Most of what he says is denotative true, but there's a few things are wrong.
First, he says that troops from Fredricksburg were sent to quell the draft riots. That was Gettysburg. That's a misidentification.
Second, he mentioned that the Union forces were being destroyed by the Confederates with some minor victories. Meh, the Eastern Theater was going sideways, but that was mostly thanks to McClellan being an idiot. Yeah, Lincoln micromanaged a bit, that's because McClellan failed to even attack a Confederate force of maybe 12,000 with over 180,000 troops for months. Union generals repeatedly lost battles and withdrew. Grant is described as murderous to his own troops, but most of them supported him because he kept attacking even when he lost, meaning that the Union forces would still gain ground, even when they lost battles. The Confederacy basically never had any chance to win the Civil War once the US Navy up-ended their blockade of Chesapeake Bay, tactically. George McClellan was the only chance they actually had at winning, had he won an election, he would have sued for peace. He got BTFO'd in the election (though that election wasn't exactly "clean" by any measure, even on a philosophical basis: hey, if the rebel states didn't leave, can't they still vote in that election?)
Third, he said that the South was the economic powerhouse of the country. Not really. They were. The Civil War took place during the Industrial Revolution. The Northern states' industries were incredibly powerful, but we hadn't reached the Guilded Age power levels yet. The South's lack of rail infrastructure, and lack of industrialization meant that a war economy was utterly inept compared to the North's. The South didn't believe that, and were warned that a war of secession would go badly, and really thought they'd be likely to win. Instead, the plantation & slave economy of the south is basically proof of how retarded it had gotten. By the time of the 1860's, slaves were being trained to run, fix, and maintain cotton gins, and early proto-tractors. Industrialized agriculture was beginning and would have utterly eradicated slavery anyway, but the South just couldn't fucking fathom plantations without slaves. They even tried to burn their own stockpiles of cotton to drive up the price, only to have France and Britain build non-slave cotton fields in Africa and India respectively, meaning the south literally set it's own economy on fire for no reason.
Fourth, he mentioned that the South felt unrepresented. Yes, they did, but it also wasn't exactly true. For the past 100 years, political power reigned almost entirely within the South, maybe Virginia specifically. Yes, there was a conspiracy of northern, industrialist, pro-tariff, Hamiltonians in seeking to seize power from the plantation south. This had been an ongoing fight that had lasted decades already. But that doesn't mean that the South was out of power. Lincoln may have gotten the war he wanted, but he was elected because of the shit that southern plantation owners had been doing to expand slavery even when it wasn't wanted. This is best shown in Bleeding Kansas, where Texas, Georgia, Virginia, and a host of other slave states, basically sent troops and militants into Kansas to start an insurrection with the population because the settlers didn't want slavery in their state. In order to preserve the power of the slave states, the south invaded and the fighting continued into the civil war, until Topeka was raised to the fucking ground. We can also point out that the Fugitive Slave Law, and it's ratification by the Supreme Court, was a desperate attempt to permanently institutionalize slavery, even in the north, where it was illegal in many states. I've ranted about the Fugitive Slave Law before, but it's a wild violation of constitutional authority, and an eradication of states rights pushed by the south. But, like Razor said, the south doesn't have to be good, for Lincoln to be bad. The unfortunate truth is, the Jeffersonian Republic that Thomas envisioned was already dead by the 1850's. This is what the Industrial Revolution just kind of does.
Fifth, I don't know about the accusations of mass rapes by Union troops. There's no question they looted, burned, and pillaged. That was intentional. Rape specifically? I just haven't heard accusations like that that are confirmed by anything. It's kind of like accusations of open murder. There is no evidence that Union troops went out, lined people up against walls, and shot them one by one. The Civil War is actually most remarkable in that it has some of the fewest civilian casualties of any American war. The entire battle of Gettysburg killed one civilian. One. She was outside and was accidentally shot by a stray round as the armies were moving through the town. Yes, Atlanta, Charleston, and Columbia were entirely raised, but deaths were very few, if any at all. Frankly, Reconstruction killed a hell of a lot more civilians than the Civil War did. But rapes specifically? It's just not something I've seen documented or testified to. I know how Sherman talked, and he absolutely destroyed everything he touched except the people. That doesn't mean that they might not have died in the winter, or gone through rough hardships, but when it comes to American commanders that are serial killers, Curtis LeMay still tops Sherman by a lot.
