re: Arguably the greatest speech in American history was delivered 160 years ago today...

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And one side decided to leave the union specifically because they felt the institution was threatened. We know this because they say so, explicitly

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No doubt it was part of the division of the US along with economical and cultural differences. Only, the North kept the institution of slavery going strong. Lincoln even offered for the South to come back to the Union and they could keep their slaves until the end of the century. So it's not like he was on some virtuous crusade to free the slaves. He only signed the EP because the support for the war from the North was waning and he was losing as the war was going much longer than he promoted.

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It took Federal involvement to even begin to curb the South’s insane racism

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Tell me where Jim Crow segregation started.

I'm not defending the way black people were treated in the South, and you can stop pretending the North was this bastion of moral virtue.

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Do you really think the Confederate government was better?

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May be, maybe not. The fact that today this country is still so divided culturally says better or not it was a better fit for self determination. Which was what Washington and the other founders believed in, right? I mean, they were subjects of the Kingdom when they fired on the British.

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No doubt it was part of the division of the US along with economical and cultural differences.

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Let's not understate it here. It was the cited reason by the Confederates themselves, repeatedly.

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Only, the North kept the institution of slavery going strong. Lincoln even offered for the South to come back to the Union and they could keep their slaves until the end of the century. So it's not like he was on some virtuous crusade to free the slaves.

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No shite.

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e only signed the EP because the support for the war from the North was waning and he was losing as the war was going much longer than he promoted.

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Sounds like good politics to me.

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Tell me where Jim Crow segregation started.

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Tell me where it reached its apex.

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I'm not defending the way black people were treated in the South

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By supporting the Confederacy, unfortunately you are. That's just the way it is.

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you can stop pretending the North was this bastion of moral virtue.

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As soon as you stop pretending that the Confederacy was some genteel government full of innocent people minding their own business.

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The fact that today this country is still so divided culturally says better or not it was a better fit for self determination

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Brother, the US is barely divided. It is played up by the media. In terms of the actual functions of the country, it works remarkably well. You desperately need to get out more as well as to read more history, as the notion that nations have to be culturally uniform isn't accurate by any stretch of the imagination. Before the Westphalian system, that idea by itself would have been alien. Even now, there are few places on earth that could be considered culturally united, and those places are extremely small. Otherwise, you are going to get cultural differences just due to the sheer amount of people.

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Which was what Washington and the other founders believed in, right? I mean, they were subjects of the Kingdom when they fired on the British.

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Let's examine the political economy behind that decision, and maybe you'd actually figure out why one was supported and one was fought against.

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your imaginary “fiancé” calls you a bitch. you admitted as much in this thread. and when called on it, you went rage mode and completely fabricated that i abuse my wife of 8 years and the mother of my young children. you once again, proved my point in one post. try to be less insecure and go get laid, brother.

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Hmm, maybe if you could actually figure out what I was doing there, you'd get it. Think it through.

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It's also ironic that he has a pic of Ghandi who was instrumental in the secession of India from the British, yet doesn't believe the South had the right to secede for self determination.

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You don’t understand anything about the Partition of India. It was the largest mass migration of people in human history to that point, and 1 million people died. It led to several wars and is currently a major geopolitical flashpoint. Do you really want to go down that road, given your flimsy understanding of historical facts as they stand?

You keep harping on this self-determination angle, but aren’t seeing the other side of this. Which isn’t surprising.

Also, nowhere did I say that the South didn’t have the right. But unilateral declarations of independence usually lead to hostilities. The South knew this, which is why they began to prepare for a potential battle at Ft. Sumter well-before April.

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You don’t understand anything about the Partition of India

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You would be right for once. And you know why? I don't fricking live in India. They did however continues slavery after gaining independence. I guess ole Ghandi was ok with that. Looks like you are too.

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You keep harping on this self-determination angle, but aren’t seeing the other side of this.

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Government oppression?

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I would take the government of Louisiana over the entire Federal government

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You would take the government of Louisiana in 1860? Another slaver.

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it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.

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No, say what they were actually fighting for

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The Confederates went into the battle an absolutely free people;

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I can think of a lot of people in the confederacy who were the furthest thing from absolutely free. But you do you.

God you fricking inbreds are something else.

Again, you seem fond of never answering direct questions. You reference events like the Post-Soviet Conflicts and the Partition of India thinking that they aid your points when they never do and at the same time claim that you only talk about places you live or whatever. It seems like you should stop referencing those events when you understand them so little.

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The Civil War and the Union's victory catapulted the Federal Government into what it is today.

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Then South Carolina really shouldn't have fired on Fort Sumter.

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An empire

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Like you give a shite about that. If you did, surely you would be on the side of the many groups this century who opposed this evil Empire, right? The Confederates definitely didn't, as they had their aims on both an empire ranging from the Pacific to the Caribbean.

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that has a trillion dollar military budget, hundreds of bases around the world

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So?

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the unchecked power to print fiat money as it sees fit

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First, I'd love to hear about how you think government debt works. Second, no shite it has that power. The Constitution gives the Fed Gov wide leeway to fund itself. Sorry you don't like the Constitution.

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spying on and prosecuting innocent people, overthrowing of governments to install American friendly leaders

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Lol, how do you think geopolitics works? It is cutthroat to degrees you don't appear to understand. The reality is this. Might makes right and either you make others live by rules you make or you live by the rules imposed on you by others. You are in the latter position, and will never get to the former, especially given how naive you are to international relations. I'm guessing you've never thought of how the French, who were involved in Mexico during the time period of the CW, thought of the Confederacy, have you?

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Do you think any of the founders had that vision (aside from Hamilton)?

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So one of the men who is regarded as one of the seven founders of the Republic, a list which includes two other men with whom Hamilton wrote the Federalist papers, had a very expansive view of the form the Federal Government could take, and you are going to suggest that it was a minority, sidelined opinion? I hate to break it to you, but the early modern period of the American republic included some very explcit expansionist aims.

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Do think if the States would have known that in time the Fed Gov would reach a point where they dictate to the States what they must comply with or else they get funding cut off and possibly murdered, do you think any of them would have signed the Constitution?

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What you mean to suggest is that they wouldn't have signed the Constitution if they were as naive as you are. Thankfully, they weren't.

You dumbass, it doesn't matter what your family did. The Confederacy made it explicit that they wanted to keep the institution of slavery alive. If you prefer the CSA over the Fed Gov because of some weird victim complex, then you support slavery. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

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So now you've admitted that the war was not about the Union wanting to free the slaves.

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The war was first and foremost about preserving the Union. Lincoln and his administration made that clear to the American people from the outset. Abolition was very unpopular with the average Northern in 1861 and Lincoln understood that using the conflict to go after slavery was a political loser.

In the early months of the war there were even questions within the Union high command of what to do with runaway slaves who wandered into their lines. Most Union commanders decided to keep them as contraband of war as they saw fewer slaves on the plantations as a net positive for the Union and a net loss for the Southern economy.

With that all said, it's easy to see that by 1863-64, the war aims of the Union had changed. It was no longer just about preserving the Union but also about the abolition of slavery. That sometimes happens in war. As conflicts drag on, the gloves start coming off. The Emancipation Proclamation was a political football the Lincoln administration hoped would keep Europe out of the conflict. It succeeded in doing just that.

What the conversation fails to grasp, however, is that Lincoln knew his Emancipation Proclamation was unconstitutional and needed something more permanent to abolish the institution of slavery. Hence why he pushed for the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in January 1865. You can argue about Lincoln's views on the black man all you want to, however the Thirteenth Amendment proves once and for all that he was no fan of the institution of slavery.