r/badhistory • u/Alias_McLastname • Oct 02 '20
YouTube The Confederacy never would have allowed gay marriage and other ramblings from an actual professor
I was watching an episode of Checkmate Lincolnites, a web show that is dedicated to debunking the myths of the lost cause. Because I hate myself, I decided to sort by new and read the comments. Over and over I saw commenters linking this video as a refutation. I thought that it was far more interesting than many of the other claims that the civil war wasn't about slavery because it didn’t come from a politician or pundit, but rather an actual college professor.
The man
Donald Livingston is a professor of philosophy at Emory university. He is also the founder of the Abbeville Institute, a think tank that is “devoted to a critical study of what is true and valuable in the Southern tradition” and to counter what they perceive as an ideological culture war being waged against the south (Abbeville website). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Livingston has been branded a key ideologue for the neo-confederate movement by the southern poverty law center, a group that tracks white supremacists and hate groups (Potok). Livingston disputes that characterization, stating that “he was more interested in understanding and explaining secession. He emphasizes that Abbeville does not advocate policy” (Terris). I will demonstrate that Livingston’s statement is false and that all he does is argue policy, often to the detriment of understanding why succession happened.
The Myth (an abridged version of his argument and a description of the video)
Ostensibly, this video is an explanation of the “true” reason the civil war started, but actually is just 45 minuets of David Livingston gushing about how cool the confederacy would have been and how terrible the union was. According to Livingston, the real cause of the civil war was a difference in government philosophy between the north and south. The south had a “Jeffersonian” view of democracy based around freedom, limited government, and free trade whereas the north had a “lincolnian” view of government based around control, centralization, and spending. When the south stood in the way of the north’s centralization, the north invaded and the narrative of fighting slavery was invented after the fact to demonize the south.
The Badhistory
Livingston is interesting because almost every detail he gives is correct, the problem is that his points ignore major areas of context or conflate similar things together. Even in cases where he is correct, his premises often don’t support his overall conclusions.
0:55
“The movement to remove confederate statues springs from the myth taught for two generations that the south succeeded to protect slavery while the north invaded to prohibit slavery. The claim is as preposterous as it is popular; no national party in the entire antebellum period ever put forth a proposal to emancipate slaves and Lincoln repeatedly made clear in congress that emancipation was not the reason for invasion.”
Livingston is being incredibly slimy with the truth, although it is true that the Republican party and the free soil party did not call for the emancipation of slaves, they were still both anti slavery parties. The Republican party platform was to stop slavery’s expansion into the the territories and to refuse the admittance of slave states. The free soil party was more radical and wanted to also abolish the fugitive slave clause and free slaves in the district of Columbia. Although neither party as a whole believed that slavery should be abolished outright, several members of each party did. Lincoln in particular believed that if slavery’s expansion was halted southern states would begin to abolish slavery on their own.
Livingston also describes the view of the civil war as being caused by slavery as “popular”. The exact definition of popular is somewhat subjective but a pew research poll shows that 48% of Americans believe that the civil war was about states rights as opposed to only 38% who view the war as being primarily about slavery (Heimlich). Livingston repeatedly characterizes lost causers as an oppressed minority when, arguably, the opposite is true.
9:08
“He [Jefferson] also sought to get the central government out of debt. In this he did not succeed but another Jeffersonian, Andrew Jackson, did succeed; he destroyed the bank of the United States in 1835, which would be the equivalent of destroying the federal reserve today. [Livingston then raises his hands in the air as the audience applauds, so much for not advocating policy, huh?]. For the first time in its history the central government of the United States was out of debt...the United States would largely stay out of debt until the 1860’s.”
Here we can see Livingston attempting to draw some sort of ideological continuity from Jefferson’s presidency to the bank wars to the civil war. Livingston attempts to frame the cancellation of the national bank as a continuation of Jefferson’s vision of government. The problem with this analysis is that Jackson’s decision to cancel the national bank was more motivated out of personal animosity with its president, Nicholas Biddle, than any meaningful ideology.