Sixth, I've said this forever, States Rights and Slavery are the same issue. It's States Rights about Slavery. Slavery was the cultural touchstone of the time, the Industrial Revolution's economic consequences around slavery fed into the problem. It was an issue during the founding of the constitution, and it only got worse as industrialization made slavery as an economic activity preposterously stupid. It's all kind of jumbled up into one massive morass. It's like saying: "Our modern cultural divisions are about the Left's over-financialization of the global economy. That has nothing to do with Cultural Marxism!" That's just wrong. It's not one or the other. Fabian Socialists are using the financialization of the economy as a mechanism to control it in order to enact Socialism. It's the same issue. On a similar point, yes: it's about taxes, tariffs, industrialization, federal centralization, Hamiltonian v. Jeffersonian philosophy, which inform States Rights... which falls into the power of Slaveocratic rule by the plantation south, the mass immigration they initiated, the protectionism they gave themselves, and the broader abolitionist movement that would have destroyed their economic order. It's the same issue..
Maybe post all this in a YT comment? Or some of it. Most of the comments criticizing RazorFist are the really stupid LINCOLN GOOD SOUTH BAD variety. He has replied to a few point-by-point refutations in the comments already. It might inspire him to make a Part 2 video.
And about the events leading up to the war...
political power reigned almost entirely within the South
a conspiracy of northern, industrialist, pro-tariff, Hamiltonians in seeking to seize power
sent troops and militants into Kansas to start an insurrection with the population because the settlers didn't want slavery in their state
a desperate attempt to permanently institutionalize slavery, even in the north, where it was illegal in many states
the Jeffersonian Republic ... was already dead by the 1850's
It sounds like instead of states with wildly different value systems vying for control of an empire, having two separate nations would have been better for both sides.
To be honest, his issue is mostly a little bit of lost nuance, and a few perceptive issues, but other than that all I can tell him is that his fundamental point about the video is entirely correct.
None of my criticisms even approach a refutation of that, because he's not wrong.
If any American president in the modern era declared "War Powers" they'd be called a dictator to. In fact, they were. Several US governors enacted the equivalent of "War Powers" by just asserting that a medical emergency gave them unlimited gubernatorial fiat to suspend protests, empty jails, and create massive fines. Some even tried to instantiate intra-state hard borders. These are dictatorial powers. The fact that Lincoln pulled the same shit Cuomo did, tells me that yes these are dictatorial powers.
That's entirely regarding the Civil War itself. Just his War Powers doctrine is dictatorial, and is objectively unconstitutional by every legal analysis. Even FDR, LBJ, Woodrow Wilson, and Richard Nixon never pulled that shit. Even they needed to go to congress to allow them to engage in "Peacekeeping Operations" or to "prosecute foreign conflicts to the benefit of the interests of the US". You can't just declare war powers and claim that you have unlimited authority until you are removed from power by an election. That's some fucking Caesar level rationalization there. In fact, Caesar (formally) had less.
To become literal dictator for 10 years, a Proconsol would have to have his Dicatatorship ratified by the Senate. Caesar only did that after he seized Rome, defeated Pompey, removed most of the Senate, and had Cesareans declare him Dictator Perpetuo well after all public dissent had been crushed, including a kind of cucked Cicero who failed to stop him.
... until he was assassinated 11 days later.
Lincoln had those powers for years.
It sounds like instead of states with wildly different value systems vying for control of an empire,
It was. That's the saddest part. Despite Americans having heroic tales from both sides of the war, there were no good guys. The Constitution was dead with the Dredd Scott decision; Chief Justice Taney and President Buchanan had guaranteed that, even while Kansas burned. The Radical Republicans had no concern for mollifying the political upheaval. The Southern Democrats had no interest in compromising on any issue regarding slavery, and wanted to maintain the political power they'd always had. The Whigs were quickly vanishing, and the only politicians that seemed legitimate were the ones claiming they would explicitly "Do Nothing", regardless of what happened politically.
having two separate nations would have been better, or no worse, for both sides.
I kinda think that if the Confederates had split off, they would devolved into infighting, economically failed, and re-integrated to the union by the time WW1 took place.
I kinda think that if the Confederates had split off, they would devolved into infighting, economically failed, and re-integrated to the union by the time WW1 took place.
Without a navy or access to rail and ports, the South would have been utterly vulnerable to navel blockade, privateers or even pirate action. Their markets were across the biggest stretch of open water in the world. The South would have instantly been made a banana republic, and been at the mercy of any power with a fleet.
