re: The road to Appomattox and the end of the Confederacy began on this day 160 years ago

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Much of the reticence against emancipation wasn't some principled defense of slave labor, its because they didn't know what to do with them in society if they were freed. I'm pretty sure that solutions to that would have been developed in less than 40 years.

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So you're saying the property only had to hold the fort for 40 more years, give or take.

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Much of the reticence against emancipation wasn't some principled defense of slave labor, its because they didn't know what to do with them in society if they were freed. I'm pretty sure that solutions to that would have been developed in less than 40 years.

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Yes. Caste systems always resolve themselves amicably.

The union initially tried to give freed slaves a chance with “40 acres and a mule.” This policy, along with just about every other policy to stand up the former slaves as independent members of society for the next 100 years were rejected by southerners (and many northerners, but overwhelmingly by southerners).

Well past your 40 year time frame were the GI bills in 1944 for returning veterans. Southern law makers insisted the program be administered by the states rather than the feds. The result is the 1.2 million black service members were largely denied the benefits of unemployment assistance, home purchase assistance, education grants, 100 years later.

The inability of people to acknowledge basic inequities in how blacks have been treated in the US is astounding. Members of the ruling class cannot tolerate social mobility from the untouchables.

People were and are racist. It’s not rocket science.

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If that was the case you'd think they would have said that was the reason instead of explicitly saying it was over slavery.

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States rights were still an issue. South Carolina was at the forefront of a state having the right to nullify federal laws. The hypocrisy of it was Southern states believed they had the right to nullify federal laws, but they condemned Northern states that refused to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act.

Slavery was the prime issue though. It was too important culturally and economically for the South to just give it up.

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You traitor lovers always conveniently forget about this...

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It was different time. Barely one hundred years removed from independence from Britain. It's not surprising states still felt like their autonomy superseded federal law even to the point of removing themselves from the United States. The Civil War ended that debate decisively.

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Factually incorrect.

The United States army marched south to shut down a rebellion.

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Factually ignorant of the right of secession, that very right penned in our own Declaration of Independence.

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And Davis took the bait.

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You’re right. He did, and he should have waited, but as Europe looked on, they knew that not actual sovereign nation could tolerate a foreign army to occupy its territory and call itself sovereign. They should have built themselves up militarily and through partners, but instead they really couldn’t overcome the blockade. That what really did them in in the end.

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Destroying half the country in order to save it still doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Slavery wouldn’t have made it out of the 19th century and had it been allowed to end organically you would have a much better country today.

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Concur with this slavery was on the out anyway.

Why Lee (who was antislavery) and Davis sent so many poor southern men to die for it is beyond me. All wars are "rich man" wars, the CW even more-so than most.

(no message)

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The confederacy believed that they could still operate as under the articles of confederacy.

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They were correct to believe so or the Union states wouldn’t have needed to address the constitutional law surrounding the issue after the war in Texas v White.

Read any of the founding fathers: there never would’ve been a United States had the colonies or states believed they couldn’t leave if they chose and a few northern states considered leaving over various issues early on.

While there was debate on the topic when the articles were replaced between the federalists and the anti federalists, even federalists like Monroe acknowledged the self evident right to extrajudicial revolution if necessary having just done so against the crown a decade or so prior.

“ And since the seceding states, by establishing a new constitution and form of federal government among themselves, without the consent of the rest, have shown that they consider the right to do so whenever the occasion may, in their opinion require it, we may infer that the right has not been diminished by any new compact which they may since have entered into, since none could be more solemn or explicit than the first, nor more binding upon the contracting partie[s].”
-St George Tucker 1789

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Well they found out they were wrong about that.

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Natural law does in fact trump constitutional theory haha.

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I mean the Allies defeating the Axis immediately comes to mind. I don’t know how one could argue that wasn’t worth it

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Again, I don’t think anyone who lost their lives at their young ages would say them losing their life was worth it. Necessary perhaps from a survivor’s point of view, but human lives being lost in war is never worth the value of the human lives lost for them or their families,, especially if they can’t answer for themselves, but considering the state of Europe at present, it’s becoming even more questionable why we even bothered, not once, but twice.