American Civil War

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Ah. If we are discussing the possibility of a just rebellion, then normally it is held that you have to have very compelling reasons for wanting to rebel, and that you have tried and failed to address your grievances through the established mechanisms. From that perspective, the South did not have a good reason to rebel, and they had not done enough (if anything) to address their problems within the existing framework. Thus, their secession was illegitimate, and they, not the Union, were at fault over Fort Sumter.

So no, I am not outright denying the possibility of a just rebellion. The South did not meet the standards necessary to justify such an extreme step, so I hold that their actions were illegitimate.

What kind of diplomatic resolution would you expect? The south asked the north to leave the fort, but the north did not, so the south ended up attacking. I mean, as it stands, the North wanted to fortify the fort, which if done against the Southern claims to independence and wishes, would seem aggressive to me given that the South, as much as is reasonable, dissented.

That being said, I do to some extent agree with you on the American revolution, but not that much. I think the tax issue is stupid, but I am fine with a group declaring independence. In any case though, you also know that it was only a sub-section of Americans who were actually revolutionaries, so the British were not attacking "America" but rather a portion of the populace.


Yes, that's part of the paradoxical nature of rebellion. In order to be a rebel, you have to accept an authority as really being the authority, but also deny their authority. Now... I think I might still be muddled from reading some Camus about the matter, and you can re-translate my words with perhaps "accepting and denying" being in different senses, but you aren't rebelling against something if you really and truly don't believe in the authority.

And yeah, you actually can wish away laws when they become inconvenient for you. Jurists do this sometimes even, that's even the major job of the Supreme Court as they make up or wish away laws at whim. Laws aren't these solid things that we can grab onto, but rather can be dismissed if nobody really cares about an issue.


And the Southern secession was as valid as any secession could be considered. Because of that the Northern rejection is still in rejection of the interests of the Southern people as expressed through this statement of secession.

I am not saying that the South was "absolutely guiltless", they don't have to be. But, the South *did* try to make peace and secede peacefully.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter
"The South sent delegations to Washington D.C. and offered to pay for the federal properties and enter into a peace treaty with the United States."

Lincoln held to his position to reject the self-determination of the Southern people, and so everything results from that. I hold more strongly to the belief that people can secede to determine their own direction, and thus I disagree with Lincoln and see his actions as really aggressive against people who were just trying to do their own thing.


Well, ok, but I still think that the South was not illegitimate in seeking to secede. I think that slavery is a despicable institution, and I will admit that abolishing slavery is a great thing, but I y'know, this doesn't justify Northern actions that led to war.

Maybe you say that they took an insufficient amount of steps, but seriously Orwell, is it really reasonable to believe that the system could continually be changed to accept the changing dynamics between the two groups? I think not, so I don't see Southern action as terribly wrong, as there were not reasonable solutions within the existing framework.

First, on a question of fact, I already told you that they were not reinforcing the fort. They were only sending provisions to the troops already there. And again, we come back to the point: the Union did not regard the secession as lawful or legitimate. Of course they would not have acquiesced to the South's demands. Why would they?


True enough. I tend towards conservatism in such matters though. A situation has to be quite dire before I will unreservedly approve of any revolution or rebellion.


No, it was not valid. The secession was a combination of wanting to preserve slavery and being sore losers over the election.


Lincoln explicitly stated in that article you posted that he had no desire to invade the South, and that he would only use force to defend federal property. At this point I don't think you can say the North and South are different: both sides believed they had a rightful claim to Ft. Sumter, and both were willing to use force to back up their claims. Note, however, that it was the Confederates who opened fire on an unarmed merchant craft.


Here are my points:
1. The South's reasons for secession were illegitimate, ie they did not satisfy the requirements for a just rebellion. Based on this, I say they were illegitimate in trying to secede.
2. The North was defending its interests, which it had every reason to continue to regard as its concern. Partly because of point 1, and partly because that is simply the nature of a state, the North could not have been expected to accept the South's claims. At no point in the build-up to war did they act in any manner that was blatantly illegitimate or that would not have been expected.
3. The South initiated hostilities, not the North. They started the war.

