Thomas F. Harney

[John Fazio]

(08-05-2015 11:45 AM)John Fazio Wrote:  

(08-04-2015 09:38 PM)Rosieo Wrote:  

(08-04-2015 07:50 PM)Rick Smith Wrote:  

(08-04-2015 06:30 PM)John Fazio Wrote:  

(08-04-2015 05:39 PM)Rick Smith Wrote:  John,

Agreed.

No question that Booth and his team had as their objective the decapitation of the federal government. A reflection of the Harney plan. If not all at one place, simultaneous assassination at different places would have to do.

Probably the difference in our positions is that I would have been with them.

But then, I am unreconstructed.

Rick

Rick:

No probablies about it. What will it take to reconstruct you? Two questions: Do you agree that acknowledgement of error is a mark of courage? Do you believe that slavery was desirable and therefore worth preserving even at the cost of war? Upon receipt of your answers, I will refer you to a document which I believe you will find interesting. I'll give you a hint: it is not Alexander Stephens's famous pre-war speech, nor his equally famous post-war speech.

John

John,

We may be delving into murky waters here. Although a Southerner and having many ancestors who were in General Lee's army, I do believe that if slavery was what the War was over, it was the worst reason for a fight. No slave was worth even one of the 700,000 casualties.

But there is more to it than this, and I cannot put it into words that anyone not of Southern heritage would understand. I do believe that the South was manipulated into firing the first shot; all part of Mr. Lincoln's and the radical Republicans' plan to bring on the war.

Bill Richter has written on this subject and can speak eloquently upon it; I cannot.

Rick

Now I want to ask if you're a flagger. Not sure how much I do not understand, so I refrain.

Rick:

I don't know what a "flagger" is.

John

Rick:

The document I wish to refer you to is South Carolina's Declaration of its Reasons for Seceding from the Union (that may not be its exact title; it has been a long time since I read it). Observe that it says not a word about tariffs or any of the other alleged causes of the war, but that it has a great deal to say about slavery. Statements of a like kind made by the other seceding states are largely the same in this respect. You say that slavery was the worst reason to fight and that no slave was worth even one of the 700,000 dead. Well, the document(s) to which I just referred you should remove all doubt from your mind that that in fact was what the South fought for. I believe it is time for the unreconstructed to bite the bullet and acknowledge that it was a mistake for the South to fight to preserve slavery. Yes, there were many dimensions of the root cause: the political dimension, the economic one, the social one, the cultural one. But they were all tied to the institution of slavery, which, therefore, really was the ultimate cause of the war.

John