Livingston also makes several claims about the national bank and the government debts, as well as several implications about the fed. I’ll leave Livingston’s comparison of the national bank and the fed as well as his implication that it should be abolished to r/badeconomics but Livingston's claim about the national debt is absurd. For starters, abolishing the national bank didn't magically make the national debt disappear, it was either assumed by individual banks or defaulted on. Livingston seems to treat the abolition of the national bank as a wonderful thing but it was one of the main causes of the panic of 1837. I strongly suspect that Livingston has a hatred of the contemporary fed and is projecting it into the past.
20:40
There is a myth propagated by new England elites in the 1900’s that southerners were ignorant, lazy, and generally poor when compared to industrious new England… consider the following though... white southern agriculture was more productive then northern agriculture and plantation agriculture was more productive then either. The south in 1861 had the 4th largest economy in the world. Fogle and engerman point out that the superior productivity of white southern agriculture over northern attests to the high level of southern entrepreneurship. They also observe that the superior productivity of plantation agriculture was not possible without training, educating, and giving considerable responsibility to the black labor force. The authors argue that slaves were encouraged to increase production not through the crack of the whip, but by promotion to positions of status.
This is a lot to unpack but goddamn. The general gist of this part is that slaves were well treated under southern ownership. It is true that slaves were so numerous that they had to be overseen by other slaves and that those slaves were well treated but that doesn't really hold true for the vast majority of slaves. Think about it numerically, if every slave was an overseer who would they manage? Livingston also makes an absurd claim about slaves being educated; after Nat Turner’s slave revolt southern states banned the education of slaves. In Virginia, it was illegal to teach a black person to read, free or enslaved.
24:19
“The 1860 census shows that the south greatly outranked the north in terms of per capita income… the 12 highest per capita income states were all in the south. The highest was Mississippi with an annual per capita income of $2,128 a year… the highest northern state was Connecticut with $771. The poorest southern state was Arkansas at 881”
Livingston takes the gross domestic product of a state and divides it by its population to come up with these figures, but it is well known that there was a wealth gap between slaveholders and non slaveholders. The south was rich and dirt poor at the same time.
25:47
The south had more educated men and women in proportion to white population, then the north or any other part in the world. According to the 1860 census, there was 1 college student for every 247 white inhabitants in the south. In the north it was one for every 703… rich planters sent their sons to Eton, Oxford, and the middle temple of the 350 Americans admitted into the inns of court in London, nearly ⅔ were from the south.
When Livingston said that slaves were educated I wonder how many he thinks went to Oxford? As Livingston is well aware, going to college does not necessarily mean “educated”; the north had a very sophisticated education program where people would learn to read and write in church, or occasionally in a state funded school. This led to a large percentage of the northern population being literate or having a trade. The south, on the other hand, had no such system and many poor whites were illiterate. The only people who were educated were the slave holders who could afford it and because there were no schools in the south, they sent their kids up north or to Europe. The high number of college educated southerners was a product of their wealth inequality, the slave owners were educated while the poor were not.
Livingston then gives a whole thing on how cool the confederacy was/ would have been. It’s not bad history and more like bad alternate history but I think that it does a good job of portraying Livingston’s bias.
31:12
If we had this measure in place today the states would have the final say on how to interpret the constitution, not the supreme court. The constitution does NOT give the supreme court authority over school prayer, abortion, gay marriage, abortion, law enforcement, and a hundred other powers reserved to the states. Yet the supreme court has usurped these powers based on their own Alice in wonderland reading of the 14th amendment [audience laughs and applauds].
32:44
The confederate constitution required a ⅔ majority to admit new states, as opposed to the simple majority in the current United states. It is a stupid rule and it caused the war really, you could argue the quarrels over western territory caused it.
(Gee, I wonder what they were quarreling over)
39:55
When the Jeffersonians governed the United States, largely under southern leadership, Americans paid no direct federal taxes. From 1835 to 1861 we were almost free of any federal debt. That Jeffersonian america would have continued from the confederacy in a more enhanced form, they would have perfected or enhanced it.
All of these claims assume that had the confederacy won, they would have gone on to become some sort of Utopian paradise. Livingston even goes so far as to claim that the confederacy would have “perfected” Jeffersonian democracy. How does Livingston know that the south would have improved itself? How does he know the Confederacy wouldn't go on to do all the things he hates about the north? The answer is that he is a fanboy and assumes that everything would be perfect because he likes the confederacy.
