Jimmy Shirley: And, another thing. It was the Southern States/Colonies who first besought the King of England to end the slave trade, not that hellhole called yankeeland.

Oh please. Don’t break an arm patting yourself on the back.

The coastal South (Virginia especially) did play a leading role in the push to end the trans-Atlantic slave trade. But it had nothing in particular to do with moral qualms about slave-trading. Those same colonies/states happily continued to trade and ship slaves throughout the continental U.S. and down into the extermination plantations of the Caribbean. It was for precisely that reason that Virginia slave-traders pushed to end the trans-Atlantic slave trade: because they stood to make more money from the internal slave trade if new slaves were not being shipped in from Africa.

The ban on the importation of slaves from Africa was not a measure taken in the name of humanity. It was one of America’s first pieces of protectionist legislation, and the Virginians in particular loved it for pecuniary, not moral, reasons.

SLC: The “esteemed” Dr. Walter E. Williams is an Uncle Tom and self hating black man who is esteemed only by extreme right wingers. He has about as much credibility in the black community as Norman Finkelstein has in the Jewish community, namely less then none.

raj: This Southern “nationalism” is nothing more than an expression of an inferiority complex after their having lost a war that they started (remember Fort Sumter?).

I am no fan of Walter E. Williams, and I consider neo-Confederates to be buffoons, charlatans, or worse, depending on the case. But both of these claims are textbook examples of the argumentum ad hominem, abusive form. The argument given for applying the term “bigotry” can be assessed on its own merits, regardless of the “credibility” or other personal properties of the person advancing it. So can the case for or against so-called Southern nationalism. These attempts at dismissing arguments through abuse of the arguers — particularly when that abuse takes the form of dime-store psychoanalysis of people that you have never so much as met in person — are really despicable, and have no place in rational discussion.

SLC: Since Mr. Flagger whines about Shermans’ alleged atrocities, lets bring up the Confederate POW stockade at Andersonville, Ga. where thousands of Union prisoners were starved to death by the Confederate traitors.

Why? While Andersonville was certainly a war crime of the most despicable sort, that does precisely nothing to justify or excuse the murder and rapine committed by Sherman’s gang of thugs. It so happens that the Red Army committed many war crimes during World War II. Does that “you too!” defense excuse or justify the war crimes committed by the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, and SS?

SLC: Mr. Flagger whines about the bombardment of Atlanta during the investment of that city by Shermans’ army. Well, war is hell, isn’t it. The Confederate traitors sowed the wind by bombarding Fort Sumter and reaped the whirlwind during the bombardment of Atlanta and Vicksburg.

How perfectly vile. Did the civilians killed, maimed, and ruined in the attacks on Atlanta and Vicksburg personally participate in the attack on Fort Sumter? If not, then it seems you’re claiming that you can justifiably (or excusably) attack innocent people as retaliation for attacks made by some other group of people, over whom they had no particular control and most of whom they did not even know. If the attackers of Fort Sumter somehow “sowed,” I cannot see what in the world that justifiably has to do with what civilians in Atlanta or Vicksburg might “reap.”

Georgia Flagger: Saying slavery was wrong is correct today, but for 230 years, it was an legal American institution, by tradition and practice, protected by law.

This is absolute hooey. If you’re setting out to defend the rights of people to secede — i.e. to cast off claims of legal authority to which they no longer consent — then you have no business going around insisting that whatever the law says, that must be O.K. When Congress passed laws authorizing Lincoln’s invasion of the South, do you think that the “legality” of that slaughter made it O.K.? If you’re here to defend the right to nullify and resist unjust laws or unjust claims of legal authority, then what are you doing turning around and trying to exempt slavery from moral condemnation, simply on the grounds that it was licensed by the positive law of the time?

Ed Brayton: My claims are quite simple: 1) that the overwhelmingly primary cause of the civil war was slavery. The south seceded because of slavery. If it was not for the fact that slavery was clearly going to be gotten rid of, sooner rather than later, the south would not have even considered seceding.

