.
> Actually this was settled by the Missouri Compromise IIRC.
And IIRC, The Missouri Compromise was ruled unconstitutional by the
Dred Scott case and later repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
> While all of this is Politically Correct and all, slavery did not become an
> issue until the war was already in progress and was made one by the North,
> which freed everybody's slaves but their own.
So I suppose the above mentioned situations (Dred Scott, K-N A, among
other hot button issues of the 1850s) which were directly related to
slavery had nothing to do with the civil war! Maybe you should try
reading some of those college textbooks you speak so highly of. Maybe
then you'll learn that Slavery was a MAJOR issue prior to the civil
war. The notion that the slavery issue was some afterthought invented
by the north is ludicrous.
Charles Lincoln wrote:
> Don't kid yourself about Abraham Lincoln winning by any sort of large
> majority---the Democrats committed suicide in 1860 by splitting the party
> not just in half but (really) three ways...
Checking my statistics from the Election of 1860 I see that Lincoln
took the election with 180 electoral votes compared to the 123 COMBINED
electoral votes of the other three running parties. Now let's assume
for a moment that the three opposing parties unified and ran a single
candidate and it was a Lincoln vs. (let's say) Douglas election. Lets
also assume that everyone that voted for one of the opposing parties
voted for Douglas. Now, If you break it down by state you see that the
only states that Lincoln won with less than a 50% popular majority were
Cali, Oregon, and New Jersey. New Jersey split its electoral vote, so
that wouldn't have changed anything. So we'll give the 7 votes for
Oregon & Cali to Douglass. Even when we do this, Lincoln still gathers
173 Electoral Votes. Still more than the 152 votes needed to tke the
election. That is, even if the three opposing parties combined to
support one candidate, Lincoln would still have won by a 57% electoral
majority. That sounds like a large majority to me. I'll give you the
fact that this majority wasn't mirrored in the popular vote, but -as we
are all too aware of these days- the popular vote really means squat.
As I stated in my post above, the reason for this is because of the
drastically denser population in the north caused it to have a much
greater number of electoral votes than the south. No matter how you
slice it, Lincoln still won the election of 1860 and by a fair
electoral majority.
-Mephij
P.S. I'm not trying to start a flame-fest here, just setting the record
straight. In the end, we're all browncoats so why can't we all just get
along :)
Charles Lincoln
news:1128695300.0...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> J. Clarke wrote:
************[snipped]**********************
> That sounds like a large majority to me. I'll give you the
> fact that this majority wasn't mirrored in the popular vote, but -as we
> are all too aware of these days- the popular vote really means squat.
> As I stated in my post above, the reason for this is because of the
> drastically denser population in the north caused it to have a much
> greater number of electoral votes than the south. No matter how you
> slice it, Lincoln still won the election of 1860 and by a fair
> electoral majority.
>
> -Mephij
>
> P.S. I'm not trying to start a flame-fest here, just setting the record
> straight. In the end, we're all browncoats so why can't we all just get
> along :)
>
Hayes-Tilton '76 or Bush-Gore '00, but the difference between winning a
decisive majority in the electoral college by virtue of less than decisive
popular vote nationwide is still fairly interesting from the historical
standpoint of "why were the Southern Democrats so anxious to secede...."
But as you say, that particular war is LONG OVER while the Alliance is still
an Inter-gallactic nemesis---so we can definitely get back to the business
at hand namely the Movie of the Year---Serenity....as far as I'm concerned,
anyhow.... (OK, Batman Begins was a close second---now there's an argument
about current events worth having....which was better?)
Robert Uhl
>
>> Now, Joss Whedon comes along and tells an allegory of this basic
>> premise,
>
> Not really. In the 'Verse the independents started that way and were
> taken over by the Alliance. The confederates were already part of the
> Union.
No, they _had_ been part of the Union. That ended before the shooting
started.
> Maybe someday I'll post what's wrong with the north-east.
Yankees, mostly, and the remnants of Puritan messianic fervour. Even as
atheists, Yankees seem to think that God is on their side.
--
Robert Uhl <http://public.xdi.org/=ruhl>
`We _must_ implement multi-processor object-oriented Java-based
client-server technologies immediately!'
`You know, FORTRAN and slide rules put men on the moon and got them
back safely multiple times.' --Matt Roberds
Robert Uhl
>
> And focus on your Bizarro world interpretation of a war which doesn't
> involve a civil war, states rights, or any of the issues which led the
> South to secede, fire the first shots, and start he Civil War being an
> "allegory" for the Civil War.
Firefly is a sci-fi Western, with a failed war of independence, a
tyrannical government and cruel savages; the parallels could neither be
nor exact nor more politically incorrect.
Spoilers Below
Heck, the Alliance made the Reavers what they are--just like the Union
drove the aborigines to what they were (I'm no defender thereof, but
they got a rotten deal and weren't nearly as nasty before folks started
scalping them and so forth).
--
Robert Uhl <http://public.xdi.org/=ruhl>
We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other
languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their
pockets for new vocabulary. --James D. Nicoll
No 33 Secretary
news:1128643700.2...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> No 33 Secretary wrote:
>> "The major issue?" No. Certainly not. The major issue was states
>> rights vs. federal control, but both north and south. Once the war
>> started, a - but not the only - major issue was slavery, in the minds
>> of the public. But slavery itself was, at most, a contributing factor
>> to _the_ major issue, which was states rights.
>
> Huh? States Rights? Yeah, the states' right to have slaves!
State sovereignty, vs. federal control.
It's not complicated.
<meaningless rant snipped>
No 33 Secretary
news:1128695300.0...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> J. Clarke wrote:
>> Actually the high school textbook answer is that it was to free the
>> slaves. Try some college level books.
>
> Actually, High School textbooks are much more likely to pull out the
> "States Rights" argument. Why?
Because it's historical fact.
> P.S. I'm not trying to start a flame-fest here,
Liar.
J. Clarke
> J. Clarke wrote:
>> Actually the high school textbook answer is that it was to free the
>> slaves. Try some college level books.
>
> Actually, High School textbooks are much more likely to pull out the
> "States Rights" argument. Why? Because a textbook company trying to
> sell books to public shools doesn't want to offend anyone, and to say
> the civil war was to free the slaves may offend Dixies.
Nobody I know from the South is offended by that contention. They may be
offended that the Damnyankees _did_ it but that's another story.
> It's the same
> reason why some high-school science textbooks still list creationism as
> a valid scientific theory: uninformed school boards don't buy books
> which contradict their uninformed beliefs.
You mean that there is still a public school system in the US that uses such
books that has not been sued out of existence?
> It's the College textbooks
> which acurately outline the causes of the war as being slavery related.
Maybe for the mandatory "American History for Dummies" course.
> I would like to see any college textbook anywhere that doesn't say that
> the outbreak of the civil war was mostly caused over tensions rising
> out of the slavery issue.
Well, start with Stampp's "Causes of the Civil War". Slavery was part of
the issue but a long way from all of it. Taxation, population migration,
and a bunch of other economic issues had a very large part in the decision
to secede.
>> Actually this was settled by the Missouri Compromise IIRC.
>
> And IIRC, The Missouri Compromise was ruled unconstitutional by the
> Dred Scott case and later repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
>
>> While all of this is Politically Correct and all, slavery did not become
>> an issue until the war was already in progress and was made one by the
>> North, which freed everybody's slaves but their own.
>
> So I suppose the above mentioned situations (Dred Scott, K-N A, among
> other hot button issues of the 1850s) which were directly related to
> slavery had nothing to do with the civil war!
Their being related to slavery and the war being about freeing the slaves
are not the same thing. They were also about political power and that was
the _real_ issue.
> Maybe you should try
> reading some of those college textbooks you speak so highly of. Maybe
> then you'll learn that Slavery was a MAJOR issue prior to the civil
> war. The notion that the slavery issue was some afterthought invented
> by the north is ludicrous.
It was in some senses a major issue but it was not the reason the Civil War
occurred.
> Charles Lincoln wrote:
>> Don't kid yourself about Abraham Lincoln winning by any sort of large
>> majority---the Democrats committed suicide in 1860 by splitting the party
>> not just in half but (really) three ways...
>
> Checking my statistics from the Election of 1860 I see that Lincoln
> took the election with 180 electoral votes compared to the 123 COMBINED
> electoral votes of the other three running parties.
And your point is?
> Now let's assume
> for a moment that the three opposing parties unified and ran a single
> candidate and it was a Lincoln vs. (let's say) Douglas election. Lets
> also assume that everyone that voted for one of the opposing parties
> voted for Douglas.
Let's say that by not being divided three ways the Democrats managed a more
effective political campaign.
> Now, If you break it down by state you see that the
> only states that Lincoln won with less than a 50% popular majority were
> Cali, Oregon, and New Jersey. New Jersey split its electoral vote, so
> that wouldn't have changed anything. So we'll give the 7 votes for
> Oregon & Cali to Douglass. Even when we do this, Lincoln still gathers
> 173 Electoral Votes. Still more than the 152 votes needed to tke the
> election. That is, even if the three opposing parties combined to
> support one candidate, Lincoln would still have won by a 57% electoral
> majority. That sounds like a large majority to me. I'll give you the
> fact that this majority wasn't mirrored in the popular vote, but -as we
> are all too aware of these days- the popular vote really means squat.
> As I stated in my post above, the reason for this is because of the
> drastically denser population in the north caused it to have a much
> greater number of electoral votes than the south. No matter how you
> slice it, Lincoln still won the election of 1860 and by a fair
> electoral majority.
