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Originally Posted by Dom182  The South had little to no industry aside from agricultural. Most of this was plantation based and relied heavily on slave labor. These slave owners controlled politics and economics. Then the north began to grow. Through both a high Birthrate and heavy immigration from European countries. There population grew much faster than the lightly settled south. Making it difficult for the slave holders to maintain control over the political system. At first politicians had mostly moderated opposition to slavery, this resulted in compromises such like Missouri Compromise of 1820 there admission as a slave state allowed the slave owners to maintain control of the senate.. Later, the issue of slavery in the new territories led to the Compromise of 1850. Which sidestepped immediate political crisis. The next crisis over slavery resulted in the Kansas-Nebraska act, again allowing slavery in those states. This sparked the initial fighting and is the precursor to the war. Theree was an outpouring of anger following passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Large public meetings were held in numerous Northern communities, some of which used the term “Republican.”
WIth comprimisers like Clay and Webster gone the Whig party had tried to take the lead but had no leader. They united with Northern Democrats to form the republican party. Almost overnight the party was successful, winning control of the House of Representatives in the fall of 1854. One of their main goals was to Repeal of the Kansas-Nebraska Act—the Republican opposition to the extension of slavery was based as much on economic concerns as moral ones. While being people of their times they were racists as we would define it, they wanted and end to slavery. Losing political clout was a blow to the south and they began grumbling. Then Lincoln, a republican, was voted into office and gave his house divided speech. He expressed a desire to "arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction". All of the new territories were to become free-soil states, which increased the Southern movement toward secession. Both North and South assumed that if slavery could not expand it would wither and die.
Southern secession was triggered by the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln because regional leaders feared that he would stop the expansion of slavery and put it on a course toward extinction. Many Southerners thought either Lincoln or another Northerner would abolish slavery, and that it was time to secede. The slave states, which had already become a minority in the House of Representatives, were now facing a future as a perpetual minority in the Senate and Electoral College against an increasingly powerful North.
Now this is the true history of the civil war. Not your revisionist version. Your initial post was that the republicans were on the wrong side of freeing the slave. As for the Native Americans that is not what the post is about. As for the occupation of CHina, that is a laugh. Talk to the Japanese about that. While you are at it talk to the tibetans. I asm sure if you go back far enough, about 50 years works for me but feel free to go back futher, they were once a free country.
You know what is funny. You spout this crap about revisionist history etc. If you were in CHina you would not be able to spout it at all.
As for my experience in a history class, it is accurate. I find it alarming because it was a history class. One thing is immutable, that is history. Now while I will concede that history is written by the victors, just look at any communist history, ours is pretty close to accurate when it comes to facts. FUrthermore we see it happening today. When I was in college in the early 90's we still had the cohones to call our teachers on it and or walk out. Today not so much. |
Well, I totally agree with what you have wrote, Dom. But you wrote that it was mainly an economical battle as well as a political one. The PEOPLE of the north cried out for freedom of slaves or to halt the expansion of slaves, NOT conservatism ok? To say that conservatives lobbied for freedom of slaves is a silly and gross exaggeration. I totally agree with everything that you wrote in the first paragraph. That is what I learned as well, but you seem to interpret that as if Conservatives were so moral that they had to free the slaves out of the goodness of their heart. The Confederates were the conservatives of those days that did not want progressive change.
As for China, you're absolutely wrong. You still seem to be stuck in the Maoist era view of China. You can absolutely do anything you want except threaten to overthrow the government. China is more capitalistic than the U.S.. If you have the money, you can do anything. Study what China has been doing after 1978 and especially after 1989. People protested and were not squashed by tanks as western propaganda claimed. There hasn't been many protests because it's hard to complain when the economy is growing at 11% annually. The only protests were illegal protests of religious groups such as the Falun Gong and the Dalai Lama that threatened to have too much political power and overthrow the government. Imagine The Church of Scientology taking over the white house. I'm sure we would set up laws to prevent that.
China is actually the country headed towards a democratic federalism with strong capitalistic values while America is steering towards socialism.
By the way Dom. You seem like a very bright guy with a good education. How come you ended up working at Enterprise?