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Third party and unknowns HAVE to be looked at if anyone wants any sort of real and substantial change. The two parties are so corrupt now that it is going to take a major, and I mean MAJOR shake up to get things back on track again. Even if a third party candidate doesn't win, it would ultimately lead to the two parties paying attention, perking their ears up and realizing the American people are tired of their nonsense, their political corruption and their self serving ideals.
Follow up - so if the South just wanted to survive, and take a defensive stand, did its military strategy reflect this? Or, to put it another way, were the moves made by the South in keeping with the idea of "holding on" or did it stray from its main objective?
The biggest detractor to this is everyone says that the South was aggressors when it fired at Ft Sumter. However, I think this was not an aggressive move but a very political and shrewd move by Lincoln to get the south to indeed fire and appear as the aggressor.Ft Sumter is in South Carolina, yet it is occupied by federal troops... so... you have something similar to a US Embassy in another country. The Embassy sits on another nations land, but since it is occupied by the US it is considered US soil. The federal government considered Ft Sumter Union land; the south considered it Confederate property and therefore property of the south.The problem also arises in that Lincoln had already called on the states to raise troops against the south, even before a shot was fired at Ft Sumter. That could also be considered aggressive. So in response the south is simply acting on the defensive to protect themselves against incursion of federal troops on their soil.The whole beginnings of the war were like chess match...Each side skillfully and shrewdly playing the other side to gain the result they wanted.
Quite simply hold on and survive. The South never thought it could militarily defeat the North. Southerners hoped that the North would tire of the war and give up.
Agreed, and one could also say they never intended to "defeat" the North from the beginning. The South never had "conquest" in their strategy. They indeed wanted them to tire, and then ultimately let the South be. The Union would have broken apart, but one could argue 600,000 lives could have been saved had one side let the other be. Again, right or wrong as that would have been.
This is a relatively straightforward question: what exactly was the South's objective during the war?
Depends on who you ask and when you ask. That isn't to be as cryptic as it sounds.Ask a white northerner prior to 1861 the question and then after 1863 and you would get a myriad of answers. Ask the same question to a white southerner, or a free black, or a mistreated slave, or a slave who is treated well, or a Irish immigrant, or a simple, non-slave owning farmer in the south or midwest... so many different views of the same thing.Hindsighted history and what is ALWAYS spouted is that it is was ultimately slavery. Every professor I have listened to has used the same theories over and over again and anything close to a southern viewpoint is revisionist nonsense. They have grown so accustomed to the politically correct notion of the Civil War, the relagating the southerner to nothing short of the devil, that all the other factors are mentally blocked. William Sherman thought slaves should remain slaves. Stonewall Jackson took care of his slaves as if they were family and even schooled and churched them.Again, like the other thread, it can't be looked at as black or white. There are indeed shades of gray that all encompassed the southern objective.Conversely, what was the northern objective? I again would submit it depends on who you ask and when you ask.Ultimately, today, our views are slanted by the fact we have history since then to further complicate things. For one to divorce themselves from this history and try to honestly view the deetails and feel the pain from both sides tends to ultimately see justice and injustice on both sides, but then get's labled a "NeoConfederate" and instantly shut off because the viewpoint is not the sanitized view the world has grown used to hearing.
This is an age old question and I don't think anyone will ever agree on could this have been prevented, was it over slavery, expansion, yadda yadda... it is so complex that I don't think you can box it up with the slavery lable and say, "that solves that".
It had occurred to me that with the devastation upon the South, and the suffering that Southerners endured during and after the war, some of them may have regretted going to war in the first place. What could they have done differently? Had they had the option of controlling the emancipation of the slaves on their own terms, would they have done it? Imposing sanctions on oneself is preferable to having them imposed by the outside in most cases. But would this have been enough for the North?
Again, looking at it from the perspective of the times, slavery was not ths issue to the southerners. The issue to them was you are telling me how I should live my life, you are telling me that my way is evil, when the laws of the land which I will defend say otherwise, you are telling me that I have less rights than you and that I should just'play ball' and roll with the changes, because, after all the changes are inevitable. Slavery was a match in a matchbook. It took someone to light it for it to ignight the eventual flame it would become. It did not happen on it's own.So, again, we keep seeing "slave this and slave that" all looked at in hindsight, and not looked at in the eyes of the southern farmer who was just living his life the way he always had, and again, by the law. He was obeying the law and now, someone from outside his sphere of influence is telling him he had better change his way of living. "What law am I breaking?" he might ask. "you are breaking natural law" might be the response. "Who gave you the right to tell me what is right and wrong when I am living by the SAME law of the land that you are?"The problem I see is the double standard of the law. Ultimately, there was a division in the entire belief system and the law was used as a crutch on both sides. There was enough of a difference, and this goes well back into the colonial period) between the southern and northern mentality that ultimately conflict was going to occur, with or without slavery.
The South had its cotton, and the cotton crops needed slave labor to continue. Rather than give up the labor, the South decided to wage war. I'm wondering - could the South have given up slavery to avoid war? For example, could the South have emancipated the slaves voluntarily and kept them on as wage earners? Although they would have taken a financial hit, it would not have been so bad as what ultimately happened.Naturally, we have to set aside the issue of states' rights to consider this question.
