Dr Williams, a BLACK professor of Economics at the George Mason University and an occasional guest host for Rush Limbaugh saids it much better than I can in what a "Civil War" was and was not. Black Americans would do much better if they listened to black educators like Dr Williams and Dr Thomas Sowell rather than the Je$$e Ja¢k$on and Al Sharpton types who are the well-paid overseers of the new plantation called welfare. How else can they afford $500 suits and send their children to the country's top private schools? This new plantation does not give labor in exchange for their food and shelter like the plantations of the pre-war South did, but their votes to keep their masters in power, the Democrat Party.
The Democrats, if you recall, were the party that supported slavery, voted to secede from the Union, and later passed post war Jim Crow laws; to include the first gun control laws to prevent blacks from defending themselves. In the sixties it was Democrats that attempted to suppress civil right movements at the state and national levels to include Democratic Senators such as Al Gore, Sr. and Ernest Hollings, who when Governor of South Carolina, ordered the Confederate flag to be flown over the state capital building as an act of defiance against federal courts ordering desegregation. They and other democrats actively fought against civil rights and voter acts on the floor of the House and Senate.
It was not Republican officials who turned fire hoses and attack dogs on Martin Luther King. It was not Republican officials who looked the other way while the freedom riders were beaten up in bus stations. It was not Republican governors who stood in schoolhouse and university doors to prevent blacks from registering. It was the Democrats who did all that and worst and is now telling Black Americans that they are their friends? That the Republicans are the racists? Never mind that the Republicans were founded as an anti-slavery political party in 1841. Have I missed something here?
If there is any historical revision being done to the War Between the States, it is the modern PC education system doing it. Slavery was only a small part of the War Between the States and the war did end it. What is being ignored is the national government's interference in the right of "property" (slaves were property and had titles to them like we do for our automobiles today. How would you feel if the Congress said you could not drive your car to other states like they prohibited the transport of slaves to certain territories?) I am not advocating slavery; it was simply the norm and general thought at that time.
Other more important factors of that time such as tariffs (a form of tax) that hurt only the South is not addressed by modern "scholars" because to do so will mean admitting that the national government was, and still is, oppressing the people and interfering in the free commence of property, excessive taxes, and the control and production of goods and services. Witness what is happening to the tobacco industry, gun manufactors, private heath care services, complicated tax codes that take an average of 45% of your income, and environmental policies that take private land without just compensation.
The basic question of States versus Federal power was never settled and the argument has come up again as Conservatives and Libertarians try to take back the country from the central government and return it to the people. The only thing that the war proved was that a highly industrial population of 20 million persons could defeat a largely agricultural society of 11 million. It should be noticed that three reconstruction amendments were added the Constitution, but not one of those prohibited a State from leaving the Union.
Saying all that, I think that in hindsight that it turned out for the better for the world that the war was lost by the South. The United States became a better and stronger country because of it and a Confederate victory could of lead to more separations within the USA and CSA leading to a Central America type banana republics always sniping at each other. The United States would not of been up to the task of being the Arsenal of Democracy in World War One and Two and not be able to go toe to toe with the USSR during the Cold War.
But now it is a new world and a new century, people all over the world are now fighting and voting for their own self-determination, many of these movements are supported by the United States. It would be hypocritical if the United States did not allow its own citizens the right of secession.
THE problems that led to the Civil War are the same problems today -- big, intrusive government. The reason we don't face the specter of another Civil War is because today's Americans don't have yesteryear's spirit of liberty and constitutional respect, and political statesmanship is in short supply.
The war of 1861 was not a civil war. A civil war is a conflict between two or more factions trying to take over a government. In 1861, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was no more interested in taking over Washington than George Washington was interested in taking over England in 1776. Davis sought independence. The war of 1861 should be called "The War Between the States" or the "War for Southern Independence."
History books have misled Americans to believe the war was fought to free slaves. Statements from the time suggest otherwise. In President Lincoln's first inaugural address, he said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so." During the war, in an 1862 letter, Lincoln said, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery." A recent article by Baltimore's Loyola College Professor Thomas DiLorenzo titled "The Great Centralizer," in The Independent Review (Fall 1998), cites quotation after quotation of similar northern sentiment.
Lincoln's intentions were summarized by Stephen Douglas in debates. Douglas accused Lincoln of wanting to "Impose on the nation a uniformity of local laws and institutions and a moral homogeneity dictated by the central government" that "place at defiance the intentions of the republic's founders."
A precursor came in 1832, when South Carolina called a convention to nullify acts of 1828 and 1832, referred to as the "Tariffs of Abominations." Compromise averted secession and possibly war. The North favored protective tariffs for their manufacturing industry. The South, which exported agricultural products to and imported manufactured goods from Europe, favored free trade. A northern-dominated Congress enacted laws similar to Britain's Navigation Acts to protect northern shipping interests.
After Lincoln's election, Congress passed the highly protectionist Morrill tariffs. The South seceded. Their constitution was nearly identical to the U.S. Constitution except that it outlawed protectionist tariffs, business handouts and mandated a two-thirds majority vote for spending measures.
The only good coming from the War Between the States was the abolition of slavery. The great principle enunciated in the Declaration of Independence that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" was overturned by force. Destroying the right to secession, Lincoln opened the door to the unconstrained, despotic, arrogant government we have today, something the framers of the Constitution could not have possibly imagined.
States should again challenge Washington's unconstitutional acts through nullification. But you tell me where we can find leaders with the love, courage and respect for our Constitution like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John C. Calhoun.
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