25 Percent Of Americans Open To Secession

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I think you know that by "on the dole" I mean those who take far more than what they've put in (if they've put anything in) without any desire to do anything for a living. Those who vote democrat for the sole purpose of perpetuating their lifestyle.

If you go back a few post of mine and read what I wrote you'll see what I was talking about. The end of slavery was only a partial success. You can't make me feel all naughty and remorseful by twisting my words around so that I come of as racist.
That's what you're doing.

Agreed.

True, the forces of reaction had tried to undo Lincoln's accomplishment, but that doesn't nullify what Lincoln had done. It just means the fight for equality has yet to be one.
And no, I'm not trying to make you sound like a racist, I'm just saying you're wrong.

If that means racists, people motivated by fear of "the other," and people with backward religious ideas they want to enforce on everyone else, then I'm in agreement with him.

War is of course stupid and worthless, and people shouldn't have to give their lives. But it should be recalled that it was the Confederacy that had started aggressions, and that Lincoln almost to the very end had tried to negotiate an end to hostilities. There are few legitimate reasons to give up human life, but freeing people from undeserved bondage is one such reason.

Correct. The North continued to have slaves until the turn of the century. The last slaves to be freed belonged to the Governor of New York and he unwillingly had to free all 200 slaves he owned.
The North had a more rigid social structure as far as a class system is concerned and was considered to be more racist than the south according to many notable abolitionists, including the great author, Charles Dickens.
Most of the purehearted abolitionists were not in favor of the war. The majority of Northern Abolitionists wanted all the slaves deported from America for the sake of white supremacy.
Additionally, the international slave trade was banned in the confederacy.

Secession was a right that was guaranteed in legal documents, such as the Kentucky Resolve. Secession was culturally considered to be an implicit part of the constitutional contract, and this cultural viewpoint stayed constant until Lincoln came into office and had to change that idea in order to start his war.

The war itself was about money as it always is. The North was industrializing and most of the northern states had accumulated debt. Meanwhile the South had booming business. Money was slowly being taken out of southern hands to the north on taxes, but only at trace amounts. The power of the states was balanced preventing any action to be taken from one side or the other. Then Kansas applied for statehood, which caused massacres, as people violently went to protect their interests. If Kansas were to be a Free State, they would likely become industrialized and join the North and impose greater taxes that would siphon off Southern Profit to benefit Northern Industry. If Kansas was to be a Slave state, they would likely be agricultural and side with the South and cut off Southern funding of Northern Industry. Additionally, either side that won would have immediate political power in Kansas and thus alter the balance immediately. Note also, that free states still had slaves and the main difference was in regulations.
After much bloodshed, Kansas became a free state and voted to impose massive taxes on the South which increased the tax rate to about 60%. The southern Elite, both black and white, didn't care to halve most of their profit reduced. Abolitionists didn't like these taxes because it would reduce economic incentives to free slaves and reduce the ability for positive change to be made. The South would secede claiming that they were no longer adequately represented in the congress and that the Northern states were imposing unfair taxes on them.
Upon secession, the Union Armies were asked to leave. Lincoln refused (an act of war), and sent supplies to the Union Armies (an act of war.) Union troops had begun to enact acts of violence in the South. Despite months of requesting troop withdrawls, the Union would not answer, and when the North started trying to resupply the Union troops, the south responded. The south fired, without injuring anyone, Lincoln claims the South has committed unwarranted acts of war against the Union and launches a propaganda campaign to start the civil war. As it turns out, evidence has been found in Lincoln's letters that he orchestrated the firing on Fort Sumpter to give way for a war.
Lincoln would continue in arresting tens of thousands Northern political dissidents, and censor and/or disband northern newspapers in order to control information to allow the war to happen.
Northern P.O.W. camps would end up having death rates comparable to Auschwitz, particularly the Ellismira and Chicago P.O.W. camps. Camps were given explicit orders to torture the men with the utmost cruelty.

Well, there were quite a few free black people who preferred slavery. William Ellison was a free black man who became one of the wealthiest slaveowners in the south and there were quite a few like him. Even among those who were slaves, there was a percentage who preferred it because of stockholm syndrome regardless of whether or not they could improve their lot in life.

Except it didn't. It continued in the North for several more decades. And to slaughter hundreds of thousands of people, including many who were supposed to be freed, is somehow justified by the end results? More than 600 thousands soldiers, not including the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed or maimed. In Sherman's March, he had his men seek out and kill 1/4 of the civilian males and maimed another 2/4 or 1/2. That doesn't include the women or children both black and white who would meet the same fate at his hands. Do the ends really justify the means? Why did America have to be one of only two countries to end slavery through war?

