Well, as far as education goes, that is traditionally been a state function (Oho! States rights!). Therefore, one cannot blame the ebil federal government on the shitty education systems you find in say.... Mississippi.

I've been told that the DFW area has the most Fortune 500 companies headquartered there, for example.

Hell, as far as federal monies being distributed, the South has far more military installations than the North.

In addition, according to http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/266.html,

6 out of the top ten on that list are Southern States (This is a list of federal spending per dollar of tax income from each state).

In addition, no state from the former Confederacy aside from Texas and Florida contributes as much in tax revenue than it receives in federal spending. That kind of thing rather shoots your whole argument in the head, yes? If anything, the South is more of a burden than it is a source of tax revenue.

African-Americans live in the south because that's where their homes are. What do you think should have happened, African Americans be ethnically cleansed from the South? I haven't the foggiest idea as to what your point is.

"The civil right's movement wasn't a necessity based on this argument. "

Huh? What should they have done, put up with Jim Crow forever?
During Reconstruction, blacks were elected to Congress. Freedmen's Bureaus were being set up to help freed slaves. Public education was being instituted for blacks for the first time. This ended after the nefarious Hayes-Tilden pact. The abolitionist wing of the Republican Party was pushed aside in order to appease the defeated white southerners.

" know of many areas of the south that are quite poor but I cannot think of any areas that are quite wealthy besides the occasional tourist area which is a definite exception to the rule so please elaborate."

Georgia is the 10th richest state in the Union. Texas is rich - awash in oil wealth. During the financial crisis it was one of the few areas of the country that wasn't experiencing recession. UT is one of the richest school systems in the country. Collin County, TX is the 23rd richest county in America - median household income of $97,000. Shelby County, Alabama is among the richest countries in the country. Belle Meade, Tennessee is a very wealthy suburb of Nasheville.

" "Is the U.S better after the 60's?""

How can you even ask this question? We're finally achieving progress on the social equality front. Prior to the 1960s excluded social groups were just that, excluded. Women CEOS? Forget about it. Sexual harassment protection in the workplace? Nope. Gays unafraid to come out of the closet? Not a chance. Blacks voting without poll taxes and other mechanisms of disenfranchisement? Nope. Instead we had segregation, racial tension, impenetrable glass ceilings, and very little education about sexuality.

Life was only better pre-1960s if you happened to be from a group that already had all of their rights. That wasn't very many groups.

As far as education is concerned the money alloted to each state comes from th e federal government does it not?

The south has far more military installations because the majority of it's population still comes from the poor south.

As for fortune 500 companies I see that you assess wealth with individuals. Where do you live? In the south? No? I thought not. If you're going to assess wealth by the riches minority then you must include nations such as Mexico and Brazil among the richest populations and forget that their people live in squaller much like the people from the southern U.S

P.S, Texas is the south west and not considered the "south".

Texas was part of the Confederacy. Thus, if you make the argument that the South has been economically exploited because they were the "losers", Texas falls into that classification.

Also, you fail to explain if the South being poor is all the North's fault, why does the South receive more federal funding per dollar of taxes?

@Putin33 bla bla bla.
Where do you live? The south is probably the most desegregated portion of the US. Family's are more racially mixed there than in any part of the US. I'm shocked by how many people use old arguments to support their beliefs. My argument wasn't racially motivated but it's a fact that since the 60's, crime has risen. Did your grandparents feel the need to lock their doors? Can you now safely travel through any part of the city in which you live? Are middle-class children now acting like high-class children or low-class children? Is the middle class growing or shrinking? With a "minority" (although he's 1/2 and raised by whites although American persuasion consider this to be Black) President has any significant changes happened? You tell me.

Jk you answer not 1 question. Texas is not part of the south. I never mentioned the confederacy. Also you never said from where your IZOD ass was from. You also never responded to the difference between Individual wealth and the wealth of the masses. Bring your white-ass down south and wander through it's sorry little towns and see how far you get. Then talk to me about better or not. In most cities in the south you can't even leave your home at night.

I'm pretty sure West Virginia is up there with Mississippi and Alabama on the poverty scale, and on the living in squalor scale.

But wait, let me source.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/statemedfaminc.html

West Virginia is #3 poorest. Virginia is 6th richest.

"Where do you live? The south is probably the most desegregated portion of the US. Family's are more racially mixed there than in any part of the US."

You're incomprehensible. You said pre-1960s. The South was not de-segregated during this time. Your argument is all over the place.

