The American Revolution was started by about one third of the population of the thirteen colonies. This one third encompassed the landed wealthy, the educated, the middle class, the yeoman farmers, and the illiterate. Basically every strata of society in terms of money, education, prestige, personal or political power. But it was ONLY one third of the population. And the reasons theses thirteen colonies eventually revolted against England were what exactly? Come on class, I know you know. Yes, the young lady in the back. Correct. They rebelled because they were sick and damn tired of not being represented by their government, weary of abuses by that government, and convinced upon logical, moral, philosophical, legal, and spiritual reasons that their government no longer cared about the well being of it’s subjects. After the war was over, the Loyalists were allowed to keep their homes, farms, businesses, and lives. The loyalists went on to become citizens in a new country; free to engage in commerce, free to hold public office, worship how they wished, and be an integral part of their local and state communities.
The French Revolution was another animal altogether. The French rebelled not just against their king, but their entire wealthy class. The revolutionaries at this point were the poor and the scant middle classes. They were essentially used as pawns by figureheads. Figureheads who, after the revolution, engaged in bloody purges, expropriation of property, and let us not forget the systematic redistribution of wealth and lands. The idea of Liberté, égalité, fraternité, took a while to really catch up when pitted against the public spectacle of watching your particularly boorish former landlord get his head whacked off.
And then there was the American Civil War. To say that the Civil War was fought to end slavery in the southern states is to say that pushing the gas pedal makes the car go. The complex myriad issues of that time cannot be recounted by anything less than a thorough study of American history and law since the founding of freaking Jamestown up through the actual night Fort Sumter was taken by the Confederates. Over a deuce and a half centuries of uniquely American jurisprudence, legislation, taxation, bank failures, bitter fights in the new Congress, personal injustices and rivalries, philosophical antipodes of thought, and what exactly our own law (as embodied by our Constitution and Bill of Rights) stood for and exactly how much power our federal government had over local and sovereign rule of the individual states came to a head. The argument over states’ rights verses federal power grabbing was lost in the emotional impact of the Emancipation Proclamation. During that little revolution, innocent and apolitical people in the South were murdered and had their homes burned to the ground during Sherman’s march to the sea. Outnumbered, outgunned, under financed, and with the moral low ground, the Confederacy still managed to stave off Federal oppression for the four bloodiest years in American history. After losing their revolution, the Confederacy was subjected to punitive taxation, forced labor, direct violation of the Third Amendment for the only time in US history, it’s citizens were locked out of political power for over a generation, its wealth divided by fiat, and property rights trampled. Aside from the question of the injustice of one person being able to own another person, every single OTHER aspect of the Union’s prosecution of the Civil War was illegal, immoral, and contrary to the very things this country was founded upon. On the other hand, our country was still young enough that if it had been torn asunder, foreign powers would have looked at the pieces as just something else to fold into their own empires, which could have just led to the cycle repeating itself as in paragraph one.
So what’s my point?
Good question.
When I started writing this, I was thinking about how each time a vast revolution has occurred in the last couple centuries, the warfare has been bloodier and the victors more harshly treated the losers. (I obviously left out most of the turmoil the world has witnessed as petty dictators and avowed socialists/fascists fomented revolution for their own ends. I left out the changes that happened as progressions of a political nature as well. I was thinking more about a popular, democratic type of revolution rather than say, a communist one.) As I got to the part about the US Civil War, however, I realized that no fight is more bitter than a fight between brothers. No one fights more fiercely than the man who knows, in his heart, that his enemy should be his friend and their goals should be toward the common good, not the good of one over the other. No man, who has to face his brother, or his neighbor, or his friend, across a line of battle, is more aware of that voice in his head that says, “how could he be so wrong about this?”
So folks, pick your flavor. Choose your fate. Decide NOW if we need to keep heading towards civil unrest, disobedience, and outright rebellion. Then decide what it will look like, based on history, and extrapolate out from there. Decide if what you believe is true and right and good will keep being true and right and good if you have to go a-soldier for it. I think I know my answer. I hope I know what the people who hold public trust would answer. I only fear that both they (and far too many of us) haven’t even thought about the question yet.
cross posted at The Line Is Here
You speak of The Confederacy with: “and with the moral low ground”. This is based on what, exactly ? The following, “Aside from the question of the injustice of one person being able to own another person, every single OTHER aspect of the Union’s prosecution of the Civil War was illegal, immoral, and contrary to the very things this country was founded upon.” ?
