Good Christ. Fort Sumter, the South started the war. It’s hard to take anyone seriously when they start talking about Northern Aggression.
How many Union soldiers did the Confederacy kill at Fort Sumter?
So if Mexico surrounded the border control facility south of San Diego and captured it and the federal agents there without killing anyone, they would get to keep it? Or we can ask for it back, but in no way does it constitute a hostile act on their part to capture a U.S. facility. And if the U.S. Army had to fight through a battalion of the Mexican Army to retake the facility, that would be an aggressive act by the U.S?
Are you saying that taking military action and capturing assets is not aggressive as long as no one dies?
Irrelevant. Who fired the first shot?
I thought there were no deaths on either side in the battle proper.
Because it might have prevented a bloody civil war, the deadliest war in our history, and made the transition from a slave economy a lot smoother. Because it would probably have meant a good deal less fear and hatred between the races, and perhaps blacks wouldn’t have lost an entire century to Jim Crow. And the importation of slaves had already been outlawed by the time the Civil War broke out.
Moral purity is not the same thing as moral sanity.
I’m still waiting for any historical evidence that the South would have even listened to this offer, let alone accepted it.
Not morally worth it. it’s absolutely disgusting to say that the slavers should have been rewarded for crimes against humanity. They were not entitled to a dime, and it was worth fighting ten wars not to sell the country’s soul like that.
It was the South that started the war, by the way. If you’re going to start a war with America, you’re going to get what’s coming to you. At the end of the day, the South chose war over human decency, and they paid the price.
How many people did the underwear bomber kill when he tried to blow up that airplane?
So your case that the Confederacy starting the war by shelling a fort for 34 hours straight and taking the garrison prisoner was in fact an act of aggression by the North is based on the Confederates being lousy shots that day? Tell you what, how about I take your car and shoot at you. If purely by accident I miss and don’t kill you, I’ll starting calling it the Act of astorian Aggression, OK?
Honestly, it’s impossible to take someone seriously when they starting talking about Northern Aggression. Moreso when they’re aware that the war started with the Confederate shelling of Fort Sumter.
It doesn’t matter if they would have accepted a buy out or not. The amount of money required makes the entire thing pointless.
There were an estimated 4,000,000 slaves in the US in 1860.
(Slavery - Wikipedia)
The average price for a slave in 1860 was $1,800.
(http://www.civilwarhome.com/slavery.htm)
The amount that would have to be spent to buy all these slave then was $7,200,000,000.
For comparison’s sake, that amount in 2005 USD is $155,973,600,000.
(Historical Value of U.S. Dollar (Estimated))
And that’s just the buyout. There is no way to avoid the cost of Reconstruction which is still going to be required in order to bring the South into the 19th century. So even if the South was willing to accept over that much money to see it’s entire economy and way of life destroyed it really doesn’t matter. There was no way to raise that much money or distribute it.
Who the heck even pays for it? The non-slave holding states? Yeah, they’re going to be thrilled. If you think the South was pissy because of some tariffs the North is really not going to be happy if they’re expected to raise that much.
And here I thought racism and slavery led to fear and hatred between the races. Turns out it was the Noth putting an end to slavery that did it. I had no idea. I’d never realized that Southern whites would have treated blacks as something like equals if only they’d been paid in return for freeing them from slavery. I’m sure Southerners would have been happy to give blacks a fair shake at working and voting if a slave buyout could have been worked out.
I believe that Lincoln’s offer during the war to the border states was $100 a slave.
That’s probably a more realistic price. Not only is it 1/18 their value, but there weren’t as many of them. It looks like individually states such as Virginia, Georgia, Alabama or Mississippi had more slaves then the border states combined.
(http://www.civilwarhome.com/population1860.htm)
Actually, if the US as a whole had taken the $100 dollars per slave deal instead it would have been cheaper than the Civil War. Only $400,000,000 to the final cost of $6,190,000,000.
(http://www.civilwarhome.com/warcosts.htm)
I’m still not sure if Lincoln could have come up with that much though. It still leaves the question open as to who pays for it all, since I can’t see the Southern states supporting a tax to buy the slaves. And considering how adamant the South was about keeping slaves they probably wouldn’t except 1/18th their value in exchange.
I would think that it’d be harder to finance Reconstruction afterwards. If the South was given that much money they’d probably be expected to build their own industry and infrastructure just like the North had. I’m not sure the South could have done that even with an extra $400 million. The North would have continued to dominate the US economy only further driving a wedge between the two.
If anything the economic collapse for the southern states would probably have led to increased violence to Blacks (if that was even possible) as there wouldn’t have been any protections at all for the newly freed Blacks. The Freedmen’s Bureau would probably never have existed and the “Black Codes” of the South would have taken effect instead of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
The South didn’t give Lincoln any chance of offering a compensation plan anyway. They instigated the war before Lincoln even had a chance to think about abolishing slavery.
I seriously believe if Lincoln had gone to them with a plan of buying out their slaves for $100 apiece, the war would have started the same day he made that offer.
Imagine if Obama told the NRA tomorrow that he was planning on banning guns next year, but out of fairness, he had a plan in place to compensate every owner. Obama would be lucky if he came out that room alive.
How does this in anyway relate to anything I asked you?
States don’t have rights. There are no such thing as states’ rights. Defense of states’ rights was as much a cause of the Civil War as defense of states’ dumplings.
Were there economic causes - yes. Not that those economic causes weren’t heavily linked to slavery, of course. But when you talk of states’ right, you allow those who justify the Confederacy to define the terms of the argument.
The total federal budget in 1860 was $78 million dollars. Even using the lowball $100-a-head price, that comes to over five times the entire annual budget of the government of the United States. (The state of Mississippi referred to the worth of slaves as being $4 billion, or $1,000 a head, which would be the entire budget of the government of the United States for over fifty years.) Any sort of buyout offer simply wasn’t remotely feasible in monetary terms, even if the slave owners could have been persuaded to go along with it.
Schooled yet, jrodefeld?
Still cheap compared to the cost of the war. In 1865, the total budget was 1.3 billion, with 1.1 billion going to defense.
you with the face, maybe we have misunderstood each other.
Why you think this matters, though, still eludes me. It’s as if you think I’m calling these people blue-eyed devils. I’m not. A lot of Nazi officers were probably nice guys too. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some who actively chose not to participate with the death camp killing, and elected to be on the frontlines of battle instead. But do you see anyone pointing to their existence as if to deflect blame and criticism everytime WWII is discussed?
[quote]
My response was “Yes. Over and over.”
I did not mean that these individuals who behaved with some goodness in their hearts deflected blame from those who participated in Nazi atrocities. I think that is what my answer probably conveyed. My mistake.
My viewpoint is that I don’t think that people in one country or from one region of the country are basically very different from each other. And I have stated that over and over. I have seen others make that point too.
You have posted about the ignorance of Southerners in this thread. Why do you do that? Do you think that Northerners and Southerners are basically different?
Isn’t it easy to call someone else ignorant if you never believe anything good can come from them?
If someone twists the words of those who have done the right thing at the right time, how can they ever believe that someone who belongs to “that group” is a decent human being?
Mindset matters.