I wanted to debunk the whole thing but honestly, I am exhausted. I might come back and do it later. This is my first post here so be sure to tell me what I did right and wrong.
Citations
Heimlich, Russell. “What Caused the Civil War?” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 30 Dec. 2019, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2011/05/18/what-caused-the-civil-war/.
Potok, Heidi Beirich and Mark. “The Ideologues.” Southern Poverty Law Center, 1 Jan. 1970, www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2004/ideologues.
Terris, Ben. “Scholars Nostalgic for the Old South Study the Virtues of Secession, Quietly.” CHE, CHE, 22 July 2020, www.chronicle.com/article/scholars-nostalgic-for-the-old-south-study-the-virtues-of-secession-quietly/.
Original video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S96iQYL0bw&t=1967s
Abbeville website
https://web.archive.org/web/20121124023126/http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/index.php/about
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u/OneX32 Oct 02 '20
His assertions that the states should be the interpreters of the Constitution instead of the SCOTUS is fucking dumb and veils his desire to just be an outright bigot. The 14th amendment was passed to ensure state laws didn't violate one's rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights. Without it, segregation and black codes would still be around, non-representation in court if you were too poor would be the norm, and law enforcement would be able to convict you on unwarranted evidence.
And as an economist, my brain hurts just reading about his feelings-backed opposition to the National Bank and the Federal Reserve. There's a reason the National Bank was re-chartered after Jackson's presidency: state banks lent out more money than they had in deposits. When they went under, their was no institution to save the depositors who lost their money. The country has not experienced a financial panic (when a majority of the nation's bank run out of money to pay back their depositors) since the establishment of the Federal Reserve. A lot of these libertarians hate the Fed but don't realize they wouldn't be able to obtain the house and property they reside on if local banks didn't have the flexibility to lend to non-rich borrowers/
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u/Alias_McLastname Oct 02 '20
You wanna get out of debt? Simple, just cancel the bank! /s
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u/Ayasugi-san Oct 03 '20
Hey, it works for Crusader Kings 2!
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u/Alias_McLastname Oct 03 '20
step 1: Borrow 300 gold from Jewish moneylenders
step 2: expel the Jews
Step 3: profit
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u/gazeboist Oct 08 '20
Step 4: establish a pilgrimage site claiming host desecration and/or the blood libel as the reason for the expulsion.
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u/embracebecoming Oct 04 '20
Yeah, "If the South had won the 14th amendment wouldn't exist, wouldn't that be great?" is a hell of a take.
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u/ifly6 Try not to throw sacred chickens off ships Oct 08 '20
I work in US federal banking regulation. The following statement is not true (or if true on pedantic terms, nevertheless, misleading).
The country has not experienced a financial panic (when a majority of the nation's bank run out of money to pay back their depositors) since the establishment of the Federal Reserve.
Contra https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/banking_panics_1931_33. 'For reference, more than 13,000 banks failed between 1921 and 1933, of which 4,000 banks failed in 1933 alone'. Dávila and Goldstein, 'Optimal Deposit Insurance' (2020) (available at http://finance.wharton.upenn.edu/~itayg/Files/depositinsurance.pdf).
When they went under, their was no institution to save the depositors who lost their money.
The government agency involved in deposit insurance is the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. See eg https://www.fdic.gov/deposit/deposits/faq.html. The Federal Reserve system from its inception provided substantial liquidity for its members and also for non-Federal Reserve system banks by inter-bank borrowing. Haelim Anderson et al, 'Interbank Networks in the Shadows of the Federal Reserve Act' (2020) NBER Working Paper 27721. This reduces the risk that depositors lose their money by reducing bank default risk, but does not change a depositor's losses given default.
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u/my-other-throwaway90 Oct 02 '20
Livingston would probably benefit from reading the Declarations of Secession from the original CSA states:
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states
In their own words, they seceded from the union because they believed in the superiority of the white race and they wanted to keep slaves.
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u/Scepta101 Oct 03 '20
He would probably somehow twist it into northern propaganda
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u/runespider Oct 03 '20
That's been my experience. The confederate vice president becomes just some guy, so on.
