Why didn't the US let the Confederacy secede...

Why didn't the US let the Confederacy secede? Why go to war against fellow Americans just cause several states wanted to be a separate country?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguayan_War
youtube.com/watch?v=p5mmFPyDK_8
youtube.com/watch?v=5OKdbc0DYpM
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

They did, they just kept hold of federal (non-state) territory. The war only broke out when the states fired on federal property.

because federalists didn't want it to set a precedent for the future, as wrong as they usually were secession is not something that should be used as a bargaining chip to disrupt national politics.

That said, the CSA could probably have kept existing (albeit unrecognized by anybody) if they hadn't attacked Sumter. You can get into whether or not it was justified, but politically it was stupid and eventually killed state's rights for good.

Balkanized countries are not known for their stability and longevity especially at a time when Europe was conquering everything. Likewise, it was pretty petty to fall out just because you lost an election (especially since he said you can keep your slaves).

Note how America only gotten stronger after it bitchslapped the south

>That said, the CSA could probably have kept existing (albeit unrecognized by anybody) if they hadn't attacked Sumter.
Basically this

But the pope recognized them

Funny how we're having a similar event now

Because balkanization weakens your country, not to mention it would set a precedent and every state would threaten with secession the moment they don't like something.

Balkanized America would suffer the same fate as Austria-Hungary and Yugoslavia, atomized into a handful of non-countries in subservient bitch position to actually strong powers.

>Why go to war
You should ask that from the Confederates.

We could see civil war 2.0

Not even close. A couple swing states flipping isn't the same as the political chessboard on the eve of the civil war. You don't understand the vast cultural divide between north & south, free & slave that existed at that time. In the 1860 election that democrat party split in two because of the cultural & political differences between its northern & southern wings.

you're right

if a civil war ever happened in america today, id be shocked. theres not enough cultural divide in ANY part of the country, not even urban vs rural.

because a house divided cannot stand

I mean I was half memeing.
Cal exit has gotten more support/publicity in it's short lifespan than a Texas independence movement has gotten over its entire life

White midwest vs Spixican southwest.

God I hope Calexit happens.

States hate to lose power.

The Confederacy attacked first with the bombardment of Fort Sumter

I'm sure it would have gotten recognition from abroad had the union allowed them to exist de facto

Even if it existed de facto the US would still have flipped their shit if any European powers made diplomatic overtures to them like that, which I don't think anybody was willing to risk. By the end of the next decade or so Western Europe was a lot more dependent on US industrial exports than they were on CS cotton.

>By the end of the next decade
We only know that by hindsight. In the beginning of the decade the picture was different, especially because the confederate economy hadn't yet been destroyed by a total war.

>Even if it existed de facto the US would still have flipped their shit if any European powers made diplomatic overtures
The British and French did come close to recognizing the CSA during the war. Had there been no fighting at all, the CSA's sovereignty would have looked pretty secure and so the European powers probably would have recognized it. The North would also balked at the prospect of having to fight the Europeans and Confederates at the same time, possibly having them sue for peace or seeing the ascendance of a peace party that recognized the CSA's independence.

Just because the US would have flipped their shit doesn't mean European powers wouldn't have made diplomatic overtures to the CS. I'm thinking of WWI and how the Germans offered to help Mexico conquer land back from America... and can you imagine how well the CS and Nazi Germany might have gotten along?

Dems don't have the balls to succeed

huh sounds funny after I typed it

anyway libs don't have the balls

>can you imagine how well the CS and Nazi Germany might have gotten along?
No... I can't really.

Do you think the CS would have committed themselves to a D-Day invasion? Do you think they would have given military aid to the Soviet Union?

Even by just staying neutral, the CS and Nazi Germany would have been getting along incredibly better than the US and Nazi Germany did.

This is Turtledove or Stirling tier retardation frankly.

>let's change one event while all the other things in the world stay the same, uninfluenced by said event

There's a good possibility that Hitler wouldn't ever take power if the CSA won.

Slavery or not, the CS believed in what the founding fathers believed just as much as the US did, although maybe with their own confirmation bias towards things they said as well as bias towards certain founding fathers over others. I don't think it's fair to say they would approve of European dictatorships just because racism. Slavery would have been long gone by the 1940s in the CSA anyway due mechanization of farming and the fact that they would have economic sanctions and poor relations with the US and Europe out of the ass if they kept it.

