[quote]2busy wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
The Star-Spangled Banner was the battle flag of this confederacy. Should we now, enlightened and sensitive as we are here in the 21st century, take it down, and stop singing about the battle over which it flew?[/quote]
They’re working on it.
[/quote]
Interesting trivia: Francis Scott Key was also a prominent slaveowner.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Interesting trivia: Francis Scott Key was also a prominent slaveowner.[/quote]
That obviously needs to go then. Maybe we can get Kanye West to write a new anthem.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Madison didn’t commit treason against his government…
[/quote]
Uh, what?[/quote]
What is confusing about this?
[/quote]
The fact that he was a bold faced traitor? And played a leading role in a treacherous revolution?
Maybe you specifically mean in his actions as president in the war of 1812? Though he was fighting the country he committed treason against and the conflict was largely a fallout from that treason. He was still a traitor.
[/quote]
The British certainly thought Madison a traitor. So you’re saying they were right?
Madison didn’t think he was a traitor - he thought he was participating in a justified revolution in defense of natural rights.
Either the British were right, or Madison is right, but both cannot be right - so which one is it?
You seem to think the British.
[/quote]
Oh dear, TB, the Founders knew they were traitors and risked hanging for being such. This is American History 101.[/quote]
Yes, they completely understood that what they were doing was considered treason by the British monarch and would be punished as traitors if they lost. But they were not actually committing treason, because their revolt was justified. Which they knew and believed.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Yes, they completely understood that what they were doing was considered treason by the British monarch and would be punished as traitors if they lost. But they were not actually committing treason, because their revolt was justified. Which they knew and believed.
[/quote]
Where did you get this unique definition of treason?
I really can’t find a source that says anything like what you’ve outlined. It certainly is in the minority if there even is one.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Ahhh…it’s very interesting that TB’s rhetoric that “justified actions” prevent the appropriate application of the word “treason” are almost verbatim what CSA promoters – then and now – use. It’s like they faxed the talking points from 1860 right straight to TB’s home office and he scanned them into a Word document and printed them right here on lil ol’ T-Nation.[/quote]
I was thinking that very thing. I wonder how many of the secessionists believed that their actions were in any way unjustified, immoral or treasonous. Especially inasmuch as they had the Bible to back them up on the morally justified part, and the precedent of the Revolution to back them up on the politically justified part.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Madison didn’t commit treason against his government…
[/quote]
Uh, what?[/quote]
What is confusing about this?
[/quote]
The fact that he was a bold faced traitor? And played a leading role in a treacherous revolution?
Maybe you specifically mean in his actions as president in the war of 1812? Though he was fighting the country he committed treason against and the conflict was largely a fallout from that treason. He was still a traitor.
[/quote]
The British certainly thought Madison a traitor. So you’re saying they were right?
Madison didn’t think he was a traitor - he thought he was participating in a justified revolution in defense of natural rights.
Either the British were right, or Madison is right, but both cannot be right - so which one is it?
You seem to think the British.
[/quote]
Oh dear, TB, the Founders knew they were traitors and risked hanging for being such. This is American History 101.[/quote]
Yes, they completely understood that what they were doing was considered treason by the British monarch and would be punished as traitors if they lost. But they were not actually committing treason, because their revolt was justified. Which they knew and believed.
[/quote]
So Trotsky and Lenin were not actually committing treason when their Red Guards stormed the Winter Palace and murdered the Tsar and his family, because they believed they were participating in a justified revolution in defense of proletarian rights.
Plus their revolution was successful, into the bargain.
An interesting idea.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Interesting trivia: Francis Scott Key was also a prominent slaveowner.[/quote]
That obviously needs to go then. Maybe we can get Kanye West to write a new anthem. [/quote]
As long as it still has rockets and bombs in it. We have to uphold our status as the only country in the world whose national anthem mentions rockets and bombs.
EDIT: Actually, fuck Kanye. I nominate the classic by Trey Parker, who to my knowledge never owned a single slave.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
At stake was the very preservation of the new nation, under the Constitution, which allowed slavery. The British had abolished the slave trade in 1807, and a British victory in the War of 1812 would have meant the end of slavery in North America rather sooner than it actually happened.
So yes, in a very real sense, Madison waged war in order to preserve the institution of slavery.[/quote]
About two decades earlier, as it happened. Or one, if the newly reintegrated American colony could have finagled a spot on the list of excepted territories.
But what evidence do we have that slavery has any material connection with the 1812 casus belli? Such evidence exists in comical abundance vis-a-vis the CSA. Did slavery come even a little close to bearing on the 1812-era evidence that survives?
Edit:
To illustrate my point very (very, very) unscientifically, the letters s, l, a, v, and e do not appear in that order a single time on this page…
…whereas, on this page…
…the number is 498.[/quote]
The British helped facilitate the escape of slaves (mainly by allowing said slaves to board their ships, essentially freeing them). While some were no doubt irate about British actions in this area, the War of 1812 was not materially fought over this issue, libertarian revisionism aside.
[/quote]
Yes exactly. Slavery figured into the war as what is essentially a British military tactic (and even this wasn’t made official until long after the war’s beginning). But this is incidental to the war’s cause and meaning: in order to establish a useful analogy with the Civil War, centrality would have to be shown.[/quote]
And the emancipation of southern slaves by those fighting to preserve a nation built upon the backs of African slaves was essentially a military tactic to cripple the south’s ability to wage war, made official long after the war’s beginning.
[quote]OldOgre wrote:
And the emancipation of southern slaves by those fighting to preserve a nation built upon the backs of African slaves was essentially a military tactic to cripple the south’s ability to wage war, made official long after the war’s beginning. [/quote]
This is true – and it would be a good reminder to anybody who got too caught up in praising Northern motivations – but it doesn’t change the fact that perceived and real threats to the institution of slavery was the existential CSA cause and the underlying animator of the hostilities. It is this that has absolutely no analogue in the War of 1812 (and thus hamstrings the analogy beyond the point of usefulness).