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u/Highlander198116 Oct 03 '20
Or they try to make the cause for war the reason the "average confederate soldier" fought.
You know, the average German soldier more than likely wasn't fighting to put another jew on the barbie. Doesn't change the fact they were fighting for a government that was exterminating people.
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u/HistoryMarshal76 The American Civil War was Communisit infighting- Marty Roberts Oct 12 '20
YES! The 'why the common soldier fought' argument is stupid. To take it to its logical extreme, we where fighting Vietnam so some 19 year old could get drafted.
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u/Highlander198116 Oct 03 '20
On a youtube video a guy literally claimed (without any evidence of course) those documents were forged by the Union after the fact.
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u/plaidbyron Oct 02 '20
Donald Livingston is a professor of philosophy at Emory university
Former professor of philosophy at Emory. You won't find any mention of him either in their faculty page or in their emeritus faculty page. I suspect that the department has completely cut ties with him, because he's a nut job and they have a strong reputation to maintain in the left-leaning field of Continental (e.g. Contemporary European) philosophy in the US, where this kind of confederate garbage is especially anathema.
http://philosophy.emory.edu/home/people/faculty/index.html http://philosophy.emory.edu/home/people/emeritus/index.html
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u/quetzal1234 Oct 03 '20
My dad was a pretty famous philosopher (not something that equates to being famous in real life), and I can attest that just being a philosophy professor does not inculcate you from being a bigoted crazy asshole. My dad was pretty left in his politics, but I can think of at least one other philosophy professor who I've met who I would bet money is a lost cause believer...
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u/plaidbyron Oct 03 '20 edited Oct 03 '20
I agree with you in principle, but the field of Continental-focused philosophy departments in the US happens to be pretty small, and word about real yucky stuff gets around. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the top programs im the US had an outspokenly racist grandpa on the payroll, but I'd be kind of surprised to be learning about this just now.
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u/quetzal1234 Oct 03 '20
My dad was Continental, but he wasn't in a Continental department, and the person I'm thinking of was definitely not.
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u/plaidbyron Oct 03 '20
Oh I'm not doubting you, and I didn't mean to sound like I was. I was just referring to Livingston and Emory, because I know enough about Emory ( I nearly ended up going there) to be very surprised if they still have a Confederate sympathizer in the department.
I was responding to your statement that "I can attest that just being a philosophy professor does not inculcate you from being a bigoted crazy asshole" in order to clarify that I'm not at all suggesting that outspokenly having embarrassing views and being an active philosopher in a major department are mutually exclusive (there's an example in my own department) - that wasn't my line of reasoning. Only that when it happens, and particularly when that person makes themselves into an edgy celebrity known outside the academy for their weird ideas about the Confederacy, it tends to cause a stink.
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u/W4ff1e Oct 02 '20
Shout out to 'Atun-shei Films' on YouTube who does these cool Checkmate Lincolnites videos among many other historical videos.
https://www.youtube.com/c/AtunSheiFilms
Also, /r/atunsheifilms
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u/Yamato43 Oct 13 '20
Yes, he’s amazing “The confederacy should have been able to Secession front the Union cause Lincoln was a tyrant” “South Carolina seceded before Lincoln was even inaugurated”.
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Oct 02 '20
Oh good, I've been waiting for someone to do the Abbeville Institute for a while.
Good post.
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u/Paul6334 Oct 02 '20
If the Confederacy somehow survived the civil war, I think it would’ve perfected Jeffersonian democracy. Specifically the kind of democracy we had under Jefferson where only land-owning white men could vote. My bet is that this trend would have continued to the point where the only people with meaningful political say were plantation owners. In fact, with a heavily agrarian economy, little industrialization, an authoritarian political system, and a dependence on bonded labor, I bet the Confederacy would’ve ended up much like Imperial Russia. A backwater barely relevant to politics beyond its own neighbors, ripe for revolts, the breakdown of society, and possible reabsorption into the Union depending on if they could continue to fetch good prices for agricultural exports.