So, is that why Lincoln refused prisoner exchanges while keeping an extremely cruel, bloody, and murderous P.O.W. policy? And when the South sent prisoners north as an act of goodwill, why did the North turn them down?
Is that why Lincoln asked Fox to resupply Fort Sumpter while refusing to go to negotiations over that incident even though the south had constantly requested negotiations for months?

Who started the aggression anyways? Didn't Major Robert Anderson burn down Confederate properties six days after the secession? Didn't he take a cannon and aim it at a city?
Isn't sending an armed fleet into another country's territory to resupply a foreign army an act of war?

Yep, and the strangeness of American slavery doesn't end there. My maternal great-grandmother's family was one of several white families who were indentured (contractually and practically slaves) to the owner of a northwest Georgia plantation where the black slaves had volunteered to teach her alongside their own children in the school that the owner encouraged and paid for. Not all slaveowners were evil, not all "slaves" were black and stupid, and not all black slaves were resentful and hostile (covertly or otherwise) to their owners or others. Remember, during the Reconstruction Period, most newly freed slaves hadn't the wherewithal to leave the plantations and agreed to continue working as indentured servants. Many of those servants saved wisely and were able to pay off their servitude quickly, and still save enough to propel them into self-owned businesses. Not that any of the conditions of reconstruction were morally right or generally effective for the freed slaves, but the normalcy biases of 21st Century Americans (which appear to expect every slave to have been a nascent Frederick Douglass) don't always match the realities of 18th and 19th Century slave life where, as little more than an economic reality, slavery was socially and politically quite varied and fluid.

animaster-

While there were black slave owners in the American south, same as there were black millionaires under apartheid in South Africa, the fact remains, they were in both cases a minority whose numbers have been blown out of proportion for political reasons.
And while there may have been blacks who preferred slavery, they were almost certainly a minority.
Hostilities started with the Confederacy at Fort Sumter. Lincoln's response to secession was in fact his duty, as he had sworn to protect America against enemies both foreign and domestic, and secessionists qualify as domestic enemies.
And slavery continued in the north after the Civil War? What slavery was that?
As for the reason why Lincoln had refused prisoner exchanges was because Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis had devised the reprehensible policy of murdering all black soldiers serving in the Union army rather than taking them captive.
And Sherman's march, and all the devastation it caused? Well, they were fighting a war to win, not to be gentlemanly. Would the Confederacy have acted any different had the situation been reversed? I sort of doubt it, considering how Pro-Union communities in the south had been devastated by Confederate troops, or how Pro-Union German immigrants in Texas and Missouri had been targeted by Pro-Confederate vigilante violence.

Sure, not all slave owners were evil, but the institution of slavery certainly was.
As for slaves not being resentful toward their owners - it really depended on who was asking them the questions. Long after the war, elderly former slaves often had told white interviewers that they had held no animosity toward their former owners, but when other blacks had asked the same question, the truth came out about cruelty and white supremacy, and the resentment that they the former slaves still had felt.
And it's absolutely true, many of the first forced labor in America consisted of indentured servants who more often than not had been treated any better than slaves. The difference was, those indentured servants went on to freedom, and to live lives as equals to their former masters. The same could hardly apply to black slaves.

Wait a minute - - slavery continued in the north to the turn of the century? Uh, which century are you referring to? If you mean up to the end of the 19th century, I really have to ask what history book you pulled that one from.
And Lincoln had faked the attack on fort Sumpter? Really? In what revisionist Neo-Confederate source does it say that, because it certainly doesn't in any legitimate history books.
Southern elites being both black and white? Considering that the Confederate war aims clearly speak of white supremacy, it makes it highly unlikely that blacks would ever be counted as elites, let alone as equals.
More social equality in the south than the north? Maybe in the northeast - just as it was also the case in the southeast. Much truer social equality existed in the west (and yes, I am a westerner ).
And in regard to Union POW camps being comparable to Auschwitz - maybe so, but they were absolutely no worse than Confederate camps like Andersonville.

There was no food in the South during the later years of the war.Who knows if the prisoners in the South would have been fed if there was plenty.The captives up North were starved when there was an abundance of food available.I'm in total agreement that no person should ever be a slave(I also have white ancestors that were indentured servants),but lets not whitewash the war crimes the North is guilty of.

was referring to the gov'ts of the states representing the old confederacy, and NOT people. the lions' share of southern senators and congressmen block forward progress on the problems besetting our nation, am only stating the obvious and not intending to insult southerners in general.