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What did British officers think of the American civil war as it was happening?

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Re: What did British officers think of the American civil war as it was happening?

#221

Post by joshuamorton »

piethesailorman wrote: post #218
joshuamorton wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest you read something as basic as the Wikipedia article on sumpter, basically everything you've said about it is wrong, and I'm wholly uninterested in discussing this with someone from an alternate timeline. What I will say is first, that trying to equate families and countries is rarely valid, and this case is no exception (declaring yourself divorced, for example, does not make it so, and if you take certain…

Quoted post unavailable.

I mean no, I trust accurate historical sources. I'm just saying the stuff you're spouting is so completely obviously off base that it's directly contradicted by Wikipedia.

Like you're not even trying to go for a thing that is debated. Literally no one pushes the story your telling, you've made it up! I cannot find anything, anything that corroborates any of the stuff you're saying. Sumter wasn't empty when shelled. The reinforcements were sent before Lincoln took office. No one was kicked out at bayonet point. You've created confederate fanfiction!

> the north building a massive army and killing people to conquer northern virginia.

Like how you're pretending the south wasn't also building an army at the same time! Lol.

Re: What did British officers think of the American civil war as it was happening?

#222

Post by piethesailorman »

nl wrote: post #219
piethesailorman wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

You realise that single parenthood is a choice (I'm a single parent by choice), whereas having your family separated under slavery is not, right? The comparison should be prevalence of kidnapping in modern times vs family separation under slavery.

An interesting point that makes me stpo and think for a moment However, are you saying all single parents choose to be single parents? Do you speak for all single parents? My mother left my father to handle myself and siblings. I can tell you he didnt choose to be left behind.

Re: What did British officers think of the American civil war as it was happening?

#223

Post by piethesailorman »

piethesailorman wrote: post #222
nl wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realise that single parenthood is a choice (I'm a single parent by choice), whereas having your family separated under slavery is not, right? The comparison should be prevalence of kidnapping in modern times vs family separation under slavery.

An interesting point that makes me stpo and think for a moment However, are you saying all single parents choose to be single parents? Do you speak for all single parents? My mother left my father to handle myself and siblings. I can tell you he didnt choose to be left behind.

Didnt mean to send yet. Your last point is excellent though! I agree

Re: What did British officers think of the American civil war as it was happening?

#224

Post by nl »

piethesailorman wrote: post #222
nl wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realise that single parenthood is a choice (I'm a single parent by choice), whereas having your family separated under slavery is not, right? The comparison should be prevalence of kidnapping in modern times vs family separation under slavery.

An interesting point that makes me stpo and think for a moment However, are you saying all single parents choose to be single parents? Do you speak for all single parents? My mother left my father to handle myself and siblings. I can tell you he didnt choose to be left behind.

> My mother left my father to handle myself and siblings. I can tell you he didnt choose to be left behind.

It was a choice made by a private citizen to choose their own autonomy.

That's very different to a choice made by one person on the life of another, enforced by the power of the state.

Re: What did British officers think of the American civil war as it was happening?

#225

Post by webmobdev »

Hayvok wrote: post #37

The Civil War in America absolutely dominated the British national conversation, especially in the early years of the war. Politicians followed the conflict closely, and there were even several debates in Parliament over British policy toward the conflict. Frequently discussed was a line that a lot of Americans would recognize today, of "when should Britain get involved??" because of the destructiveness of the confli…

What I found more interesting is the French role in both US and India in inciting rebellion against the British

- https://thediplomat.com/2018/04/the-last-time-the-us-and-ind...

- https://aeon.co/essays/why-american-revolutionaries-admired-...

Re: What did British officers think of the American civil war as it was happening?

#226

Post by avgcorrection »

threatofrain wrote: post #86
SemanticStrengh wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American russophobia is a sad state of affair considering history, they also gave Alaska for a negligible price. > When the Civil War broke out, both England and France considered hostile intervention on behalf of the South and they tried to convince the Tsar to join them. Alexander II’s refusal was critically important because the British and French then decided to abort their plans. It's crazy to think Russia deter…

Putin ordered Russian forces to be on the highest level of nuclear readiness. We have programs on Russian state TV where people talk about using nuclear weapons to drown the UK and devastate the European coast with a nuclear tsunami. This is a scary time we live in. The conversation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine may now be centered on NATO, but it began with statements of routine training exercises at the border…

If Russophobia is a widespread phenomenon then it started way before 2022.

