I Wish The Lincoln Had Let The South Secede. We Would All Be Better Off.

Before you go jumping me about his great war to free the slaves, remember that was not his goal. His goal was to preserve the union and strengthen Federal power. He did free the slaves and certainly that was a positive result. However, he did it very late in the game as an attempt to further weaken the south economically. It was not a main goal of his fighting the war. If it were, he would have signed emancipation into law at the start. Fortunately, slavery was a dying practice in most western countries and would have come down in fairly short order if they wanted to retain trading partners, etc.

I have believed for a long time that states that voluntarily joined the union had every right to voluntarily leave it. There is nothing in the constitution to prevent that move. In short, I do not think the war itself was even legal.

Had they been allowed to remain separate, they would have been economically weak and dependent on the Union for much manufacturing and trade. They would have posed little or no military threat to the north. We could have co-existed on this big ass chunk of land and kept our noses out of each other's business.

They would be a red country imposing their vision of right-wing, fundie, authoritarianism on their own and left the rest of us the hell out of it. Today, they would be a country where abortion remained illegal, where states would be free to have their own official religions, and the death penalty was cherished. They could have embraced their rural, Southern Baptist, "Leave it to Beaver", fantasy to the hilt.

Meanwhile, the more urban north would have been free to adopt the liberal ideals of secular humanism that folks in the up here largely endorse. Without the wingers rising up ever 20 or 30 years to roll back our progress a generation or two. Sure, we would still have the Utah's of the world. But, they would be a tiny minority.

We could have been two nations with very different goals and ideals. Neither fighting to impose their vision of good governance on the other. I think that would have been better for everyone concerned.

NOTE: Please do not use this as an excuse to launch into a round of so called "southern bashing". That is not how this post is intended. It is merely a reflection on how things may have been different today if they had been different then. My hat is off to libs that can stand to live in minority status among the wingers that dominate the region. That takes some real guts and intestinal fortitude. I do not think I could deal.

VOTE BUSH FOR PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERACY!

I love you, too.


Grannie..muttering into her coffee WAY south of the Mason Dixon line

But, at least we suck together.

Going for more coffee...and a smoke.

Mutter, mutter, mutter.

then you write that you don't want this thread to be used for bashing.

Let me think.......

Big difference. As it stands we are in constant struggle to impose what one side ot the other wants on a much larger whole. I frankly do not think that makes eother the north or the south particularly happy. You need to read more carefully.

you need to look at the voting maps a bit more carefully.

By your logic, you are excluding towns such as Chapel Hill, NC. Asheville, NC. Austin Texas. There are many blue areas down here.

But, that is not the scale I am talking about at all. When Chappel Hill gets big enough to secede, they should. Until then, I think discussing divisions that existed historically is a bit more on point.

No, neither region is homogenous. That was not my argument. However, both regions are dominantly liberal or conservative. New York is the bluest state in the union. However, there are still reds in the state. However the vast majority of us are liberal. We would still dominate politics and daily life.

Same is true of the south. There are pockets of Blue down there. But, they are dominated by the majority red.

Will there ever be a division that totally splits the mix? Of course not.

Palm Beach, Broward and Miami Dade Counties in Florida. There's also the Keys, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, etc. The South is nothing like it was during the Civil War. Unfortunately, there are some parts that continue to believe that life was better back then, but those of us in the deep South (South Florida) do not!

you will see we really are in more of and urban/rural situation, with the urban areas blue and the rural areas red. (rather than North/South that is) Two thoughts. The urban areas need the rural for food and the rural areas need the urban for manufacturing, so we are stuck with one another.

And second, I bet if the election were held tomorrow you would see a very big difference. A lot of those red areas (like Ohio...cough..cough) were just barely taken by the GOP. We shouldn't decide we need to split the country based upon one election.

My thoughts...good post. I love a little controversy with my morning coffee.

Our system is a winner takes all free for all where the minority in each state is dominated by the majority. I think that should change but, as it stands, if you are not the majority in your state, you basically have no say at the federal level.

I am not basing anything on the last election. These are long standing cultural trends (in generality) that I am talking about. How do you think we got into the war in the first place? Certainly not based on the 2004 election results.

Trade could accomplish the same balance of rural food and urban manufacturing. Why do we all have to be under the same political umbrella for that redistribution of resources to take place?

Gee, I thought each district voted in their US Reps, not the entire state.

I was mainly thinking of the Red/Blue divide on the electoral maps. That is a function of presidential elections.

Thank god for the House. I wish they had more influence.

Look at the Texas redistricting, where "pockets" like Austin were sliced up to give more power to the majority.