Again you're grossly oversimplifying a complex situation.
> -Mephij
>
> P.S. I'm not trying to start a flame-fest here, just setting the record
> straight. In the end, we're all browncoats so why can't we all just get
> along :)
For the same reason the Democrats couldn't get along?
Charles Lincoln
> Mephij wrote:
>
>> J. Clarke wrote:
>>> Actually the high school textbook answer is that it was to free the
>>> slaves. Try some college level books.
>>
>> Actually, High School textbooks are much more likely to pull out the
>> "States Rights" argument. Why? Because a textbook company trying to
>> sell books to public shools doesn't want to offend anyone, and to say
>> the civil war was to free the slaves may offend Dixies.
>
> Nobody I know from the South is offended by that contention. They may be
> offended that the Damnyankees _did_ it but that's another story.
>
proper (not counting John Brown's activities during the Buchanan
administration in Kansas and at the National Armory near D.C. as part of the
Civil War as some very-well respected historians would like to do) had
absolutely NOTHING to do with any dispute about slavery. Idiot Louisiana
General PTG BEAUREGARD fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor when the
Union forces refused to withdraw. If South Carolina had been willing to
just let them sit---the war itself probably never would have started because
NOBODY in the North wanted to fire the first shot. South Carolina and PTG
Beauregard gave the North exactly what they wanted---an excuse to fight.
Lincoln called up troops and that even had the effect of pushing Virginia,
North Carolina, and Tennessee to secede when they had not done so on their
own and had not participated in the Montgomery, Alabama government until
then. Then my pathetic ancestors cooperated in moving the national capital
of the Confederacy from the almost unreachable Montgomery to the "come and
get me, I'm close to you" site of Richmond, Virginia. The American Civil
War, like most wars, was a stupid mistake and the people who started it paid
the most for it. Anti-Slavery civil disobedience and "terrorism" such as
John Brown's might have gone on all over the country without the
Southerners' rash, stupid actions in starting the war---but if Slavery had
gone out quietly by force of law and forms of gradual or compensated
emancipation in the U.S. as it did in the British Empire and/or
Brazil---race relations probably never would have turned as sour as they did
in the U.S.....
But now, I want to know---how DID the Alliance-Independent Civil War
start? What was the "Fort Sumter"-like event that triggered that civil war?
Any speculations, fellow brownshirt sympathizers?
******[I snipped the rest because I grew up totally emersed in these
arguments among several generations of my family and I find them extremely
tedious and well worn: my mother went to the University of Chicago and she
couldn't stand the whole idea that we had any Confederate, pro-slavery and
Southern ancestors, but she also couldn't live a day without house-servants
waiting on her; my grandmother loved Southern Heritage and the Ideal of the
South and celebrated RE Lee's birthday; my grandfather felt that the war had
been very bad for the cotton business and that was particularly hard on his
father who was with the Galveston Cotton Exchange during the late 19th
century and early 20th; my Dad also went to school up North, but he felt
that John Brown's terrorist activities were a bad thing (burning towns in
Kansas and all that) but he was much more interested in the decline of
educational standards after1954; one of my aunts was totally in love with
Ian Smith, the White Supremacist Prime Minister of Rhodesia and author of
the 1965 UDI, but she always had a soft spot for White South Africans
generally; while another of my aunts couldn't care less and thought that
Elvis was the most important person ever to come out of northern Mississippi
or Memphis and wasn't she the closest to being right, after all?]
Rocky Frisco
That war was illegally waged against the seceding States. Secession was
always a right of a State. That war was a war of aggression and it was
unconstitutional. Lincoln was a tyrant, responsible for at least 600,000
needless deaths. He waged a war against women and children, a war
against the Land, so brutal that the rest of the world shuddered in
horror. Slavery was the excuse; nobody in the North or South thought it
was the cassus belli. Lincoln was a racist and had made that clear.
-Rock http://www.rocky-frisco.com
--
Rocky Frisco's LIBERTY website: http://www.liberty-in-our-time.com/
The World's Best Daily News Service: http://www.rationalreview.com/
Rock onstage with JJ Cale and E. Clapton: http://tinyurl.com/3modw
Rocky Frisco
The way the pendulum swings in our country, I wonder how long it will
take to rename the memorial "The Booth memorial" and get old Aberrated
Abe off the sawbuck.
Rocky Frisco
The North had control over the US Government and was using this to
support the whole country on taxes and fees paid mostly by the South.
The North looked to be ready to start meddling with the South even more,
including the use of slavery. The South was tired of this unfair
situation and seceded. When the North insisted on claiming jurisdiction
on the South and supplied Fort Sumter, the South defended herself and
the war started, just as Lincoln intended.
> In short, no matter how you try to paint it, the civil war was fought
> over the issue of slavery.
There are a number of historians with excellent credentials who disagree
with you. The Emancipation Proclamation was written and signed to
prevent England from supporting the South; it did not free any slaves in
the North, only in the South.
> When I think about Mal and the Browncoats I'm thinking more along the
> lines of the American Revolution: that was a *real* war for
> independance against a tyranical empire.
Both fights were against being ruled by outsiders.
Mephij
> Nobody I know from the South is offended by that contention. They may be
> offended that the Damnyankees _did_ it but that's another story.
I used the term "may" because although most reasonable people wouldn't
be offended, there is the chance that some would. Textbook companies
know this and since it is their goal to make profit at all cost (even
to sacrifice historical accuracy) they will often lean toward the more
neutral "states rights" argument.
> You mean that there is still a public school system in the US that uses such
> books that has not been sued out of existence?
Yes. Perhaps you are unaware of the ongoing Intelligent Design debate
in this country.
> Maybe for the mandatory "American History for Dummies" course.
Hmmm.... I didn't take that course in college. How was it?
> Well, start with Stampp's "Causes of the Civil War". Slavery was part of
> the issue but a long way from all of it. Taxation, population migration,
> and a bunch of other economic issues had a very large part in the decision
> to secede.
I didn't ever say it was the only issue: I said it was the major issue.
Stampp does a good job of highlighting the other issues which are
sometimes lost in other accounts. In fact, many of the issues which
directly led up to the election of the Republicans in 1860 were
economically based (i.e. Panic of 1857). As much as these other factors
helped set the stage for sectional tensions between the north and the
south there is no question that the issue of the fate of slavery in new
states was at the forefront of the issues which led to war.
> Their being related to slavery and the war being about freeing the slaves
> are not the same thing. They were also about political power and that was
> the _real_ issue.
Agreed. the war wasn't about freeing the slaves, but the main issue
which led up to it was the future of legalized slavery in the United
States. The south seceeded in large part to protect the "peculiar
institution" on which the southern economy so heavily relied at the
time. The Civil War wasn't a moral crucade perpetuated by the North. I
wasn't trying to suggest that. If I came off that way I apologize for
misrepresenting my argument.
> It was in some senses a major issue but it was not the reason the Civil War
> occurred.
No, it wasn't THE reason, but it was most definately a major issue. why
do I get the sense that we're starting to be on the same page.
> And your point is?
My point is that whether or not the southern dems were split or not
would most likely not have changed the outcome of the election
> Let's say that by not being divided three ways the Democrats managed a more
> effective political campaign.
My hypothetical situation was based on actual data from the election of
1860. You're right, that is certainly a possibility, but there is no
factual data to form a hypothesis around.
> Again you're grossly oversimplifying a complex situation.
Again, I was merely making an informed hypothesis based on actual
election data. Who knows what may have happened had my hypothetical
election actually taken place. But based on the available data I think
my conclusion was reasonable. The fact remains, Lincoln won and unless
someone here has a time machine and can whack some sense into the Dems
I don't think we'll ever really know.
It's clear that eveyone involved in this discussion is very adamant in
their viewpoints and I don't see anyplace else for this discussion to
go except downhill. Therefore, to prevent this topic from becomming the
single cause of the Second Civil War, this will be my final post on the
subject. Be Seeing You.
-Mephij
atlasbugged
>> You mean that there is still a public school system in the US that uses
>> such
>> books that has not been sued out of existence?
"Mephij" <Mep...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1128708760.3...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Yes. Perhaps you are unaware of the ongoing Intelligent Design debate
> in this country.
Front page news, just recently, when Bill Gates infamously doled out money
to these simians. Clarke-troll knows about it.
Robert J. Kolker
>
> No, they _had_ been part of the Union. That ended before the shooting
> started.
The shooting started in 1855 in the Kansas Nebraska territories. How
quickly they forget "bleeding Kansas".
Bob Kolker
J. Clarke
> J. Clarke wrote:
>> Nobody I know from the South is offended by that contention. They may be
>> offended that the Damnyankees _did_ it but that's another story.
>
> I used the term "may" because although most reasonable people wouldn't
> be offended, there is the chance that some would. Textbook companies
> know this and since it is their goal to make profit at all cost (even
> to sacrifice historical accuracy) they will often lean toward the more
> neutral "states rights" argument.
>
>> You mean that there is still a public school system in the US that uses
>> such books that has not been sued out of existence?
>
> Yes. Perhaps you are unaware of the ongoing Intelligent Design debate
> in this country.
I am well aware of the "debate" but I am not aware of any school systems
that have adopted books espousing such a viewpoint without being sued into
penury.
>> Maybe for the mandatory "American History for Dummies" course.
>
> Hmmm.... I didn't take that course in college. How was it?
Well, if you didn't take it you didn't go to college in the US because it's
a government mandated course.