Re: What did British officers think of the American civil war as it was happening?

#227

Post by avgcorrection »

watwut wrote: post #81
SemanticStrengh wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American russophobia is a sad state of affair considering history, they also gave Alaska for a negligible price. > When the Civil War broke out, both England and France considered hostile intervention on behalf of the South and they tried to convince the Tsar to join them. Alexander II’s refusal was critically important because the British and French then decided to abort their plans. It's crazy to think Russia deter…

Right now, Russophobia is kind of healthy thinking. Their current mix of tsarism and return to kinda communist thinking except the communist ideology is sucky and dangerous.

Pick one:

- Russia is an authoritarian state lead by one man and his inner circle

- It is rational to hate Russians in general

Re: What did British officers think of the American civil war as it was happening?

#228

Post by true_religion »

skibble wrote: post #108
qiskit wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I’m sorry but this is profoundly and aggressively incorrect. The civil war was not reframed after the fact to be about slavery, quite the opposite in fact. The ‘reframing’ is in fact what you’ve tried to assert, in that it was supposedly a matter of economics rather than slavery (though of course other factors were certainly at play). It’s part of the ‘lost cause’ narrative furthered by the southern states after the…

I’ve always wondered why people reframing the civil war to be about economics rather than slavery, don’t consider slaves are part of the economy (and that slavery itself is a perversion of an economic system).

If you value free market economics, like we so often do today, then step one ought to be free mobility of labor which means laborers ought to be literally free of physical chains binding them to their “employers”.

Re: What did British officers think of the American civil war as it was happening?

#229

Post by s1artibartfast »

ruined wrote: post #220
qiskit wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The civil war was not reframed after the fact to be about slavery, quite the opposite in fact. Should I believe you or lincoln? '...My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery...' https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/greele... If the civil war was about freeing slaves, why did lincoln wait so long to end slavery? Why didn't he do it imm…

This document was simultaneously published by the very committee that issued the initial ordinance of secession in South Carolina, and it explains the decision to secede at great length. It is all about slavery: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Address_of_the_People_of_... Additionally, articles of secession from other states also explicitly mention slavery in the actual text of the law, including Alabama's ordinan…

This whole debate is semantics and pedantics about the word cause. The reality is that it doesn't make sense to reduce history to a single factor.

The south wanted to secede because the union was threatening their economic interests which relied on slavery. The union did not want the south to secede for their own reasons, of which slavery was not the foremost.

You can not remove any part of that explanation and still describe the "cause" of the war.

The war would not have happened if slaves didn't have economic value. The war would not have happened if the north was indifferent to the south leaving.

Trying to reduce things further than this is a fools errand.

Your linked document is a great example of this. It discusses a great many things. The first half is a history of grievances about states rights and failures of the union to uphold the constitution.

It starts to talk about slavery about half way through if you ctrl-f.

Anyone arguing for their singular preferred cause can find supporting evidence in it because the "cause" of the war was the interaction of multiple factors, so evidence exists for all of them.

The problem is that showing evidence that one factor was critical to the start of the war does not prove that other critical factors do not exist.

Re: What did British officers think of the American civil war as it was happening?

#230

Post by nl »

dragonwriter wrote: post #135
nl wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Slavery was at best an afterthought. Markets and tariffs were the reason the south seceded. Tarrifs were the reason for the civil war. This is so wrong it's a wonder how anyone could think this. Put it like this: the reason the South wanted low tarrifs was because they were a low cost producer. And they were a low cost producer because of slave labor.

> This is so wrong it's a wonder how anyone could think this. A very long propaganda campaign (oddly, by the very same people who argue that slavery was actually a good thing that was done for those subject to it who should be thankful for it) has established it as an article of faith for a large population in this country, despite the fact that the rebels were quite explicit that the rebellion was about slavery.

I thought this was impossible, but sure enough here on HN there is someone who is literally making that exact argument: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31454920
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