So, whose fault really was it that the American Civil War began? Americans are taught in schools it was the South...

So, whose fault really was it that the American Civil War began? Americans are taught in schools it was the South, because they fired on Fort Sumter, but it was not a surprise attack, they had been telling them for weeks to leave.

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Hard to say tbqh

Definitely the south.

Also, Jeff Davis was a pretty good writer.
Btw, I hold with Edmund Wilson on this. It was an inevitable conflict between two cultures and economies drifting apart.

Slavery is obviously an evil, but secession if the American Revolution was justified, then so was this.

Yeah, it definitively was inevitable, the only alternative would be something similar to, South and North Korea today.

Lincoln makes a great case for Northern Aggression imo. But it's a bit harder to support the North when you read of someone like Robert E. Lee.
>I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honour for its preservation. I hope, therefore, that all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labour, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It is intended for 'perpetual Union,' so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession: anarchy would have been established, and not a government, by Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and all the other patriots of the Revolution. … Still, a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me. I shall mourn for my country and for the welfare and progress of mankind. If the Union is dissolved and the Government disrupted, I shall return to my native State and share the miseries of my people, and, save in defense will draw my sword on none.

it was probably the jews

no single person's fault

it was the result of the inherent flaws of the original system festering for less than a century and more had to do with what the country didn't do than what it did.

Fuck off, Clay

reminder that the ultimate redpill is sympathising with the confederates but being glad the union won

u mad Jackson?

This was the standard position in pop culture until quite recently, when it became le heroic northerners saving slaves from le inbred southern swampmonsters.

on one hand civil war was the American revolution in reverse

on the other hand the fall of the south made us go full hog on Hamilton's industrial plan turning us into a superpower.

though my own racial bias will always give me problems with the whole "chattel institutional slave economy" thing

>n Hamilton's industrial plan turning us into a superpower.
Yeah, but we didn't get any of Hamilton's cultural plan. Pretty shit deal imo

They had no authority to tell the federal government to leave a federal installation.

Even of you ignore the bat shit crazy notion that secession was somehow legal and that the fort was now in a separate southern nation, which is legally incorrect and wrong.

All U.S. Military and diplomatic installations are considered sovereign U.S. Territory. An attack on that territory is illegal.

The southern states had no more legal sovereignty than ISIS/ISIL/Daesh and were treated as such.

Thier actions (including and especially secession) were illegal under the constitution and a violation of the citizenship rights of all U.S. Citizens in southern states (which were all of them except the slaves, which was corrected with Emancipation).

Nothing in the Constitution allows for a state secession, nothing in the constitution allows a state to tell U.S. Citizens they are no longer U.S. Citizens but rather Virginia or what have you citizens. The war was entirely illegal, in every aspect.

The Southern U.S. States were in rebellion but they were at all times still U.S. States. The only legal avenue that would have created a separate southern nation would have been Amending the Constitution to allow succession, or a treaty signed by the Federal Government stipulating that condition. The Confederacy was never legal, nor was it ever sovereign. This every action they took was illegal and subject to correction and alignment with established legal practice of state authority and constitutional law, of witch the southern states were in violation of.

Besides, all southern ladies dreamed of Lincolns giant manhood at night and this is what the war was really about.

Southern Gentlemen BTFO, how will they ever recover.

>Even of you ignore the bat shit crazy notion that secession was somehow legal
Kek, what do you think secession is? The revolution wan't legal either.
>Nothing in the Constitution allows for a state secession
Is it outright prohibited?

so if russia starts telling americans to move out of california, if they attack in two weeks time its Americas fault? sweet. Ill call daddy Putin.

Is California in Russia?

Precisely, the revolution was illegal under English law, of witch all u.s. Revolutionaries were subject to until they forced England to sign a treaty establishing U.S. Sovereignty. The declaration of independence was nice but it had no legal weight. Until the war was won and the English government signed a treaty, the revolution was in fact illegal and England was well within her rights to attempt to put it down. Only by victory and treaty did a separate nation come into existence legally.

So why censure them for trying the same thing?
>dey lost so dey wrong durr

No, but The U.S. Southern States, and all federal instillations were within the United States.

If i'm not mistaken didn't parliament try to offer a treaty where, all leaders of the Continental Army would be given pardens if they surrendered?

>and all federal instillations were within the United States.
As well as the proposed confederacy. See why your analogy is awful?

No, right and wrong are moral concepts and have no legal bearing. The south violated the law and were unable to win thier independence as a legal fact. The us revolutionaries violated English law but won and were able to establish independence as a legal fact by treaty with England.

>right and wrong? Is this Sunday school?

Again, do you even have a point? You're saying they lost so they lost.

A better, less herp derp comparison would be the Delian League where everyone volunteered to go in yet Athens forced them to stay and be pretty much its subjects.

If so it proves my point.

>England was well within her rights to attempt to put it down
>rights

>right and wrong are moral concepts and have no legal bearing

hmmmmmmmmm it's almost like human rights and liberties exist independent of legal frameworks that may seek to limit them.

Were southerners rights being violated by the Federal government? If so, was not their abandonment of that same government completely justified?

OpYes if they would have won the war, it would not have made thier action legal after the fact, it would have given them the ability to force the U.S. To sign a treaty establishing as legal fact thier independence. Thus making the illegality of those actions irrelevant.