>> Well, start with Stampp's "Causes of the Civil War". Slavery was part of
>> the issue but a long way from all of it. Taxation, population migration,
>> and a bunch of other economic issues had a very large part in the
>> decision to secede.
>
> I didn't ever say it was the only issue: I said it was the major issue.
You can say that but that doesn't make it so.
> Stampp does a good job of highlighting the other issues which are
> sometimes lost in other accounts. In fact, many of the issues which
> directly led up to the election of the Republicans in 1860 were
> economically based (i.e. Panic of 1857). As much as these other factors
> helped set the stage for sectional tensions between the north and the
> south there is no question that the issue of the fate of slavery in new
> states was at the forefront of the issues which led to war.
Now, this time actually read Stampp and not the Cliff Notes.
>> Their being related to slavery and the war being about freeing the slaves
>> are not the same thing. They were also about political power and that
>> was the _real_ issue.
>
> Agreed. the war wasn't about freeing the slaves, but the main issue
> which led up to it was the future of legalized slavery in the United
> States.
What, the North wanted to force the South to continue it or something? If
you think that anybody with a lick of sense in the South thought that
slavery was going to continue for more than another generation or so then
you really need to do your homework. It was doomed for reasons that had
nothing whatsoever to do with the government.
> The south seceeded in large part to protect the "peculiar
> institution" on which the southern economy so heavily relied at the
> time.
Well, now, their economy was having more trouble from northern tariffs and
the like than from any danger of having to pay their workers.
> The Civil War wasn't a moral crucade perpetuated by the North. I
> wasn't trying to suggest that. If I came off that way I apologize for
> misrepresenting my argument.
And yet you continue behaving as if slavery was the major issue, when it
wasn't.
>> It was in some senses a major issue but it was not the reason the Civil
>> War occurred.
>
> No, it wasn't THE reason, but it was most definately a major issue. why
> do I get the sense that we're starting to be on the same page.
>
>> And your point is?
>
> My point is that whether or not the southern dems were split or not
> would most likely not have changed the outcome of the election
Unless it did. You can't prove that a unified campaign would not have won
the election for the democrats, and nobode else can prove that it would
have. But the consensus among historians seems to be that the Democrats
shot themselves in the foot.
>> Let's say that by not being divided three ways the Democrats managed a
>> more effective political campaign.
>
> My hypothetical situation was based on actual data from the election of
> 1860. You're right, that is certainly a possibility, but there is no
> factual data to form a hypothesis around.
Well, now, one could do a statistical analysis of primaries.
>> Again you're grossly oversimplifying a complex situation.
>
> Again, I was merely making an informed hypothesis based on actual
> election data. Who knows what may have happened had my hypothetical
> election actually taken place. But based on the available data I think
> my conclusion was reasonable. The fact remains, Lincoln won and unless
> someone here has a time machine and can whack some sense into the Dems
> I don't think we'll ever really know.
>
> It's clear that eveyone involved in this discussion is very adamant in
> their viewpoints and I don't see anyplace else for this discussion to
> go except downhill. Therefore, to prevent this topic from becomming the
> single cause of the Second Civil War, this will be my final post on the
> subject. Be Seeing You.
If you don't want to support your opinions then don't express them.
J. Clarke
> SKMDC wrote:
>
>> It strikes me that for years us Southerners have explained ad nauseum
>> that the War Between the States was about protecting our land and homes
>> from an aggressive North. That's usually met with the Slavery Argument
>> where the accuser assumes everyone south of West Virginia had hundreds
>> of tortured slaves, which is of course not true. The farmer who took
>> his squirrel gun to fight the invading army wasn't fighting for
>> slavery, he was fightin' for his life.
>>
>> Now, Joss Whedon comes along and tells an allegory of this basic
>> premise, in much the same way Buffy was all allegorical for teen issues
>> and whatnot, and everyone suddenly "gets" the idea that the poor dirt
>> farmin' Southerners weren't nearly as bad as all that. Thanks Joss.
>> I've always known what being a Southerner means, but sometimes it's
>> tough to explain, and you've given me about 16 hours worth of visual
>> explanation... maybe it can supplant "Deliverance" as a
>> non-Southerner's notion of the South. :)
>
> That war was illegally waged against the seceding States.
Well, except for the little detail that the Southern forces made the moronic
mistake of _shooting_ at the Yankees. Who, needless to say, had few qualms
about shooting back.
> Secession was
> always a right of a State. That war was a war of aggression and it was
> unconstitutional. Lincoln was a tyrant, responsible for at least 600,000
> needless deaths. He waged a war against women and children, a war
> against the Land, so brutal that the rest of the world shuddered in
> horror. Slavery was the excuse; nobody in the North or South thought it
> was the cassus belli. Lincoln was a racist and had made that clear.
>
> -Rock http://www.rocky-frisco.com
> --
> Rocky Frisco's LIBERTY website: http://www.liberty-in-our-time.com/
> The World's Best Daily News Service: http://www.rationalreview.com/
> Rock onstage with JJ Cale and E. Clapton: http://tinyurl.com/3modw
--
J. Clarke
> "J. Clarke" <jclarke...@snet.net.invalid> wrote in message
> news:di667...@news1.newsguy.com...
>> Mephij wrote:
>>
>>> J. Clarke wrote:
>>>> Actually the high school textbook answer is that it was to free the
>>>> slaves. Try some college level books.
>>>
>>> Actually, High School textbooks are much more likely to pull out the
>>> "States Rights" argument. Why? Because a textbook company trying to
>>> sell books to public shools doesn't want to offend anyone, and to say
>>> the civil war was to free the slaves may offend Dixies.
>>
>> Nobody I know from the South is offended by that contention. They may be
>> offended that the Damnyankees _did_ it but that's another story.
>>
> Actually, it's fairly undisputed that the initial shots of the Civil War
> proper (not counting John Brown's activities during the Buchanan
> administration in Kansas and at the National Armory near D.C. as part of
> the Civil War as some very-well respected historians would like to do) had
> absolutely NOTHING to do with any dispute about slavery.
Which has what to do with the probability of a Southern school board getting
in trouble over adopting a textbook that holds that Damnyankees conquered
the South to impose their views about slavery on it?
Note that we are not talking about your views or my views or historical
accuracy but about the probability of any significant number of Southern
parents sufficiently effective to cause problems for elected officials
actually doing so over this issue.
> Idiot Louisiana
> General PTG BEAUREGARD fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor when the
> Union forces refused to withdraw. If South Carolina had been willing to
> just let them sit---the war itself probably never would have started
> because
> NOBODY in the North wanted to fire the first shot. South Carolina and PTG
> Beauregard gave the North exactly what they wanted---an excuse to fight.
> Lincoln called up troops and that even had the effect of pushing Virginia,
> North Carolina, and Tennessee to secede when they had not done so on their
> own and had not participated in the Montgomery, Alabama government until
> then. Then my pathetic ancestors cooperated in moving the national
> capital of the Confederacy from the almost unreachable Montgomery to the
> "come and
> get me, I'm close to you" site of Richmond, Virginia. The American Civil
> War, like most wars, was a stupid mistake and the people who started it
> paid
> the most for it. Anti-Slavery civil disobedience and "terrorism" such as
> John Brown's might have gone on all over the country without the
> Southerners' rash, stupid actions in starting the war---but if Slavery had
> gone out quietly by force of law and forms of gradual or compensated
> emancipation in the U.S. as it did in the British Empire and/or
> Brazil---race relations probably never would have turned as sour as they
> did in the U.S.....
On this I wholeheartedly agree with you.
> But now, I want to know---how DID the Alliance-Independent Civil
> War
> start? What was the "Fort Sumter"-like event that triggered that civil
> war? Any speculations, fellow brownshirt sympathizers?
Well, now, River pretty much summed it up: "We meddle". I don't think that
Joss has shown which particular piece of idiotic meddling started the war,
but given the example of Miranda, it's clear that the Alliance has pulled
some pretty spectacular cock-ups in that regard.
> ******[I snipped the rest because I grew up totally emersed in these
> arguments among several generations of my family and I find them extremely
> tedious and well worn: my mother went to the University of Chicago and she
> couldn't stand the whole idea that we had any Confederate, pro-slavery and
> Southern ancestors, but she also couldn't live a day without
> house-servants waiting on her; my grandmother loved Southern Heritage and
> the Ideal of the South and celebrated RE Lee's birthday; my grandfather
> felt that the war had been very bad for the cotton business and that was
> particularly hard on his father who was with the Galveston Cotton Exchange
> during the late 19th century and early 20th; my Dad also went to school up
> North, but he felt that John Brown's terrorist activities were a bad thing
> (burning towns in Kansas and all that) but he was much more interested in
> the decline of educational standards after1954; one of my aunts was
> totally in love with Ian Smith, the White Supremacist Prime Minister of
> Rhodesia and author of the 1965 UDI, but she always had a soft spot for
> White South Africans generally; while another of my aunts couldn't care
> less and thought that Elvis was the most important person ever to come out
> of northern Mississippi or Memphis and wasn't she the closest to being
> right, after all?]
--
Mephij
J. Clarke wrote:
> I am well aware of the "debate" but I am not aware of any school systems
> that have adopted books espousing such a viewpoint without being sued into
> penury.
I don't think any school systems espouse intelligent design exclusively
(although there may be), but there are those which present it as a
valid scientific theory along with evolution. to even discuss
intelligent design in a science curriculum is an insult to public
education... unless it's a theology course.