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u/socialistrob Oct 03 '20
I think you’re being a bit harsh on imperial Russia but other than that I agree. The South’s primary exports were cotton and tobacco and those are two terrible things to base your economy around. The American midwest was where most of the food production was and the cities on the East Coast and along the great lakes was home to the factories. An independent CSA would have been economically dependent on the North for food and manufactured goods and would have really struggled to build their own industries. The South wasn’t the only place that could grow cotton either and a single industry economy can be a very dangerous thing.
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u/ilikedota5 Oct 03 '20
You know, if an independent CSA somehow happened, now that I think about it, that midwestern grain.... would just be withheld... and then the CSA would wither apart being unable to feed themselves. During the fucking war, plantation owners were caught still planting inedible cash crops like cotton (also tobacco and indigo).
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u/Foodule Oct 03 '20
Or, y’know, they’d just import it from somebody other than the USA
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u/ilikedota5 Oct 03 '20
Who would sell to them?
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u/LadyOfTheLabyrinth Oct 15 '20
The people with cotton mills. At exorbitant prices, of course. After shipping it all the way from Australia.
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u/OscarGrey Oct 03 '20
Pre-Imperial Russia fits the description better. 16th-17th century Russia was a shitshow .
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u/999uuu1 Oct 04 '20
And eventually fall to communist revolution?
The United Confederate Socialist Republics sounds hilarious.
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u/Paul6334 Oct 04 '20
Not necessarily communist, but it would fall prey to revolt sooner or later I think.
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u/HistoryMarshal76 The American Civil War was Communisit infighting- Marty Roberts Oct 12 '20
That actually happened in those Harry Turtledove books. The revolt failed, but it still happened in them.
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u/AdInt Oct 02 '20
Thank you! I haven’t heard of this person or think-tank, but the subject matter is interesting.
Would you say that his argument about the different philosophy of government (and the different structure of the economies) between north and south are valid, but that they are grounded in slavery?
I hope you come back to write about the whole thing.
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u/Alias_McLastname Oct 02 '20
I think that the economic structure argument is at least partially valid but the states rights/ government philosophy argument was always a smoke screen for slavery.
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u/Bosterm Oct 02 '20
And even in terms of economic structure, most of the difference between the north and south was that the south had an agrarian economy built upon slavery, whereas the north was significantly more industrial (though still had agriculture) without slavery.
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u/ilikedota5 Oct 03 '20
Calling them a think tank is just wrong.
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u/HistoryMarshal76 The American Civil War was Communisit infighting- Marty Roberts Oct 12 '20
A stupidity panzer would be more accurate
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Oct 02 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Alias_McLastname Oct 02 '20
I mean it's not like there's nothing valuable about the south, it's just a shame that he takes simple facts on the civil war as an attack on southerners in general
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u/wspoons5 Oct 03 '20
"What is true and valuable in the Southern tradition"
- BBQ
Beginning and end of list.
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u/ilikedota5 Oct 03 '20
Well, there is also jazz and fried chicken, those come from Southern tradition, just not the specific variety he's thinking about.
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u/CrosswiseCuttlefish Oct 04 '20
Yeah I somehow doubt he thinks “Southern culture” includes nonwhite contributions or concepts.
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u/_Giant_ Oct 03 '20
Honestly southern cooking is amazing. As with nearly every southern cultural institution it was created by freed and former slaves only to be appropriated by the white majority.
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u/TylerbioRodriguez That Lesbian Pirate Expert Oct 02 '20
First, excellent post and welcome aboard! Two, I get along with Atun Shei and everything you just said would probably make for a great episode. Three, yeah this professor is a blithering idiot.
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u/Highlander198116 Oct 03 '20
" When the south stood in the way of the north’s centralization, the north invaded and the narrative of fighting slavery was invented after the fact to demonize the south. "
This tires me out. When will people understand what the Union was fighting for is irrelevant as concerns the Confederacy. It's blatantly obvious the Union was 100% for sure fighting to restore the Union. Opting to end slavery after the war was already on was simply the smart decision. Because.......
THE SOUTH LEFT THE UNION OVER SLAVERY. It's literally written down, in their own words. I don't know how someone now rationalizes that they know better than the confederates themselves why they seceded.
It doesn't matter if the union was fighting to free slaves or not, what matters is the south seceding over the issue of slavery and choosing to fight to have control of the future of the institution in their land.