"My argument wasn't racially motivated but it's a fact that since the 60's, crime has risen."

I don't care if it was 'racially motivated'. Your claim was life was better pre-1960s. We had social movements that helped bring more freedom to lots of people since then. That's a part of the picture you have to consider. You apparently ignore that to focus on an alleged increased in crime.

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

Murder rates in the 2000s are at their lowest point since any time since the 1960s.

On other crimes you are correct, there has been an increase. Does that cancel out all the other positive stuff? Not in my view, no. And I believe a lot of this crime could be reduced if had sensible policies about dangerous weapons.

Also, the perception that the north is all white, wealthy, and doin' fine is a little askew in general.

For instance, I live in Detroit. I guarantee you'd rather walk around your town than mine. I used to live in Buffalo. That was only marginally better.

Ebay, you're wandering into personal insult territory.

I'll answer your questions once you actually start answering/responding to mine, instead of trying to change the subject and distort more information.

Sacred: Shit, I've lived in both Connecticut and South Carolina.... I'd feel much safer in South Carolina... the neighborhood I lived in CT was pretty effing shady.

Tour any town in the de-industrialized rust belt if you think the north is rich. Youngstown, Toledo, Akron, Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland, Syracuse, Erie, Flint, I need not go on.

@Ebay: I read that earlier you said the South was still very uneducated. The city where i am from is in southeastern Virginia, which is considered the South. My city has one of the 150 best school systems in the country, in which the students easily are well educated. Also, you say no one could feel safe walking at night in a southern town. My city also has one of the lowest crime rates in the country, considering the population. (I do not know exact numbers on this specific one) I definitely would feel much safer walking at night in my city than most cities in the north, where crime is almost part of daily life.

"So please explain to me why the Confederate States all listed slavery as their principle casus belli."

I've already said slavery was a factor. Go re-read my post.

"You mean the tariff(s) that was/were vetoed by President Buchanan?"

No, I mean the Morril tarrif that was signed into law by President Buchanan on March 2nd, 1861, and which Lincoln said in his inaugural address he had every intention of enforcing (the attack on Fort Sumter, a customs house involved in collecting the tariff duties, was of course attacked the next month). I explained this pretty clearly.

"Uh no, read the Declarations of Causes for Secession. There is not a single mention of tariff in any of them. They are EXCLUSIVELY about slavery."

Here is the very same Georgia Declaration's lengthy condemnation of tariffs, state capitalism, and 'internal improvements' which you apparently skipped over:

"The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the South not at all. In the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests of the North began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests. Even the owners of fishing smacks sought and obtained bounties for pursuing their own business (which yet continue), and $500,000 is now paid them annually out of the Treasury. The navigating interests begged for protection against foreign shipbuilders and against competition in the coasting trade. Congress granted both requests, and by prohibitory acts gave an absolute monopoly of this business to each of their interests, which they enjoy without diminution to this day. Not content with these great and unjust advantages, they have sought to throw the legitimate burden of their business as much as possible upon the public; they have succeeded in throwing the cost of light-houses, buoys, and the maintenance of their seamen upon the Treasury, and the Government now pays above $2,000,000 annually for the support of these objects. Theses interests, in connection with the commercial and manufacturing classes, have also succeeded, by means of subventions to mail steamers and the reduction in postage, in relieving their business from the payment of about $7,000,000 annually, throwing it upon the public Treasury under the name of postal deficiency. The manufacturing interests entered into the same struggle early, and has clamored steadily for Government bounties and special favors. This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding States. Wielding these great States it held great power and influence, and its demands were in full proportion to its power. The manufacturers and miners wisely based their demands upon special facts and reasons rather than upon general principles, and thereby mollified much of the opposition of the opposing interest. They pleaded in their favor the infancy of their business in this country, the scarcity of labor and capital, the hostile legislation of other countries toward them, the great necessity of their fabrics in the time of war, and the necessity of high duties to pay the debt incurred in our war for independence. These reasons prevailed, and they received for many years enormous bounties by the general acquiescence of the whole country."

The text of all of the declarations (not just the four that Putin has cherry-picked) are available here:

http://www.civil-war.net/pages/ordinances_secession.asp

Most are quite brief; some don't even mention causes, while others state causes but don't mention slavery at all; Arkansas, for instance, mentions only the fact that Lincoln had vowed to crush the seceding states by brute force. And while not a state, the Cherokee Nation's declaration is I think the most fascinating:

http://www.civilwarhome.com/cherokeecauses.htm

"this somehow negates the fact that seceded right after a Free Soiler was elected?"