The unfortunate reality of slavery was Constitutionally protected in EVERY STATE OF THE UNION !
You started out well, but,
Boo Hoo, you had me and you lost me.
Jeff Stone
March 3rd, 2009
Mr. Stone,
Constitutionally protected, yes. But protected via a compromise necessary to forge the country into a unified whole to begin with. It was still immoral and contrary to the ideals upon which this country was founded.
toaster
March 4th, 2009
@Jeff Stone: Xst, endeavor to make sense next time. Are you vexed that you can no longer have slaves or that your side “lost”? Hard to tell.
Liberty Girl
March 4th, 2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Compromise
Jeff, you are mistaken. Jeeze, this is not the argument I thought I would get about this post…
MLG
March 4th, 2009
In other news…
Yeah, brother against brother conflict is the worst.
David
March 4th, 2009
[...] I agree with quite everything Mr Liberty Girl (yes, that’s Mister) had to say, but I’m awfully glad I read it. Really, there’s nothing quite like a stirring call to arms, especially when you’ve [...]
Vodkapundit » “…if this goes on.” March 4th, 2009
@David: *stare*
Liberty Girl
March 4th, 2009
uhmmm … I also opened my eyes a little wider at the “moral low ground” statement.
Since I’m not blessed/cursed with an American government education, my view is based on what I learned in the 50′s in Canada, as well as reading, reading and more reading.
What I learned is that the logsplitter brought in the slavery issue when support for the war of northern aggression was losing steam and support. The more interesting aspect of the Civil War was the moral low ground … the last slave transporters were based in New York City, and the last slave owners were based in New England (Boston if memory serves). What I found interesting and astounding is that slavery started out as the English norm – indentured servitude – and the very first documented slave owner was a black man who had served out his servitude.
That all said … I’m strongly in favor of a combination Boston Tea Party / CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkey Revolution … with the leaders of the Demonrats being led directly to the slicing stations … evil fucks that they are!
pete in Midland
March 4th, 2009
Pete … Canadian education is too Brit-o-centric.
The Brits tried to condone the South simply because they were their biggist trading partner, and the tariffs the North imposed effected them as well. During the war, they were also their arms dealer.
This issue IS complicated … but the trigger was the monied South’s fear of losing Slavery. The Mason-Dixon Compromise, and the Bloody pre-war fighting in Kansas and Missouri were not about abstruse legal points … they were about fear of an Abolition Amendment.
Kristopher
March 4th, 2009
OK, we seem to be getting sidetracked a little. The slavery issue as an aspect of the Civil War was not the point. The point was that we, the population of these currently united states, need to take a second and think about what is happening in terms of the long view. If the screamers out there on the right decide to do something violent, how do you think the administration of 44 is going to react? Are they going to use the “emergency” as cause to restrict the rights of everyone? (Remember, good ol’ Rahm says an emergency is a terrible thing to waste.) After that first bout of unplanned and ill prepared lunacy occurs (and you all know it will) and then the govt decides to answer with whatever draconian response they can pull out their three functional brain cells, what happens next? And are you ready for it?
Mister Liberty Girl
March 4th, 2009
More to the point than my previous post: I know the value of what I hold to be good and right and true. And I think I know what that would demand of me.
toaster
March 4th, 2009
As an aside to the aforementioned sidetracking… NO government that allows one human being to OWN another human being is moral. (By that same token, conscription is not moral either, but that’s another show.) Selling your own indentures however, is a different story. I sold my indentures to the US Navy for defined terms with defined expectations by both parties; among those was the right not to have my indentures sold to another party, the govt was required to house, clothe, and feed me, and I was guaranteed a certain monetary compensation for my labors. An indentured servant has rights, a slave does not. A slave has no choice, an IS does. An IS makes a decision to do a certain amount of labor in exchange for a certain date of emancipation, a knowledge base, passage to a destination, or some other agreed upon end game. A slave is property; with no choices in any single aspect of his present or his future, and with no prospect of emancipation shy of the grave. The man who owns a slave, even Thomas freaking Jefferson, is not a human being; he is just an animal that has learned to rationalize away his base nature. So yes, the Confederacy was fucking wrong. ON THAT POINT. But just like ol’ TJ, it didn’t mean they couldn’t be right about other things.
Mister Liberty Girl
March 4th, 2009
“and you all know it will) and then the govt decides to answer with whatever draconian response they can pull out their three functional brain cells, what happens next? And are you ready for it?”
