Recent content by burt

Oh, what I wouldn't do to shoot pit bulls all day long. Shoot them all.

You read what you want, make up what you want, and discard the rest. Shit, you are obtuse! The Corwin Amendment accomplished nothing that Lincoln hadn't already stated his beliefs about - that there was no authority to interfere with slavery where it existed. If it had been successful in...

It would do you so much good if you would include things in their context. from Lincoln's letter to Horace Greeley: " As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the...

I have never claimed Lincoln was an abolitionist in the sense of a Garrison or Brown, although he was one in the sense that he favored the institution's ultimate extinction. You seem incapable of understanding that difference. No, he represented a client in court in respect of the existing...

Did Lincoln want to abolish slavery? Yes. Was he in favor of slavery? Not in any way that I am aware of. Did he think there was any constitutional power for the president to interfere with slavery where it then existed? No. Did he support a plan to re-establish blacks in Africa? Yes ...

You obviously read just what you want, make up what you want, and discard all the rest. Not a good recipe for understanding anything.

I think its important to realize that the original wave of secession of the deep South was a colossal failure. Out of 15 slave states, only seven seceded. They threw a great party and no one of importance showed up. The Confederacy was delivered into this world stillborn. And what did...

If you would like to rely on Prof. James D Fearon's definition of what a civil war is, as does heavenlyboy34, here is a more complete version from a 2006 Washington Post article of his: 1) Civil war refers to a violent conflict between organized groups within a country that are fighting over...

Whose nullification? The only people bitching about nullification in the 1850s were southerners, and they were bitching about northern states nullifying fugitive slave laws with their Personal Liberty Laws. So, do we hear any libertarian hoorahs here for the northern states who fought against...

You obviously read just what you want, make up what you want, and discard all the rest. Not a good recipe for understanding anything.

Tim Russert on Meet The Nation: "According to Paul, Abe Lincoln should never have gone to war - there were better ways of getting rid of slavery." If you want to claim that the war was not about slavery, then the only thing left is that the US got rid of slavery in the most peaceful way...

You have a great talent for avoiding the point. Even the Wikipedia page that you provided gave many definitions for what constituted a civil war. You chose one of them. (first you accuse me of an appeal to authority for asserting that most people on both sides in the 1850-60s referred to it a...

Can't have your cake and eat it too. Can't claim in one breath that the Civil War was not fought to free slaves, and then in the next breath claim that only the US fought a civil war to free the slaves, while everyone else did it peacefully. The fact is that you cannot pretend to know what...

You mean the War Where the Yankees Kicked the Rebel's Asses? :) It is incorrect to think of Illinois as a purely "northern" state that was anti-slavery. The southern portion of the state was nestled in between two slave states, and slavery was allowed in salt mines there until about 1850...

Lincoln only had a part in representing slaveholders in two cases in the 1840s IIRC, which even you should realize came before the fugitive slave act. It is a puzzlement to everyone why he agreed to participate in those cases, and he was well known to be anti-slavery in opinion. If you...