Lincoln was a lot more than a 'free soiler'. He was a longtime mercantilist in the Henry Clay mold who made his bones as a lawyer and lobbyist for wealthy northern corporations that profited mightily from the corporate welfare Lincoln extracted from the federal government at the southern states' expense.

"It's quite clear Tolstoy is deliberately distorting Lincoln's views in an attempt to demonize him on the question of race in order to absolve the Confederacy. "

Your own quotes do a fair job of demonizing Lincoln on the question of race; this famous one, for instance:

"I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. [Loud cheers.] I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment."

Thus Lincoln's 'solution' to the 'race problem' - deportation to Africa, a sentiment which was quite popular in the North, where most people did not care about slavery so much as they wanted to cleanse the continent of 'the inferior race' and eliminate competition to white labor.

"So somehow despite the story you tell, the south got their way on every sectional issue of importance during the whole decade of the 1850s. "

Except on the aforementioned Morill Tariff, maintenance of the Missouri Compromise, the Crittenden compromise you mention, etc., etc. It would be safe to say that if the south really had gotten its way on everything, there would've been no reason to secede.

"Racial equality has nothing to do with free soil"

I agree - and so did the free soilers, who wanted bans on slavery so that the west would be the exclusive reserve of whites only. I thought you were opposed to that sort of government-forced racial segregation?

"No historian takes this claim seriously...

A very strange accusation from the man who thinks the Stalinist Soviet Union was a paradise.

"Non-slave holding whites feared with great intensity any prospect of equality with blacks"

Not as great an intensity as in the allegedly tolerant and progressive north. Antebellum free blacks numbered over a quarter million (something like 8% of the overall black population) in the south and were allowed to own property (including slaves - the 3rd largest plantation in South Carolina in 1860 by number of slaves was owned by a former slave who was freed in his youth), while in the north they were not even allowed to exist in some states; Indiana's constitution said that "No Negro or Mulatto shall come into, or settle in, the State, after the adoption of this Constitution." Many states like Illinois took a similarly hard line against 'undesirables'. True, there was systemic de jure discrimination in the South, but it was nothing as severe as in the northern states (outside of New England). de Tocqueville summed it up thusly: ""race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known."

"The 69th NY, 63rd NY, 88th NY, 116th Pennsylvania and 28th Mass regiments were all Irish. Where were the desertions?"

The famed Irish Brigade. Way to select a sample. From "Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America" by Allen Guelzo:

"One relative of an Illinois cavalryman confidently promised that "every man that has got the sand will throw off on the Lincoln Government now after the proclamation setting the nigger free. Ill[inois]'s is bound to go with the Southland." In the 106th Pennsylvania (part of the Army of the Potomac's Philadelphica Brigade), opinion about the proclamation was running strongly against, with "many...boldly stating that they would not have entered the army had they thought such would have been the action of the Government." It was worse still in the Fifty-first Pennsylvania - a regiment which had lost a third of its men at Antietam - where "officers and men swore that they would neither draw a sword or fire a shot in support of such a proclamation." Rather than risk armed resistance, many soldiers decided the path of protest lay to the rear. One Vermont infantryman reported in late January that "20 deserted out of one battery that went with us in one night." The soldiers "are getting disgusted...and it is nothing uncommon for a Capt. to get up in the morning and find half his company gone." Of the more than 13,000 desertions Illinois regiments suffered during the war, the single largest number occurred immediately after the Proclamation was issued; one regiment, the 109th Illiniois, had to be disbanded for disloyalty."

"I've already said slavery was a factor. Go re-read my post."

I read your post several times, it's the usual nonsense about how only a small portion of the Confederates were slaveowners and that somehow the non-slaveholding whites didn't like slavery at all, but nonetheless fought for the South. Then you go on to make a series of rants about the Confederate generals were all anti-racist progressives [including inexplicably the self-proclaimed slavehound Robert E. Lee and KKK founder and overall slave trading murderous thug Nathaniel Bedford Forrest], while the northern politicians and generals were all reactionary. You'd make your Confederate worshiping hero Lew Rockwell proud.

Your whole narrative here is trying to minimize the importance of slavery as an issue, and simultaneously turn the race issue on the north, pretending that the north was less progressive than the south. Yet, in multiple declarations it is discussed at the exclusion of all other issues. In multiple declarations, including Georgia, is the first and most prominent issue raised. The Mississippi declaration is as clear as day about the southern 'cause' in the opening paragraph.

