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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (10499)	1/31/2000 2:49:00 PM
From: Pat W.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Neocon, Jack Anderson, hardly a southern apologist, wrote this piece a few days ago. He included a lot of history i was not aware of and found interesting. I thought it would be worth passing on. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Could American Holocaust have been avoided? By Jack Anderson 25 January 2000 Bigotry is an evil that has led to some of history's worst crimes, the Holocaust being the worst among them. But there are all forms of bigotry, and we are witnessing one of the most peculiar of them in the current controversy over the Confederate flag. It is a situation made for demagoguery. The claim is made that the flag is a symbol of slavery and secession, and therefore worthy of our disdain. The problem is that the slogan is great alliteration, but terrible history. Here are the facts: Until the election of 1860 the winning ticket or cabinet was always regionally balanced, but the Republicans of that year chose Abraham Lincoln of Illinois and Hannibal Hamlin of Maine. Their message was clear: Southerners were not welcome. This was not simply a matter of slave states versus free states, but of competing economies and ways of life. As a result, the Republicans did not even bother to campaign in the South, but their divisive ticket won the electoral vote anyway, over a divided Democratic Party. They won it with the smallest plurality in American history: 39 percent. South Carolina and six other deep South states then foolishly seceded, rather than bear up to the new administration until the next election. Then, even more foolishly, they allowed themselves to be maneuvered into a confrontation at Fort Sumter, a completely bloodless battle that Lincoln used to call for an invasion of the South. That decision, regardless of loyalties, must be regarded as the worst single political decision in our history, because in the stroke of a pen he did what no other event could accomplish: He forced the four upper South states out of the Union. Those states : Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas had recently voted by overwhelming majorities to reject secession, and each of them, by similar majorities, reversed those votes when compelled by Lincoln to choose between fighting for or against their fellow Southerners; civil wars allow no neutrals. And those states went on to provide more than 50 percent of the manpower for the Confederate armies, which guaranteed a long and bloody war. Gen. Robert E. Lee's wife, Mary, best expressed the upper South sentiments when she declared South Carolina and Massachusetts ought to fight it out and leave everyone else alone. In short, the average Southerner was not fighting for slavery or even secession. After all, fewer than 5 percent of Southerners were slaveholders (385,000 out of a free population of 8,361,677, according to the 1860 Census), and the men in the ranks were hardly willing to die to protect their officers' right to perpetuate that peculiar institution. They fought because they were invaded. And by fighting, they died by the thousands. More than 25 percent of all military-age Southern men and 10 percent of all military-age Northern men died in the war, making the Civil War America's holocaust. It was an unnecessary war, which Lincoln claimed was endured solely to preserve the Union. As he wrote to Horace Greeley in 1862, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it...." Yet it is interesting to ponder what might have occurred had he simply blockaded the seven seceding states instead of invading them. Any course that kept the upper South in the Union would have been preferable to the carnage his invasion inflicted on the nation. The official death toll is listed at 623,000, but that does not include civilian deaths nor lives shortened by war wounds. So when South Carolina flies the Confederate flag and Georgia retains the emblem in its state flag, the majority of their citizens are not celebrating slavery and secession. They are honoring the ultimate sacrifice paid by their forebears. And the misuse of the Confederate flag by such despicable organizations as the Ku Klux Klan or the Neo-Nazis is devastating to the sons and daughters of Confederate veterans, just as it is devastating to all citizens when the American flag is desecrated, carried upside down or flown by American communists, bigoted skinheads or even by those same Neo-Nazis. Now the demagogues rally round the phrase of slavery and secession, using their false version of history to denigrate an honorable memory. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: Neocon who wrote (10499)	2/1/2000 9:16:00 AM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

The War of the Rebellion (the official name at the time) was fought over tariffs. I thought we've been through this. As I recall, I didn't convince you of anything and you didn't convince me of anything. You are obviously driven by ideology on this and I have my own biases as well. OK, let's see if I can dig up some hitherto unused material. A book by Charles Adams titled For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization has an interesting neutral take on this. Chapter 29 of his book deals with the Civil War, or if you prefer, "The Rich Man's War and the Poor Man's Fight." It's ironic to say the South was anti-capitalist when it was they who sought to make their ports tariff free. The North was adamant in not allowing that. Who is the anti-capitalist here? In his book, Adams walks the reader through the earlier fights over high import taxes. In 1832 a convention was called in South Carolina to nullify the new federal import duties. The duties were declared unconstitutional, and the governor was authorized to resist any attempt at enforcement by the national government. Andrew Jackson reacted strongly and it looked as if a civil war was in the making. Cool heads prevailed and a compromise was worked out. The tariff was to be reduced over the next few years to levels South Carolina would tolerate. This was the great Compromise of 1833. Lincoln was supported in his bid for the presidency by industrialists in the North. He paid his debt to them when he signed into law the Morrill Tariff, as it was called. It was the highest tariff in US history. It doubled the rates of the 1857 tariff to about 47% of the value of the imported products. The tariff struggle of 1832 was still a simmering issue, by this act Lincoln closed the door to any reconciliation. An editorial that ran in the Boston Transcript on March 18, 1861: It does not require extraordinary sagacity to perceive that trade is perhaps the controlling motive operating to prevent the return of the seceding states to the Union which they have abandoned. Alleged grievances in regard to slavery were originally the causes for the separation of the cotton states; but the mask has been thrown off, and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centers of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports. The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah are possessed with the idea that New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging on free trade. If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out a policy by which only a nominal duty is laid upon imports, no doubt the business of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured thereby. The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederate States that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than New York. In addition to this, the manufacturing interests of the country will suffer from the increased importation resulting from low duties....The government would be false to its obligations if this state of things were not provided against. There is much more that can be said, but I have to run. I'll end with this quote from Lysander Spooner, a vociferous abolitionist, who wrote in his pamphlet No Treason in 1870, All these cries of having 'abolished slavery,' of having 'saved the country,' of having preserved the union,' of establishing 'a government of consent,' and of 'maintaining the national honor' are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats - so transparent that they ought to deceive no one.