William Marina: Ron Paul is simply misinformed about the Civil War
[Mr. Marina is Prof. Emeritus in History, FL Atlantic U., Research Fellow, the Independent Inst., Oakland, CA, & Exec. Dir., the Marina-Huerta Educ. Foundation.]
While I like Ron Paul as my candidate, he is simply wrong on the Civil War.
There is no indication the South wanted to end Slavery in the way it had ended in other nations; on the contrary, radical leaders there wanted to expand it into the American West (Bloody Kansas), and to create a Slave Empire in the Caribbean, especially Cuba. Lincoln and Alexander Stephens, in the 1840s opposed the illegalities of the aggressive Mexican War proponents, a fact never mentioned in diatribes by Tom DiLorenzo.
Is Ron, as a Texan, unaware a major reason Texas broke from Mexico, was because the Mexican Const. had ended Slavery, and the Texan-Americans there wanted to keep it?
Intellectually, the South was falling behind in Science, etc., just as it is today, especially Texas, under the sway of textbook committees that deny Evolution. In that regard, it may be that Dr. Lynn Cheney is a greater long term threat to Liberty than even her husband.
There is no doubt Freedom of Thought is in danger today, but it was equally, if not more so, the case in the Old South as documented by such books as Clement Eaton's classic, Freedom of Thought in the Old South.
In a geopolitical sense, I cannot imagine a United States, even a decentralized, anti-empire one as I prefer, that would allow another nation such as the Confederacy, to control the mouth of the Mississippi River System, which drains the entire central portion of the continent from mountain chain to mountain chain.
Grant said it all, after his victory at Vicksburg, the key battle of the War, in his telegram to Lincoln, "the Father of Waters flows once again, uninterrupted, to the sea," and commerce came flowing out to demonstrate that Cotton was not King.
It is a great tragedy that Lincoln was a mercantilist, centralizer, but that cannot be changed by falsifying History! What Ron Paul neglects to mention is that the South, unlike other nations, such as Brazil, that freed their slaves, was much more deeply racist, then and afterwards, a fact that is traced in Bruce Bartlett's new book, due out Jan. 8th: http://www.opinionjournal.com
While I like Ron Paul as my candidate, he is simply wrong on the Civil War.
There is no indication the South wanted to end Slavery in the way it had ended in other nations; on the contrary, radical leaders there wanted to expand it into the American West (Bloody Kansas), and to create a Slave Empire in the Caribbean, especially Cuba. Lincoln and Alexander Stephens, in the 1840s opposed the illegalities of the aggressive Mexican War proponents, a fact never mentioned in diatribes by Tom DiLorenzo.
Is Ron, as a Texan, unaware a major reason Texas broke from Mexico, was because the Mexican Const. had ended Slavery, and the Texan-Americans there wanted to keep it?
Intellectually, the South was falling behind in Science, etc., just as it is today, especially Texas, under the sway of textbook committees that deny Evolution. In that regard, it may be that Dr. Lynn Cheney is a greater long term threat to Liberty than even her husband.
There is no doubt Freedom of Thought is in danger today, but it was equally, if not more so, the case in the Old South as documented by such books as Clement Eaton's classic, Freedom of Thought in the Old South.
In a geopolitical sense, I cannot imagine a United States, even a decentralized, anti-empire one as I prefer, that would allow another nation such as the Confederacy, to control the mouth of the Mississippi River System, which drains the entire central portion of the continent from mountain chain to mountain chain.
Grant said it all, after his victory at Vicksburg, the key battle of the War, in his telegram to Lincoln, "the Father of Waters flows once again, uninterrupted, to the sea," and commerce came flowing out to demonstrate that Cotton was not King.
It is a great tragedy that Lincoln was a mercantilist, centralizer, but that cannot be changed by falsifying History! What Ron Paul neglects to mention is that the South, unlike other nations, such as Brazil, that freed their slaves, was much more deeply racist, then and afterwards, a fact that is traced in Bruce Bartlett's new book, due out Jan. 8th: http://www.opinionjournal.com