"http://www.civil-war.net/pages/ordinances_secession.asp"

These are ordinances of secession. I referred to the declaration of the causes of secession, which go into detail about the reasons behind secession. They're completely different documents. Yes, these ordinances did not contain reasons, they were matter of fact pronouncements about the intent to secede. You're being wholly disingenuous here with this trick, but hilariously accuse me of 'cherry picking'.

"No, I mean the Morril tarrif that was signed into law by President Buchanan on March 2nd, 1861, and which Lincoln said in his inaugural address he had every intention of enforcing (the attack on Fort Sumter, a customs house involved in collecting the tariff duties, was of course attacked the next month). I explained this pretty clearly."

Right, the Morrill Tariff, which was passed months after the movement for secession. The only reason they were able to pass it was because the secessionists had left Congress, thus allowing it to pass the Senate where the Democrats had been tabling it. This is your economic cause for war? This is a rather sad argument.

The Democratic Walker tariff - implemented in 1846 and in effect until 1857 - lowered tariffs to catastrophically low rates. Foreign railroad iron undersold in American markets, ruining the iron industry in the north. At the height of panic of 1857, the south passed another tariff which lowered the rate even more. From 1857-1860 - the Republicans and protectionist Democrats tried multiple times to adjust the rates to stem the bleeding of northern industry. Each time they failed. This is probably why few southern states made any mention of it in the run up to the war. In the 1860 election, the only party to talk about the tariff was the (exclusively northern based) Republicans. The Democrats avoided it, preferring to harp on the issue of race. (McPherson, p. 225). The idea that the North was waging economic war on the South is an inversion of history and is absurd on its face.

"Lincoln was a lot more than a 'free soiler'. He was a longtime mercantilist in the Henry Clay mold who made his bones as a lawyer and lobbyist for wealthy northern corporations that profited mightily from the corporate welfare Lincoln extracted from the federal government at the southern states' expense."

You can't even stay on topic for a second - the topic being Lincoln being a freesoiler. This is another random rant about Lincoln that has no relevance to anything whatsoever. Before you said Lincoln wasn't a free soiler - your quote "Far from being a "free soiler" - , now you say he was but have to add the libertarian screed about corporate welfare and other blather for the second time. If all of this 'corporate welfare' sloganeering actually mattered to the southern Democrats they would have raised it in the election. They didn't. It is clear from the newspapers and speeches by southern politicians that the central issue was slavery and race. So this is just you reciting the usual anti-Lincoln talking points from the pro-Confederate libertarian blog of the day. But how is anything of this grounds for an armed insurrection? Why didn't the South revolt when Clay and his American system supporters were far more influential in the 1830s/1840s? How did Lincoln pay off corporations at southern expense, and how does this absolve the south from waging economic warfare against the north through the federal government for decades? And why should Lincoln or anybody have cared about states who were at war with the federal government?

"Thus Lincoln's 'solution' to the 'race problem' - deportation to Africa, a sentiment which was quite popular in the North, where most people did not care about slavery so much as they wanted to cleanse the continent of 'the inferior race' and eliminate competition to white labor."

Another irrelevant anti-Lincoln rant. If you bothered to read Lincoln's speech in full context you'd realize that he claimed the emigration to Liberia as a solution was not feasible. The whole point of bringing up those quotes was to get the full context of Lincoln's views on race and slavery, since you had ridiculously claimed he wasn't a free-soiler (only to now claim that he was) and claimed he didn't make the blocking of the expansion of slavery his main political plank. But my attempt at giving full context leads you to cherry pick quotes in order to do the same tactic over and over again.

Lincoln says:

"If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia,-to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me, that whatever of high hope, (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days. What then?"

It's clear to anyone with any honesty and reading ability that he says that emigration to Liberia was not feasible. Tolstoy doesn't even bother to deny the fact that he is heaping abuse on Lincoln on the issue of race to deflect from the slavehounds of the confederacy and their stated reason for seceding.

"Except on the aforementioned Morill Tariff, maintenance of the Missouri Compromise, the Crittenden compromise you mention, etc., etc. It would be safe to say that if the south really had gotten its way on everything, there would've been no reason to secede."

