This is a frighteningly cavalier attitude, assuming you were being serious.
Do you think we should go around the globe, toppling all the bad guys? Should we liberate East Timor by invading Indonesia? Should we invade Afghanistan to eliminate the Taliban? Should we invade Iraq (again) and Nigeria and every other country run by some two-bit thug? For that matter, should the more socialist countries of the world invade US? What do we do after that? Do we maintain occupying armies in all of these places?
Ken Lawrence wrote:
>Now finally, many among the LBO group are arguing that those who stood and
>fought gallantly against chattel slavery were either wrong or misguided,
or at
>best wasted their efforts. (Providing podiums for Nazis is noble, but
>expropriating slaveowners at gunpoint isn't? This is negation of the negation
>with a vengeance.) No wonder there is such pessimism here about the prospects
>for revolution. If even the magnificent movement to abolish slavery -- which
>began in slave quarters, Underground Railroad "stations," maroon camps,
>pulpits, and parlor meetings in solidarity with Amistad mutineers, then
spread
>to the fiery plains of Kansas and the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, long before
>Edmund Ruffin fired the symbolic first shot at Fort Sumter -- failed to
merit
>respect, what cause might ever stir them to the barricades?
>
>Accompanying these crackpot "left" analyses is a palpable contempt for
>activists that appears to be broadly shared among LBOers, regardless of their
>fierce debates on matters of doctrine and party affiliation. Does anyone here
>care about real conditions of life among working and oppressed people, and
how
>we are struggling to bring change?
Is it so hard to discern the distinction between supporting slavery and/or calling sacrifices made to end slavery as misguided or worthless, and the idea that a different approach might have achieved the same result (abolishing slavery) but with less suffering in the long run?
Its depressing how quickly you get the finger pointed at you that "you're not a real leftist," or "you don't really care about working people." It is possible for people to care about these things and not necessarily agree with your position. All of the people on this list who have stated the opinion that the Civil War may have been unnecessary or a mistake are also opposed to slavery, and oppression in general. These kind of accusations are simply low blows which drag the discussion onto a personal level.
Gar Lipow wrote:
>2) In terms of the argument that slavery would have been eliminated
>more thoroughly or in a better way if it had been done differently...
>This type of what-if speculation is completely non-falsifiable. You
>can never prove what would have happened one way or another. See the
>Pigs and Wings thread. Or as my late father would have said "If your
>grandma had balls she'd be your grandfather".
Yes, but so is the position that how things actually happened is somehow good and better than other possible alternatives that existed at the time. You certainly CAN make reasonable extrapolations on how things might have evolved differently based on the historical evidence. I'm not a believer in predestination. Decisions matter, they have different consequences, some of which are preferable to others. It's a perfectly legitimate exercise to look back on history and make judgements about how things could have been different (as you in fact did in the rest of your post).
As for your other points:
>What is my evidence for them wanting to attack the U.S.? The
>statements they made at the time showed they anticipated a quick and
>easy victory. They virtually all the good generals, had grabbed the
>U.S. treasury, had most of the U.S. weapons of war. You can find their
>writing at the time of succession quite full of boasts as to how
>easily they would "lick" the union -- before the first shot was fired.
>
>Now why would defeating them have been so much harder if the Union had
>waited? As I said, the South started out with the money, the guns, and
>all the good generals. The North had basically two advantages: More
>people, and more productive capacity. The productive capacity was a
>long not a short term advantage: they had to survive the initial
>months of the war for this to do the Union any good. If the South had
>managed a quick victory, or had (as it tried) managed to grab
>Maryland, and Washington D.C. at the beginning of the war it might
>have won before the North could get it's immense factories on a war
>footing.
>
>The one *immediate* advantage the North had was population. But this
>was an advantage only so long as people became soldiers. People both
>North and South volunteered for militias or armies as soon as Lincoln
>was elected. (Everyone knew that his election meant war. Conscription
>came later.) But in the North, many volunteers signed up for three and
>four month enlistments. By the time war came, some of the three month
>enlistments were already up. In short if Lincoln had listened to those
>who wished to delay war, he would have lost half his army before a
>shot was fired. Also there is some real question whether he could
>have instituted conscription, without a war.
If all this were true, why didn't the South invade the North in the real war? My understanding of Civil War strategy was that the South felt they could fight a successful DEFENSIVE war - officers like Lee, who were also well aware of the manpower and industrial advantages of the North, never seriously considered invading the North.
Secondly, northerners would probably have been more keen on fighting if the South invaded the North. There is a big difference between a campaign of attacking the South, and one in which the North is perceived as being the target of a Southern offensive. Lincoln would have had no trouble getting recruits in the South attacked the North.
>Another problem: If the North had recognized the confederacy
>initially, Britain might well have followed suit. One thing that
>ultimately let the North defeat the confederacy was the refusal of
>Britain to trade with it. This was due to a number of factors.
This is true, but while it may have allowed the South to last long enough for the North to call off the war due to exhaustion, it would not have enabled the South to conquer the North.
>Could Britain really
>have resisted the temptation to play the great game, supporting first
>one side then another until it had the chance the reconquer it's lost
>colony in all but name.
Saying that Britain would have reconquered the US is a bit of a stretch.
>If the South had won would the decedents of Slaves have been worse off
>today than they are in are real world? I have little doubt of this.
>Yes slavery would have ended eventually, around 1890 or so, but in a
>country dominated by a slavocracy. There would have been no
>reconstruction to reverse. White privilege would have been far worse
>than it is . I suspect that people without skin privilege would just
>be winning the right to vote now, with the fight against the criminal
>injustice system and economic discrimination decades away. It is
>always an act of extreme optimism to believe that things couldn't be
>worse.
You might be right about this. This gets to the heart of the disagreement, I guess. In any case, the folks who have argued that the Civil War was not the best solution to the problem are not saying that things couldn't be worse, but rather things could have been better.
Brett