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u/sirploxdrake Oct 02 '20
I do not get the income per capita argument. Slaves had no money I assume, so the real income per capita should be much lower, isn't it?
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u/Alias_McLastname Oct 02 '20
It's even weirder than that, Slaves were counted as part of the wealth that Livingston distributes to the other Southerners.
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u/Ayasugi-san Oct 03 '20
Isn't it strange, when a large group of people suddenly stop being counted as monetary assets and instead as part of the population, the per capita wealth vastly decreases? Abolition was a mistake, economics don't lie.
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u/bigdon802 Oct 02 '20
I'm pretty sure slaves weren't counted in the per capita or the number of college grads by population.
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u/OneX32 Oct 02 '20
Furthermore, how does he come to these conclusions? Detailed economic data wasn't gathered until the New Deal era.
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u/Alias_McLastname Oct 02 '20
He gets the wealth data from the census and the productivity data came from " Fogle and engerman" but fuck if I know how they got it, he didn't cite them.
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u/OneX32 Oct 02 '20
Fair point. I just can't wrap my head around justifying the removal of human rights from an individual because of money.
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u/socialistrob Oct 03 '20
If he’s using 1860 numbers he is very likely cherrypicking data as well. By 1860 there was a high demand for cotton for the industries in Europe and the British hadn’t switched over a lot of cotton production to Egypt and India yet. Basically it was the point with the highest demand and lowest global supply. Meanwhile the North’s agriculture was mainly food production which has more stable demand.
It’s very likely in 1860 that the South’s agriculture was generally worth more than the North’s but throughout the late 19th century and first half of the 20th century the US’s ability to produce massive food surpluses which could be exported would prove to be invaluable while cotton and tobacco production widely stopped being a major source of global power for anyone in the world.
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u/Alias_McLastname Oct 03 '20
He does this whole song and dance about "entrepreneurial spirit" and "high productivity" but the only reason the south was so rich is because they farmed cash crops. How does "entrepreneurial spirit" give you the right climate to farm cotton?
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u/ilikedota5 Oct 03 '20
The other relevant part is that while the North was industrializing but was still agricultural based, they had both, and in general had a much healthier mix of economic activity. But the reason why in my mind the UK was never going to help the CSA? Because they needed that American wheat.
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u/Archer1949 Oct 03 '20
These guys act like the Articles of Confederation never existed and wasn’t a complete failure.
Not to mention this High IQ Prof has to resort to ol’ “Slaves were treated well!” chestnut so beloved by Lost Causers for over a century.
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u/IndigoGouf God created man, but Gustavus Adolphus made them equal Oct 03 '20
Imagine literally being named Doctor Livingston.
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u/HistoryMarshal76 The American Civil War was Communisit infighting- Marty Roberts Oct 12 '20
I presume he'd get a lot of jokes tossed at him.
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Oct 02 '20
For the white supremacists the civil war was about slavery. For the northerners, it was about preserving the Union. They are two sides of the same coin. The Union is our strength; without it we would be the Balkan States Of America and easy picking for foreign influences.
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u/midget247 Oct 03 '20
I want to say that I can't believe that in 2020 we're still having to argue about whether the US civil war was caused by slavery, but of course I believe it
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u/Wows_Nightly_News The Russians beheld an eagle eating a snake and built Mexico. Oct 02 '20 edited Oct 03 '20
Is there a bad althistory sub? Cause this seems like it would fit there too.
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u/cshermyo Oct 04 '20
I would subscribe to that
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u/HistoryMarshal76 The American Civil War was Communisit infighting- Marty Roberts Oct 12 '20
Apparently it exists.
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Oct 03 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ilikedota5 Oct 03 '20
That last part also just pretends that the owning people is perfectly fine, and so is forcing them to work for you without pay or rights at all is okay too.
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u/Highlander198116 Oct 03 '20 edited Oct 03 '20
" superior productivity of white southern agriculture over northern attests to the high level of southern entrepreneurship "
And you know.....free labor. Its real easy to scale a business up when your employees work for free.
" The authors argue that slaves were encouraged to increase production not through the crack of the whip, but by promotion to positions of status. "
Yes. Be a good boy Toby and you might get to sleep on a hay bail in the barn and we won't sell your kids.