The Founding Fathers knew they ran the risk of being charged with treason.
“We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall hang separately.” - Ben Franklin prior to signing the DOI.
It all depended on the outcome of the “civil” war.
“In civil wars, every man chooses his party; but generally that side which prevails arrogates the right of treating those who are vanquished as rebels.” - Thomas McKean DOI signer and later the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]OldOgre wrote:
And the emancipation of southern slaves by those fighting to preserve a nation built upon the backs of African slaves was essentially a military tactic to cripple the south’s ability to wage war, made official long after the war’s beginning. [/quote]
This is true – and it would be a good reminder to anybody who got too caught up in praising Northern motivations – but it doesn’t change the fact that perceived and real threats to the institution of slavery was the existential CSA cause and the underlying animator of the hostilities. It is this that has absolutely no analogue in the War of 1812 (and thus hamstrings the analogy beyond the point of usefulness).[/quote]
But it does mean that the 600,000 Northerners died to preserve the union, not to free slaves.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Actually, fuck Kanye.[/quote]
I don’t know, man. “Hurry up with my damn croissants”…“sunglasses and Advil; last night was mad real”…“have you ever sad sex with a pharaoh? I put the pussy in a sarcophagus.” Aren’t you at least a little curious to find out what kinds of things Kanye would make our Olympic and National sports teams mouth on international television?
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]OldOgre wrote:
And the emancipation of southern slaves by those fighting to preserve a nation built upon the backs of African slaves was essentially a military tactic to cripple the south’s ability to wage war, made official long after the war’s beginning. [/quote]
This is true – and it would be a good reminder to anybody who got too caught up in praising Northern motivations – but it doesn’t change the fact that perceived and real threats to the institution of slavery was the existential CSA cause and the underlying animator of the hostilities. It is this that has absolutely no analogue in the War of 1812 (and thus hamstrings the analogy beyond the point of usefulness).[/quote]
But it does mean that the 600,000 Northerners died to preserve the union, not to free slaves.[/quote]
Yes, of course. My position in this thread has from the beginning been about the CSA’s existential cause; nowhere am I interested in or peddling pro-Union hagiography. (However, as an aside, it is absolutely ahistorical to remove – as revisionists so burn to do – Northern abolitionist sentiment and state legislation from the essential forces which drove that CSA cause to coalesce.)
Edited.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]OldOgre wrote:
And the emancipation of southern slaves by those fighting to preserve a nation built upon the backs of African slaves was essentially a military tactic to cripple the south’s ability to wage war, made official long after the war’s beginning. [/quote]
This is true – and it would be a good reminder to anybody who got too caught up in praising Northern motivations – but it doesn’t change the fact that perceived and real threats to the institution of slavery was the existential CSA cause and the underlying animator of the hostilities. It is this that has absolutely no analogue in the War of 1812 (and thus hamstrings the analogy beyond the point of usefulness).[/quote]
But it does mean that the 600,000 Northerners died to preserve the union, not to free slaves.[/quote]
His argument, broken down to it’s basic level, seems to be that without a CSA there would not have been a war so the reasons for the war must be the same reasons as the reasons for the founding of the CSA. Is that about right? I think that is what they tried to teach us in 4th grade history too. And also, I almost forgot, the north fought to preserve a nation that was built upon the backs of negro slaves.
[quote]OldOgre wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]OldOgre wrote:
And the emancipation of southern slaves by those fighting to preserve a nation built upon the backs of African slaves was essentially a military tactic to cripple the south’s ability to wage war, made official long after the war’s beginning. [/quote]
This is true – and it would be a good reminder to anybody who got too caught up in praising Northern motivations – but it doesn’t change the fact that perceived and real threats to the institution of slavery was the existential CSA cause and the underlying animator of the hostilities. It is this that has absolutely no analogue in the War of 1812 (and thus hamstrings the analogy beyond the point of usefulness).[/quote]
But it does mean that the 600,000 Northerners died to preserve the union, not to free slaves.[/quote]
His argument, broken down to it’s basic level, seems to be that without a CSA there would not have been a war so the reasons for the war must be the same reasons as the reasons for the founding of the CSA. Is that about right? I think that is what they tried to teach us in 4th grade history too. And also, I almost forgot, the north fought to preserve a nation that was built upon the backs of negro slaves. [/quote]
Without the North, there would be no war.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]OldOgre wrote:
And the emancipation of southern slaves by those fighting to preserve a nation built upon the backs of African slaves was essentially a military tactic to cripple the south’s ability to wage war, made official long after the war’s beginning. [/quote]
This is true – and it would be a good reminder to anybody who got too caught up in praising Northern motivations – but it doesn’t change the fact that perceived and real threats to the institution of slavery was the existential CSA cause and the underlying animator of the hostilities. It is this that has absolutely no analogue in the War of 1812 (and thus hamstrings the analogy beyond the point of usefulness).[/quote]
But it does mean that the 600,000 Northerners died to preserve the union, not to free slaves.[/quote]
Yes, of course. My position in this thread has from the beginning been about the CSA’s existential cause; nowhere am I interested in or peddling pro-Union hagiography. (However, as an aside, it is absolutely ahistorical to remove – as revisionists so burn to do – Northern abolitionist sentiment and state legislation from the essential forces which drove that CSA cause to coalesce.)
Edited.[/quote]
Maybe it was someone else in this thread that had laid the deaths of Union soldiers at the feet of the evils of the cause of slavery. I know someone did.