Right, but I already made my point in pointing out that I consider the right to a people to self-determination to be somewhat basic. The Southerners are a people as noted by the fact that they formed a government and declared secession, so I see the Northern unwillingness to accept this as aggressive against their wishes as the I do not see the North to have as much right to Southern territory as the South.


I am not nearly as conservative so I think my point seems straightforward given my non-conservatism.


So? Slavery was not regarded as illegitimate by the North, only just as something they didn't care to maintain. Additionally, this isn't a matter of one election and you know it. Because of that, I have to say that Southern claims to secede do not seem bizarre and that they did to this in a relatively official manner rather than just starting a crazed and bloody war against the North at the get-go.


Lincoln also refrained from peaceable diplomacy which is what I back up my claim with. You mean that the South repulsed a merchant craft that was coming to the Fort that they believed was their possession? I don't really see what was wrong with that. Maybe you think they should have fired more warning shots, but their intention was clear on the matter.


1) The South's actual reasons for secession are not as relevant as the fact that they sought to secede as a social body with some structure behind this. As such, the legitimacy of secession is based less upon the actual reasons and more upon the
2) The North was rejecting the self-determination of the people of the South, a self-determination that would seem to belong to many varied people groups.
3) Maintaining the fort against Southern interests is still a matter of some aggression. If the Southern claim to sovereignty was accepted, then the fort could have been abandoned, but maintaining this fort was part of the Northern rejection of Southern independence.

I disagree, the reasons for secession/rebellion are important for determining legitimacy. If I wanted to start a rebellion because the government passed an education bill that was slightly off from what I wanted, everyone would recognize this as ridiculous. If I started a rebellion because the government was systematically rounding up and massacring members of an ethnic minority, suppressing free speech, and imposing a state religion, I think more people would see my case as valid. Granted, I gave extreme examples on both sides of legitimate/illegitimate, but I think you understand the point.


The South was rejecting the self-determination of their entire black population, which in many parts was greater than the white population. At this time both North and South rejected self-determination of women. I just don't see this as a good argument because it's hypocritical on its face.


But it was not. The premise is false, so we can say nothing of the conclusion. I mean, on this point the only way we could reach agreement is to say the North and South disagreed on the issue of the South's sovereignty, and that war resulted from this disagreement. From that point, whether to assign blame to North or South hinges only on whether the secession was legitimate or not, and I still maintain that it was not.

If you had a lot of people who agreed with you, then it is plainly not ridiculous Orwell.

As for the extreme examples, honestly, these extreme examples have to admit to some level of social construction. Slavery itself is an issue that many of us consider wrong to that point, but within that society it was acceptable.


This was acceptable at that time period. That being said, this conflict was not very much about slavery on the part of the North, so even though I agree with you that the North and South should give women freedom and that the South should not have slaves, this is immaterial to whether the South can secede given that it wasn't the relevant issue. I mean, nobody accepts the idea that things are just "all or nothing".

If the North was really on a moral crusade, and wouldn't let the South go for that reason, I would be less favorable towards the South without question.


Well, you have to recognize that part of my claims is that the North should have accepted this, thus leading o the problem.

I still maintain that secession is legitimate.

If slavery and slaver power wasn't a factor, why did so many confederates reference slavery as a crucial issue? Why did the South leave the union when an anti-Slavery Party gained office? And why were "Radical Republicans" take power in the South as soon as the war ended?

Master Pedant, slavery was an issue in the South *leaving* but not the North preventing the South from leaving. From the Northern perspective, slavery was not the reason to prevent the South from leaving the Union, and thus from that perspective, the North does not have much legitimacy in compelling the South to stay.

Slavery was, perhaps, a peripheral issue but it was rapidly officially disappearing from most of the world and maintained in the American South as a economically profitable system. It was recognized as an abomination then as now and persisted in effect for a century after the war in discriminatory practices that still pervade to an extent in America culture. It is totally disgusting and cannot be defended in any way by decent people and as a black mark on American ideals it blots any group that associates itself with it.

The radicals in the Republican Party insisted on doing anything possible to end slavery. The moderate leaders were less enthusiastic. Nevertheless, reduced slavery and slaver power would likely be a result of Republican rule over the country. The Southern Slaver Elite and white racists acted to prevent this.

