Debates
29 May 10
30 May 10
Originally posted by zeeblebotDorling Kindersley.
the last time i read the "it wasn't about slavery" point was in my kid's D&K book on the Civil War (the first time was in Social Studies class in Texas, late elementary or junior high, i think).
D&K is a European publisher that makes books with a lot of nice photographs, supported mostly by captions and chapter intros.
i'll look it up the text and post it.
The Visual Dictionary of the American Civil War.
p. 38
Slavery
Slavery in the United States was not the cause of the Civil War. The main issues were states' rights, the question of whether or not a state could nullify its compact with the Federal government, and the legality of seizing U.S. property inside state lines. But slavery brought those issues to a head. Lawmakers in slave states created Black Codes - rules that defined the slave's place in Southern society and pressed all whites to look to their enforcement. ....
Ironically, slavery continued to be legal throughout Lincoln's lifetime in any state that remained in the Union.
...
30 May 10
Originally posted by Bosse de NageThere's no requirement that a country be a democracy in order to be recognized as a country.
Yes, you could point it out on the map. A country without a government from 'independence' until 1992 or 2002, depending how you look at it. Except those two months in 1975 before the FNLA, MPLA and UNITA started fighting each other. I guess that's what the 'Angola' in the OP refers to. But this ground has already been covered.
Democracy is still not particularly healthy in Angola.
30 May 10
Originally posted by zeeblebotDid your Texas Social Studies class mention these sentences from Texas' A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union?:
the last time i read the "it wasn't about slavery" point was in my kid's D&K book on the Civil War (the first time was in Social Studies class in Texas, late elementary or junior high, i think).
D&K is a European publisher that makes books with a lot of nice photographs, supported mostly by captions and chapter intros.
i'll look it up the text and post it.
We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
That in this free government *all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights* [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html#Texas
Bet not.
30 May 10
1 edit
Originally posted by adam warlocki gave you some details for which you asked but have not yet had the benefit of reading your comments thereon.
The conditions in Angola are the ones to be expected in country that was at war for 40 plus years.
it is very difficult to get any thing done efficiently and promptly there.
Even though I don't know exactly what your friend is referring to I think that this is mostly true.
Can you provide a few more details of what exactly you're talking about?
30 May 10
Originally posted by Sartor ResartusSorry but I've missed them.
i gave you some details for which you asked but have not yet had the benefit of reading your comments thereon.
What your friend says is true. Telephone and internet connections are slow and fail a ot in Angola. And everybody complain that things get a lot of time to be done.
But this is country that came for 40 plus years of war, and until the 1950's (more or less) had virtually no access to higher education for its African population.
Also peace in Angola has only 8 years, so some difficulties are expected.
Things could be a little bit better (I think this is undeniable), but how much better is a subject of debate.
31 May 10
Originally posted by adam warlockThank you for your comments which I shall pass on to my friend.
Sorry but I've missed them.
What your friend says is true. Telephone and internet connections are slow and fail a ot in Angola. And everybody complain that things get a lot of time to be done.
But this is country that came for 40 plus years of war, and until the 1950's (more or less) had virtually no access to higher education for its African popu ...[text shortened]... a little bit better (I think this is undeniable), but how much better is a subject of debate.
31 May 10
Originally posted by wolfgang59Oh, yes, shame on Portugal.
Because there was never a stable government. "Civil War" broke out at independence ... but as pointed out "Civil War" is incorrect as there was no unified country.
Shame on you Portugal!
Shame on a democracy who was less than one year at the time for not being able to stop a civil war where one of the factions was funded by the USSR and the other one by the US. Yes. In its infant steps, Portugal didn't even have a Constitution by the time, but that shouldn't stop it from establishing a safe transition in the middle of a war against three separatist factions of a Cold War proxy. Not to mention that there was also Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, etc. that a revolutionary provisional government had to take care of. Oh, and of course Portugal should have stopped the US from undermining the Alvor Agreement by increasing military aid to only a part of the coalition leading to mounting tensions or Cuba and the USSR for aiding the other one.
Shame, shame, shame.
06 Jun 10
Originally posted by Bosse de NageThe most convenient way to explain my argument is by using Wiki as my source. Yes, I know it's not reliable. If any of the facts are incorrect please let me know.
OK, my analogy between the USA and Angola was poor: the South tried to secede from the USA, so the USA remained the USA throughout the Civil War; Angola, on the other hand, was not Angola to begin with, and did not become Angola until elections were held in 1992. Therefore the US Civil War has no relevance to this thread; you can all stop talking about ...[text shortened]... ist except, perhaps, on paper.
I'm running out of ways in which to make this basic point.