> Well, if you didn't take it you didn't go to college in the US because it's
> a government mandated course.
Government mandated college course??? I wasn't aware such things
existed, I certainly didn't take any when I was in college. maybe state
subsidized institutions have stricter curriculum guidelines provided by
the state, but there is no such thing in private schools.
> You can say that but that doesn't make it so.
I'm not sure I know how to reply to that.... Is there a point that I
somehow missed?
> Now, this time actually read Stampp and not the Cliff Notes.
Umm.... Ok. So are you going to present a point, because I'd really
like to counter one...
> What, the North wanted to force the South to continue it or something?
Eureka, an actual point... maybe. Wait, no, that doesn't even make
sense! The north wasn't trying to do anything! The South Seceeded from
the union. The South started the war. Are these concepts so hard to
grasp?!?! The world was changing. Some changed with it, others took up
arms.
> If you think that anybody with a lick of sense in the South thought that
> slavery was going to continue for more than another generation or so then
> you really need to do your homework. It was doomed for reasons that had
> nothing whatsoever to do with the government.
You're right, it was doomed. But the southern slave-owning aristocracy
deluded themselves by refusing to believe it. If they knew that slavery
was on the way out then Kansas-Nebraska would never have been an issue
nor would dred scott. And it wasn't just this aristocracy that was
defensive of the right to on slaves, even smaller farmers were in
support of it largely because slavery was a historical institution not
to mention such "little people" often depended on their slave magnate
aristocracy for loans, access to farm equipment, and the ability to
bring products to market. Publications such as DeBow's MAgezine (which
would become the voice of the secession movement) regularly would
defend slavery not as a "necesary evil" but as a God's will. Was
slavery a dated institution? Yes. But the honest fact of the matter is
that the vast majority in the south refused to believe it and was
determined to keep it by hook or by crook. If you're trying to say
otherwise you're deluding yourself. You state your argument above as
though it were fact and even acuse me of not doing my "homework", yet
you fail to produce any evidence to support your assertion.
> Well, now, their economy was having more trouble from northern tariffs and
> the like than from any danger of having to pay their workers.
Perhaps, but it is not untrue that at the time the southerners feared
that the abolition of slavery would devastate the slave-powered cotton
industry. Since the southern economy was largely based on cotton
exports, having no such exports would mitigate the impact of tariffs.
Thus, economically speaking, the threat of abolition was worse than the
high tariffs southerners were paying on exports - or at least thats how
southern plantation owners and politicians felt at the time. This is
backed up by the militant pro-slavery movement in the south during the
1850's.
> And yet you continue behaving as if slavery was the major issue, when it
> wasn't.
This sentence just goes to show that you are entirely missing my
argument. It wasn't a moral issue of slavery that started the war, it
was the fear in the south that slavery was on its way out. These are
too separate things.
> Unless it did. You can't prove that a unified campaign would not have won
> the election for the democrats, and nobode else can prove that it would
> have. But the consensus among historians seems to be that the Democrats
> shot themselves in the foot.
It was a mistake for the Dems to split, yes, but I haven't heard of a
legitimate repectable historian who would say that lincoln would have
lost the election had they not. To speculate in such a way would be
irresponsible because there's nothing to support it. You're right,
though, no one can prove one way or another, but if you care to produce
some evidence against my assertion I'd be glad to hear it. Merely
citing a "consensus amoung historians" is hardly an argument: it's a
way aroud one. Produce your own hypothesys and back it up with actual
data, then I'll hear you out. As a side note: the resaon the dems split
in the first place was over the issue of slavery. The southern
democrats wanted a pro-slavery platform and the northern democrats
refused to allow it. Thus, the party split and the northern dems went
with (moderate) Douglas and the southern dems went with (pro-slavery)
Beckinridge. The fourth candidate, Bell, was not ever affiliated with
either party.
> Well, now, one could do a statistical analysis of primaries.
And, pray tell, why would one do that? Primaries have absolutely
nothing to do with the outcomes of elections, I just don't see what
studying them would acomplish (other than to confuse the situation)
> If you don't want to support your opinions then don't express them.
I have been supporting my arguments. My attempt to withdraw from the
discussion was in no way an an admission of defeat. As I stated, it is
clear that neither of us is willing to back down in our opinions and if
we continue this way I see no place else for this discussion to go but
into a ad hominum crap throwing fest. Either we can agree to disagree
(god, I hate buzzwords) or we can keep this going another few rounds.
Your choice.
-Mephij
Captain Nerd
Rocky Frisco <ro...@rocky-frisco.com> wrote:
> SKMDC wrote:
>
> > It strikes me that for years us Southerners have explained ad nauseum
> > that the War Between the States was about protecting our land and homes
> > from an aggressive North. That's usually met with the Slavery Argument
> > where the accuser assumes everyone south of West Virginia had hundreds
> > of tortured slaves, which is of course not true. The farmer who took
> > his squirrel gun to fight the invading army wasn't fighting for
> > slavery, he was fightin' for his life.
> >
> > Now, Joss Whedon comes along and tells an allegory of this basic
> > premise, in much the same way Buffy was all allegorical for teen issues
> > and whatnot, and everyone suddenly "gets" the idea that the poor dirt
> > farmin' Southerners weren't nearly as bad as all that. Thanks Joss.
> > I've always known what being a Southerner means, but sometimes it's
> > tough to explain, and you've given me about 16 hours worth of visual
> > explanation... maybe it can supplant "Deliverance" as a
> > non-Southerner's notion of the South. :)
>
> That war was illegally waged against the seceding States. Secession was
> always a right of a State. That war was a war of aggression and it was
> unconstitutional. Lincoln was a tyrant, responsible for at least 600,000
> needless deaths. He waged a war against women and children, a war
> against the Land, so brutal that the rest of the world shuddered in
> horror. Slavery was the excuse; nobody in the North or South thought it
> was the cassus belli. Lincoln was a racist and had made that clear.
I have this strange feeling that, had the states been allowed to
secede, within a few years many of them would have seceded from
the Confederacy (nothing the CSA could morally do to stop them)
and applied to re-join the US. After a generation or so the South
would have been re-integrated into the US, having gotten the need
to secede out of their system. Some of them might have joined
an independent Texas, though, and the westward conquest would
been slowed.
Like Mal says, anyone has a statue of them raised has been some
kind of sumbitch or other. Nature of the beast, and all.
Cap.
--
Since 1989, recycling old jokes, cliches, and bad puns, one Usenet
post at a time!
Operation: Nerdwatch http://www.nerdwatch.com
Only email with "TO_CAP" somewhere in the subject has a chance of being read
Commodore LXIV
>> Well, if you didn't take it you didn't go to college in the US because
>> it's
>> a government mandated course.
>
> Government mandated college course??? I wasn't aware such things
> existed, I certainly didn't take any when I was in college. maybe state
> subsidized institutions have stricter curriculum guidelines provided by
> the state, but there is no such thing in private schools.
>
uhhh I have a bachelor's degree
(almost my second one completed before ... stuff happened)
all my history requirements were taken care of with
History of Western Civ one and two
after I took the courses they stopped offering them...
replaced with a much more politically correct and
multicultural world history ... *sigh*
I dunno what he is talking about I never had any US history
at the collegiate level.
J. Clarke
> OK, I lied. I just can't resist responding to Clarke's post.
>
> J. Clarke wrote:
>> I am well aware of the "debate" but I am not aware of any school systems
>> that have adopted books espousing such a viewpoint without being sued
>> into penury.
>
> I don't think any school systems espouse intelligent design exclusively
> (although there may be), but there are those which present it as a
> valid scientific theory along with evolution. to even discuss
> intelligent design in a science curriculum is an insult to public
> education... unless it's a theology course.
>
>> Well, if you didn't take it you didn't go to college in the US because
>> it's a government mandated course.
>
> Government mandated college course??? I wasn't aware such things
> existed, I certainly didn't take any when I was in college. maybe state
> subsidized institutions have stricter curriculum guidelines provided by
> the state, but there is no such thing in private schools.
It's usually a condition of aid of one sort or another.
>> You can say that but that doesn't make it so.
>
> I'm not sure I know how to reply to that.... Is there a point that I
> somehow missed?
>
>> Now, this time actually read Stampp and not the Cliff Notes.
>
> Umm.... Ok. So are you going to present a point, because I'd really
> like to counter one...
Until you get past your fixation on slavery there's no real point in
attempting discussion.
>> What, the North wanted to force the South to continue it or something?
>
> Eureka, an actual point... maybe. Wait, no, that doesn't even make
> sense! The north wasn't trying to do anything! The South Seceeded from
> the union. The South started the war. Are these concepts so hard to
> grasp?!?! The world was changing. Some changed with it, others took up
> arms.
You seem unable to grasp the concept of sarcasm. Slavery was going to end.
If the South conquered the entire world, slavery was still going to end.
The only wiggle room was when and how.
>> If you think that anybody with a lick of sense in the South thought that
>> slavery was going to continue for more than another generation or so then
>> you really need to do your homework. It was doomed for reasons that had
>> nothing whatsoever to do with the government.
>
> You're right, it was doomed. But the southern slave-owning aristocracy
> deluded themselves by refusing to believe it.
Some did, some didn't. Rober E. Lee certainly belonged to the "southern
slave owning aristocracy" at one point, and yet he freed his slaves. On
the other hand, Grant didn't free his until the war was over and he was
forced to by law.
> If they knew that slavery
> was on the way out then Kansas-Nebraska would never have been an issue
> nor would dred scott.