How would we be better off? Sure, there's some problems down here with racism and fundies but you should try living here. I live in Tennessee and do like it here. The town where I live is great and I think we get along pretty well. :)

I wish people could deal with this post on the scale it is being discussed. Would YOU personally be better off? Who knows. Probably not. But the struggle for the soul of each region would not exist. No more wingers down there pissed at us secular humanists and no more Northern libs wondering how long until the theocracy is complete. That is my point. As it stands we are in constant conflict. I do not think that is good for any of us.

Do you have another suggestion on how we could reduce that conflict? I am certainly open to it. This is all theoretical after all.

Fuck all of those Southerners.

And people wonder why a white Northern elitist doesn't do well in the South? Wake up.

As far as Kartina victims are concerned. The victims of the Asian Sunami are not Americans. Did that mean we felt no need to help out?

The rest of your post, I will not even address. It is just knee jerking. I never said anything of the sort.

The same mind set you know..

..lived (quite a bit ) in the north and west and although there
are religious nuts and "backward thinkers" everywhere, the South
has the majority of un-logical thinkers.
I've encountered racism and idiocy everywhere in the USA but the South,
(Generally speaking) makes a habit of it....

I think Lincoln might have been right to try to keep the Union together for the economic health of both the North and the South. They had very different economies and the North's was more flexible and mature and, therefore, more likely to thrive if separated, but together they were both stronger. If there were a Union States of America and a Confederate States of America, the rest of North America could have easily been balkanized into several other nations. Imagine Texas as a separate nation or remaining part of Mexico. Same with Florida. The whole southwest might still be part of Mexico. Not that that would necessarily be a bad thing and I'm sure lots of folks would prefer it. I certainly don't think the US went about their expansion thing in a very equitable or humane way.

Your point addresses the social divisions that exist and cause us problems today, but Governments are primarily concerned with economic and power issues. As far as they're concerned, social issues will sort themselves out and they don't do things for the social good of their people unless the people demand it.

As would most Americans living in 2nd, or third class, "powers" like most of Europe. Alas, most Americans enjoy shouting "We're Number One!!" or, "USA! USA!".

Why does NYC have the MOST racially segregated schools in the nation?

Why does NYC have some of the most racially segregated housing than any other city?

Both regions have their issuies. That is not my point.

My point is that as it stands each region (and its majority) is in a constant struggle to impose liberal or conservative ideals on the much larger whole. I am talking about letting each do as it pleases. Reduces conflict and allows each region to live at is sees fit without the ideals of the other being imposed on it.

Meanwhile, the more urban north would have been free to adopt the liberal ideals of secular humanism that folks in the up here largely endorse. Without the wingers rising up ever 20 or 30 years to roll back our progress a generation or two.

You claim the North is superior when it comes to liberal ideals, yet, it is a Northern state that has the most racist and classist public school system in the nation.

Painting with such a broad brush, as you have done, reduces the argument to hyperbole, void of facts.

I claimed difference. Both regions would be free to be who they want to be without imposing our ideals on each other. Is that or is that not a still a source of constant conflict? Regional autonomy would rweduce that conflict. That is all I have claimed.

Apparently, they don't "largely endorse" liberal ideals thus, there wouldn't be massive class and racial segregation.

WHAT liberal ideals are you referring to? Abortion and gay rights? Sorry, but those are just two issues that the Repubs have made all important.

REAL LIBERALS care about race and poverty.

I never claimed that we had worked out all of our issues or that we would even be able to. But, you are off on a tangent that has little to do with what I am talking about at all. Sorry you are so worked up by a theoretical.

some flames to help with the heating bills... But seriously, are there disadvantages in size? I can see a case for having a bunch of smaller countries, say 4 or so where America is now. Give TX to Mexico. West America, everything else west of the Mississippi. Confederate America, the Olde South. East America, the North. Probably gonna happen sooner or later, after all, I think they jinxed us big time with all that "New American Century" crap -- figure we have 20 years left, if that.

that war - and if secession had been allowed, how might attitudes have changed on their own by now.

This is just a theoretical. A starting point for consideration.

reason for many of the attitudes.

The confederacy was more than a mere collection of people-filled-states who could be allowed to leave the Union.

Economic reasons -

They were the source of raw materials that drive Union state mills, the source of economic power for the Union.
Cities like, for example, New Bedford, and Lowell, Massachusetts, were the most prosperous cities in the Union solely because
of their textile mills manufactured cloth from southern cotton. The south also provided non-cotton agriculture that helped
feed the North through the winter. Transport of these goods drove the railroad industry. Sale of manufactured cloth to
southern states also drove the Union economy.