The Missouri Compromise was overthrown by the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, 6 years before secession. The Morill Tariff was implemented AFTER secession thanks to the non-votes of traitor Senators, and the South had succeeded in lowering the tariff in the middle of a northern economic crisis, and had succeeded in blocking any attempt to raise the tariff in the aftermath of the 1857 panic. The Crittenden "compromise" was a one-sided capitulation. So yes, sorry the North didn't completely bow down to every southern demand. At any rate, 14 southern Senators didn't even bother to vote on the Crittenden Compromise, which would have been enough to carry it. As McPherson explains, no amount of capitulation at that point would have stopped the momentum for secession. (p.254). Before any compromise had been debated, the southern Congressional delegations had already signed a document on December 13, 1860 stating that "The argument is exhausted. All hope of relief in the Union, through the agency of committees, Congressional legislation, and Constitutional Amendments, is extinguished." (p. 254).

"if the south really had gotten its way on everything, there would've been no reason to secede"

There was no reason to secede. They had gotten so used to control and dominance of every branch of government, that the very threat that they might not get their way in the future, was their reason for secession. President Buchanan said as much in his last State of the Union.

"It is alleged as one cause for immediate secession that the Southern States are denied equal rights with the other States in the common Territories. But by what authority are these denied? Not by Congress, which has never passed, and I believe never will pass, any act to exclude slavery from these Territories; and certainly not by the Supreme Court, which has solemnly decided that slaves are property, and, like all other property, their owners have a right to take them into the common Territories and hold them there under the protection of the Constitution.

So far then, as Congress is concerned, the objection is not to anything they have already done, but to what they may do hereafter."

"I agree - and so did the free soilers, who wanted bans on slavery so that the west would be the exclusive reserve of whites only. I thought you were opposed to that sort of government-forced racial segregation?"

If you agree then why the hell do you keep bringing up whatever racist policy/statement you can dig up against the north, in your pathetic attempt to whitewash the Confederacy? You denied Lincoln and the Republican Party were free soil and denied the Confederacy bolted because a free soiler was elected and have provided no "proof" other than you trite charges of racism 50 times over. Nevermind that African Americans stood in line for miles after Lincoln to honor him after he was killed by a slavehound thug. And nevermind that General Grant was elected President on the strength of the black vote in the South. The northern politicians were all evil racists and the southern slavehounds who sold the infant children of mothers to other slavehounds had their slaves best interests at heart.

If the Republicans all hated blacks so much, and abolitionism/free soil was just a way to entrench the power of whites - why - in the middle of the 1860 election, in New York Republicans propose an initiative for the enfranchisement of blacks in New York? Why did black abolitionists like Frederick Douglas endorse the Republicans in 1860? How does that reconcile with your all northerners are racist propaganda parade?

" I thought you were opposed to that sort of government-forced racial segregation?"

Only someone so deluded and blinded by extremist libertarian ideology would believe that the southern Democrats, the Confederacy, and a southern victory would bring about more freedom for blacks in America than a Union one. Reconstruction was really 'government enforced segregation' right? Why didn't the evil north do all these horrible things to blacks from 1865-1877 that you claim they wanted to do?

"A very strange accusation from the man who thinks the Stalinist Soviet Union was a paradise."

Really, someone writing long screeds about how progressive the Confederacy and the South more generally was than the North is the last person who can ever invoke the usual "you're a commie, nah nah nah" line, or ever bitch about supposed historical revisionism.

"Not as great an intensity as in the allegedly tolerant and progressive north"

Hmm, really? This is your defense of your claim that non-slave holding whites were opposed to slavery and resented the slaveowners? That's why Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown declared that "slavery is the poor man's best Government. Among us the poor white laborer...does not belong to the menial class. The negro is in no sense his equal. He belongs only to the true aristocracy, the race of white men. [Yeomen farmers] will never consent to abolition rule, for they know that in the event of the abolition of slavery, they would be greater sufferers than the rich, who could protect themselves".

Southern newspapers warned poor whites about how abolition would lead to amalgamation between blacks and poor whites.

"Do you love your mother, your sister, your daughter? If Georgia remained in a Union ruled by Lincoln and his crew....in TEN years or less our CHILDREN will be the slaves of negroes". (MacPherson, 243).

It's also a wonder then that southern "anti-racist" shouted about how the "Black Republicans" had a "wild and fanatical sentimentality toward the Black Race" (MacPherson, 159).

" in the south and were allowed to own property (including slaves - the 3rd largest plantation in South Carolina in 1860 by number of slaves was owned by a former slave who was freed in his youth),"

Oh gee, how nice. They have the "right" to keep others in bondage. Wonderful. The libertarian definition of a free society.

"while in the north they were not even allowed to exist in some states; Indiana's constitution said that "No Negro or Mulatto shall come into, or settle in, the State, after the adoption of this Constitution.""