Of course they would. It was about political power.
> And it wasn't just this aristocracy that was
> defensive of the right to on slaves, even smaller farmers were in
> support of it largely because slavery was a historical institution not
> to mention such "little people" often depended on their slave magnate
> aristocracy for loans, access to farm equipment, and the ability to
> bring products to market.
Most people don't like change. That is different from having any love for
the institution.
> Publications such as DeBow's MAgezine (which
> would become the voice of the secession movement) regularly would
> defend slavery not as a "necesary evil" but as a God's will.
So? The fact that a certain publication holds a certain view does not mean
that it is representative of anything but the views of the editor.
> Was
> slavery a dated institution? Yes. But the honest fact of the matter is
> that the vast majority in the south refused to believe it and was
> determined to keep it by hook or by crook.
Which is called "inertia".
> If you're trying to say
> otherwise you're deluding yourself. You state your argument above as
> though it were fact and even acuse me of not doing my "homework", yet
> you fail to produce any evidence to support your assertion.
You're the one who started out making assertions about the issues leading to
the Civil War. It's up to you to defend them.
>> Well, now, their economy was having more trouble from northern tariffs
>> and the like than from any danger of having to pay their workers.
>
> Perhaps, but it is not untrue that at the time the southerners feared
> that the abolition of slavery would devastate the slave-powered cotton
> industry.
How so? Are you saying that if the slaves were freed they would no longer
be willing to pick cotton? So what do you believe they _would_ have done
to put food on the table and a roof over their heads?
> Since the southern economy was largely based on cotton
> exports, having no such exports would mitigate the impact of tariffs.
I'm sorry, but you seem to be confusing emancipation with execution or
something. The workforce would still be there, they'd just have to be paid
a wage and pay for their own meals and lodging out of it instead of being
provided room and board in lieu of a wage.
> Thus, economically speaking, the threat of abolition was worse than the
> high tariffs southerners were paying on exports - or at least thats how
> southern plantation owners and politicians felt at the time. This is
> backed up by the militant pro-slavery movement in the south during the
> 1850's.
And of course the Radical Right is representative of the views of the
American people today.
>> And yet you continue behaving as if slavery was the major issue, when it
>> wasn't.
>
> This sentence just goes to show that you are entirely missing my
> argument. It wasn't a moral issue of slavery that started the war, it
> was the fear in the south that slavery was on its way out. These are
> too separate things.
"Fear"? More like "certainty".
>> Unless it did. You can't prove that a unified campaign would not have
>> won the election for the democrats, and nobode else can prove that it
>> would
>> have. But the consensus among historians seems to be that the Democrats
>> shot themselves in the foot.
>
> It was a mistake for the Dems to split, yes, but I haven't heard of a
> legitimate repectable historian who would say that lincoln would have
> lost the election had they not.
Well, now, given what you're saying about slavery perhaps you should review
a few more historians. Stampp disagrees with you. So does Catton.
> To speculate in such a way would be
> irresponsible because there's nothing to support it. You're right,
> though, no one can prove one way or another, but if you care to produce
> some evidence against my assertion I'd be glad to hear it. Merely
> citing a "consensus amoung historians" is hardly an argument: it's a
> way aroud one. Produce your own hypothesys and back it up with actual
> data, then I'll hear you out. As a side note: the resaon the dems split
> in the first place was over the issue of slavery. The southern
> democrats wanted a pro-slavery platform and the northern democrats
> refused to allow it. Thus, the party split and the northern dems went
> with (moderate) Douglas and the southern dems went with (pro-slavery)
> Beckinridge. The fourth candidate, Bell, was not ever affiliated with
> either party.
>
>> Well, now, one could do a statistical analysis of primaries.
>
> And, pray tell, why would one do that? Primaries have absolutely
> nothing to do with the outcomes of elections, I just don't see what
> studying them would acomplish (other than to confuse the situation)
No, they have to do with the effect of multiple candidates on voting
patterns.
>> If you don't want to support your opinions then don't express them.
>
> I have been supporting my arguments. My attempt to withdraw from the
> discussion was in no way an an admission of defeat. As I stated, it is
> clear that neither of us is willing to back down in our opinions and if
> we continue this way I see no place else for this discussion to go but
> into a ad hominum crap throwing fest. Either we can agree to disagree
> (god, I hate buzzwords) or we can keep this going another few rounds.
> Your choice.
If you want to withdraw, withdraw. If you don't then don't. But don't
whine about it.
J. Clarke
Every college I've attended has had an American History requirement,
waivable by examination or transcript credit.
Mephij
J. Clarke wrote:
> It's usually a condition of aid of one sort or another.
It wasn't for me. Besides, even if that is at some institutions, that
doesn't make it government mandated, which was your original assertion.
> Until you get past your fixation on slavery there's no real point in
> attempting discussion.
Then present some valid argument to sway me from my "fixation". So far
I've seen no real evidence aside from a wonderful smoke show to change
my opinions.
> You seem unable to grasp the concept of sarcasm. Slavery was going to end.
> If the South conquered the entire world, slavery was still going to end.
> The only wiggle room was when and how.
Sarcasm is my specialty. But I know when it's appropriate and when it
isn't. And when you're trying to make a valid argumet definately isn't
the time.
I completely agree that the era of slavery was nearing an end, I'm just
saying that many in the south could not or would not understand that
and thus defended it something fierce.
> Some did, some didn't. Rober E. Lee certainly belonged to the "southern
> slave owning aristocracy" at one point, and yet he freed his slaves. On
> the other hand, Grant didn't free his until the war was over and he was
> forced to by law.
I'm sure Mr. Lee was a fine upstanding individual with morals and
compassion and all that jazz, but I was not referring to one man, I was
referring to majority of the slave-owning elite; the so-called "slave
magnates". They were the ones most strongly opposed to abolition and
also they were the ones who held the majority of the land, power, and
money in the south at the time.
> Of course they would. It was about political power.
What does promoting slavery have to do with political power other than
the fact that slave owners in the south tended to have more of it? If
you feel your statement is true I invite you to back it up with some
evidence or at least something that makes sense.
> Most people don't like change. That is different from having any love for
> the institution.
Right, people don't like change. They were afraid of it. They were
afraid of what would happen to their established society should the
slaves be freed. They were so afraid of this that they were willing to
die to prevent it. They were willing to go to war to prevent it.
> So? The fact that a certain publication holds a certain view does not mean
> that it is representative of anything but the views of the editor.
Indeed, but the fact that it was one of the most popular publications
of the time and considered to be the voice of the secessionist movement
might mean something.
> Which is called "inertia".
Again, they were afraid of change. I feel the need to quote Master
Yoda: "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to
suffering."
> You're the one who started out making assertions about the issues leading to
> the Civil War. It's up to you to defend them.
And I think I've been doing a mighty fine job of it. Don't you?
> How so? Are you saying that if the slaves were freed they would no longer
> be willing to pick cotton? So what do you believe they _would_ have done
> to put food on the table and a roof over their heads?
They would have picked cotton. I was merely stateing the fears of the
southern slave owners at the time. I thought I made that pretty clear
when i said, "at the time the southerners feared that the abolition of
slavery would devastate the slave-powered cotton industry." Your
argument would work out better if you actually took time to read and
understand what I was saying.
> I'm sorry, but you seem to be confusing emancipation with execution or
> something. The workforce would still be there, they'd just have to be paid
> a wage and pay for their own meals and lodging out of it instead of being
> provided room and board in lieu of a wage.
See Above. I wasn't saying that the former-slaves would stop working, I
was saying that there was panic amongst the plantation owners that that
would happen. Jeez.
> And of course the Radical Right is representative of the views of the
> American people today.
Im not following you. Were you making a point, or is this another
attempt at sarcasm?
> "Fear"? More like "certainty".
You've said yourself that folks in the south wanted to maintain status
quo. This means that slavery stays. This means that although slavery
was on its way out, the major proponents of it were either unable or
unwilling to realize it.
> Well, now, given what you're saying about slavery perhaps you should review
> a few more historians. Stampp disagrees with you. So does Catton.
Can you post some examples from them? I'd like to see what they say on
this in their words, not your interpretation. And for the record:
history is largely an interpretation. Citing any historian's viewpoint
as fact is like hearing one particular take on something and holding
that to be the truth. Instead, as any histroy schollar worth the price
of his education will tell you, truth comes from studying the research
of many historians and forming educated views of events based not on
one or two or three opions but on many.
> No, they have to do with the effect of multiple candidates on voting
> patterns.
I still fail to see how this helps. regardless of how many candidates
there are in a primary election, the voters only choose one in the end.
Maybe I'd understand you better if you went ahead and provided some of
this analysis.
> If you want to withdraw, withdraw. If you don't then don't. But don't
> whine about it.
I'm not whining. I'm game as long as you are.
-Mephij
Commodore LXIV
"J. Clarke" <jclarke...@snet.net.invalid> wrote in message
> Every college I've attended has had an American History requirement,
> waivable by examination or transcript credit.
>
huh, well I have only attended the two... perhaps up here
we like to forget we are part of the US, and probably so do
you down there. :)
Robert J. Kolker
>
>
> Well, except for the little detail that the Southern forces made the moronic
> mistake of _shooting_ at the Yankees. Who, needless to say, had few qualms
> about shooting back.
If it was legal for the Southrons to secede then the Confederacy was a
foreign power that committed an acted of war against the United States.
If was not illegal, the Southron governments were hijacked by traitors,
rebels and insurrectionists. In either case, the U.S. was justified in
shooting back.