The Southers states cotton economy was attractive to world powers at the time the same way
Vietnamese/Guatemalan/Honduran/Chinese cheap labor is attractive to American
corporations. The south could have become a major supplier of un-processed cotton, or found other investors to build the mill infrastructure
that they lost when seceding from the Union, which would have perpetuated the slavery problem, and provided ample funds to
Southern state governments and the Confederacy to raise a better equipped army. It could have also propped up the Confederate dollar such
that it would severely impact Northern trade with the outside world.

If we allowed the South to remain independent from the Union it would have caused economic chaos.

Strategic reasons -

The US was only forty or so years out of the War of 1812, and while the Union had relatively good relations with Britain at the time,
there is no reason that they could not have allied with the south to retake their colonies. If you remember, Britain was at
the height of its imperial power, and could have, should the resources proved valuable enough to them, either taken the
South by force, or allied with the south to retake their former northern colonies.

Certainly if you look at the pre-war South and see nothing but "Song of the South" imagery,
then certainly it might seem that allowing the Confederacy to stand appears as a possible solution to
what would become a terrible and very costly war.

But that isn't how it was.

Why do we have to be the same nation to redistribute the resources. If anything I see that as a means to reduce conflict between the two nations.

You may be right on the security front. However, I just do not know. As it stands we are a bit too big for our britches. Just ask Iraq. Maybe a little more humble nation would have been better for the entire world.

Thanks for engaging though. Respectful disagreement is always welcome.

Hey, slavery might have ended anyway! Who cares if another generation or two was born & died as slaves? They weren't YOUR folks. (People forget the non-Whites make up a large proportion of the hated Southerners.)

A smaller USA would not have had the urge or the ability to move West. That would have been good for the original inhabitants. But the Northern states would retain the parsimonious Yankee spirit, while rejecting the do-good urges evolved from Puritanism. Abolitionism out of fashion--Women's Suffrage stifled at birth.

The new, smaller North would not need so many workers. The Irish had just arrived & would make a fine permanent underclass. With no upwardly mobile Irish to support rebellion back home, the British Empire would be pleased. The Northern WASP's wouldn't need to deal with even-more-alien immigrants--not much room for Italians, Jews, etc. The cities would be free from Black people moving North--& from the Mexican Menace.

A small, tight, thrifty USA--with sedate manners & decorous dances for the upper classes. How nice for you.

Writing off the poorest and the Blackest regions in the nation is classist and racist, very elitist. Sounds pretty Bushie.

Furthermore, the new South is not the same as the old South, but the OP is obviously not concerned with the facts.

- An unstable rogue nation to the south would perpetually harry and hamper the developing north.

- Further "colonial" wars would have to be fought in the west and Caribbean.

- There would be no Monroe Doctrine. European involvement in North and South America would escalate fast.

- California would not be the Golden State. It would be a disputed western Sudetenland.

- The scale of human misery in the South before the eventual fall of slavery would be awful.

- You would now be dealing with a Kaiser-dominated Europe with an aggressive Imperial Britain or a Hitler and Japan-dominated world.

Everybody would be worse off.

And Bush might still be president of the 22-state USA, considering the fact he's from Connecticut.

Gee, that worked well for him.

Dean is right on, ALL FIFTY STATES from the ground up.

Two countries could have been divided and picked off one by one by the Axis in WW2 (remember, even being one united country, WW2 was touch and go for years), which certainly wouldn't have left us "better off"....

And had Lincoln allowed it, what was to keep other states from seceding? Consider the Western states; the Federal government chased the Indians off their land, chased outlaws off their land, spent cast sums to build irrigation projects and roads, gave them favorable below-market rates for mining and ranching, only to have a sizable faction of "Reagan Republicans" demand that the "Federal government get off their backs." What would keep them from seceding?

It is my considered opinion that had the south succeeded in winning the Civil War, there would have been numoerous wars between the United States and the Confederate States from that time period to the current day.

Peace between the two nations would have never been achieved, IMO.

The Civil War was fought, not to overturn the government and replace a ruling regime (as we see in other nations' civil wars), but for the right of people in a region to secede and form their own government. Rather than argue interminably about the reasons and long-term outcomes, why not discuss the primacy of a people to form their own government? Why, for instance, would we knee-jerkingly oppose a Kurd secession from Iraq, a 'nation' whose boundaries were drawn without respect to cultural affiliations?

The mere fact that we have a country which is purportedly 'balanced' between states and federal governance (a rather unusual arrangement with the demise of the Soviet Union), should lead us to conclude that some mechanism for secession is justified.

Why not recognize a state's right to secede based on a 60% supermajority vote of its electorate? (Pick your own level of popular will.)

I'm not usually very sympathetic to the complaint that someone is "south bashing." But this thread seems totally unnecessary to me. It's flame bait.

And, for the record: If you really think "we would all be better off," I might suggest that African-Americans would most certainly not be better off.