I have been thinking about this for some time now, well, ever since it became obvious we have a President that is the enemy within…curiously enough, I was reading about the oust of the Shaw of Iran and how when the shit hit the fan there, the military did not fire upon the civilians. It was the main reason the revolution was able to rest control.
If it came down to our government throwing down the gauntlet on our people…I am confidant( at least within the next few years) our men and women in the military will splinter before they shoot at their own…no matter, it is a very scary thought, I hope it does not come to this….but then again…liberty or death? I know what I would choose.
javamartini
March 4th, 2009
I don’t think it’s accurate to say that revolutions/civil wars are getting more uncivil. Rather, I think the American Revolution was unusually civil, at least from our side. It’s an anomoly that creates the impression of a trend. Remove it and you have a flat line of steady barbarity.
tim maguire March 5th, 2009
off topic, we’ll have to have slightly different viewpoints … since I accept no guilt for what happened generations ago.
on topic … as I said yesterday, I’, quite ready to help take this country back from the morons and savages … AND help live up to the founders dream that we would never allow despots like bambam to destroy us.
pete in Midland
March 5th, 2009
OK, we seem to be getting sidetracked a little. The slavery issue as an aspect of the Civil War was not the point…
A little advice then, which I hope you and other readers here will heed. Drop the “War of Northern Aggression” schtick and quit taking about the Civil War as anything other than a war over slavery.
Seriously, don’t mention States Rights in the same breath as the Civil War – it doesn’t matter if slavery was or wasn’t the only reason for the war, linking States Rights to the ACW gives States Rights a bad name and we can’t afford that right now.
Totalitarians argue against liberty by saying some people will abuse liberty so we need to take it away from everyone. It’s a lousy argument, but some people buy it and you don’t help when you remind everyone that the Confederacy invoked the notion of liberty to defend the practice of slavery.
Your first two points about the US and French revolutions were perfect. Why the need to sully them with an apology for Jeff Davis and his cronies? It undermines everything else you’re for. Give it up. The Confederacy was a bad thing created by a decent poeple corrupted by an evil idea. You don’t need to defend it. You shouldn’t want to.
And you shouldn’t let nostalgia for the antebellum South get in the way of protecting our Libery today. Put away the Stars and Bars. Every time you wave it, you give Obama and his allies ammunition. Stop it. Please just stop it.
JMH
March 5th, 2009
@JMH: It’s not much of a discussion if you don’t actually comprehend what you’ve read. Try again.
Liberty Girl
March 5th, 2009
No, I comprehend the message about bloody “brother vs. brother” civil war. I think you (or Mr. LG, rather) are also wrong about that – the Civil War was only bloodier than earlier wars because machinery was more deadly, not because the fighting was animated by stronger passions.
The post also exaggerates the travails of Reconstruction and the horrors of Sherman’s March to the Sea, probably because the whole Son-of-the-South nostalgia bit.
The Founding Fathers all would have been hanged if the revolution failed. How many members of Jefferson Davis’ cabinet joined him going to the gallows? None. Davis himself wasn’t even hanged. His VP served in Congress after the War. Every Confederate state was readmitted within 5 years (okay, 5 years and 4 months for Georgia) of the end of the fighting. Neither reconstruction nor Sherman’s march were picnics for the South, but most failed insurrections get far worse treatment.
FWIW, I had ancestors who fought on the Tory side in the Revolution. They were most decidedly not welcome to stay after the war was over, and moved to Canada. There was a great deal of very nasty fighting in the Carolinas during the Revolution.
But I remain firmly in agreement with MLGs observations about the differences of the American and French revolutions. Class warfare is far bloodier than a broad-based rebellion based on lack of representation in the government. The efforts of some politicians today to drive us further towards class warfare are dangerous and evil.
JMH
March 5th, 2009
JMH..
Listen, I get that you are worried about noise on the signal diluting the message, really I do.
However, you are affording me a teachable moment, so if you will allow, I will expound upon it.
Firstly, you are correct in part of you commentary: the Civil War was indeed more bloody due to advances in the ability of one human to rend another apart. But you fail to make the next step…how much worse will it be NOW? Back then, the ability to own a rifle that was the exact same quality as the armed forces carried was perfectly acceptable. Is it now, or will any government troops or even police units have the population in general at a mechanical disadvantage from the offset? The entire point of the post was an attempt to make people think about exactly how bad things could get if events take a bad turn.