Those who live by the sword are likely to perish by the sword. Jesus
said that but he probably was not the first to say it.
Bob Kolker
Lesa
> Every college I've attended has had an American History requirement,
> waivable by examination or transcript credit.
>
> --
> --John
How many colleges have you attended? I know the one that I attended did not
have am American History requirement. I also know that of the 15 colleges
that DS is looking into right now none of them have an American History
requirement for gradution. They all have a "social sciences" requirement,
but there are multiple ways in which this requirement may be fulfilled.
J. Clarke
> J. Clarke wrote:
>>
>>
>> Well, except for the little detail that the Southern forces made the
>> moronic
>> mistake of _shooting_ at the Yankees. Who, needless to say, had few
>> qualms about shooting back.
>
> If it was legal for the Southrons to secede then the Confederacy was a
> foreign power that committed an acted of war against the United States.
Except that the secession was not complete so the actual action was that of
a criminal.
> If was not illegal, the Southron governments were hijacked by traitors,
> rebels and insurrectionists. In either case, the U.S. was justified in
> shooting back.
Generally speaking the US government doesn't burn cities when some moron in
the military frags the lieutenant. Apparently they were willing to make an
exception in the case of Beauregard.
> Those who live by the sword are likely to perish by the sword. Jesus
> said that but he probably was not the first to say it.
I take it then that you're a Christian.
> Bob Kolker
J. Clarke
Maybe they've changed the rules since the early '70s.
Rocky Frisco
Very likely. Slavery was just becoming unprofitable, so I assume it
would have largely died out in a few years or decades. The situation
with black people in the conquered South was obviously NOT good; it
might have been better sooner if your scenario had played out.
> Like Mal says, anyone has a statue of them raised has been some
> kind of sumbitch or other. Nature of the beast, and all.
Abraham Lincoln was a special kind of monster. That, taken with his
near-deification by the corrupted government he left us, is the source
of my virulent distaste for the man and his actions in The Presidency.
He was a brigand and a criminal, an egocentered maniac, and he destroyed
the nation he claimed to be protecting.
Captain Nerd
Rocky Frisco <ro...@rocky-frisco.com> wrote:
> Captain Nerd wrote:
>
> > In article <vXx1f.1163$%42.1033@okepread06>,
> > Rocky Frisco <ro...@rocky-frisco.com> wrote:
> >
> >>That war was illegally waged against the seceding States. Secession was
> >>always a right of a State. That war was a war of aggression and it was
> >>unconstitutional. Lincoln was a tyrant, responsible for at least 600,000
> >>needless deaths. He waged a war against women and children, a war
> >>against the Land, so brutal that the rest of the world shuddered in
> >>horror. Slavery was the excuse; nobody in the North or South thought it
> >>was the cassus belli. Lincoln was a racist and had made that clear.
> >
> >
> > I have this strange feeling that, had the states been allowed to
> > secede, within a few years many of them would have seceded from
> > the Confederacy (nothing the CSA could morally do to stop them)
> > and applied to re-join the US. After a generation or so the South
> > would have been re-integrated into the US, having gotten the need
> > to secede out of their system. Some of them might have joined
> > an independent Texas, though, and the westward conquest would
> > been slowed.
>
> Very likely. Slavery was just becoming unprofitable, so I assume it
> would have largely died out in a few years or decades. The situation
> with black people in the conquered South was obviously NOT good; it
> might have been better sooner if your scenario had played out.
I like to think there may be some alternate timelines out there
where something like this happened. An acceptable alternate would
be where WWI was never fought. I sure wish I could find them...
... outside of Harry Turtledove novels, that is.
> > Like Mal says, anyone has a statue of them raised has been some
> > kind of sumbitch or other. Nature of the beast, and all.
>
> Abraham Lincoln was a special kind of monster. That, taken with his
> near-deification by the corrupted government he left us, is the source
> of my virulent distaste for the man and his actions in The Presidency.
> He was a brigand and a criminal, an egocentered maniac, and he destroyed
> the nation he claimed to be protecting.
Well, my standards for demonizing are as strict as the ones I use
for sanctifiying someone, so forgive me if I don't see him as the
soulless monster you do. He was a S.O.B., but I also think he was
just to ignorant to figure out the right way of keeping the US
together. I've learned that ignorance and stupidity are far more
likely reasons than evil intent to explain why people do bad things.
Doesn't make the stupid bad any less bad, the things they do, but
lets me save my strength to really hate the evil. Stupid bad just
makes me exasperated.
J. Clarke
Well, now, if you'd like to try one that goes the _other_ way, have you read
"The Domination" by SM Stirling?
>> > Like Mal says, anyone has a statue of them raised has been some
>> > kind of sumbitch or other. Nature of the beast, and all.
>>
>> Abraham Lincoln was a special kind of monster. That, taken with his
>> near-deification by the corrupted government he left us, is the source
>> of my virulent distaste for the man and his actions in The Presidency.
>> He was a brigand and a criminal, an egocentered maniac, and he destroyed
>> the nation he claimed to be protecting.
>
> Well, my standards for demonizing are as strict as the ones I use
> for sanctifiying someone, so forgive me if I don't see him as the
> soulless monster you do. He was a S.O.B., but I also think he was
> just to ignorant to figure out the right way of keeping the US
> together. I've learned that ignorance and stupidity are far more
> likely reasons than evil intent to explain why people do bad things.
>
> Doesn't make the stupid bad any less bad, the things they do, but
> lets me save my strength to really hate the evil. Stupid bad just
> makes me exasperated.
>
> Cap.
>
--
Captain Nerd
"J. Clarke" <jclarke...@snet.net.invalid> wrote:
> Captain Nerd wrote:
>
> > In article <EJW1f.1222$%42.193@okepread06>,
> > Rocky Frisco <ro...@rocky-frisco.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Captain Nerd wrote:
> >>
> >> > In article <vXx1f.1163$%42.1033@okepread06>,
> >> > Rocky Frisco <ro...@rocky-frisco.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >>
> >> Very likely. Slavery was just becoming unprofitable, so I assume it
> >> would have largely died out in a few years or decades. The situation
> >> with black people in the conquered South was obviously NOT good; it
> >> might have been better sooner if your scenario had played out.
> >
> > I like to think there may be some alternate timelines out there
> > where something like this happened. An acceptable alternate would
> > be where WWI was never fought. I sure wish I could find them...
> >
> > ... outside of Harry Turtledove novels, that is.
>
> Well, now, if you'd like to try one that goes the _other_ way, have you read
> "The Domination" by SM Stirling?
That would be one of his "Draka" novels? No, I haven't, but I never
"got" the Draka series. Tried a few times, but the setting just never
attracted me for some reason. I did get through the first of the
"Nantucket" novels, staggered through the second, but bailed on the
third. And I have to admit I haven't read Turtledove's "Guns of the
South" series, I've just seen them. Turtledove's characters seem more
real than Stirling's, for some reason, and I care more about what
happens to them. I really like his alternate WWII series, with the
invading aliens totally screwing up the war...
J. Clarke
> In article <di9kv...@news3.newsguy.com>,
> "J. Clarke" <jclarke...@snet.net.invalid> wrote:
>
>> Captain Nerd wrote:
>>
>> > In article <EJW1f.1222$%42.193@okepread06>,
>> > Rocky Frisco <ro...@rocky-frisco.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Captain Nerd wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > In article <vXx1f.1163$%42.1033@okepread06>,
>> >> > Rocky Frisco <ro...@rocky-frisco.com> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >> Very likely. Slavery was just becoming unprofitable, so I assume it
>> >> would have largely died out in a few years or decades. The situation
>> >> with black people in the conquered South was obviously NOT good; it
>> >> might have been better sooner if your scenario had played out.
>> >
>> > I like to think there may be some alternate timelines out there
>> > where something like this happened. An acceptable alternate would
>> > be where WWI was never fought. I sure wish I could find them...
>> >
>> > ... outside of Harry Turtledove novels, that is.
>>
>> Well, now, if you'd like to try one that goes the _other_ way, have you
>> read "The Domination" by SM Stirling?
>
> That would be one of his "Draka" novels?
That's three of the four.
> No, I haven't, but I never
> "got" the Draka series.
Imagine you're a Draka citizen and it can become quite seductive. The thing
is he seems to actually understand slavery, the trouble is that such
understanding is Politically Incorrect in the extreme.
> Tried a few times, but the setting just never
> attracted me for some reason. I did get through the first of the
> "Nantucket" novels, staggered through the second, but bailed on the
> third.
You'd probably hate "Dies the Fire" then, but "The Protector's War" is one
that I'd like to see Joss make into a movie.
> And I have to admit I haven't read Turtledove's "Guns of the
> South" series, I've just seen them. Turtledove's characters seem more
> real than Stirling's, for some reason, and I care more about what
> happens to them. I really like his alternate WWII series, with the
> invading aliens totally screwing up the war...
>
> Cap.
>
--
tria...@aol.com
Robert Uhl wrote:
> tria...@aol.com writes:
> >
> > And focus on your Bizarro world interpretation of a war which doesn't
> > involve a civil war, states rights, or any of the issues which led the
> > South to secede, fire the first shots, and start he Civil War being an
> > "allegory" for the Civil War.
>
> Firefly is a sci-fi Western, with a failed war of independence, a
> tyrannical government and cruel savages; the parallels could neither be
> nor exact nor more politically incorrect.
ROFL.
