Minister of Truth
Practically Perfect
You gentlemen will be debating the constitutional issues of whether the CSA had a reason to secede, legally, morally, etc. This is the APP, so let's leave Woodstock and farm animals out of this, shall we?
APP - USA vs CSA
- Thread starter Minister of Truth
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Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
Absolutely the Southern Slave States had a reason to secede. If they had permitted the outlawing of slavery it would have been the greatest transfer in property wealth to have occurred in human history. No governing political class anywhere at anytime in history has ever permitted such a transfer of property without resorting to arms. Unfortunately for the South that property was human property and the institution of slavery had a degenerate and corrupting influence on the South that was impacting the rest of the nation and it simply had to go.
While the North East and Great Lakes region were trying to develop into modern industrial States based on free enterprise and free labor, which was far more cost affective and productive, they we're being impeded by the Southern States and how slavery had trapped them into a one agricultural commodity European colonial aristocrat/serf-slave economic system that was incapable of modernizing and was a lead anchor around the rest of the nations neck.
While the other States were rapidly developing their industrial economies, investing in infrastructure, education, internal improvements and expanding the principles of self government the South was trapped in an agricultural caste system, dominated by the Plantation owner class, which prevented these developments from occurring within the Southern States making it both an economic and intellectual backwater of the nation where it has largely remained despite the demise of slavery. At the time of the Civil War the South lagged behind the industrializing free labor States by more than a century in technological and economic development.
It was the cultural conservatism of the South, which was primarily responsible for it being a backward and undeveloped society, which doomed it to being conquered by the North, when it insanely decided to attack the North, who would eradicate the peculiar institution and force the South to adapt to change at the point of a gun. We have, in fact, seen several political cycles in our history where the entrenched cultural conservatism of the South has forced the rest of the nation to coerce the South to adapt to needed change and several times at the point of a gun.
The American Civil War was an object lesson on the dangers of entrenched social conservatism and its inability to innovate and adapt to change and what the consequences can be economically, politically, socially, culturally and militarily.
While the North East and Great Lakes region were trying to develop into modern industrial States based on free enterprise and free labor, which was far more cost affective and productive, they we're being impeded by the Southern States and how slavery had trapped them into a one agricultural commodity European colonial aristocrat/serf-slave economic system that was incapable of modernizing and was a lead anchor around the rest of the nations neck.
While the other States were rapidly developing their industrial economies, investing in infrastructure, education, internal improvements and expanding the principles of self government the South was trapped in an agricultural caste system, dominated by the Plantation owner class, which prevented these developments from occurring within the Southern States making it both an economic and intellectual backwater of the nation where it has largely remained despite the demise of slavery. At the time of the Civil War the South lagged behind the industrializing free labor States by more than a century in technological and economic development.
It was the cultural conservatism of the South, which was primarily responsible for it being a backward and undeveloped society, which doomed it to being conquered by the North, when it insanely decided to attack the North, who would eradicate the peculiar institution and force the South to adapt to change at the point of a gun. We have, in fact, seen several political cycles in our history where the entrenched cultural conservatism of the South has forced the rest of the nation to coerce the South to adapt to needed change and several times at the point of a gun.
The American Civil War was an object lesson on the dangers of entrenched social conservatism and its inability to innovate and adapt to change and what the consequences can be economically, politically, socially, culturally and militarily.
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Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
I think I may have won this debate by default.