Your next mistake was to say that I was advocating something I was not: not once in this entire comment thread or in the original post have I stated, not one little bitty bit, anything resembling an apology for the Confederacy. In fact, I have plainly stated the exact opposite. I have related history, sir, not opinion or editorial. For you to somehow take any of the above as ‘nostalgia for the antebellum South’ is tantamount to you thinking I sure wish I could own people as property. At the very least, you are making an attack towards ME, rather than the words and ideas, which causes you to lose credibility. And here’s a FWIW for you, sir: My ancestors not only OWNED slaves, they imported both slaves from Africa and indentured servants from Europe. It has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on this discussion however, because I wasn’t responsible for it. The fact that your Tory ancestors were made unwelcome and moved to Canada is not relevant either. They were the exception, not the rule.
You bring up the fact that “reconstruction” officially only lasted a few years, however you fail to point out that after the Confederate states were re-admitted to the Union, “reconstruction” still limited political and business opportunities for Southerners for at least a generation. Or that often times, those who helped rebuild the South only were allowed to do so because those individuals came from the North, i.e. ‘carpetbaggers,’ and held political power or owned successful businesses ONLY because they treated with Union interests.
Facts matter, sir.
My entire point, ill made as it must seem to you, is not the causes of revolution, but the consequences thereof.
Do you, personally, believe that our country is heading towards something resembling any of those three scenarios? Do you, personally, think that it is possible our government is making such bad choices that some rock with lips is likely to go off half cocked and mess things up for the rest of us? Unfortunately, I do. I am just trying to say that people out there need to realize a few things: 1) what do you believe? Do the rich deserve to be destroyed because they aren’t doing their part when the top five percent already pay 29 percent of all the taxes? Does our government need to be overthrown? Or are the resolutions professing the right to ignore Washington D.C., already in the works in statehouses across the country, merely the preamble to secession and all that it entails? 2) Do the citizens of this country really know the entirety of what any of the three scenarios really entail? And 3) What are YOU, or they, or I, going to be willing to do, and to whom, if push comes to shove?
I offer no answers here. I am simply asking people to think about it for themselves, realize what their own personal boundaries are, and decide if they believe the principles this country was founded on are even worth trying to restore when faced with a government and at least fifty two percent of the voting public who don’t seem to give a damn anymore.
Mister Liberty Girl
March 5th, 2009
Mr. LG,
Based on the way you presented the ACW material, I made assumptions and I shouldn’t do that. I apologize.
I don’t think you – or 99% of those nostaligic for the South – have any desire to reinstate slavery or any doubt about it being a bad thing. I do believe there exists however a nostalgia for other elements of Southern culture that aren’t stained by the issue of slavery. That’s fine – any nostalgia is usually predicated on a bit of selective memory anyway. But it bothers me when I see that nostalgia encourage people to plead the Confederacy’s case.
Why does it matter, and how does it connect to your larger, more important, point? Here’s how I see it. There were many tensions leading up to the Civil War, but Slavery was the one that couldn’t be resolved. Everything else could be negotiated by reasonable people, but not slavery, and it spun off other contentious issues. All the arguments about admitting new states were fueled by the need to preserve a Free-Slave balance in the Senate, for instance. If not for the issue of slavery, the war could have been avoided.
And so who is to blame for that? Clearly not the abolitionists. Their desire was to right a very clear wrong. I blame the southern aristocracy. Even though by the 1850′s slavery had become a financial drag, it was too ingrained in the self-image of their culture. They dreamed up conspiracy theories about Northern Aggression to avoid confronting the simple fact that their countrymen were asking them to stop keeping humans in bondage. Worse, they conscripted noble ideas such as States Rights into defense of their indefensible way of life.
Because southern leaders spent the twenty years leading up to the Civil War doggedly refusing to let go of something they didn’t need, they plunged the country into the worst bloodshed it’s yet seen.
Bringing it to today. 52 percent of our countrymen severely dissapointed you and I last November, and it’s led me to do a lot of questioning along the lines you describe. There is a lot to fear, but recent events have given me a little bit of hope. Here’s why, and here’s why I reacted so strongly to the Confederacy business.
A good sized chunk of that 52 percent seem to be having some buyers remorse. They’re begining to realize Obama conned them. I shake my head and want to spit when I see these fools complaining he’s not who they thought he was, but I hold my tongue. They’re fools, but they’re also important votes we need to salvage things. They can help atone for their stupidity if we show them the way. Get them on our side long enough to undo the damage. In the long run, we have to sort out some bigger issues, but in the long run you first gotta survive the short run.