After the Angolan War of Independence (1961–1974) which ended with a leftist military coup in Lisbon, Angola's independence from Portugal was achieved on November 11, 1975 through the Alvor Agreement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Angola
The Alvor Agreement, signed on January 15, 1975, granted Angola independence from Portugal on November 11, ending the war for independence while marking the transition to civil war. The agreement, signed by the MPLA, the FNLA, UNITA, and the Portuguese government, was never signed by the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda or Eastern Revolt as the other parties excluded them from negotiations. The coalition government established by the Alvor Agreement soon fell as nationalist factions, doubting one another's commitment to the peace process, tried to take control of the colony by force.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvor_Agreement
The FLEC acts in the region occupied by the former kingdoms of Kakongo, Loango and N'Goyo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLEC
This last entry indicates an independent political system from the rest of Angola i.e. three kingdoms.
07 Jun 10
1 edit
Originally posted by no1marauderyou see what revisionism does to you!
Did your Texas Social Studies class mention these sentences from Texas' A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union?:
We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity ...[text shortened]... olding states.
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html#Texas
Bet not.
----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_American_Civil_War#Onset_of_the_Civil_War_and_the_question_of_compromise
Onset of the Civil War and the question of compromise
Henry Wilson, author of History of The Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (1872-1877).
Abraham Lincoln's rejection of the Crittenden Compromise, the failure to secure the ratification of the Corwin amendment in 1861, and the inability of the Washington Peace Conference of 1861 to provide an effective alternative to Crittenden and Corwin came together to prevent a compromise that is still debated by Civil War historians. Even as the war was going on, William Seward and James Buchanan were outlining a debate over the question of inevitability that would continue among historians.
Two competing explanations of the sectional tensions inflaming the nation emerged even before the war. Buchanan believed the sectional hostility to be the accidental, unnecessary work of self-interested or fanatical agitators. He also singled out the "fanaticism" of the Republican Party. Seward, on the other hand, believed there to be an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces.
The irrepressible conflict argument was the first to dominate historical discussion. In the first decades after the fighting, histories of the Civil War generally reflected the views of Northerners who had participated in the conflict. The war appeared to be a stark moral conflict in which the South was to blame, a conflict that arose as a result of the designs of slave power. Henry Wilson's History of The Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (1872–1877) is the foremost representative of this moral interpretation, which argued that Northerners had fought to preserve the union against the aggressive designs of "slave power." Later, in his seven-volume History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the Civil War, (1893–1900), James Ford Rhodes identified slavery as the central—and virtually only—cause of the Civil War. The North and South had reached positions on the issue of slavery that were both irreconcilable and unalterable. The conflict had become inevitable.
But the idea that the war was avoidable did not gain ground among historians until the 1920s, when the "revisionists" began to offer new accounts of the prologue to the conflict. Revisionist historians, such as James G. Randall and Avery Craven, saw in the social and economic systems of the South no differences so fundamental as to require a war. Randall blamed the ineptitude of a "blundering generation" of leaders. He also saw slavery as essentially a benign institution, crumbling in the presence of 19th century tendencies. Craven, the other leading revisionist, placed more emphasis on the issue of slavery than Randall but argued roughly the same points. In The Coming of the Civil War (1942), Craven argued that slave laborers were not much worse off than Northern workers, that the institution was already on the road to ultimate extinction, and that the war could have been averted by skillful and responsible leaders in the tradition of Congressional statesmen Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. Two of the most important figures in U.S. politics in the first half of the 19th century, Clay and Webster, arguably in contrast to the 1850s generation of leaders, shared a predisposition to compromises marked by a passionate patriotic devotion to the Union.
But it is possible that the politicians of the 1850s were not inept. More recent studies have kept elements of the revisionist interpretation alive, emphasizing the role of political agitation (the efforts of Democratic politicians of the South and Republican politicians in the North to keep the sectional conflict at the center of the political debate). David Herbert Donald argued in 1960 that the politicians of the 1850s were not unusually inept but that they were operating in a society in which traditional restraints were being eroded in the face of the rapid extension of democracy. The stability of the two-party system kept the union together, but would collapse in the 1850s, thus reinforcing, rather than suppressing, sectional conflict.
Reinforcing this interpretation, political sociologists have pointed out that the stable functioning of a political democracy requires a setting in which parties represent broad coalitions of varying interests, and that peaceful resolution of social conflicts takes place most easily when the major parties share fundamental values. Before the 1850s, the second American two party system (competition between the Democrats and the Whigs) conformed to this pattern, largely because sectional ideologies and issues were kept out of politics to maintain cross-regional networks of political alliances. However, in the 1840s and 1850s, ideology made its way into the heart of the political system despite the best efforts of the conservative Whig Party and the Democratic Party to keep it out.
07 Jun 10
Originally posted by no1marauderi remember discussion of the secession ordinances. not sure if it was in a different class, or in the context of "but really, the cause was not slavery".
Did your Texas Social Studies class mention these sentences from Texas' A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union?:
We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity ...[text shortened]... olding states.
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html#Texas
Bet not.