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Was the civil war worth it all

Was the civil war worth it

  • yes

    Votes: 30 75.0%
  • no

    Votes: 10 25.0%

  • Total voters
    40
Your message reads like a holocaust denier. The Nazis would not have starved, brutalized or murdered Jews because they were too valuable as slave labor. That's the logic you use to "prove" slaves were not brutalized. Raping slave women certainly is well documented - contrary to your opinion that rapists are driven by logic - and of course your disregarding the value of slave babies for sale and resale.

I've only seen 1 place where slaves who "picked cotton" had actually been "housed." It was a thick, crude brick wall that used to be part of a shed for the slaves on one side of a field. The derrelict rusted iron shackles were still hanging from the wall.

Oh dear God, so your response to my charge of hyperbole is more hyperbole? :lamo

To you, I say good day...
 
Lol... Slavery was on its way out... yeah... as we all know that was the end of the bad treatment for blacks in the South. If anything, I'd say the U.S. South would have ended up like another Brazil. A white ruling elite with a disgustingly poor black population.
 
Oh dear God, so your response to my charge of hyperbole is more hyperbole? :lamo

To you, I say good day...

Your message is a concession.
 
Lol... Slavery was on its way out... yeah... as we all know that was the end of the bad treatment for blacks in the South. If anything, I'd say the U.S. South would have ended up like another Brazil. A white ruling elite with a disgustingly poor black population.

It did end up that way, and stayed that way for a while. A lot of the money in the south is "old" money...hard for an imported group of people to access that.
 
I'm glad you were given the final say on that...:roll:

He wasn't interested in a conversation. He only wanted to post his opinion without any replies that might have been contrary to his. I also made one reply only to be rebuke as he basically said he didn't want to hear it. His opinion was the only one that counted. I replied, so be it.
 
One thing I think we need to put into context of the time on this threat was back during those days, people thought of themselves as being from the state they were born in and not America. They called themselves Georgians, Virginians, New Yorkers, not Americans. Which ever state you were from held your loyalty much more than to the United States as a whole.

It wasn’t until the Spanish American War that we actually started to think of ourselves as Americans instead as Georgians, Alabamans, Delawareans, and Marylanders etc. WWI pushed that thinking along and finally during WWII we finally looked at ourselves as Americans and not being just from the state we were from.
 
If I understand it correctly, each state also had in a sense its own unique ruling group of the rich and powerful that basically ran their state how they wished.
 
One thing I think we need to put into context of the time on this threat was back during those days, people thought of themselves as being from the state they were born in and not America. They called themselves Georgians, Virginians, New Yorkers, not Americans. Which ever state you were from held your loyalty much more than to the United States as a whole.

It wasn’t until the Spanish American War that we actually started to think of ourselves as Americans instead as Georgians, Alabamans, Delawareans, and Marylanders etc. WWI pushed that thinking along and finally during WWII we finally looked at ourselves as Americans and not being just from the state we were from.
Mississippi was brutally honest about the whole thing in their Declaration of Secession. They needed slaves in order to continue their way of life.
Declaration of Causes of Secession

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

Let's put ourselves in thier mind for a moment. You live in the mid-1800's, education ends around 5th grade, if that. There is no TV, books are scarce, honest news does not exist, traveling anywhere more than a few miles from home is not likely. All you know is what you are told and what you see around you. You're told that Blacks come from the jungles of Africa and that they are impervious to heat. They are also not human. So...? You buy it.

Hell, even today, in the age of TV, the Internet and access to a million pages of documented historical fact, people down there still tend to believe more what they hear and see around them than accept facts which conflict with their long held beliefs. It is what it is.

So, yeah. A war to set them straight was needed. Sometimes, I think that maybe another one should not be out of the question either.
 
Mississippi was brutally honest about the whole thing in their Declaration of Secession. They needed slaves in order to continue their way of life.
Declaration of Causes of Secession



Let's put ourselves in thier mind for a moment. You live in the mid-1800's, education ends around 5th grade, if that. There is no TV, books are scarce, honest news does not exist, traveling anywhere more than a few miles from home is not likely. All you know is what you are told and what you see around you. You're told that Blacks come from the jungles of Africa and that they are impervious to heat. They are also not human. So...? You buy it.

Hell, even today, in the age of TV, the Internet and access to a million pages of documented historical fact, people down there still tend to believe more what they hear and see around them than accept facts which conflict with their long held beliefs. It is what it is.

So, yeah. A war to set them straight was needed. Sometimes, I think that maybe another one should not be out of the question either.

Yes, most people who only stay around home and have never visited other parts of the world or even the U.S. do believe what they are told and hear. They stereotype, a lot of times the stereotype is completely opposite of the truth. Long held beliefs are very hard to get rid of. Even to some when they know they are not true, but it is easy to continue on believing and going along with your peers than challenging them.

