Ignoring the issue of slavery, who would you have wanted to win the civil war?

[Inverse Icarus]

ignoring slavery, the North.

i'm not sure if what i want or what i know, most likely a mixture.

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


How are you defining General?

Over a third of the South held slaves, and in the Deep South it was half.

Regardless, over 90% of Southerners owed their livelihoods and economic prosperity to the institution of slavery.

Bull****. Get your facts right for a change, Boris.

[MrFun]

Slowwhand, he is probably counting even the poorer Southernern families who owned one to five slaves on a smaller farm.

Not just the wealthy plantation owners, but all classes of slave owners. Right Boris??

[SlowwHand]

Even if he meant that, he's wrong.
To the vast majority of The South, it was State's Rights; which meant much more than slavery.
It meant what many Northerners back to this day.
Still, my answer remains The North.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by SlowwHand


Bull****. Get your facts right for a change, Boris.

*ahem*

"Almost one-third of all Southern families owned slaves. In Mississippi and South Carolina it approached one half. The total number of slave owners was 385,000 (including, in Louisiana, some free Negroes). As for the number of slaves owned by each master, 88% held fewer than twenty, and nearly 50% held fewer than five.

For comparison's sake, let it be noted that in the 1950's, only 2% of American families owned corporation stocks equal in value to the 1860 value of a single slave. Thus, slave ownership was much more widespread in the South than corporate investment was in 1950's America.

On a typical plantation (more than 20 slaves) the capital value of the slaves was greater than the capital value of the land and implements." Source: http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/stat.html

"Census data can be appealed to in order to determine the extent of slave ownership in each of the states that allowed it in 1860. The figures given here are the percentage of slave-owning families as a fraction of total free households in the state. The data was taken from a census archive site at the University of Virginia.

Mississippi: 49%
Louisiana: 29%
Kentucky: 23%
South Carolina: 46%
Texas: 28%
Arkansas: 20%
Georgia: 37%
North Carolina: 28%
Missouri: 13%
Alabama: 35%
Virginia: 26%
Maryland: 12%
Florida: 34%
Tennessee: 25%
Delaware: 3%

In the Lower South (SC, GA, AL, MS, LA, TX, FL -- those states that seceded first), about 36.7% of the white families owned slaves. In the Middle South (VA, NC, TN, AR -- those states that seceded only after Fort Sumter was fired on) the percentage is around 25.3%, and the total for the two combined regions -- which is what most folks think of as the Confederacy -- is 30.8%. In the Border States (DE, MD, KY, MO -- those slave states that did not secede) the percentage of slave-ownership was 15.9%, and the total throughout the slave states was almost exactly 26%."

As a note, Southerners claimed the North was trying to UNDERESTIMATE the number of slave-holders in the South. Their aim was to demonstrate how vital slavery was to the Southern economy:

"It will thus appear that the slaveholders of the South, so far from constituting, numerically, an insignificant portion of its people, as has been malignantly alleged, make up an aggregate greater in relative proportion than the holders of any other species of property whatever, in any part of the world; and that of no other property can it be said, with equal truthfulness, that it is an interest of the whole community." (from James D.B. DeBow, DeBow's Review - January 1861, pp. 67-77)

This is first-hand documentary evidence taken from the census of 1860.

I will happily accept your apology any time for calling me a liar without knowing what you were talking about. I know you're a big man and will undoubtedly do so.

[Shi Huangdi]

The North. Tampering with history that mcuh would likely cause some of our ancestor to not meet, meaning we all would not exist.

[MrFun]

States' rights was nothing but a facade.

Reread the posts of mine and Boris --- Southern politicians screamed and howled about states rights when it was convenient for them.
Then when they wanted the federal government to take strong-arm action to protect slavery, Southern politicians demanded a stronger federal government in that aspect.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by MrFun
Slowwhand, he is probably counting even the poorer Southernern families who owned one to five slaves on a smaller farm.

Not just the wealthy plantation owners, but all classes of slave owners. Right Boris??

I see no logical reason to differentiate between classes of slave holders. Even a person who held 1 slave is a slave holder.

[MrFun]

exactly, Boris

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Even if he meant that, he's wrong.
To the vast majority of The South, it was State's Rights;

And slavery, and protecting slavery was by far the most cited cause of the war by Southerners. It's in the secession documents, it was what they spoke about most in the secession legislatures, it was all over the editorial pages of the Southern newspapers.

And let's not forget the "Cornerstone" speech, eh?

[MrFun]

Let's give Slowwhand some time to read these flurry of posts from both of us -- don't want to overwhelm the poor guy.

[Aeson]

If slavery wasn't part of the issue then I would have to say the south. I don't think the federal government should have the right to forcibly keep states from leaving the union.

If slavery wasn't part of the issue though, then the south might not have wanted to leave in the first place.

[Boris Godunov]

Hey, I just want my apology!

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Aeson
If slavery wasn't part of the issue then I would have to say the south. I don't think the federal government should have the right to forcibly keep states from leaving the union.

If slavery wasn't part of the issue though, then the south might not have wanted to leave in the first place.

The federal government did not violate the Constitution, thus, the South had no reason to secede other than their own, extreme reason -- to preserve slavery.

[Aeson]

And I was postulating based on the 'leave slavery out of it' part of the original question.

Even if the Constitution isn't violated though, States should still have their right to withdraw from the Union if the populace wishes it. The Constitution was drawn up long ago, and ratified before anyone living here in the US was born. It isn't a sacred document that could never be wrong.