Why America Lost the Civil War and how it will lead to our ruin. (Agree?)

I dunno about this one, I don't considder myself fully American, but I am still eternally greatful that the Yanks won the war.

I would completely hate to live in a world where states rights still had the power that the south wanted them to. America never would have become a world power without a strong federal government, and the country would be a weak and internally divided nation. The Civil War truly united the United States, no longer were people New Yorkers, Alabamans, Wisconsinites or Virginians, but Americans.

There is also the cultural issue, the south had a much more defined culture before the war than today. Southerners had a very rigid class system with less social mobility than there was in even England at the time. This system included the plantation owners and other large landholders which acted like a form of noblility and ruled through economics over lower classes of common people. This would be an absolutely horrible system to live under, unless you were in the ruling class. Also much of the south's fighting force came from the lower classes, and they were duped into fighting for the economic rights of the upper class in my oppinion.

Finally, Lincoln never wanted the radical reconstruction to take place, had he not be murdered, the rebuilding of the south would have been very different and the states would be welcomed back into the union. Lincoln did fight the war for the slaves as well, and was greatly pained by the south's rebelion, missing sleep and feeling that he failed the nation. Quite a tragic way for such a great man to live his final years, but he did save the nation and free thousands of people from one of the US's worst abuses, slavery.

May Peace Travel With You
~Astral

Pro individual rights are a large part of it, agreed but I also think they want to give people these rights by getting the federal government out of the business that belongs more on the local state level where local state citizens have more say. What may be good in one state may not be good for another. The Republicans and the Democrats IMO believe in no individual rights.

Texas, the Demos and Repubs believe in individual rights as well, the problem is simply that they don't necessarily believe in States' Rights.

States' Rights better insure that an individual's rights will not be threatened. A "citizen's" rights to be more accurate.

The major parties don't respect that on the national level, State governments obviously do more than Federal elected officials do.

As for Astral:

I dunno about this one, I don't considder myself fully American, but I am still eternally greatful that the Yanks won the war.

The Yanks had to win the war, secession was not the answer, if only the Southerners were fighting for States' Rights and not secession, then they would have won what they wanted, freedom everlasting.

I would completely hate to live in a world where states rights still had the power that the south wanted them to. America never would have become a world power without a strong federal government, and the country would be a weak and internally divided nation.

This is not true. In 1844 the United States virtually doubled its land mass, which already was about the size of the major European nations on the European Continent and British Isles. They accomplished this in a "state-centered" federal system.

This is because the Federal Government does have certain enumerated powers that allow for it to make the Union a strong Union and not a dissolving Confederacy of different "nations".

[quoteThe Civil War truly united the United States, no longer were people New Yorkers, Alabamans, Wisconsinites or Virginians, but Americans.

The Civil War destroyed the United States and created a nation that would be more appropriately named "The Federal Districts of the District of Collumbia."

There is also the cultural issue, the south had a much more defined culture before the war than today. Southerners had a very rigid class system with less social mobility than there was in even England at the time. This system included the plantation owners and other large landholders which acted like a form of noblility and ruled through economics over lower classes of common people. This would be an absolutely horrible system to live under, unless you were in the ruling class. Also much of the south's fighting force came from the lower classes, and they were duped into fighting for the economic rights of the upper class in my oppinion.

The Southerners fought to remove the Northerners from their lands, plain as that.

Finally, Lincoln never wanted the radical reconstruction to take place, had he not be murdered, the rebuilding of the south would have been very different and the states would be welcomed back into the union. Lincoln did fight the war for the slaves as well, and was greatly pained by the south's rebelion, missing sleep and feeling that he failed the nation. Quite a tragic way for such a great man to live his final years, but he did save the nation and free thousands of people from one of the US's worst abuses, slavery.

May Peace Travel With You
~Astral

I don't believe there is any hard evidence Lincoln did not want this. The Democrats were pro-States' Rights, the Republicans wanted to construct their own ideology into the system, whether they truly believed it would centralize the nation as it did is also indeterminable, but that is the effect it had.

Andrew Johnson (Lincoln's Successor) was a Jacksonian Democrat who firmly believed in States' Rights. He was impeached by the Republicans.

To think Lincoln would not have done what his entire party did, is I think being blindly faithful.