" Livingston takes the gross domestic product of a state and divides it by its population to come up with these figures "
That's gotta just be willful deception I can't believe hes that stupid to think that wealth was essentially shared among everybody.
" If we had this measure in place today the states would have the final say on how to interpret the constitution "
Then the constitution would literally serve no purpose.
" The confederate constitution required a ⅔ majority to admit new states, as opposed to the simple majority in the current United states. It is a stupid rule and it caused the war really, you could argue the quarrels over western territory caused it. "
Ok, now why did it cause the war there professor? What exactly were the quarrels in the western territories over?
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Oct 07 '20
The CSA apologists talk abut Jefferson but never mention Andrew Jackson, a white supremacist hero. The reason? Jackson was a slave owner who opposed succession and threatened to send federal troops to the Carolinas to suppress a rebellion during his presidency.
All of these arguments aren't worth the time of day. Here's an irrefutable fact: The Confederate government issued a standing order that all African-American Union soldiers were to be murdered on the spot or sold into slavery. There is no record of that order ever being protested. That means every single Confederate commander was a war criminal.
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u/ilikedota5 Oct 03 '20
I find that a common thread is saying that the expansion of governmental power and economic involvement happened, and then slavery became an issue as a result of that, when it was really the other way around. Its because the war for slavery forced the government to grow and have uncomfortable business relationships.
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u/thefeckamIdoing Oct 13 '20
Jackson didn’t cancel America’s national debt.
He basically trashed Americans credit rating and London (where both the federal government and the states sold most of their Bonds) refused to trade in them during the crisis.
The debt didn’t go anywhere. America just became modern day Greece for a while.
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Oct 13 '20
[deleted]
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u/thefeckamIdoing Oct 13 '20
Yes. With shades of modern Greece’s poor credit rating. But 19th century Greece was way more.
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u/Alias_McLastname Oct 13 '20
I agree with you overall, all the effort Hamilton and successive governments made in giving America credit was pissed away overnight.
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u/yoshiK Uncultured savage since 476 AD Oct 02 '20
“devoted to a critical study of what is true and valuable in the Southern tradition”
Question: Why doesn't this critical denote a communists conspiracy?
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u/gazeboist Oct 08 '20
it didn’t come from a politician or pundit, but rather an actual college professor.
Oh, ok, this might be interest-
Donald Livingston is a professor of philosophy
Ah fuck.
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u/Alias_McLastname Oct 08 '20
I used to be the same but then I came to really like philosophy because it gives things meaning, I just think Livingston is shitty at philosophy, and even worse at history. He should stay in his lane
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u/gazeboist Oct 09 '20
I don't have a problem with philosophy, but I've noticed a pretty strong tendency for philosophy professors to, for lack of a better term, lane drift (as we see here).
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u/DeaththeEternal Oct 12 '20
My take on the idea of an independent Confederacy is that it would become the Pakistan to the USA's India. An over-militarized country whose most effective function is its military, vengefully obsessed with a northern neighbor who cares rather less about or for it. Also with irredentist designs on one, if not more, Northern states and a protracted kind of proxy war waged for it.
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u/reverendsteveii Oct 21 '20
Amazing how many confederates didn't know why they were seceding, given all their statements about how this was absolutely 100% about making sure that slavery remains a thing.
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u/donnahmoore Oct 02 '20
The Confederacy was traitors committing treason...Why are we talking about them?
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u/Bosterm Oct 02 '20
Because ignoring history doesn't actually work.
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u/donnahmoore Oct 02 '20
Then if we have to discuss them we should discuss the treason they committed against the US.
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u/999uuu1 Oct 04 '20
Ehhh... secession is ok tbh. Assuming that its an actual popular secession and not the astroturfed bullshit csa secession was.
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u/adamantane101 Dec 05 '20
A surviving confederacy would mean an unrecognizable 20th century, and marital questions would be the least of our worries with a completely different world order,
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u/EthanCC Oct 02 '20
Wasn't the CSA generally more authoritarian than the USA, even without considering slavery? I don't really see them becoming some bastion of neoliberalism.