The Union would have been fools not to punish the shit out of the confederacy with a trade embargo. It would have strengthened the Union financial centers and consolidated the Union's own domestic market, helping to speed along industrialization.
I do not think that things would have been better for anyone to postpone a conflict.
Most of what he says is denotative true, but there's a few things are wrong.
First, he says that troops from Fredricksburg were sent to quell the draft riots. That was Gettysburg. That's a misidentification.
Second, he mentioned that the Union forces were being destroyed by the Confederates with some minor victories. Meh, the Eastern Theater was going sideways, but that was mostly thanks to McClellan being an idiot. Yeah, Lincoln micromanaged a bit, that's because McClellan failed to even attack a Confederate force of maybe 12,000 with over 180,000 troops for months. Union generals repeatedly lost battles and withdrew. Grant is described as murderous to his own troops, but most of them supported him because he kept attacking even when he lost, meaning that the Union forces would still gain ground, even when they lost battles. The Confederacy basically never had any chance to win the Civil War once the US Navy up-ended their blockade of Chesapeake Bay, tactically. George McClellan was the only chance they actually had at winning, had he won an election, he would have sued for peace. He got BTFO'd in the election (though that election wasn't exactly "clean" by any measure, even on a philosophical basis: hey, if the rebel states didn't leave, can't they still vote in that election?)
Third, he said that the South was the economic powerhouse of the country. Not really. They were. The Civil War took place during the Industrial Revolution. The Northern states' industries were incredibly powerful, but we hadn't reached the Guilded Age power levels yet. The South's lack of rail infrastructure, and lack of industrialization meant that a war economy was utterly inept compared to the North's. The South didn't believe that, and were warned that a war of secession would go badly, and really thought they'd be likely to win. Instead, the plantation & slave economy of the south is basically proof of how retarded it had gotten. By the time of the 1860's, slaves were being trained to run, fix, and maintain cotton gins, and early proto-tractors. Industrialized agriculture was beginning and would have utterly eradicated slavery anyway, but the South just couldn't fucking fathom plantations without slaves. They even tried to burn their own stockpiles of cotton to drive up the price, only to have France and Britain build non-slave cotton fields in Africa and India respectively, meaning the south literally set it's own economy on fire for no reason.
Fourth, he mentioned that the South felt unrepresented. Yes, they did, but it also wasn't exactly true. For the past 100 years, political power reigned almost entirely within the South, maybe Virginia specifically. Yes, there was a conspiracy of northern, industrialist, pro-tariff, Hamiltonians in seeking to seize power from the plantation south. This had been an ongoing fight that had lasted decades already. But that doesn't mean that the South was out of power. Lincoln may have gotten the war he wanted, but he was elected because of the shit that southern plantation owners had been doing to expand slavery even when it wasn't wanted. This is best shown in Bleeding Kansas, where Texas, Georgia, Virginia, and a host of other slave states, basically sent troops and militants into Kansas to start an insurrection with the population because the settlers didn't want slavery in their state. In order to preserve the power of the slave states, the south invaded and the fighting continued into the civil war, until Topeka was raised to the fucking ground. We can also point out that the Fugitive Slave Law, and it's ratification by the Supreme Court, was a desperate attempt to permanently institutionalize slavery, even in the north, where it was illegal in many states. I've ranted about the Fugitive Slave Law before, but it's a wild violation of constitutional authority, and an eradication of states rights pushed by the south. But, like Razor said, the south doesn't have to be good, for Lincoln to be bad. The unfortunate truth is, the Jeffersonian Republic that Thomas envisioned was already dead by the 1850's. This is what the Industrial Revolution just kind of does.
Fifth, I don't know about the accusations of mass rapes by Union troops. There's no question they looted, burned, and pillaged. That was intentional. Rape specifically? I just haven't heard accusations like that that are confirmed by anything. It's kind of like accusations of open murder. There is no evidence that Union troops went out, lined people up against walls, and shot them one by one. The Civil War is actually most remarkable in that it has some of the fewest civilian casualties of any American war. The entire battle of Gettysburg killed one civilian. One. She was outside and was accidentally shot by a stray round as the armies were moving through the town. Yes, Atlanta, Charleston, and Columbia were entirely raised, but deaths were very few, if any at all. Frankly, Reconstruction killed a hell of a lot more civilians than the Civil War did. But rapes specifically? It's just not something I've seen documented or testified to. I know how Sherman talked, and he absolutely destroyed everything he touched except the people. That doesn't mean that they might not have died in the winter, or gone through rough hardships, but when it comes to American commanders that are serial killers, Curtis LeMay still tops Sherman by a lot.