Yet they made up 5% of the population right before the Civil War. This article was declared invalid in 1866 - meanwhile the South was happily implementing severe black codes across the South during this time (another fact which doesn't go well with your ridiculous narrative). I do not deny that harsh black codes were implemented in border states like Indiana and Illinois before the Civil War, but I do enjoy how you exclude New England but yet go on to claim that the North was much more anti-black than the South. How convenient. Blacks were allowed to vote in: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New York (with a property requirement). How many southern states allowed blacks to vote?

"The famed Irish Brigade. Way to select a sample. From "Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America" by Allen Guelzo:"

Yes, you do realize that the whole debate was about Irish immigrants, because they were singled out by TJ for opposing emancipation, right? Do you bother to follow the subject of the discussion, ever?

"Of the more than 13,000 desertions Illinois regiments suffered during the war, the single largest number occurred immediately after the Proclamation was issued; one regiment, the 109th Illiniois, had to be disbanded for disloyalty."

Oh no, one regiment! The fact that of the multitude of men who deserted the Union army (est. 200,000 total) only one regiment can be found to have disbanded because of Emancipation speaks volumes. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued right before the fighting became really brutal. The fact that more soldiers did not refuse to fight such a brutal war for a race they supposedly hated is a marvel.

"Union desertions averaged 4647 a month in 1863 (the year Emancipation first went into effect); 7333 in 1864; and 4368 in 1865."

http://books.google.com/books?id=-BhsaaPGzA0C&pg=PA152&lpg=PA152&dq=Union+deserters+averaged+4647+a+month+in+1863;+7333+in+1864;+and+4368+in+1865&source=bl&ots=le3KPNOeYO&sig=YpB-P_prDC-ABFm2lQ6ooPhB3AY&hl=en&ei=D7w_TefpOYP58AbfvrnRBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false

"The Democratic Walker tariff - implemented in 1846 and in effect until 1857 - lowered tariffs to catastrophically low rates. Foreign railroad iron undersold in American markets, ruining the iron industry in the north."

The "catastrophically low rate" of the Walker Tariff was 35%. If northern industry couldn't compete with foreign competition, even though said foreign competition was paying a 35% tariff on top of the cost of moving their goods across 3,000 miles of ocean, then northern industry deserved to fail.

"These are ordinances of secession...You're being wholly disingenuous here with this trick"

The Declarations of Causes are also linked on the page... if my intention was to hide them, it was an epic fail. After doing some research, I did not realize that of all the seceding states, only 4 wrote declarations... a highly curious fact, considering that this was less than a third of the seceding states. Makes me wonder how important the declarations (for which I have not been able to find authors) were if most states didn't feel the need for them; since there were apparently no declarations for most states, these ordinances would have to stand as the key document concerning causes, where they are listed. As I observed, several of the ordinances that did list causes did not include slavery.

"Right, the Morrill Tariff, which was passed months after the movement for secession"

It had been in debate since 1859. With Lincoln and his fellow former Whigs winning the election - who made no effort to conceal their desire for a massive tariff increase - the fix was obviously in. And half of the Confederate States were still in the Union at the time it was passed, leaving only *after* it was passed, and after Lincoln declared his intention to bring the secedants back into the northern mercantilist orbit by force.

"Why didn't the South revolt when Clay and his American system supporters were far more influential in the 1830s/1840s?"

Ever hear of the Tariff of Abominations and the resulting Nullification Crisis? This is covered even in high school level US history classes. And rates weren't low by any stretch (well, with your perspective, I imagine *any* rate would be 'too low', I suppose) - the aforementioned 'catastrophically low' Walker Tariff (1846-1857) was 35%.

"And why should Lincoln or anybody have cared about states who were at war with the federal government? "

Well, I would think he should've cared so that those states would not have wanted to go to war with the federal government (as you put it), costing hundreds of thousands of lives. But who needs persuasion when you can just nuke 'em? With an attitude like this, I can see why you have so many defeats in your games.