The problem is you take out state rights and assume the war was fought over slavery. You also assume that is why the north was fighting, for the end of slavery; they were not, initially. This is an age old question and I don't think anyone will ever agree on could this have been prevented, was it over slavery, expansion, yadda yadda... it is so complex that I don't think you can box it up with the slavery lable and say, "that solves that".Here is my 2 cents for what it is worth... Slavery would have died out, eventually. Many northerners who fought owned slaves themselves, and were not fighting for the end of slavery. You had southerners who did not even own slaves fighting, not for slavery but for their right to their way of life (which happened to include the LEGAL practice of slavery), you also had southerners who did own slaves who took great care of their property (right or wrong as it sounds) and treated them better than some that were free were treated in the north. Yes, many were not treated right.Again, I think that this is such a complex issue that you can't look at a single point and use it as the focal point. Events leading up to the war, well before the war in the lat 18th and early 19th century were crucial factors in whether or not the war was going to happen. The difference today is that most of our expansion is over. We don't have states coming on at the rate they were back then. That was crucial in stepping up the ante and bringing the nation closer to war, as each state represented the possible interests of either the north or south in terms of representation.Honestly, all things considered, I do not believe war could have been avoided. I think it was a "right of passage" this country had to go through. I think that when you look back on the chain of events there was no stopping this event from happening, short of the Union letting the south go, again, right or wrong as that would have been.My two cents.. and it could easily have gone on to ten bucks!! 🙂
I think there should be passion on the subject, expertise and personal opinion in certain areas, but REALLY turns me off and makes me just shut my brain down and do the minimum to get by in the class is a teacher who pushes his religious and political agendas on me without any consideration that I probably have a totally different perspective on both and his job is NOT to tel lme that my political/religious views are wrong and thus makes my history knowledge irrelevant, but is supposed to make me see how those two subjects, from multiple points of view, shaped history and my values are equally as relevant as his.
For me it is the period in America from the early 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century with a specific focus on the Civil War.But to be quite frank, I find the majority of history, related to military affairs highly interesting...
I watched the Common Soldier one as well. Pretty basic, but still interesting. Not sure I agreed with everything 100%, but that is pretty typical with these sort of presentations.Looking forward to the next two...
I believe Noah cannibalized the ark afterward to build homes for his family and other structures for the animals. He almost had to didn't he? But the impression that the ark made on Mt. Ararat might still be there, and it might not. It's not really that important to me, but if it is still there, it would really shake the world to its foundations...especially the evolutionists and atheists.
I agree with this... God said the entire earth was covered, so my guess is no trees survived afterwards so it would only make sense that Noah used the Ark for housing initially and then lumber. So honestly, I don't they will find it. Maybe one could find a piece of it that would be able to be somehow dated to the same period, but an intact ark I don't think exists any longer.As for evolutionists and atheists believing, I agree that like stated, they would still continue to deny the truth. It has happened long ago and still does today. Jesus said (to the Phairisees) that they had the words of Moses and the prophets and even if one were to come back from the dead people would still not listen (and they didn't and many still don't today... even though what He said happened). The truth is hard to swallow for some, especially when it completely disrupts everything they hold as truth. This goes for religious (or non religious) beliefs, history, political ideals, etc.Truth is a very hard pill to swallow. Sorry, didn't mean to head of fon a religious tangent 🙂
Did they use ground penetrating radar? ::)
Now THAT is funny! 😀
And I for one did not mean to run anyone off… even myself… I understand discussions on one subject, especially history, can lead to a discussion that can get quite heated (politics and religion) and my hope was that those discussions stayed out of the discussion at hand in turn keeping the thread relevant. Too many good discussions end up in right and wrong arguments and the original topic gets lost in the muck. That has been my experience online, and quite frankly I was getting tired of it. I stopped visiting any forum that was history related because every discussion ended up degenerating into an argument over left and right, God or no God.I'm glad that there is a place here to take these sort of discussions and let em rip... that way, the other areas are free to stay on topic and if you choose to debate a political/religious debate it is segregated enough to allow you the freedom to choose to do that or to bow out, keeping the rest of the forums free of strife.I'm not a Liberal...I find most things about liberal thinking as far off-base as they can get...that being said I agree that differences in viewpoints can spice things up, especially in a forum-type setting. The trick is to keep it from degenerating into name calling and getting personal. Been down that road...On the same hand, my viewpoint, being much further to the right, probably finds liberals thinking I am as far off-base as I can get... Again, that?s why I think we need to try our very best to divorce that part of us when we are discussing a topic and realize the other person in the discussion most likely does not have the same viewpoint.Anyway, said way more than I planned, and still probably rambled... Point is, if I offended you willyD, it was NOT intentional. It was for my own sake of trying to find a history site where I could talk history and not politics/religion.If I did offend you I offer my apologies.
King David, King Solomon, King Rehoboam... the last saw the kingdom of Israel break apart under his reign...
My finger is thicker than my father's waist. (That's why the tribes walked out on Rehoboam).
That whole linage is an extremely insteresting read/study.
King David, King Solomon, King Rehoboam… the last saw the kingdom of Israel break apart under his reign…
coda: I know nothing of Glenn Beck and have never heard him speak–I do know his face. This is a non political post.
Not sure how that could have been MORE political... at any rate... I disagree, but again, since this is a history site and not a political site I will leave my comments to myself.Funny.. I have tried my entire life to keep my political views as much as possible away from my historical views, but everywhere I go to look for educational and enlightening discussion on historical subjects I seem to find the same old thing... It sort of angers me and quite honestly, usually ends up with me not returning...Hoping that is not the case here... so far I have enjoyed it...