>what is real politic, hurt durr

Then why bring up the legality?
>they lost so they lost

KillHuman rights and liberties do exist independent of legal framework. The actions of federal and state governments do not. All thier action, including how those actions interfere with human rights and liberties are bound to the legal framework of the Constitution. The southern States abandoned that framework.

The federal government was not infringing the rights of southern states. It was in fact, by the act of secession, southern states infringing the citizen ship rights of U.S. Citizens.

you can't have black slavery if there aren't any black people

Because the illegal nature of the action of the Southern States is what started the war. That was the point to OPs question. Why didn't the Federal government just leave instead of making us blow them up. There was no legal grounds to force them to leave.

But there may have been moral ones

Morality is a very important ethical and philosophical concept but it has no legal weight or bearing. The actions of the Southern U.S. States were illegal. Legality is the only concept that matters when it has to do with the actions of governments. Federal, states, and international politics are subject to laws including bit not limited to treaties.

The Constitution has authority over the actions of the Federal Government as well as the states. The authority of the Constitution is not moral, it is legal. Right and wrong are subjective. Legal rights exist outside of the constitution. The actions of Washington D.C. And the actions of the southern states are subject to the Constitution, including the established legal precedent of Federal Supremacy in law.

Each state that ratified the constitution, and every subsequent state that was added to the union became subject to the Constitution. There is no other higher or relevant legal avenue for them to pursue. Thier actions, secession, the fort, all of it was illegal at all times. Reveling does not make you victorious and it does not make you free. You still have to win that freedom. They did not.

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.

Nobody could explain shit like Sherman did.

>South Carolina sells Fort and land to Federal government in 1830s
>They decide to become traitors
>Demand the fort they have no right to
>Launch an assault on the fort
>Cry when their insurgency fails
>Cry when they get off with a light occupation

Dixie was a mistake.

This. I prefer the current ultracapitalist multi cultural (?) hellhole we're headed to. Long live the society for which no one on either side of the war would have cared for!

Dude! Fucking SLAVERY!

A

The confederacy was a splitting of federal governments. There is no authority in that old territory when the federal government is split in two.

>muuuuhhh multiculti waaahhh i have to see niggers on the other side of the street waaaaaaaaaah

Ok, and what if it was that Russia was telling americans in Alaska to move, would that still be americas fault if russia declared war two weeks after that by invasion?

>accede to a Constitution
>attempt to nullify the contract by force of arms

tee bee aytch, the only thing the North did wrong was stop occupying the South.

>destroy culture
>durr u just hate black ppl
Can't make this up.

He's right though.

Oh, I know it. How could anyone disagree with you without being morally wrong?

>Hey whitey what ya looking at?
>hehe just messing with you man

By definition, in order to endorse the Confederate States, you have to hate black people, America, and freedom.

>So, whose fault really was it that the American Civil War began?
Who fired the first shot?

South had a legal right to secced

the South started it, but the anti-slavery thing of the north is what caused their aggression. It wasnt just a few rich elites who owned slaves and chimped out. Slavery WAS the economy of the south. It was going to get fucked up bad with it taken away.

Imagine if the president told California it couldnt have any tech industry anymore. Or like if the president told Louisiana and Texas "You need to shut down EVERYTHING you have to do with the oil industry because muh wind"

>trying to pretend multiculti isnt a horrid failed abortion just to make a point

Yeah, but California wouldn't be able to use its political clout to make it impossible for the Feudal Government to pass any law because they were upset over slavery.
The Federal Government gave the South compromise after compromise to ensure that America would still be able to govern itself, even at the expense of individual's rights. If the Fugitive Slave act and Bleeding Kansas weren't encroachments on State's rights and the rights of individual Americans nothing is.

>Slavery WAS the economy of the south
An economy most Southerners only participated in as subsistence farmers.
When push comes to shove, the South's political elite threatened the entire democratic experiment for their personal gain.

Jeff Davis and Robert E Lee opposed the leave originally. The vast amount of the support came from the commoners.

Also, there were famalies that might have owned like 1-2 slaves. It wasnt all just giant plantations

>The vast amount of the support came from the commoners

There's a reason they called it "The War of Northern Aggression," in the South. People were told they were under attack by an enemy that spoke differently, lived differently and worse of all, voted differently to them. Of course they'll support a war.

Families that owned a handful of Slaves were solidly upper middle class and an exception to the norm with none of the political power of incumbent, slave owning elites.

Not being American, I kind of like to imagine a bizarre world where the Confederacy won but as a result the CSA-circa-2017 is actually "left" of the US today.

I haven't gone so far as to create a handwaved alternate history for it, though. I just think that'd be an amusing scenario to set up as a subversion of something along the lines of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.S.A.:_The_Confederate_States_of_America

Those animosities existed since the revolution. There are journals from northern colonial troops who had to fight along with southern ones and they mention how they referred to them as "damn yankee"

And the brits could have said the same about our revolution

Not the same. It would be more like Russia telling the American embassy to clear out or else they'll force them out.

The fort was federally owned, but it was in a country it didn't belong to.

>federal government gets stronger and bigger
>some states don't like that
>"Piss off!" Aforementioned states say
>"Nay!" Says the big government
>"then it is war!"

The federal government wasn't meant to get as powerful as it became, especially not how it is now. After "Join or Die" the states should've separated and not had such a big central government.

>America revolts for more freedom
>CSA revolts for less freedom

>inb4 slavery is a form of freedom
>inb4 pretending the CSA wasn't ruled under martial law for its entire existence