The war was unnecessary, therefore the tax was unnecessary. Only the United States and Haiti had to resort to war to end slavery. Every other country in the world did it peacefully.

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

LOL. I can see Lewinsky working at Hooters to pay the bills now.

The Shah was a tyrant. He was a puppet the CIA installed - not a true ally. When the CIA deposed the democratically elected leader of Iran and replaced him with the Shah - their report stated the U.S. should expect "blowback" - meaning "violent retaliation" for those actions.

That's what the hostage crisis was - violent retaliation against our earlier actions there on the behalf of British Petroleum - so they would continue to get the OIL.

None of that was Carter's fault - but he did make several bad economic decisions as President.

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

That's because every other country didn't have an extremist element within that would not agree to end it. Making the war very necessary.

__________________
All you need to know about the energy crisis:
ANWR Exploration Republicans: 91% Supported. Democrats: 86% Opposed.
Coal-to-liquid R's: 90% YES. D's: 78% NO.
Oil Shale Exploration R's: 90% YES. D's: 86% NO.
Outer Continental Shelf Exploration R's: 81% YES. D's: 83% NO.
Increased Refinery Capacity R's: 97% YES. D's: 96% NO

SUMMARY: 91% of House Republicans have historically voted to increase the production of America’s own oil and gas. 86% of House Democrats have historically voted against.

Appeal to Ridicule. The evil of slavery would have ended in the Confederacy regardless.

As my friend 4Liberty wrote earlier:

"In actual fact, slavery was only a symptom of the problem---it was the fact that the Northern states were attempting to circumvent the Constitution in an effort to end slavery and impose tariffs favorable to Northern industry over Southern agricultural products.

As a Boston attorney of the era noted, that 400,000 Southern men fought for an institution that did them no benefit is a contradiction that ought to fool nobody, but evidently does.

The basic fact is, there didn't even have to be a fight. If the people in the Northern states simply wanted to end slavery in the United States, the Southern states did them a favor by seceding. For TWO reasons.

1) As they were no longer part of the US, slavery no longer existed in the US.

2) The Confederacy couldn't have lasted long as a slave-holding nation, as any slave crossing the borders could no longer legally be recovered and returned, encouraging a massive effort to leave by the slaves.

Economics would also have dictated that the Confederacy couldn't have been maintained in the fashion it was. The US, consisting of only the Northern states (including the Midwest and California), could have erected any tariffs they wished, making it more difficult for the Southern states to economically survive as it had before; largely due to the fact that the Confederacy had much less industry, and needed the North's industrial products---the Constitution forbade the state governments from erecting trade barriers against each other, or using tariffs to give favor to local industries, which would be possible because the Confederacy had made itself (with it's secession) a foreign nation.

Unfortunately, Abraham Lincoln was determined to "preserve the union." He said and wrote that if leaving the institution of slavery intact would accomplish this "I would do it." His orders to the commander at the under-construction Fort Sumter (in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina) forbade him to withdraw the troops from the fort, though Lincoln knew this would be an act of war (it's having armed troops and fortifications on foreign soil), and the Confederates would have every right to expel these troops, by force if necessary. By all international conventions, it was the North who precipitated that fight by failing to withdraw it's troops.

Our Declaration of Independence declares (justifiably) that a government derives it's just powers from the consent of the governed. The Southern states declared that they no longer consented to be ruled by the Constitution of the United States. The reason that they declared their secession was pretty clear. The end of slavery would come about sooner or later, but the Northern states were attempting to circumvent the Constitution of the United States and impose emancipation on the Southern states. Note here, for all the talk of slavery in the articles of secession passed by the Southern state legislatures, what they bristled at was the attempt to forcibly impose the will of outsiders on them. When the US Supreme Court upheld various acts that (while morally unpalatable) upheld the "rights" of slave owners, the Northern states ignored the rulings and thumbed their nose at the the court. This act, while many use the unjust institution of slavery as the excuse, amounted to an open declaration that the agreed upon Constitution would not be upheld, and as anyone who's had any dealings in contractual agreements would tell you, if any part of it isn't upheld, it releases the other party from it's terms. By this act of ignoring court rulings and thumbing their collective nose at the court, the Southern states were released from abiding by the terms of the US Constitution, and declared openly that they were not bound by them any longer.

This open declaration of secession by the 11 states that became the Confederacy also removed from them any taint of treason. Treason requires more than just a citizen making a violent act of war against the government or people of the US. It requires a treacherous act of violence or betrayal. Benedict Arnold was a traitor in every sense of the word. He plotted to surrender West Point to the British while still professing his loyalty to the cause of American secession. Just as the 13 British colonies did 90 years earlier, the Southern states openly declared that they were no longer part of a union by their own choice.