If blacks can be excluded - under whatever personhood calculus you're using - why can't the North just refuse to count Southern Whites as people? Therefore, the only "social body" that counts in this situation is Northern White Voters.

By the way, for someone whose quintessential desire in philosophy is to exercise all platonism away, you seem utterly depedent on it here.

Ok, but the radicals didn't have power or say over the people.

Well, blacks weren't *really* counted under the given "personhood calculus" by both sides, southern whites were though. Because of that I am still making that claim that the North lacked legitimate reason to compel the South to stay. I mean, your action is itself more arbitrary given the circumstances because everybody at the time recognized Southerners as people, and not animals, and thus their actions to compel people to be part of a body they did not want to be a part of is questionable.

Master_Pedant, everybody uses some degree of Platonism. Didn't you know this? The reason being that we think Platonistically, and so we reason about using this Platonism, but the issue is how much we are Platonistic? Do we just use it occasionally as a means of thinking? Or are we totally consumed by it? As it stands though, you're misunderstanding my argument, as you're actually invoking more Platonism than I am. I am merely looking at the fact that the North recognized the South as people and people who wanted to leave, and the North decided, for reasons I can't give much weight to, to act in a manner that I consider more problematic. This has nothing to do with the slaves though, as the slaves weren't the question between both sides, as the North wasn't acting to abolish slavery in the Civil War. As for the South's motives? I don't care if the South's motives were a dislike of Northern cooking, because I don't stand against even arbitrary seeming secessions so long as the body seceding is doing so in a manner that is not entirely irresponsible, as after all, I am at least a philosophical anarchist, and wouldn't even object too much philosophically to hermits "seceding" to independently live in their caves if they wanted to. But, my point stands, because the North wasn't preventing the South from leaving due to slavery related issues, I don't regard the North's actions as particularly good or warranted.

The issue of slaves though, actually only comes up if one's mind is somewhat Platonist. Why? Because from the absolute standpoint of the world of ideas or such crap, this matter seems bigger because of our cultural background. However, the North accepted the Southern slavery to some extent, even though a Republican was elected. Really the closest I am straying to Platonism here is talk about ethics, but... y'know, that fits under that previous rule that everybody uses a bit of Platonism. Everybody holds some viewpoint as more absolute than they know it can be. I really don't have an issue from it, and see a rule preventing this as also being as problematic and absolutist as Platonism, as we kind of have to recognize the architecture of our thoughts and work within them, rather than just yelling "I am anti-Platonist!" until our lungs die out.

(and no, "architecture of thought" does not just appeal to neurology, it is possible that culture has instilled this way of thinking or language or something, but I would really bet that it is neurology since many issues such as "free will" and "morals" and other things are cross cultural)

well, it was nigh on a century and a half ago (starting next year). People really did think differently, hold different moralities and different outlooks.

The South seceded because Lincoln won the election, as, among other things, an anti-slavery platform. The essential 'cause' of the North was to Preserve the Union, slavery or not. As many slaves found out later, the war made them free, but not equal.

Wars aren't usually about a single cause, but a multitude of them. Paradoxically, the States' Rights position the South held allowed them to remain disunified and disorganized, while the superior (in numbers) Union forces
defeated them in detail.

The other irony that the one thing that preserved the South for as long as it did was the Union generals.
I think it was McClellan that Lincoln said "If he's not using the Army, I should like to borrow it". Until
Grant came along (I like him; he fights - Lincoln), and Sherman came along, the South was able to hold it's own.

But the North won, and that's usually what makes it 'right'.

Indeed. Nietzche said: Die Macht ist das Recht (might is right).

As to Sherman: Uncle Billy said he would make Georgia howl. He did.

ruveyn

Thanks to the Ku Klux Klan.

Shortly after the war, freed slaves had the right to vote. In many states, freed slaves vastly outnumbered the other residents, and controlled state legislatures.

Until the Ku Klux Klan came along to terrorize the South and restore Aryan privileges.

Fortunately, South African Whites are not in a position to pull the same crap.