Ed, I asked you about this before and I can’t find an answer to it. What are your standards for determining what counts as “the overwhelmingly primary cause of the civil war”? Since the war had at least two sides, wouldn’t an accurate explanation of the causes for the war have to involve some discussion of the motivations of both of those sides? If not, why not? If so, then why in the world do you regard Lincoln’s motivations, or the motivations of the Federal government as a whole, to be “irrelevant” to the discussion?

You are of course quite right about the Confederates’ reasons for seceding, especially in the Gulf States that led the first wave of secessions. But the secession wasn’t a sufficient condition for civil war; that took the further decision of the Federalis to invade, attack, and occupy the seceding states (as well as establishing martial law in much of the border states). So to accurately explain the Civil War as a whole, it seems like there is more to say than what you have said about secession.

Ed Brayton: And 2) that slavery was a great moral wrong and it is a good thing that the civil war happened in order to rid our country of it.

Do you think that invading, conquering, and occupying the Confederate states was the only way, or the best way, to abolish slavery?

If it was not, shouldn’t other ways have been tried, and isn’t it a bad thing that they weren’t?

If it was, do you recognize any level of carnage that would have been too much to end slavery? What about violence that specifically maimed, murdered, or ruined innocent people, who did not own slaves, and merely happened to be in the wrong part of the country at the wrong time? Do you believe in stopping other people from committing evil by any means necessary, or are there some limits that you wouldn’t call it “a good thing” to cross?

skemono: Sure, Georgia Flagger. Go debate over here, here, and here, where all your “points” have already been debunked.

That’s an odd thing to say, since none of the articles you linked to actually address any of the claims that Georgia Flagger made about Lincoln or the Union. They make a series of arguments (mostly cogent) about the motivations of the Confederate states, but that’s a different question from the question as to the motivations of Abraham Lincoln, his war cabinet, or the Federal government as a whole.

Of course, it’s true that Georgia Flagger was changing the subject in the first place, since the topic originally was the Confederate flag, not Mr. Lincoln et al. But then the right thing to do is point out that he has changed the subject. Not to put in a series of links about the original subject, and claim that those posts refute Georgia Flagger’s claims about something entirely different.

Georgia Flagger: Confederate Generals Lee and Jackson had no slaves; those inherited by Lee were immediately freed.

Point of fact. The claim about Lee is demonstrably untrue. Lee held a few slaves in his own name throughout his life up to 1862. These were mostly personal servants; as a professional Army officer, he rarely had much use for large gangs of slaves. But after his father-in-law’s death, the scores of slaves that Lee gained control over at Arlington and the other Custis plantations were not “immediately freed.” They were held in bondage for more than five years. (Nor was their eventual manumission Lee’s decision; it was legally required by his father-in-law’s will.) During that time Lee made active efforts to recapture and punish those slaves who demanded their freedom or ran away. He also held them as long as he could legally get away with doing so, even though the will provided for five years only as a maximum span of time to arrange for the manumission. See GT 2005-01-03: Robert E. Lee owned slaves and defended slavery for details, documentation, and discussion.

Ed Brayton: Troublesome Frog just nailed it right on the head. Yes, Lincoln was primarily interested in conserving the union not in freeing the slaves. But that ignores the undeniable fact that the South seceded because of slavery.

Well, sure, but the motivations of Lincoln and his war cabinet are certainly relevant. If the Federalis were going to war not to liberate anyone, but rather to make sure that a different group of people remained under their boots, whether those people wanted to remain there or not, then that should certainly affect one’s overall view of the war. Certainly the Dixie revivalists have no moral high ground to stand on, but neither do the advocates of imperial federalism.

“The result – and a natural one – has been that we have had governments, State and national, devoted to nearly every grade and species of crime that governments have ever practised upon their victims; and these crimes have culminated in a war that has cost a million of lives; a war carried on, upon one side, for chattel slavery, and on the other for political slavery; upon neither for liberty, justice, or truth.” — Lysander Spooner (1867)