Comments on: Letter: The South Started It!

By: Brendan Wolfe

Brendan Wolfe — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:30:14 +0000

I would add to Henry’s comment that the claim that slavery would have died out eventually is an easy one to make — when you are not the one in chains.

By: Henry

Henry — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:35:48 +0000

It would be interesting to see the source for Lauren R Baum’s claim: “As General Lee tried to say so often; given a bit of time rather than leaping into the war, slavery would have died of natural causes.” If Lee really thought that slavery was dying out, he didn’t know the Southern economy very well. And we have to wonder how long Lee thought slavery would hang on — another 50 years? A hundred? The notion that slavery was dying out and that the slaveholders would let it go, if only they were left alone, is a claim often heard–but it is a myth. Slavery was producing huge profits and all the leading indicators were pointing upward. In his book “The Slavery Debates,” Robert Fogel says that “the profitability of slavery was increasing, not declining, on the eve of the Civil War. Moreover, the sharp rise in the purchase price of slaves relative to their rental price meant that slave owners were never more confident about the future of their system than they were during the last half of the 1850s.” In an earlier work, “Time on the Cross,” he wrote “There is no evidence that economic forces alone would have soon brought slavery to an end without the necessity of a war or some other form of political intervention. Quite the contrary; as the Civil War approached, slavery as an economic system was never stronger and the trend was toward even further entrenchment.”

By: Brendan Wolfe

Brendan Wolfe — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:26:37 +0000

We do a lot to encourage discussion around here, but this is just nonsense.

By: Lauren R Baum

Lauren R Baum — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:20:20 +0000

Marse Robert as he was known to his men, most of who would have followed him beyond the obvious end of the Souths ability to answer the attacks of the North, not because they were such Southern louts without brains as that they revered their commander to that depth.
He was far beyond the greatness of even such men as George Washington whom we have not glorified enough and Abraham Lincoln whom we have praised beyond the ridiculous.
Marse Robert never once showed the hatred that has been borne out by the Northern hate mongers, who have consistently used the issue of race and slavery to justify their hatred of the southerner. As General Lee tried to say so often; given a bit of time rathere than leaping into the war, slavery would have died of natural causes and would have saved 100′s of thousands of lives and million of dollars worth of property in a war where we were all family.
He was a man who chose to support his state and protect his family rather than follow the dictates folly of Lincoln who chose, through ignorance to attack the South. And be not fooled he did attack Fort Sumner.
The Southern people are now and have always been a proud people, long descended from Celtic tribes who make up the Irish and Scotish. And as Rome could testify, and Cesar has written, they were no people to push around.
They are descendants of the very same tribes who sacked Rome twice successfully and then left it due to lack of interest. The war was never won by the Northern troops or the Generals, it was lost by the South’s lack of resources. The north never fielded a General who could go head to head with General Lee.
General Lee is one of my distant forebears both through the Lee family of England but more closely through the Carters and directly through his mother. I make no claim to greatness, due to my relationship. Greatness is earned. But in General Lees case, greatness could have been conferred upon him because of his marriage to Martha Custis Washington’s grand daughter who’s adoptive grandfather was the father of our country, but also that the Lee family can lay claim to no less than two signers of the declaration of independence.
General Lee’s greatness was earned by his love of God, love of Family and love of his country in that order. It is well known that he was a member of the US military prior to the war of the Rebellion, and he loved America and was bitterly torn by the decision he was forced to make. Part of his his greatness was earned as a fact that he planned his battle strategies to protect his home rather than to attack anothers and his care was for the men who followed him and did their utmost to carry out their duty.
Lee came as near as Washingto to that apex of adoration; First in Peace, first in war, first in the hearts of his countrymen.
It strikes me that the diatribesthat have been lifted against some of our country’s greatest heros are nothing more or less than vile, revisionist history.
America must be brought low and forced to bow at the feet of one worldism. In order to achieve that end, our youth must be brainwashed into the idea that we are descended from not apes alone, but savage apes without love, Justice nor Honor.