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Societies are defined by how the ruling class gets enough to eat.
The American civil war was a conflict between two ways of doing
that.<br>
<br>
Two dominant political groups, one primarily resident North of the
Mason-Dixon Line and the other south of it, competed because they
profited from two different and incompatible ways of exploiting
labor - by renting it or owning it (i.e., by chattel-slavery or
wage-contract). Extracting surplus value from the direct producer
could be done ether way, but probably not by a mixture of both. <br>
<br>
That's what Lincoln meant when he said in 1858, "I believe this
government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free ...
it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the
other ... Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further
spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the
belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its
advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in
all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South." <br>
<br>
("Free" labor has a technical meaning - it refers to the labor of
those who have no right to live without working for their masters,
i.e., those to whom the society had no responsibility.)<br>
<br>
The Southern ruling class understood that the new Republican party,
with its central plank of "no extension of slavery" was the vehicle
of the northern ruling class and wage-slavery, as opposed to their
form of slavery. When its candidate was elected president, the the
rulers of the Southern states knew an attack was imminent and
declared their independence - as these governments had done three
generations earlier, in 1776.<br>
<br>
Gen. Winfield Scott, the leading US military figure - his
generation's George Washington - wrote on the day before Lincoln's
inauguration (March 3, 1861) and suggested the new president could
conquer the Southern states at the end of a long, expensive, and
desolating war, and to no good purpose; or he could say to the
seceded States, "Wayward sisters, depart in peace!" <br>
<br>
Lincoln chose the former, and Scott was retired. <br>
<br>
That Lincoln understood what was at stake in his state-building is
clear from his first State of the Union address:
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/historicspeeches/lincoln/stateoftheunion1861.html"><http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/historicspeeches/lincoln/stateoftheunion1861.html></a>.<br>
<br>
<br>
On 4/10/11 6:02 AM, E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:4DA18E3D.7060005@pigs.ag" type="cite">
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The best explanation of the "War of Northern Aggression" that I
ever
heard came from Fred Madsen,<br>
who took a bullet in South Vietnam during reconnaissance in the
early
60's.<br>
<br>
Fred said that the war was fought over who would control the Land
occupied by the southern states.<br>
<br>
I find Fred's explanation to be unassailable.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 4/10/2011 10:49 AM, Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:30011.30286.qm@web44915.mail.sp1.yahoo.com"
type="cite">
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<td style="font: inherit;"
valign="top"><font
class="yiv790352220Apple-style-span"
size="2">I
ran into this today on Google or
Yahoo news and made it into a word
doc b/c I tho't it was interesting
and enlightening enuff on its own,
plus it had parallels with today's
issues, i e poor white farmers
[who
were not slave-owners] supporting
the Confederacy because that was
the
class they aspired to and
identified with... (Sociologist
James Loewen
wrote <i>Lies My Teacher Told Me</i> and <i>Sundown
Towns</i>).</font>
<div><font
class="yiv790352220Apple-style-span"
size="2"> --Jenifer</font></div>
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