And yes, they probably would have remained neutral and isolationist through both World Wars, although the Germans certainly would have tried to tempt them into entering both conflicts I doubt they would have much of an appetite for an offensive war against the US and British Canada.

However this neglects a lot of what-ifs and is right.

He said, unironically.

Why do you think they would get along? Just because they were both racist? EVERY white country was overwhelmingly racist in the 19th century.

But let's dissect this shit:

First, the CSA was extremely pro-British, to the point the Southern ruling class basically cosplayed as English aristocracy. The entire secession was a gamble that pretty much required Britain to intervene on behalf of the Confederacy. You know one of the main reasons the US intervened in WW1 and WW2? Their ties to British interests. There's a good bet that the Confederacy, being even more pro-British than the Union, would side with the Brits if anyone.

Second thing, slavery based economy was becoming rapidly obsolete because of technological advancements and industrialization, in the long run wage labor proved both more effective and more profitable than slave labor. Brazil abolished slavery in the 1880s without having a civil war over it, it was just fucking dated. Industrialization and the new mode of labor in the south would mean that they would eventually NEED to abolish slavery to avoid a complete labor crisis and since CSA constitution allowed every single state a right to secede, there's a good bet they would individually secede and rejoin the Union one by one. So in essence, there's a possibility CSA wouldn't even exist as a country during the 1930s even if they survived the Civil war.

Third, America being unified spectacularly boosted their power projection, both military wise and in finance. A balkanized America probably wouldn't be much of a factor in WW1, if they even intervened, and once again without intervention and financial power, there's no Dawes plan and the Young plan. Without Dawes and Young plan, Germany wouldn't really be skullfucked by the Great Depression. Without the Great Depression, Hitler would likely never be boosted into power.

When was the first time someone used the phrase "state's rights" in the context of the Civil War?

Before civil war even happened.

12th of april 1861

Well lots of the southern ruling class were descendants of English aristocracy.

Luckily they got btfo by the superior average working man of the industrial north.

Sherman says it best I think:


I notice in Kentucky a disposition to cry against the tyranny and oppression of our Government. Now, were it not for war you know tyranny could not exist in our Government; therefore any acts of late partaking of that aspect are the result of war; and who made this war? Already we find ourselves drifting toward new issues, and are beginning to forget the strong facts of the beginning. You know and I know that long before the North, or the Federal Government, dreamed of war the South had seized the U.S. arseuals, forts, mints, and custom-houses, and had made prisoners of war of the garrisons sent at their urgent demand to protect them 'against Indians, Mexicans, and negroes'.


"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices today than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war. The United States does and must assert its authority, wherever it once had power; for, if it relaxes one bit to pressure, it is gone, and I believe that such is the national feeling."

"You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride."


The South, refusing to compromise, began the war the moment they seized Fort Sumter. The war could only end with the utter humiliation of the South, their national pride diminished, and their people made to see the horror of war they had wrought.

A house divided can't stand, also that part of the house that wants to move pays good money

But only after they warned the Union not send a resupply mission to the fort, and to hand it over.

>give me something that isn't mine or I attack you
How is that not a de facto declaration of war?

I don't know about Nazi Germany but the German Empire would have been at least Union oriented, with the CSA allied with Britain/France.

People never seem to realize how much of an about face it was when the USA cooled relations with Britain prior to WW1.

The global geopolitics of the US Civil war really don't get enough attention.

>slavery based economy was becoming rapidly obsolete because of technological advancements and industrialization
Good analysis overall but this part is a meme. Slave labor was the reason the South had such great yields in cotton. With the threat of force you can make intensive agriculture a lot more productive. Free labor did not "win out" at the end of the Civil War either. The South became less productive because the Civil War wrecked its infrastructure, slavery was abolished and stuff like the boll weevils destroyed cotton yields. Other countries with forced or extremely cheap and exploited labor like Egypt and Algeria picked up the slack in cotton production after the South couldn't step up to the plate anymore.

>southern ruling class were descendants of English aristocracy.
this is also a meme. a lot of southerners affected an aristocratic manner but most of them were rags to riches types because of the enormous profits they reaped from the rise of cotton prices as a consequence of industrialisation.

