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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?

#251
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

When Russia bombed Syrian hospitals ... invaded Chehenia and other countries ... had assasins murder people living EU, likely caused explosion in Czechs (2014), likely shut down plane, supported dictators around the world ... Common, Ukrainian invasion did not happened out of blue. And I don't even mention Russia actively trying to influence politics of ther countries to the worst.

Let’s put it like this: being critical of the American government does not force you to be Americophobic.

> invaded Chehenia

Invaded their own territory.

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

#252
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pick one: - Russia is an authoritarian state lead by one man and his inner circle - It is rational to hate Russians in general

Russia is an authoritarian state lead by one man and his inner circle. This man has very high public support. In particular, Russian population supports imperial ideology. That is no contradiction. Authoritarians can have public support while at the same time severely oppressing opposition or anyone who dares to voice something else. Also, opposition to Putin does not imply opposition to annexation of Ukrainian lands…

Sure. It is not unreasonable to “hate” someone if they oppose you. I’ll give you that.

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

#253
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Russia bombed Syrian hospitals ... invaded Chehenia and other countries ... had assasins murder people living EU, likely caused explosion in Czechs (2014), likely shut down plane, supported dictators around the world ... Common, Ukrainian invasion did not happened out of blue. And I don't even mention Russia actively trying to influence politics of ther countries to the worst.

how do you deal with the insane double standard? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phan_Thi_Kim_Phuc#/media/File:... I'm not advocating against russophobia per se, but americanophobia seems similarly legitimate

A very general western hatred (not merely US!) has been brewing over Russian social media for awhile now, and the conversation of whether to deny Russians their prerogative to hate the west is not really there. There isn't even much conversation on western media as to what the state of Russian social media is even like.

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

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget Russia sending ships to America in support of the union. The letters between tsar Alex and Lincoln are some of the loveliest pieces of writing and highest praises for America. http://beam-inc.org/abraham-lincoln-and-tsar-alexander-ii-pa...

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…

There's a very brave, honorable politician, who unfortunately was lost in the annals of history, as a man directly responsible for Russian support during the civil war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassius_Marcellus_Clay_(politi...

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

#255

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…

There's a very brave, honorable politician, who unfortunately was lost in the annals of history, as a man directly responsible for Russian support during the civil war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassius_Marcellus_Clay_(politi...

thx for sharing. Is Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. related to him ? (also known as Muhammad Ali)

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

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget Russia sending ships to America in support of the union. The letters between tsar Alex and Lincoln are some of the loveliest pieces of writing and highest praises for America. http://beam-inc.org/abraham-lincoln-and-tsar-alexander-ii-pa...

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…

“Russophobia” is a sham term invented by Russian propagandists to invalidate their opposition. It doesn’t exist.

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

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very brave, honorable politician, who unfortunately was lost in the annals of history, as a man directly responsible for Russian support during the civil war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassius_Marcellus_Clay_(politi...

thx for sharing. Is Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. related to him ? (also known as Muhammad Ali)

No. However there is a relation.

Ali's grandfather specifically named his son after Cassius to honor Cassius, the KY politician. The son proceeded to do the same, with who would eventually be a famous boxer, M. Ali.

The boxer changed his name to Ali, both due to his conversion to islam , and because he was angry to take the name of a plantation owner.

The latter is true - Cassius was a plantation owner. However, early on he defender ardently emancipation. He in fact suffered multiple murder attempts from actual slavery advocates... who surrounded him in KY

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lettergram, the "constitutional obligations" the first paragraph takes issue with are stipulated in the second paragraph: The obligation to return escaped slaves to their owners. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for your conduct in this discussion. And god help you if you walk away from here making the same claims as you have in this thread: they will lead you down into the dark.

Lmao what? How many books have you read on this subject? How many lectures attended? Im not making a moral, emotional, spiritual, statement, I’m making a factual one. To be clear, I support maximum liberty, I’m personally a libertarian. But that doesn’t mean I can’t assess a situation. The south had decades of arguing the north was attempting to suppress them. The slavery issue was one of many related issues. This re…

Look, all I can speak to is the quality of your engagement with me here. You misread a primary source which plainly states that slave labor was the precipitating issue in the conflict over state's rights which blossomed into open rebellion and bloody war. That doesn't reflect well or poorly on your reading or understanding, but it does reflect poorly on the quality of your intellectual engagement with me.

I agree that we are seeing the same issues play out with abortion, with some states seeking to pass statutes similar to the Fugitive Slave Act to prevent their citizens from obtaining abortion services in neighboring states. If they hold firmly to that perspective, then we may come to an ill end again.

But to hold the opinion that we could avoid a second Civil War by simply honoring states' rights is to willfully ignore history: the political leaders of North and South tested the states' rights framework on the problem of slavery, and it failed.

I quote another primary source, Ulysses S. Grant, who makes this case far more clearly than I can:

For some years before the war began it was a trite saying among some politicians that "A state half slave and half free cannot exist." All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down. I took no part myself in any such view of the case at the time, but since the war is over, reviewing the whole question, I have come to the conclusion that the saying is quite true.

Slavery was an institution that required unusual guarantees for its security wherever it existed; and in a country like ours where the larger portion of it was free territory inhabited by an intelligent and well-to-do population, the people would naturally have but little sympathy with demands upon them for its protection. Hence the people of the South were dependent upon keeping control of the general government to secure the perpetuation of their favorite institution. They were enabled to maintain this control long after the States where slavery existed had ceased to have the controlling power, through the assistance they received from odd men here and there throughout the Northern States. They saw their power waning, and this led them to encroach upon the prerogatives and independence of the Northern States by enacting such laws as the Fugitive Slave Law. By this law every Northern man was obliged, when properly summoned, to turn out and help apprehend the runaway slave of a Southern man. Northern marshals became slave-catchers, and Northern courts had to contribute to the support and protection of the institution.

This was a degradation which the North would not permit any longer than until they could get the power to expunge such laws from the statute books. Prior to the time of these encroachments the great majority of the people of the North had no particular quarrel with slavery, so long as they were not forced to have it themselves. But they were not willing to play the role of police for the South in the protection of this particular institution.

In the early days of the country, before we had railroads, telegraphs and steamboats—in a word, rapid transit of any sort—the States were each almost a separate nationality. At that time the subject of slavery caused but little or no disturbance to the public mind. But the country grew, rapid transit was established, and trade and commerce between the States got to be so much greater than before, that the power of the National government became more felt and recognized and, therefore, had to be enlisted in the cause of this institution.

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

#260
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

Lincoln wanted to save the union. He did not care about slaves (there was slavery in the north too, but the economy did not depend on it)

The South seceded because of the threat to slavery and the writing on the wall about the way that was going.

So, yes, the USA Civil War was about slavery. The fact that Lincoln did not fight "for the slaves" or even "free the slaves" (the slaves in the North were not freed by the Emancipation Declaration" but by the Thirteenth Amendment) is not relevant.

It is not "semantics", it is a simple fact.

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