... Oh, you didn't mean to be funny? Well, that just makes you stupid
then. Ah well.
--
Justin Alexander Bacon
http://www.thealexandrian.net
Captain Nerd
"J. Clarke" <jclarke...@snet.net.invalid> wrote:
I guess I haven't been able to do that. It does seem to be a paean
to racial supremacy and the idea that the strong deserve to have
whatever they want. I guess if people can identify with Klingons,
they can do the same with the Draka.
> > Tried a few times, but the setting just never
> > attracted me for some reason. I did get through the first of the
> > "Nantucket" novels, staggered through the second, but bailed on the
> > third.
>
> You'd probably hate "Dies the Fire" then, but "The Protector's War" is one
> that I'd like to see Joss make into a movie.
I've seen "Dies" but haven't seen "Protector's War." I'll have to
look for it.
Steve
large part in the decision to secede.
-- actually, no. Slavery was the only significant or important issue
in the decision for secession, and the secessionists said so
themselves.
See the minutes of the debates; virtually the only issues discussed at
all were the Republican threat to the future of slavery and the menace
of "almalgamation", which is to say, the lustful nigras taking the pure
white women.
The secessionists were militantly pro-slavery; that is, they said (and
sincerely believed) that slavery was righteous and the proper basis of
any efficient and moral social organization. Most of them believed
slavery was natural for black people; some of the more radical thought
that all dependent laborers should be enslaved (see George Fitzhugh,
author of "Sociology for the South").
Proslavery ideology had become steadily more dominant in the South in
the two generations before 1860; in this as in many other things Lee
was rather old-fashioned.
The Republicans had other planks in their platform, but they had been
founded as an anti-slavery (or to be more precise, Free Soil) party and
that was the basis of their coalition.
Nobody disputed this at the time. It was, as Moseby (the "Gray Ghost")
noted not until 1865 that any Confederate apologists even tried to
pretend that slavery wasn't the core of the dispute.
Steve
largely died out in a few years or decades."
-- actually, no, that's not only untrue but obviously untrue.
Slavery was at its peak of profitability in the US in 1860, and the
rising price of slaves shows that owners thought it would continue to
be profitable.
J. Clarke
> "Slavery was just becoming unprofitable, so I assume it would have
> largely died out in a few years or decades."
>
> -- actually, no, that's not only untrue but obviously untrue.
>
> Slavery was at its peak of profitability in the US in 1860,
So you're saying that the profit margins on sales of slaves sold in the US
in 1860 was at an all time high? That might be the case, but if so, it's
missing the point, which is that with mechanization becoming more and more
prominent and slaves, at least as managed in the South, being in general
poorly suited to the working of machinery (RTFM doesn't work if you are
forbidden by law to teach them to R), the prospects for industries that
used slave labor were not so rosy.
> and the
> rising price of slaves shows that owners thought it would continue to
> be profitable.
Or that there was a scarcity of slaves, probably due to the efforts of the
British Empire to stamp out the slave trade.
J. Clarke
You're missing the point then. It's not "a paean to racial supremacy", it's
a cautionary tale.
>> > Tried a few times, but the setting just never
>> > attracted me for some reason. I did get through the first of the
>> > "Nantucket" novels, staggered through the second, but bailed on the
>> > third.
>>
>> You'd probably hate "Dies the Fire" then, but "The Protector's War" is
>> one that I'd like to see Joss make into a movie.
>
> I've seen "Dies" but haven't seen "Protector's War." I'll have to
> look for it.
>
> Cap.
>
--
Robert J. Kolker
>
> Slavery was at its peak of profitability in the US in 1860, and the
> rising price of slaves shows that owners thought it would continue to
> be profitable.
The only way it would be unprofitable is for better and more cotton from
somewhere else. The Civil War is the fault of Eli Whitney. His infernal
machine made slave labor for the production of cotton fibre reasonable
efficient and cost effective. If the cotton gin had been invented thirty
years later, slavery would have been dead and gone.
Bob Kolker
>
Robert J. Kolker
>
> So you're saying that the profit margins on sales of slaves sold in the US
> in 1860 was at an all time high? That might be the case, but if so, it's
> missing the point, which is that with mechanization becoming more and more
> prominent and slaves, at least as managed in the South, being in general
> poorly suited to the working of machinery (RTFM doesn't work if you are
> forbidden by law to teach them to R), the prospects for industries that
> used slave labor were not so rosy.
A mechanical cotton picker that could outproduce a darky without
destroying the boll was finarlly invented in the 1930's.
It was the cotton gin that made the manual labor of picking the bolls
from the stem by hand very, very profitable.
Bob Kolker
Robert J. Kolker
>
>
> You're missing the point then. It's not "a paean to racial supremacy", it's
> a cautionary tale.
There are two schools of thought on that. S. M. Stirling himself with
his posting in soc.history.what-if has show himself to be delightfully
insensitive and politically incorrect. He is my kind of guy. He very
carefully showed what a society that had abandoned the Golden Rule would
be like. It would not be bad for those on top. By the way the Draka
solved the problem of those on the bottom by breeding a variant of the
human species, Homo Servus, a born slave with no inclination to protest.
Stirling also postulated that another new variant of our species, Homo
Drakensis would be bred. A true blue Neitzian UberMensch.
I think such a society would have many advantages over what we have now.
We would at last be free of Mob Rule aka Democracy. The rule of the Few
and Best is a very appealing system if you are one of the Free and the Best.
I like Steve best when he is a son of a bitch. My kind of guy.
Bob Kolker
Captain Nerd
"J. Clarke" <jclarke...@snet.net.invalid> wrote:
Well, it wouldn't be the first time I've missed the point of
something. ^======^
Steve
>So you're saying that the profit margins on sales of slaves sold in the US
in 1860 was at an all time high?
-- slave prices were high because _demand_ was high, and demand was
high because returns to capital invested in slaves were high. Rates of
return in slave-worked agriculture ranged from 5%-25%. The minimum
figure is about what you'd get on a good railway bond.
"it's missing the point, which is that with mechanization becoming more
and more
prominent"
-- not in cotton; it remained a hand-picked crop until the 1930's and
40's, and harvesting was the labor bottleneck there. Sugar was also
late to mechanize and tobacco is _still_ often hand-picked.
Note the millions of quasi-literate Mexican unskilled laborers employed
by American agriculture to this day.
In any case, slavery was no barrier to mechanization of the 19th
century variety.
"and slaves, at least as managed in the South, being in general poorly
suited to the working of machinery"
-- sorry, that's the historical equivalent of an urban legend.
Louisiana had more steam engines than any other state in the Union in
1861, and most of them were operated and maintained by slaves.
The Tredegar Iron Works found that slaves made better skilled
ironworkers than freemen, and replaced their white "puddlers" with
black slaves in the 1840's.
Or take a look at Hickory Hill, the Wickham plantation north of
Richmond. Hussey reapers, a steam threshing engine and steam powered
sawmill...
"Or that there was a scarcity of slaves, probably due to the efforts of
the
British Empire to stamp out the slave trade."
-- Capital is fungible. If people invest it in slaves as opposed to,
say, municipal bonds, it's because the return is higher.
Slaves were about as efficient as any other available manual laborers
in antebellum America and were employed at everything from making
cheese to cutting sugarcane.
There were some occupations in which either slaves or free laborers
could be used; and others in which only slave labor was used --
gang-labor on plantations, frex.
Or to get technical, slave and free labor were not fully substitutable.
If it had still been possible to import slaves, slaves would have been
more commonly used in a broader range of occupations.
Steve
from
somewhere else."
-- since the US South was the low-cost producer, this was exceedingly
unlikely.
In any event, cotton was the _most_ profitable use for slaves, on the
whole: it was not the _only_ profitable use.
People used slaves for sugar and tobacco cultivation, for digging coal,
forging iron, building houses, cutting timber, building railways,
growing wheat, etc. Even slaves on cotton plantations actually spent
less than half their labor time on cotton; the rest went to growing
their own food.
If cotton had become less profitable, the slave labor would simply have
been shifted to alternative uses, slightly less profitable but still
amply rewarding to the owner.
Economics didn't end slavery. Grant's cannon and rifle-muskets did;
not to mention the torches of Sherman's men.
Steve
>"The major issue?" No. Certainly not. The major issue was states rights vs. federal control, but both north and south.
-- nope, it was slavery. States Rights was used by both sides in the
dispute over slavery, depending on who was in control in Washington at
the time, but it was simply a rhetorical device.
It was slavery, first, last and always.
Steve
>The North had control over the US Government and was using this to
support the whole country on taxes and fees paid mostly by the South.
-- nope. Prior to 1860, the South dominated the Federal government, in
alliance with "doughfaces" from the North.
Tariffs and so forth were not serious issues. People cared about them,
but not enough to fight.
Slavery was the issue that broke the Union; the secessionists said so
themselves.
Again, just read the debates of the secession conventions, or the
newspapers.
Steve
Rule would be like."
-- it's a dystopia. I know; I wrote it.
J. Clarke
> J. Clarke wrote:
>>
>>
>> You're missing the point then. It's not "a paean to racial supremacy",
>> it's a cautionary tale.
>
> There are two schools of thought on that. S. M. Stirling himself with
> his posting in soc.history.what-if has show himself to be delightfully
> insensitive and politically incorrect. He is my kind of guy. He very
> carefully showed what a society that had abandoned the Golden Rule would
> be like. It would not be bad for those on top. By the way the Draka
> solved the problem of those on the bottom by breeding a variant of the
> human species, Homo Servus, a born slave with no inclination to protest.