>The South, refusing to compromise, began the war the moment they seized Fort Sumter. The war could only end with the utter humiliation of the South, their national pride diminished, and their people made to see the horror of war they had wrought.

Funny you say that and there were so many times where had things happened slightly one way or the other and the union would've had to sue for peace. The Union would've been the one humiliated.

Later parts of the war Lincoln had to fight draft riots, and had the war gone on much further Its likely popular opinion in the north would have forced Lincolns hand.

He's right, the slavery was economically inneficient meme has been disproven

There's a difference between exploitative capitalist labor and slavery. Egypt or India didn't utilize the latter.

Ok ignore the context and reasoning of why the war started.

Say you're a country, freshly seceded from another that you see as an enemy, however things are peaceful for now.

Except said country has a fort smack dab in the middle of the most important port in your whole new country.

You've asked said country to remove the military presence there but instead they have sent a resupply mission instead.

What would you do?

Now in the context of everything else going on, its likely that the CSA moved too quickly and odds are had they not attacked things could have been negotiated out but that's not what happened of course.

But the context was pretty much irrelevant. Union waited for the CSA to fire the first shot, and they did.

>tfw secret sympathies with the CSA
>tfw you will never live in a honor-based neo-aristocratic agrarian slave society

>he thinks he would have been an aristocrat

More like either a full-blown nigger slave, or a poor yeoman farmer scraping out a living at the edge of the marshes.

That's true. But you can't really call the labor systems of Egypt, Algeria or India "free." The heart of the global economic system became based on the exploitation of colonial peoples because violence does a good job at wringing surpluses. On the other hand, I suppose we can argue that the Civil War was part of a longer historical process that saw the transformation from slave to wage labor, even if one system was not qualitatively better than the other in the short term.

People also forget the involvement of Russia in the Civil war, for a while Britain (or better said, certain politicians in Britain) flirted with the idea of helping the CSA, but Russia sent a fleet to the US warning Britain they will fuck them up if they intervene.

I have some sympathies towards Confederate aristocratic values, but I can't get over the fact that entire country was full of niggers. They're the reason why the US is in the racial pickle it is now.

Eh, It's annoying when people jump for the conclusion and don't engage the reasoning. Chestbeating about the South doesn't even contradict the statement you greentexted, but I'll bite nonetheless.

It's no coincidence that the South was whipped so badly. Shermann even predicted its initial gains, but it simply could not sustain war and in the end, which side was more determined if not the one who brought total war? The confederacy looking for a quick victory and truce could not have withstood total war without the intervention of Britain and France into the Civil War on their side. This was perhaps the greatest crime against our civilization, lobbying these Great and Colonial powers and the clearest example of the South's fickle nature, after our forefathers had fought so hard to unshackle us from colonial influence. We truly would have reaped the fate of Mexico if either had gotten involved, the South so assured of independence by their offering of Cotton and Tobacco to their former masters.

"You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it …

cont.

Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth — right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail."

>tfw you will never be an ex-confederate veteran heading west to track down the Union General who ordered the burning of your families manor and the slaughter of your mother, brother, and sister after they had the yankees had their way with her.

>You will never find him in a dusty Californian saloon and put a bullet in him and flee south of the border, working as a bandito and wooing the senioritas.

>you will never return home to Georgia in 1880 after many years of gunslinging in Mexico and build a house with a farm.

>you get married to your childhood sweetheart Abigail and have a son and daughter.

>spend the rest of your days sipping Cherokee Whisky.

>this is also a meme
What is also a meme is that the majority of white Southerners were Anglos. They were overwhelmingly Celtic.

I do like the aristocratic values and all as well, but you also have to remember if economic basis of southern society changed at all those values probably would have disappeared within a few generations of its independence.

>but I can't get over the fact that entire country was full of niggers.
If the system ever became uneconomical I imagine that the southern elite wouldn't have qualms exporting slaves out of the country to brazil or to africa. Maybe even ethnic cleansing... After all at the end of the war, the southern war leaders actually leaned toward emancipating the slaves to mobilize tons of black soldiers to push the Union offensive. They were even willing to scrap the slave system entirely for British diplomatic recognition, even though this and the former ploy I mention never came to fruition because the war soon ended.

Nice source

Grady McWhiney: Cracker culture

The South was like an aging and fickle Southern harlot, offering up bales of cotton and crates of Tobacco, to her former husband, the colonial powers of Europe, her competition for his affection, some coolie from the east who made him dinner and was unwaveringly obedient. So much for Southern pride, the whores!