Sixth, I've said this forever, States Rights and Slavery are the same issue. It's States Rights about Slavery. Slavery was the cultural touchstone of the time, the Industrial Revolution's economic consequences around slavery fed into the problem. It was an issue during the founding of the constitution, and it only got worse as industrialization made slavery as an economic activity preposterously stupid. It's all kind of jumbled up into one massive morass. It's like saying: "Our modern cultural divisions are about the Left's over-financialization of the global economy. That has nothing to do with Cultural Marxism!" That's just wrong. It's not one or the other. Fabian Socialists are using the financialization of the economy as a mechanism to control it in order to enact Socialism. It's the same issue. On a similar point, yes: it's about taxes, tariffs, industrialization, federal centralization, Hamiltonian v. Jeffersonian philosophy, which inform States Rights... which falls into the power of Slaveocratic rule by the plantation south, the mass immigration they initiated, the protectionism they gave themselves, and the broader abolitionist movement that would have destroyed their economic order. It's the same issue..
Maybe post all this in a YT comment? Or some of it. Most of the comments criticizing RazorFist are the really stupid LINCOLN GOOD SOUTH BAD variety. He has replied to a few point-by-point refutations in the comments already. It might inspire him to make a Part 2 video.
And about the events leading up to the war...
It sounds like instead of states with wildly different value systems vying for control of an empire, having two separate nations would have been better for both sides.
To be honest, his issue is mostly a little bit of lost nuance, and a few perceptive issues, but other than that all I can tell him is that his fundamental point about the video is entirely correct.
None of my criticisms even approach a refutation of that, because he's not wrong.
If any American president in the modern era declared "War Powers" they'd be called a dictator to. In fact, they were. Several US governors enacted the equivalent of "War Powers" by just asserting that a medical emergency gave them unlimited gubernatorial fiat to suspend protests, empty jails, and create massive fines. Some even tried to instantiate intra-state hard borders. These are dictatorial powers. The fact that Lincoln pulled the same shit Cuomo did, tells me that yes these are dictatorial powers.
That's entirely regarding the Civil War itself. Just his War Powers doctrine is dictatorial, and is objectively unconstitutional by every legal analysis. Even FDR, LBJ, Woodrow Wilson, and Richard Nixon never pulled that shit. Even they needed to go to congress to allow them to engage in "Peacekeeping Operations" or to "prosecute foreign conflicts to the benefit of the interests of the US". You can't just declare war powers and claim that you have unlimited authority until you are removed from power by an election. That's some fucking Caesar level rationalization there. In fact, Caesar (formally) had less.
To become literal dictator for 10 years, a Proconsol would have to have his Dicatatorship ratified by the Senate. Caesar only did that after he seized Rome, defeated Pompey, removed most of the Senate, and had Cesareans declare him Dictator Perpetuo well after all public dissent had been crushed, including a kind of cucked Cicero who failed to stop him.
... until he was assassinated 11 days later.
Lincoln had those powers for years.
It was. That's the saddest part. Despite Americans having heroic tales from both sides of the war, there were no good guys. The Constitution was dead with the Dredd Scott decision; Chief Justice Taney and President Buchanan had guaranteed that, even while Kansas burned. The Radical Republicans had no concern for mollifying the political upheaval. The Southern Democrats had no interest in compromising on any issue regarding slavery, and wanted to maintain the political power they'd always had. The Whigs were quickly vanishing, and the only politicians that seemed legitimate were the ones claiming they would explicitly "Do Nothing", regardless of what happened politically.
I kinda think that if the Confederates had split off, they would devolved into infighting, economically failed, and re-integrated to the union by the time WW1 took place.
Without a navy or access to rail and ports, the South would have been utterly vulnerable to navel blockade, privateers or even pirate action. Their markets were across the biggest stretch of open water in the world. The South would have instantly been made a banana republic, and been at the mercy of any power with a fleet.
The Union would have been fools not to punish the shit out of the confederacy with a trade embargo. It would have strengthened the Union financial centers and consolidated the Union's own domestic market, helping to speed along industrialization.
I do not think that things would have been better for anyone to postpone a conflict.