> Stirling also postulated that another new variant of our species, Homo
> Drakensis would be bred. A true blue Neitzian UberMensch.
Yep, with among other things voluntary control of pheromone emission and
tailored pheromones designed to aid in the control of Servus and "normal"
humans.
> I think such a society would have many advantages over what we have now.
> We would at last be free of Mob Rule aka Democracy. The rule of the Few
> and Best is a very appealing system if you are one of the Free and the
> Best.
Well, now, I seem to recall that the Draka were as much a democracy as was
Athens, which was the original.
> I like Steve best when he is a son of a bitch. My kind of guy.
>
> Bob Kolker
--
No 33 Secretary
news:1128893246.2...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
>> No 33 Secretary wrote:
>
>>"The major issue?" No. Certainly not. The major issue was states
>>rights vs. federal control, but both north and south.
>
> -- nope, it was slavery.
Nope. You're eating up the bullshit propaganda that's been around since the
Civil War. Mostly because you're too stoopid to realize it.
--
"So there is no third law of Terrydynamics."
-- William Hyde
Terry Austin
www.hyperbooks.com
Steve
>Nope. You're eating up the bullshit propaganda that's been around since the
Civil War. Mostly because you're too stoopid to realize it.
-- odd, because the Southerners of the time said it was about slavery
themselves. Repeatedly.
see for example: http://history.furman.edu/tei/gares3.sgm
I'll quote it (emphasis added). You can see that absolutely nothing
but slavery is addressed. This is quite typical.
Urged on by this reckless spirit of fanaticism, they have by State
legislation, made void and inoperative within their borders, the
Constitution of the United States and set at defiance the decisions of
the highest Judicial Tribunal known to our Government, by passing State
laws to present THE RECOVER OF OUR FUGITIVE SLAVES.
Professing to be governed by a higher law than the Constitution, and
purer morality than the teachings of the Bible they have disrupted the
unity of the church and declared Southern Ministers unworthy to hold
ecclesiastical office. They have declared against THE INSTIUTIONS OF
THE SOUTH [slavery] an irrepressible conflict, and made a military
descent upon a sovereign State of this Union, for the avowed purpose of
wresting from Southern citizens their property [slaves], by force,
thereby not only endangering the lives of law- abiding citizens, but
periling the lives of helpless women and children.
They assert the right to appropriate exclusively to their own use, the
common territory of the United States, and have rejected the admission
of a sovereign State into this Union, BECAUSE HER CONSTITUTION
RECOGNIZES THE RIGHT TO HOLD SLAVES THEREIN.
They have attempted to subvert the Government of the sovereign State of
Texas, by sending into her midst their emissaries, hypocritically
clothed with the garb of religion, TO EXCITE HER SLAVES TO
INSURRECTION, to burn and plunder the dwellings of their owners, and to
massacre their defenceless families. And as if to complete the
degradation of these Southern States, they have elected to rule over us
a President, avowing all these pernicious doctrines, by a purely
sectional vote, whose avowed purpose in all his public speeches is
FIRST TO EXCLUDE SLAVERY FROM THE TERRITORIES, AND THEN TO MAKE WAR
UPON IT IN THE STATES.
No 33 Secretary
news:1129005028.3...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> 29. No 33 Secretary
>
>>Nope. You're eating up the bullshit propaganda that's been around
>>since the
> Civil War. Mostly because you're too stoopid to realize it.
>
> -- odd, because the Southerners of the time said it was about slavery
> themselves. Repeatedly.
How many have you personally talked to?
And are you smart enough to tell propaganda from truth? (No, you're not.)
In any event, this has nothing to do with Firefly.
But then, you're not here to be on topic, are you?
eyelessgame
No 33 Secretary wrote:
> "Mephij" <Mep...@gmail.com> wrote in
> news:1128643700.2...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
>
> > No 33 Secretary wrote:
> >> "The major issue?" No. Certainly not. The major issue was states
> >> started, a - but not the only - major issue was slavery, in the minds
> >> of the public. But slavery itself was, at most, a contributing factor
> >> to _the_ major issue, which was states rights.
> >
> > Huh? States Rights? Yeah, the states' right to have slaves!
>
> State sovereignty, vs. federal control.
>
> It's not complicated.
>
So, um, which side applauded the Dred Scott decision -- the one that
was dramatically anti-states-rights, specifically a state's right to
forbid the practice of slavery -- again?
Britnit
Can I ask, in all honesty, who did what in the (fictional) war within
the Firefly 'verse? Some people here seem disturbingly well-informed,
while I'm just going what the show tells us.
Mal and Zoe were BDHs, Independent, while Jayne stated that he 'didn't
fight in no war' (but probably stole a few army payrolls) and Inara was
a pro-Alliance civilian.
Kaylee was just a kid (?) Likewise Simon and River
Book was maybe Alliance brass (?)
Wash is interesting.
DVD commentary from Mr Tudyk says Wash flew one sortie and was captured
- presumably he flew for the Alliance, as he tells Saffron his
homeworld was heavily polluted i.e. industrial. Independents were more
agricultural worlds, weren't they?
Any comments, help, musketballs?
Andy
Just because Wash was likely from an Alliance world doesn't mean he
necessarily fought for the Alliance :)
--
A
(remove the spinning thing to reply)
Charles Lincoln
news:1129219958.9...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
got a good point there, Dred Scott not only overruled states' rights in
regard to slavery but, much more significantly (especially if you consider
what the consequences would have been for free blacks if the War hadn't ever
happened), Chief Justice Taney said that Africans could NEVER be citizens of
the United States---no state could confer on them equal civil rights with
whites---even though some Southern States, most notably Louisiana, but also
Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas to varying degrees, allowed
"freedmen" and their descendants full civil rights in 1860---and ironically,
after the War, these people, even those of mixed African and European
heritage, were lumped back down with the freed slaves and deprived of their
civil rights---culminating in Plessy v. Fergusson in 1892 when the Supreme
Court consigned Louisiana "mulattos" to the "back of the bus." (Mulattos
were persons of mixed race ancestry, known in Louisiana by the varying
degrees and relative mix of black blood with the white---mulatos were 50%,
one parent each, Quadroons one black grandparent, Octaroons had one black
great grandparent---and there was until very recently a high society
"Octaroon Ball" in New Orleans---many of these people had themselves owned
slaves before the War). It was really a very severe infringement on civil
right to say that the States could not decide how to classify their own
citizens, and Dred Scott had that effect before the War and Plessy v.
Fergusson really just condemned blacks nationwide to segregation and
"separate but unequal" treatment generally, even though it pretended to do
so, at least in part, in the name of States' Rights. Of course, any
pretense that States' rights survived as part of our governmental system was
pretty well cancelled out by the 17th Amendment over 90 years ago....but
that's another story....
No 33 Secretary
news:1129219958.9...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:
If Dred Scott where that simple, you'd have a point. But the "states
rights" it was against could only be enforced at the expense of others
states' rights, and it was hardly as simple as you claim. Or as simple as
you, for that matter.
rrh...@acme.com
Captain Nerd wrote:
> In article <dia31...@news1.newsguy.com>,
> "J. Clarke" <jclarke...@snet.net.invalid> wrote:
> > > Tried a few times, but the setting just never
> > > attracted me for some reason. I did get through the first of the
> > > "Nantucket" novels, staggered through the second, but bailed on the
> > > third.
> >
> > You'd probably hate "Dies the Fire" then, but "The Protector's War" is one
> > that I'd like to see Joss make into a movie.
>
> I've seen "Dies" but haven't seen "Protector's War." I'll have to
> look for it.
I'm coming in late here, but I just read "Protector's War". The
plotting was strictly by-the-numbers, the societies (particularly the
bad guys) were close enough to the same as those in the Nantucket books
as to not be interesting, and Stirling's annoying authorial tics are
still there. Stirling's books since the Draka series have moved
consistently into the light-and-frothy-read category, not that there is
anything wrong with that, but with PW I found myself skimming pages at
a time.
James Craine
Mark Healey wrote:
> On Thu, 06 Oct 2005 12:52:45 -0700, SKMDC wrote:
>
>
>>Now, Joss Whedon comes along and tells an allegory of this basic
>>premise,
>
>
> Not really. In the 'Verse the independents started that way and were
> taken over by the Alliance. The confederates were already part of the
> Union.
The alliance seems to me like WWII Japan saying "All of
southeast Asia MUST join our co-prosperity sphere".
>
>
>>I've always known what being a Southerner means, but sometimes it's
>>tough to explain,
>
>
> It means prayer in school, Jim Crow, the Ten Commandments in
> courtrooms, and Creationism taught as science. These are just a few of
> the things off the top of my head right now.
The history of our law traces back to, among other things,
the Ten Commandments. (Thank you for capitalizing it.) It
also traces back to the Magna Carta and the Code Of
Hammurabi. Would you object if they were in a courtroom?
>
> I hadn't met many southerners until I joined the military. What I
> discovered is that the stereotypes are largely true. The vast majority of
> the people I've met who believe that the bible is true are southerners
> (the rest being from the lower mid-west).
And the vast majority of people who believe in other
religions? Diversity, Environmantalism, Wicca, Government,
for example.... where are they from?
>
> If the south were allowed to secede it would have an economy and culture
> resembling that of Mexico more that the rest of the U.S.
I have always thought that the North, at great expense,
saved the South from itself with the civil war. Now we
return the favor by killing the worst of the blue state
ideas in congress.