"You can't even stay on topic for a second - the topic being Lincoln being a freesoiler"

Yes. Lincoln supported free soil in the election, and ran with a party that embraced free soil as a core issue. But was Lincoln really a free soiler at heart, or an opportunist who seized on the issue in order to secure a constituency and get elected to further the mercantilist Whig agenda? Lincoln never expressed any real opinions about the issue or even slavery in general until the Whig party started to break up, and the only organized viable successor was the Republican party for which free soil/segregation was a core issue. In fact, in 1847 Lincoln argued in an Illinois court on behalf of a slaveowner whose slaves were declared free since slavery was illegal there (Lincoln argued that since the slaves were in Illinois only temporarily and not permanently, the abolition law did not apply; he lost). Lincoln, the lifelong Whig and loyal servant of northern mercantile interests, entered into a marriage of convenience and adapted his views accordingly. If I'm wrong, it should be very very easy to find plenty of abolitionist/free soil views expressed by Lincoln from before 1854 or so.

"If you bothered to read Lincoln's speech in full context you'd realize that he claimed the emigration to Liberia as a solution was not feasible"

Alright. Let's forget about the campaign speeches. Let us turn instead to that vile piece of Confederate propaganda, the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation:

"...it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of Congress, to again recommend the adoption of a practical measure tendering pecuniary aid to the free acceptance or rejection of all Slave States, so called, the people whereof may not then be in rebellion against the United States, and which States may then have voluntarily adopted, or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, immediate or gradual abolishment of slavery within their respective limits; *and that the effort to colonize persons of African descent, with their consent, upon this continent or elsewhere, with the previously obtained consent of the governments existing there, will be continued.*"

There were at least three separate attempts made by Lincoln and his supporters in congress to resettle blacks outside the United States during the war. For an endeavor that was 'not feasible', Lincoln sure wasted a fair amount of his limited time on the thing when president.

"claimed he didn't make the blocking of the expansion of slavery his main political plank"

It wasn't his main political plank, as you've acknowledged; his chief goal was to "preserve the union".

"why the hell do you keep bringing up whatever racist policy/statement you can dig up against the north, in your pathetic attempt to whitewash the Confederacy?"

why the hell do you keep bringing up whatever racist policy/statement you can dig up against the south, in your pathetic attempt to whitewash the Mercantilists and Free Soil bigots?

"why - in the middle of the 1860 election, in New York Republicans propose an initiative for the enfranchisement of blacks in New York?"

Why, if New York was such a tolerant and racially progressive state, was such a proposal necessary FORTY YEARS after slavery had been abolished in New York? In answer to your query, it was an effort to fight the Democratic Party which was heavily entrenched in New York City before and throughout the war - not a statement about political equality. Rather like how Labor gave Arab Israelis the right to vote so Labor could stay in power in Israel.

"Why did black abolitionists like Frederick Douglas endorse the Republicans in 1860?"

While abolitionists certainly voted Republican, they were by and large lukewarm at best on Lincoln because the slavery issue was obviously not all that important to him; Garrison certainly thought so.

"How does that reconcile with your all northerners are racist propaganda parade? "

Sheesh. I point out that New England was less oppressive towards blacks than Illinois and Indiana, and I'm called inconsistent. Now you're saying that I'm saying that "all northerners are racist". I just can't win!

'states have no right to secede'

The claim that states have no legal right to secede is absurd. Many states explicitly stated that they retained this right when they ratified the Constitution. Even your man Hamilton said that the threat of secession would be a check on the power of the federal government. No one ever suggested states have no right to secede during the various crises of the early 19th century when New England states threatened it - even to the point of holding secession conventions. And if the opinions of ex-presidents count for something, what then of the fact that 3 of the 5 living ex-presidents in 1861 supported the right of the south to secede to one extent or another (including John Tyler, who served briefly in the Confederate Congress before keeling over, while his son served as a Confederate general)? Why did LINCOLN HIMSELF give a speech defending the idea of secession in the 1840s?

"Do you bother to follow the subject of the discussion, ever? "

<yawn> Apparently not. Your anger amuses me, however. Keep it up!

"Union desertions averaged 4647 a month in 1863 (the year Emancipation first went into effect); 7333 in 1864; and 4368 in 1865."

Conspicuously absent is 1862, the year the Proclamation was issued - when the mass desertions actually took place. If we move up just a little bit to page 151, however, we read that "This statement then [a letter from Lincoln to McClellan] clearly indicates 45,000 deserters in [July of] 1862 from the eastern army. But by December [the next number we have after the Emancipation Proclamation], Simon Draper, specially commissioned for the task of dealing with desertion, found upward of 100,000 absent without leave and hence subject to be treated as deserters." That's a difference of 50,000, from the Army of the Potomac alone - obviously a lot more than a single regiment. Granted these are very rough figures, but there was obviously *something* that triggered a huge spike in desertions between July and December (the EP was issued in September).