We here in America like to profess our belief in self-determination when some province or overseas colony or territory or the like declares themselves "free" of their former union, yet many on this forum would deny this notion to the Southern states of nearly 150 years ago simply because they were (and would become again) part of our own nation. If self-determination means anything, these states and the people that fought for them, should be granted the respect that self-determination demands. By our own standards, that Lincoln ordered the Southern states to remain within the Union by forcible means would be an act of imperialism (note here: by Lincoln, not by the soldiers who fought on his orders) against the right of self-determination by the Confederacy."

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

My political science professor said that if Nixon would have denied helping his administration with Watergate (which the people would have believed) and didn't resign, he could have and probably would have been the best president we have had so far. But I'm not really sure how she comes to this conclusion. If someone could let me know, that would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I'm not making a list of the ones I think are the best or worse, because I've only really known about politics with the current Bush, so I don't know anyone else from experience to say. I could read all I want about past presidents, but all I need to do is interpret the information wrong (since everyone apparently sees the same bit of information differently) and then I'd be totally clueless.

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Believing that McAfee is going to protect you from hackers and viruses is exactly like believing that republicans can actually protect you from terrorists.

When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die.

This seems to be the argument of everyone who supports the Civil War:

1) Person A is being enslaved by Person B

2) Person A will not resist and accepts her/his position as a slave under Person B

3) Therefore Person C, although Person C has never owned a slave or helped Person B coerce and enslave Person A, must sacrifice his/her freedom and take orders from another group to kill Person B and sacrifice her/his own life if necessary to free Person A

Here's my question: why is it someone else's responsibility to come die for you if you won't die for yourself?

I think the slaves should have taken responsibility for freeing themselves.

Slave revolts could have succeeded more widely. The problem is that slaves rarely tried in an organized effort. If slaves always fought to the death, there would be no profit in slavery, and it would end. Here's a rather powerful account of a Southern slave revolt:

"On the appointed night on Sunday, they left Turner's house and entered the house of his master where, with only one hatchet and one broadax between them, they executed all the members, including two teens, with the exception of an infant. They then moved from house to house throughout the night and executed every European-American they could find with the exception of a white family that owned no slaves; Will chopped up his master and his wife so passionately that Turner called him "Will the Executioner." As they went from house to house they gathered slaves and weapons. By Monday, they were approaching Jerusalem but were turned back by a regiment of European-Americans. Turner dug a cave and went into hiding, but when troops arrived they scoured the countryside and executed slaves by the hundred. Turner, however, was never caught for over two months; during all this time, Virginians were seized with panic. Hundred fled the county and many left the state for good. Turner, however, was eventually captured and hung. This was the last straw; from this point onwards, no slaveowner lived comfortably with slavery now that they understood the anger, the resistance, and the vengeance that boiled beneath the burden of slavery.

And here's another essay proving slave rebellions had a huge impact.

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

I didn't use profainity i said "squat" Apparently it thinks i said the other word.

Never said that peresroika wasn't his idea. But he based it off of the United States economic system. Dont think it turned out to well though.

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Feel the the wrath

"Evreyday above ground is a good day"-Scarface

To say they were no longer a part of the US is a copout. For starters, they had no rights whatsoever under the constitution to secede. Secondly, and more importantly, people have a right to be free and not treated as property. The US not being a sponsor of it is irrelevant to the larger issue of slavery being abhorrent.

How long the Confederacy could have lasted is up for debate. And it meant thousands upon thousands spending decades or the rest of their lives in servititude. If it were so easy for slaves to just up and leave they would have done so prior and gone to the North. It's easy for you to say "well if they had just volunteered their lives and gotten killed then other slaves would have benefited from future policy."

__________________
All you need to know about the energy crisis:
ANWR Exploration Republicans: 91% Supported. Democrats: 86% Opposed.
Coal-to-liquid R's: 90% YES. D's: 78% NO.
Oil Shale Exploration R's: 90% YES. D's: 86% NO.
Outer Continental Shelf Exploration R's: 81% YES. D's: 83% NO.
Increased Refinery Capacity R's: 97% YES. D's: 96% NO

SUMMARY: 91% of House Republicans have historically voted to increase the production of America’s own oil and gas. 86% of House Democrats have historically voted against.

No, it's not. Your response is a copout. I'll quote 4Liberty again:

"The basic fact is, there didn't even have to be a fight. If the people in the Northern states simply wanted to end slavery in the United States, the Southern states did them a favor by seceding. For TWO reasons.

1) As they were no longer part of the US, slavery no longer existed in the US.

2) The Confederacy couldn't have lasted long as a slave-holding nation, as any slave crossing the borders could no longer legally be recovered and returned, encouraging a massive effort to leave by the slaves."