Stop watching so many stupid Hollywood westerns. Also California wasn't even part of the western frontier post civil war, they had full statehood.

>Lincoln didn't repatriate the negros back to Africa
>Johnson didn't grant the negros 40 acres and a mule

Fucking dumbasses should of at least done something instead of just burn the south, sell all the land to northernen carpetbaggers, and let the poor whites and blacks live in shacks.

All of our problems stem from greedy northern bankers plundering the south during reconstruction and the negros being put in limbo after the war then Jim Crow.

Why didn't the confederates pull a paraguay? they could have won then

Lincoln wanted to, but then a certain retard actor killed him.

>Ex-confederate veteran
>Having a family manor

Top lel. Nice fantasy

they southerns also had a meme that they were descended from the Norman conquering class while the yankees descended from the servile anglo saxons.

What does that even mean?

Paraguay had an autistic episode where it became one giant military camp and everyone was mobilizes for war

The dictator wanted to larp as the Spartans

The Paraguayan War

That's the funny thing. The aristocrats almost all refused to fight other than those in the high command, it was the penniless plebs who bled and died.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguayan_War

Paraguay had a war at the same time under somewhat similar conditions and they fought essentially to the last man.

He is likely asking why the south didn't also take it all the way and refuse to admit defeat.

>everyone
"Everyone" in southern case would include the niggers and I doubt they would do much on the battlefield.

Yeah But instead of being edgy Spartans they all got annihilated

Outnumbered like 15 to 1 (compared to South which had 1 soldier for every two union soldier) and they fought to the bitter end

Daily reminder that the US would be vastly superior if this had happened.

If the South won the war, who knows how long slavery would have persisted. Remember, the success of one reactionary movement could easily have catalyzed reactionary movements elsewhere. It's a very attractive notion to have mindless inhuman automatons tending to all your needs so that you can focus on the greater things in life, like the family. In a way, it was closest to the American dream, the agrarian utopia where every man had a plot of land and a collection of slaves to work it. All your needs tended to by lesser creatures as you property, a property that would have been protected by the confederate government. I'd imagine if the South had won, slavery could still exist to this day. It's success could form the basis for slavery in Africa, South America, and the far east as a way of life in the colonies. Conservatives lie to themselves when they claim that abolition was inevitable. It was only inevitable in hindsight and because the North continued the trend of abolition, industrialization, and free enterprise.

>tfw you will never be a Yankee soldier, defiling southern belles with your BYC as you march through Georgia with based Sherman.

>tfw return home to Massachusetts after the war and get stabbed by a drunk Irishman

Northern values, senpai.

I think deep down, we all want that idealistic dream utopia of living in a manor while all your needs are taken care of by eternal servants and attendants.

Most of aristocractic history was that, even going back to ancient Assyria and beyond.

oh, vey. The yankee know! Make a slippery slope fallacy that abolition was inevitable because of a trend toward modern capitalism!

Good, fuck Californians. Even the hicks are assholes.

Says while posting a quintessential northerner.

Well, it's for the better because technological progress unleashed by industrialisation might make that dream of robot servants true without actually having to make humans suffer.

What I find funny about California is how many of them are blissfully oblivious to the fact how poor they are.

...

True. It would be very nice to have all your primary needs met by owning a large plot of farmland protected by the State, with work essentially automated by what amounts to robots, tending to your every need, with what you can't produce off the land, you get in trade directly with your neighbors on a small nonvolatile market. The Southern Aristocrats were definitely chasing a Utopian ideal when they hurled the South into war and in a way, we're still chasing that ideal. Not just the South, but the North too. There's still plenty of living space in the US and advancements in robotics look very promising for the future.

I think the biggest tragedy of the US Civil War was that neither side came home to the country that they had left and fought for.

When the south seceded it happened at the worst possible time. The north had just elected the Republicans to both the presidency and Congress, opting for the more sectarian choice hoping for anything at all to finally be done about slavery. Meanwhile the south, which had formerly served as the balancing force with New England in US politics dropped out completely.

Suddenly it was as if the Green party had full control of the government and 0 opposition.

The South, who had been trying to preserve their way of life from the ideological storm of isms raging in the industrialized north had their agrarian society forcibly dismantled by the Union government.