"Really, someone writing long screeds about how progressive the Confederacy and the South more generally was than the North is the last person who can ever invoke the usual "you're a commie, nah nah nah" line, or ever bitch about supposed historical revisionism."

Alright. Find me an antebellum freedman in the north who became one of the five richest men in their state. I can wait. While you're at it, please explain why the North didn't get around to arming former slaves until 1863 (and then only with great reluctance as an act of desparation), while many Confederate slaveowners (like Forrest) were offering emancipation in return for military service from the start of the war. As for name-calling, I hardly thought describing you as you describe yourself could be deemed an insult - the fact that you take it as such says a lot about the strength of your beliefs. And as for 'revisionism', I'm not quite sure you understand the word - all good historical studies are revisionist, in that it revises incorrect views of the past. 'unrevisionist' history is simply a regurgitation of formerly accepted facts, which is pretty boring and pointless.

"Only someone so deluded and blinded by extremist libertarian ideology would believe that the southern Democrats, the Confederacy, and a southern victory would bring about more freedom for blacks in America than a Union one"

Thanks for telling me what I think yet again. I don't know how I was ever able to form an opinion without you, Putin.

Just in case there is anyone who actually does want my opinion instead of assuming it, see my next post...

Point number one: slavery sucks.

Putin I'm sure will explain I mean otherwise, but I do not condone or support slavery in any way. And since I apparently haven't been clear enough, yes - slavery was one reason some southerners (particularly in the lower south) fought the Civil War. But it was not the only reason - not by a long shot. There were a large variety of reasons, many of them having absolutely nothing to do with slavery.

Civil War Historiography - especially in the decades immediately after the war - has in general completely ignored the non-slavery causes of the civil war and focused instead almost entirely on slavery, inventing an entire mythology around Lincoln and the unionists being dedicated and selfless enemies of slavery, fighting a war of liberation against those dirty backward inbred southern hicks who were motivated only by the desire to whip their slaves all day. This is the story told in McPherson's book, on which Putin has relied on entirely here so far as I can tell. There are grains of truth in this narrative, but it is far from completely accurate - especially in the upper south, which did not secede until after Sumter and Lincoln's declaration of intention to bring the seceding states back into the union by force. The 'War Over Slavery' narrative was adopted primarily because it's a far prettier (and easier) tale for the victors to tell than arguments about mercantilist versus free trade policies, the nature of government under the constitution, and 19th century American views on nationalism (just ask yourself which narrative you'd prefer to teach a bunch of bored high school students).

The Civil War was the most bloody, brutal, and desctructive war the Western Hemisphere has seen. It nearly bankrupted the north and ruined the south to the point that even today southern states are the poorest in the nation. Whole cities were burned to the ground; decades of improvements to infrastructure were undone. 2% of the population was killed; more than that were crippled and spent the rest of their lives with missing limbs and broken souls. The war and the hard peace that followed fed racial and sectional animosities that plagued the country for another hundred years and still have not been entirely eliminated. Like all wars, it was a catastrophe - something that sensible people would seek to avoid.

It is fairly clear that the motivations of Lincoln's chief motivation was to "preserve the union", and not free the slaves. Early in the war, Lincoln actually ordered his generals to return captured slaves to their 'owners'. Lincoln was a die-hard mercantilist, supported by northern industrialists whose top priority was to maintain the south as a captive market for northern manufactured goods with high tariffs on imports to keep out competition. But if we leave aside the fact that the federalists were not fighting a war against slavery, and a union victory early in the war ('61 or '62) likely would not have resulted in abolition, the question then becomes this: was the Civil War a worthwhile price to pay for the abolition of slavery, or was there another - better - way to end slavery?

Abolition of slavery was the only good thing that came out of the war (a sentiment echoed by Mary Chesnut, the Charleston diarist and wife of a plantation owner/Confederate general, whose writings provide an excellent view of Southern society and attitudes which anyone interested in the subject should read). However, a bloody and destructive war was not the best way to go about ending it. Every other country on earth, as well as all of the northern states (where during the Revolution 8% of the population were slaves) managed to eliminate slavery without bloodsheed - mostly through gradual and/or compensated emancipation. That is how the British and the French did it in their empires; Brazil (whose economy was at least as dependent upon slave labor as the southern states) did it as well. If that had been the course pursued in the United States, I think the war and all its horrors could've been avoided, and slavery could have been ended on terms more favorable for all concerned.

Well, I have about 4 more pages here ready to cut and paste, but I think my general position is hopefully clear enough and I don't want to bore anyone to death.