As for another war, I don't think so.
 
Yes, most people who only stay around home and have never visited other parts of the world or even the U.S. do believe what they are told and hear. They stereotype, a lot of times the stereotype is completely opposite of the truth. Long held beliefs are very hard to get rid of. Even to some when they know they are not true, but it is easy to continue on believing and going along with your peers than challenging them.

As for another war, I don't think so.

I was just venting.
 
I'm glad you were given the final say on that...:roll:

If you want to debate that, be my guest. Just keep in mind that no lawyer or historian would ever argue that Ft. Sumter was part of the Confederacy, and no international court would support the Confederacy's invasion if it happened the way it did today.
 
If I understand it correctly, each state also had in a sense its own unique ruling group of the rich and powerful that basically ran their state how they wished.

Yeah, states could be as tyrannical and undemocratic as they wanted until the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment.
 
The cause for fighting the war was better than most wars that are fought. It was to bring freedom and liberty to a population deprived of those things. Besides, if it hadn't ended slavery, like the rest of the Europe did, it would have never ended up being a world power. Why? because slavery is generally an economic pit.
 
We're talking about a couple of generations that were prevented from being born and dying as slaves.

At the start of the civil war the slave population in the US was around 4 million individuals and made up nearly 12% of the total US population.



Yeah, where would we have been without Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Barrack Obama:lol:
 
How can so many people say yes? Look at all of the deaths? Look at how the South was destroyed and did not ever really recover. Look at the fruits: the income tax, the draft, the suspension of habeas corpus. Look at how it has ended any restraints that the states had over the federal government. No, by far it was the most miserable war that Lincoln took this country into. And it wasn't really a Civil War. The South formed a new nation. There was no aggression, no violence. They left peacefully. The North, on the other hand, now there were the aggressors on a peaceful nation.
 
The cause for fighting the war was better than most wars that are fought. It was to bring freedom and liberty to a population deprived of those things. Besides, if it hadn't ended slavery, like the rest of the Europe did, it would have never ended up being a world power. Why? because slavery is generally an economic pit.

2 problems.
1. The war was not about slavery. Not at all.
2. The rest of the world ended slavery peacefully (except for Haiti, and look at how they turned out).
 
IMO if the south had been allowed the right of secession slavery would have been abolished there very early in the 20th century anyway and what we would have now is two independent nations where we now have just the USA. I'm sure we would have been very close allies and quite possibly even become one nation again so I have to wonder if the civil war was really worth the carnage.

"The approximately 10,455 military engagements, some devastating to human life and some nearly bloodless, plus naval clashes, accidents, suicides, sicknesses, murders, and executions resulted in total casualties of 1,094,453 during the Civil War. The Federals lost 110,100 killed in action and mortally wounded, and another 224,580 to disease. The Confederates lost approximately 94,000 as a result of battle and another 164,000 to disease. Even if one survived a wound, any projectile that hit bone in either an arm or a leg almost invariably necessitated amputation. The best estimate of Federal army personnel wounded is 275,175; naval personnel wounded, 2,226. Surviving Confederate records indicate 194,026 wounded.
In dollars and cents, the U.S. government estimated Jan. 1863 that the war was costing $2.5 million daily. A final official estimate in 1879 totaled $6,190,000,000. The Confederacy spent perhaps $2,099,808,707. By 1906 another $3.3 billion already had been spent by the U.S. government on Northerners' pensions and other veterans' benefits for former Federal soldiers. Southern states and private philanthropy provided benefits to the Confederate veterans. The amount spent on benefits eventually well exceeded the war's original cost.
Inflation affected both Northern and Southern assets but hit those of the Confederacy harder. Northern currency fluctuated in value, and at its lowest point $2.59 in Federal paper money equaled $1 in gold. The Confederate currency so declined in purchasing power that eventually $60-$70 equaled a gold dollar.
The physical devastation, almost all of it in the South, was enormous: burned or plundered homes, pillaged countryside, untold losses in crops and farm animals, ruined buildings and bridges, devastated college campuses, and neglected roads all left the South in ruins."

Cost Of The American Civil War

Worth every bit. We would not be where we are today if it were not for the war. Things would be dramatically different, probably for the worst. And more than likely your scenario would've never happened.
 
Worth every bit. We would not be where we are today if it were not for the war. Things would be dramatically different, probably for the worst. And more than likely your scenario would've never happened.

It's anybodies guess what would have happened without the civil war but we know exactly what happened with it and it was arguably the worst war in history.
 
It's anybodies guess what would have happened without the civil war but we know exactly what happened with it and it was arguably the worst war in history.

You're absolutely right.
 
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