Making them think the other side is a bunch of slavery apologists won’t help pry them away from Obama’s grip. Giving up nostalgia for some mythically cleansed antebellum South might be the price for gaining back something resembling what the Founders created. Other people are going to need to consider making other sacrifices too.
We all have to think long and hard about what it is that’s causing a majority of voters to give power to corrupt hacks.
Because if shooting does start, I don’t know which of the three scenarios plays out. No one does, no one can. It’s the biggest crap shoot in the world, and nobody’s playing with house money.
JMH
March 5th, 2009
JMH, Your last paragraph was perfect. I thank you for it. It summarizes exactly what I was trying to say.
I think you still are making an assumption about me personally, but I can see that we are both at least awake and thinking.
Our history is full of bad compromises and political expediency, and the slavery issue is just one of many. And despite what you see as dressing up that particular pig by the South as a state’s rights issue, the fact (the actual fact, sir) is that our founders HAD to agree to state sovereignty and the acknowledgment of individual rights in order to get us past the Articles of Confederation. Then the Federal government tried to change the rules less than a hundred years later. Even within the Confederacy, individual states had named rights in regards to self governance that the Union states did not. I have not, do not, and will not say that the South was some cleansed ideal of free thought, or enlightened attitudes, or was even mildly hip but misunderstood, because any thinking person would realize that was not the case. But to ignore history based on how it has come to be thought of depending upon which end of the spectrum of geography, education, or ideology you come from rather than on the realities of the moment within the context of the scope of history, the interrelations of world, local, or personal politics, and the economic trends represented, is not just to be doomed to repeat it, but is an indicator that the same problems will continue to BE problems until all the facts are actually known and dealt with out in the open, not simply talked about in hushed tones hoping no one else hears you speaking and gets offended by your words.
If I can’t say that the Civil War was a revolution, just because it will offend someone who takes it as an attack on “the black president” or because it is too politically incorrect that even friends on our side misconstrue the meaning because they get bogged down in the semantic weight of the words as well as the emotional quotient of the argument, then we still do not live in a country that has free speech. Freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, to assemble, to bear arms are all protected rights. Freedom to not ever be offended by how someone else chooses to exercise those rights is not.
Please, sir, you seem to have a well ordered mind; do not let your own prejudices about what you THINK I am saying detract from the things I am ACTUALLY saying. I didn’t mention the Civil War or the Confederacy with anything resembling nostalgia or apology. Just because I live in Florida, that doesn’t mean I’m driving around with a rebel flag in the back of my pick-em-truck. All I am seeing from you is a somewhat skewed reflection. You read my post, assumed you knew what I was saying based on your own life experiences, and then proceeded to attempt to dress me down for it. The funny thing is, I also got ripped by the other side saying that I was too hard on the Confederacy by saying they had the moral low ground.
Feel free to come back and read, to contribute your comments, or even to vent your spleen. But remember this; I never say anything I don’t mean and I always mean EXACTLY what I say. Nothing more, nothing less.
Mister Liberty Girl
March 5th, 2009
Excellent post and comments.
I’m not going to start anything, but I’m also not interested in sitting idly by while Communism is rammed down my throat.
Looking at the history of collectivist states in the 20th century, inaction could turn out to be far bloodier in the long run.
I’m still in a nervously “wait and see” mode at the moment.
rickl
March 6th, 2009
I see a big fundamental problem brewing with the new rise in class warfare. Concentrations of wealth are necessary to start new businesses and expand existing ones. You can’t build a factory and have it put out a product at the same time. You need a concentration of seed corn to plant the next year. You eat the seed corn, there will be no crop next year.
It appears that one reason for the success after the American Revolution is the joining of forces amongst the economic classes. Rich and poor served and fought, on both sides. It was not a poor versus rich fight, nor slave state versus free.
The left keeps harping on about class warfare, of soaking the rich, yet forget that the rich have their utility. And with the rise in 401ks, IRAs, mutual funds and such, the boundary between economic classes become blurry, diffused. A lot of folks are watching the markets respond to Washington’s actions and are getting nervous.
But I also don’t think it will get bloody, at least from the right. We are a democracy, and if the majority of the population feel a party is taking the nation the wrong way, they vote that party out of power. It is what happened in 94 when the Dems went too far, and happened again in 06 when the Republican did the same.
Ben Gibson
March 8th, 2009