Civil War arguments

[BluffTHIS!]

I think that it is clear that the South had a right to secede, simply because there was no consitutional prohibition of same. But it is also clear that there was a moral imperative to end slavery in which the North had also been complicit to some degree. Nevertheless, it is clear from reading about the lives of many southern military leaders, including Lee, that they did not like slavery but were also unwilling to fight against their native states. We today in the US have a far greater sense of federal unity than citizens living in either the North or South in 1860 did.

"This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it."
-Abraham Lincoln

[tylerdurden]

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But it is also clear that there was a moral imperative to end slavery in which the North had also been complicit to some degree.

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OK, let's assume the only reason for the war was slavery. Is it worth 600,000 lives? Slavery ended peacefully everywhere else in the world, why was the US different?

[BluffTHIS!]

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OK, let's assume the only reason for the war was slavery. Is it worth 600,000 lives? Slavery ended peacefully everywhere else in the world, why was the US different?

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Obviously it was not the only reason, but it was sufficient. And yes it was worth it to end the practice of men enslaving other men and the children of those slaves.

From Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address:

"Yet, if God wills that [the war] continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether."

[tylerdurden]

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Obviously it was not the only reason, but it was sufficient. And yes it was worth it to end the practice of men enslaving other men and the children of those slaves.

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Was it *required*? Was there *no other way*? You're ignoring the question - why was the US different? Why would it not have ended peacefully, as it did everywhere else?

Would it be worth 600,000 lives (and the 12 years of economic savagery that followed) if slavery would have ended peacefully in, say, 5 years? 10? Do you think there would still be slavery in the south today if Lincoln had not acted?

[BluffTHIS!]

The North had no reasonable expectation to believe that slavery would end in the next decade or so. And they had already waited and compromised since the birth of the republic over 75 years previously and the only change was in 1808 after the consitutional time limit had passed, to end importation of slaves into the US.

Selling persons and then separating their offspring from them by selling them in turn was too great an evil to wait longer to end. Google for one of those pictures of a slave's back with scars all over from the whip and then transport yourself back in time and tell him to wait patiently a little while longer.

[Peter666]

It is not morally justifiable to have a civil war over slavery unless slaves were being slaughtered themselves, which they were not.

[BluffTHIS!]

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It is not morally justifiable to have a civil war over slavery unless slaves were being slaughtered themselves, which they were not.

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I know you are making an argument according to catholic teachings on just war, and that the means/casualties must be proportionate to the injustice to be fought over. But the enslavement of human beings in fact slaughters their dignity as children of God. Furthermore, defrauding a laborer of his just wages, which is certainly the case here, is one of the sins that "cries out to heaven for vengence".

And you might read my earlier posts in this thread with quotes by Lincoln that involve God's judgement on slavery.

[adios]

Supposedly one of the reasons that Jefferson Davis was never brought to trial on treason charges (he was ultimately released from imprisonment after an indictment) was that the issue of secession and it's legality would have been used as a defense by Davis and the government didn't have a good legal argument as to why secession was illegal. The post Civil War US government just didn't want to go there.

[BluffTHIS!]

From what I remember, the main reason Davis was not prosecuted is that he had the support of prominent northerners like Horace Greeley who helped post his bail because they felt he was being singled out unfairly since there were so many others also instrumental in bringing about secession who were not similarly being pursued.