And in the north the people would soon find that they were now subject to things like the Draft or the Income Tax, their lives commoditized by the the government for the purpose of propagating itself. All things which would have been absolutely unthinkable in the US of 1860.

Power.


This is the only correct answer. 21st century bitching about morality need not apply.

Because of stupidly high property/rent fees. Average price per square foot in LA is $530 (add fucking $1000 for NY) compared to say St. Louis where its only $100, and the schmucks paying are making the same wage in either state typically. This has little to do with Commiefornia being a tax-filled shithole but simply because of speculation brought about by desire to live there.

Yes, the Republicans and Abe were totally unwilling to compromise, they were relentless for Abolition, Industrialization, and Capitalism. They wanted to free the slaves, not for the slave's well being, but the oil Northern machine with cheaper and more efficiently made Southern inputs. That efficiency was to be made possible by the freeing of the slaves, flooding the market with cheap black labor against whites, driving wages down.

Slaves were very costly to maintain, from food, shelter, healthcare, and housing. They were very well looked after and loved their masters very much. Says it best. The Southern Aristocrats at the end of the war even thought of fighting with their slaves, who were just as much a part of the family. They were loyal until the North started filling their heads with empty promises.

Now look at them. They are still slaves, but instead of a loving and caring Southern family to call master, it is the distant and uncaring federal government who has them on welfare. I feel such pity for blacks.

Because the reason for secession was retarded. The south wasn't threatened with losing their slaves, their sovereignty wasn't under threat, and their economic model was in no less danger being out of the union than it was in. At least modern secession movements have multiple grievances that actually potentially affect their livelihood to complain about.

This is the worst reasoning from Southerners. As if slavery was somehow "good" for blacks and as if trading ones freedom for some nostalgic, good ol' time is worth it. As if the abuses never happened. As if slave owners never bought them for seven years because they were only expect to live until about 40 before they died from some terrible disease in their flea ridden quarters or from exhaustion.

The Southern Aristocracy only wanted to co-opt slaves into fighting out of desperation. A slave with a gun was the worst nightmare of a Southern Aristocrat.

Get your head checked.

Nigga a country can't survive half-slave half-free

Nigga a house divided can't stand lol baka


The rest of your post is good larping and edgy memes

>but Russia sent a fleet to the US warning Britain they will fuck them up if they intervene.
Could they?

post civil war tunes

youtube.com/watch?v=p5mmFPyDK_8

This! This is the logic of the modern Liberal. Just like Satan in Milton's paradise lost! They will be free and they will accept hell to have it!

What good is their freedom when they live in ghettos like deplorable wretches, a black mother constantly having to worry about whether her perpetually underemployed child is going to join a street gang or die from a stray bullet? After, 150 years, despite the millions pored into their welfare by the federal government, their standard of living as only gotten worse! But, at least here, we can be free...give me a break.

And the whites in North? Was their lives any better toiling miserably in the factories day after day, tearing their families apart as industrialists gave them a meager wage and the federal government sapped them of their wage through taxes? Who was really the slave?


At least in the South, the slave was well taken care of. The slave had purpose and an appreciative white family to look after them. It was nothing like the factories. Were there some bad slave masters, sure. But is that a reason to dismantle the entire system? Of course not.


I'm not Larping as a confederate. I am a confederate and am not afraid to speak the truth, that the slaves were better off slaves, than the welfare queens they are now. You know it is true. Over 150 years later and nothing has improved for them.

No, the Russians couldn't do jack if the British intervened. It's probably some deluded slavophile posting that nonsense.

do you honestly think all blacks would be better as slaves, what about the ones that are not on welfare or government assistance? do you believe in the concept of natural rights and personal autonomy? Also, when you say nothing has improved for them, in 1940 blacks were 87% in poverty, now it is 40% I think, also the growth in black literacy after slavery was truly unprecedented. In 1880 only 20 years after slavery there were more literate blacks than literate Spaniards.

Im from Alabama btw, I guarantee you are a larping retard from the north.

is this how the hymn would have sounded at the time?

yes I believe so since it was originally made for a choir to sing.

Even though I am a unionist and detest the idea of slavery im from Alabama and would probably still fight for the south if it came to civil war.

Salute to the soldiers, not the cause.

youtube.com/watch?v=5OKdbc0DYpM