By this reasoning, the Declaration of Independence was treason. There was no legal treason made against the Constitution, proven by the following:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/N...NoTreason.html

And Jefferson, probably the most articulate Founder on the subject of the original intent of the Constitution, stated that secession was a fully acceptable course of action:

"...Besides, if it should become the great interest of those nations to separate from this, if their happiness should depend on it so strongly as to induce them to go through that convulsion, why should the Atlantic States dread it? But especially why should we, their present inhabitants, take side in such a question?...The future inhabitants of the Atlantic & Missipi [sic] States will be our sons. We leave them in distinct but bordering establishments. We think we see their happiness in their union, & we wish it. Events may prove it otherwise; and if they see their interest in separation, why should we take side with our Atlantic rather than our Missipi descendants? It is the elder and the younger son differing. God bless them both, & keep them in union, if it be for their good, but separate them, if it be better." - Thomas Jefferson

"Whether we remain in one confederacy, or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, I believe not very important to the happiness of either part. Those of the western confederacy will be as much our children & descendants as those of the eastern, and I feel myself as much identified with that country, in future time, as with this; and did I now foresee a separation at some future day, yet I should feel the duty & the desire to promote the western interests as zealously as the eastern, doing all the good for both portions of our future family which should fall within my power." - Thomas Jefferson


Yes, they do - but they must be willing to fight for those rights if others try to deny them.

We are not arguing that. Slavery was clearly wrong. It was evil, immoral and unjust, but it was IN DECLINE and would have ended on its own, without a war.

And again, the Civil War was not fought over slavery.

The following was posted by Cerran on another thread:

The Civil War wasn't fought over slavery. You forget that the majority of the states did not seceed until Lincoln marched troops against them.

Even the diaries of the soldiers involved in the war tells us that they were not fighting over slavery.

Less than 25% of southerners owned slaves

Confederate soldiers believed they were fighting against a tyrannical federal government that was invading their country and threatening their homes and families.

Lord Acton, who closely followed all the events of the war, concluded that slavery was not Lincoln’s main concern , but destroying the system of federalism and states rights (which Lincoln called "saving the Union") was. He took Lincoln at his word. In a November 4, 1866, letter to General Robert E. Lee Lord Acton wrote that "I saw in States’ rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy . . . . you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo."

General Grant said, "If I thought this war was being fought to abolish slavery, I would offer my sword to the other side."

Lincoln wasn't fighting to end slavery. Lincoln was a tyrant fighting for his political legacy:

"The U.S. was the only country in the entire world during that time where war was associated with emancipation. The British and Spanish empires, and the French and Danish colonies all chose the peaceful route to emancipation, which occurred in Argentina, Columbia, Chile, all of Central America, Mexico, Bolivia, Uruguay, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, and elsewhere prior to Lincoln’s war. Brazil ended slavery peacefully after the war. Ninety-four percent of all the slaves that were brought to the Western Hemisphere were brought to these countries; about 6 percent ended up in the United States. The former group was emancipated peacefully. Lincoln never utilized his legendary political skills to do what the rest of the world did with regard to slavery, and end it peacefully."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo32.html

And in regards to racial equality, he was a complete and total hypocrite:

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume V, "Letter to Horace Greeley" (August 22, 1862), p. 388.


"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, "Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois" (September 18, 185, pp. 145-146.

More at:

http://www.sobran.com/columns/1999-2001/001219.shtml

Your false claim is that slavery had to be ended with war, and hundreds of thousands had to die. So what if the South wanted to leave? Slavery would have eventually ended anyway, so why kill an extra 700,000 people, the vast majority of which had nothing to do with it, just so you can end it 20 years early???????? Again, the reason that slaves were enslaved is because they would not fight their oppressors themselves. If you're a slave, and you want to be free, you have to be willing to fight to the death. If every slave had fought to the death rather than allowed themselves to be captured, there would be no slavery because the slavers would have quickly given up because it would not have been worth the effort to try and capture them. That's a simple fact. The actions of the slavers and oppressors were evil, no doubt about it, but it was the responsibility of those being enslaved to stop them. They took a step in the right direction on the Amistad, and killed the slavers without looking for help from anyone else.

It was not easy for them to leave, but it was possible. They had no easy options, but that doesn't mean they didn't have options. Again, why is it someone else's responsibility to come die for you if you won't die for yourself?

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

Why bother...repeating it a second time doesn't change anything.

The Declaration isn't treason for several reasons. One being that it followed the Constitution. Once the constitution was signed, which clearly does not grant the right to secede, then they had no right. The end.

More conspiracy theories. Let me know when SCOTUS agrees with this.

Your link has nothing to do with seceding. It refers to the Louisiana purchase. The states that were part of the original constition that consists of the Confederacy were largely from states NOT part of the Purchase. Additionally, even if Jefferson was referring to state's ability to se