Franklin Saunders on Freedom, etc.

[Lemon Thrower]

Lincoln's war against the South was based on One Idea alone: if a man insists on his right to self-government, he has earned a death sentence. That is the heart of all Revolution, and the root of freedom's annihilation in this country. Washington today believes The Idea as strongly as Lincoln and the Radical Republicans. If you don't understand this root, you won't understand events: why Janet Reno was willing to kill the children at Waco to save them, or why the US had to destroy Iraq & kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to spread democracy, or why the War on Terror overseas means the end of rights at home, or why sellers of raw milk must be raided with SWAT teams.

I don't think most Northerners believe in The Idea, but still it runs America, in the hands of yankees (remember my definition above). So if you are from the North and not a yankee, don't let me rile you when I use the word yankee to describe the tyrants in Washington, because I'm not referring to you. I have as good a will toward you as I do toward any Southerner.

With sorrow I concede that the myths of American history inculcated in government schools contradict everything I've written, & that may make you mad, but I'm not trying to make you mad, only to tell you the truth.

On 4 November 1866 that great English lover of freedom, Lord Acton, wrote to Robert E. Lee, "I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction, but as the redemption of Democracy. . . I believed that [the Confederacy's] example would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom. . . Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization, and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo."

On 15 December 1866 Lee replied to Acton, that he considered the "maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people" as the "safeguard" of a free government's survival, "whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it."

Truth is the daughter of time. What is the United States today but "aggressive abroad & despotic at home"? Abroad its armies wage countless wars. At home, its agents steal your money, fondle your wives and daughters at airports, stop and search your cars without warrants, and meddle and regulate every act and even every thought of your life.

So if you are one of those criminals who insist on your right to self-government, even if you were born north of Mason & Dixon's line, you are my friend and ally, but I would never call you a yankee.

And y'all don't bother writing me one of those "The War's over, get over it" letters, because I have a handy delete key on my computer, & I will use it. Besides, the War is NOT over, & they're still waging it -- against YOU and me.

[68Camaro]

I have no historical skin in this, being a heritage "Westerner" from territory that at the time was more part of Mexico as it was the Union. But I learned a long time ago that everything I had learned in school about this was wrong. That Lincoln was right about one thing but wrong about almost everything else. That the South was wrong about one thing while right about almost everything else - and ended up losing the resulting war because of the thing they choose to be wrong about. Had the South not been stubbornly on the wrong side of the moral argument of slavery I believe the South likely would have prevailed, and perhaps in that would have actually saved the Republic. There is no winner here; the South was just as equally to blame for the result by their stubborness of justifying a national sin via out of context biblical quotes from the pulpit. Lincoln saved the "Union", but the Republic of the original founders and the Constitution was sacrificed in its place. I wryly refer to the Civil War as the "War of Northern Aggression" - that label bates people, but sometimes causes them to at least reconsider the correctness of the facts underlying their views on this.

[Lemon Thrower]

you ascribe far more relevance to the issue of slavery to the civil war than there really was.

[68Camaro]

There is a "northern" position that argues the war was fought over slavery. There is a "southern" position that says that it wasn't. According to other views, including my own, both are wrong; the reasons for the war were far more complicated than those easy positions. But regardless, it is crystal clear that the South lost the moral high ground because of the slavery position, and regardless of why the war was started, the war was lost because of that position. If you disagree, so be it - I won't argue it with you.

[aloneibreak]

some good reading on the matter is the book "the real lincoln" by thomas j dilorenzo

gives an angle thats not taught in schools...

[Lemon Thrower]

There is a "northern" position that argues the war was fought over slavery. There is a "southern" position that says that it wasn't. According to other views, including my own, both are wrong; the reasons for the war were far more complicated than those easy positions. But regardless, it is crystal clear that the South lost the moral high ground because of the slavery position, and regardless of why the war was started, the war was lost because of that position. If you disagree, so be it - I won't argue it with you.

if you believe the war was about slavery or the south lost the moral ground because of it, then you didn't understand my post. as they say, history is written by the victors. slavery is the red herring - the war was fought to eliminate states' rights.

a similar war will occur in Europe to eliminate states' rights.