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Lord of the Fleet





Seneca Nation of Indians

 LordofHats wrote:

First off, the south was not marginalized politically. Leading up the 1860 elections the Democratic party and the South in particular held a strangle hold of near absolute power in federal government. That tariff South Caronlina got up in arms about? The democratic controlled congresses of the 1840's pretty much destroyed it, reducing it by 1860 to essentially nothing. Northern steel industrialists had more to complain about over the tariff than southerners. The Fugitive Slave law was passed by a Democratic congress against objections by the North and was one of the most obvious triggers for the conflict. The South was not marginalized. If anything it marginalized the North.


You really want to go there? Fine: In 1859 New York had 33 seats in the House. Alabama had 7. Pennsylvania had 25 seats. Louisiana had 4. Connecticut also had 4 seats. Texas had 2, the same Rhode Island. Ohio had 21 seats. Virginia had 11. Notice a trend? (note that, at the time, Senators were not directly elected.)

For having a stranglehold, the Democrats did not have a majority in the House for about half the 1850's.

The Tariffs in question were not reduced in the 1840's, they were reduced ten years earlier under Jackson, though they were, indeed, under a Democrat controlled Congress. The reduction to War of 1812 levels was proposed in the House Ways and Means committee as a compromise, which was deemed acceptable.

 LordofHats wrote:

Economics? The North made almost all its money in agriculture and so did the south. Both were self sufficient for food. The North exported grains and the south exported cotton, rice, and tobacco. Forgive me. I don't think the plant a farmer grows is going to drive him to war with his neighbor. The only differences between these two in this respect is slaves and their use in the South being larger than in the North.


Really? Mining over a million short tons of Coal per annum by 1840 (which quadrupled again by 1850) must have been a hallucination. Never mind all those mills, they're a mirage.


 LordofHats wrote:

It really is about slavery. How the myth that it isn't and that the North and South were somehow widely different creatures has continued to persist baffles me. I blame Charles Beard. Damn fool should have kept his mouth shut.


And all those diarists and soldiers writing letters home too. They should really have kept their mouths shut about how different things were down South, and how strange things seemed to them. (Poor Allen Landis couldn't even understand what his prisoner was saying.)

 LordofHats wrote:

South offers deal. Lincoln refuses. That's not ending peaceful negotiation that's rejecting what he saw as unrealistic and asinine demands. Negotiations continued all the way until Fort Sumter was fired on.


Yes, but without Lincoln. Lincoln refused to even read it, or meet face to face with the negotiators. Meanwhile, Seward worked through a third party and pumped them full of disinformation about how Lincoln had no intention of coercing the secessionists by force of arms for a month.

 LordofHats wrote:
Protecting territorial sovereignty is the definition of a war of self defense.
Unless it's against a rebellion within those territories and then it's a war of suppression.


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 LordofHats wrote:


In the end, slavery was just a pretext for a war a long time in coming.


I've heard this theory before and its crap and always will be crap. Everything about the Civil War's origins is entrenched in slavery. The ongoing conflict between free soilers and slave owners is at the very heart of why it happened. The average southerner did not have a significantly different life from the average northerner. The elites of both regions had near identical interests baring slavery.

It really is about slavery. How the myth that it isn't and that the North and South were somehow widely different creatures has continued to persist baffles me. I blame Charles Beard. Damn fool should have kept his mouth shut.

One of the very first acts of the Confederate government was to offer the North a peace treaty and mutual defense agreement where in the South offered to purchase all the Federal lands in the South. Despite the urgings of his own cabinet, Lincoln refused to sign a peace treaty, as to do so, he felt, would legitimize the Confederacy. While neither side was willing to be the one to fire the first shot, Lincoln very deliberately closed the possibility of peaceful negotiation.


South offers deal. Lincoln refuses. That's not ending peaceful negotiation that's rejecting what he saw as unrealistic and asinine demands. Negotiations continued all the way until Fort Sumter was fired on.

1. I've heard that Civil War is the rise of the Republican as a one of the two dominating political factions in the US. and Lincoln had been seen by southern politicians with contempts before the war broke out.
2. Before the war broke out. Did most of the southern (slave-owning) polulations really share the same view as a handful of politicians there? Other says that Southern cotton planters were ready for the change. to hire cheap 'freemen' labour instead of buying imported slaves in a 'bidding' price. Others also said they accepts such changes with much slower stage of transition but not an instant ones. some others says they're reasonable folks and not as ignorant as some versions of history books said about them. http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/hm/HM_Chapter_14.htm How accurate is this fiction said about pre-war years of american politics? one might say that the politicians of the southern states did indeed makes war. Did the 'ultra-conservatives' being so strong in the souths to the points of screening out any less-hostile candicates?



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 Testify wrote:
The same amount of money spread out differently won't increase demand. In that day and age the spending habbits of poor whites and poor blacks would not have been radically different. It's not like poor white people were investing all their money in property.


New money is created. That is how fiat currency works. That is why the USA today has millions more people with millions more dollars than in 1860, despite having freed the slaves and brought in lots of other low paid immigrants, and so on.

Conversely, countries with demographic timebombs, such as Japan, are desperate to solve the problem of a shrinking economy. They know it won't make them all rich, but poor.

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

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 Ratbarf wrote:
Actually it was very true. The real root causes were a combination of economics, modernization, southern and northern nationalism, and the marginalization of the South politically. Remember that Lincoln had won the election without even being on the ballot in 11 states.



First off, the south was not marginalized politically. Leading up the 1860 elections the Democratic party and the South in particular held a strangle hold of near absolute power in federal government. That tariff South Caronlina got up in arms about? The democratic controlled congresses of the 1840's pretty much destroyed it, reducing it by 1860 to essentially nothing. Northern steel industrialists had more to complain about over the tariff than southerners. The Fugitive Slave law was passed by a Democratic congress against objections by the North and was one of the most obvious triggers for the conflict. The South was not marginalized. If anything it marginalized the North.

Economics? The North made almost all its money in agriculture and so did the south. Both were self sufficient for food. The North exported grains and the south exported cotton, rice, and tobacco. Forgive me. I don't think the plant a farmer grows is going to drive him to war with his neighbor. The only differences between these two in this respect is slaves and their use in the South being larger than in the North.

Modernization is a false category as it ultimately stems back to economic interests. Northern and Southern economic interests supported each other. Southern luxury goods went to the north for common goods and vice versa. Northern shipping was vital to Southern trade and the Northern shipping needed southern goods to trade. This isn't a system that fosters conflict it fosters cooperation. The states benefited much more from working together than from separating (and industrialists in the 1850's and 1860's were saying this very loudly as tensions rouse). What industry grew stronger in the north, like steel working, was a direct result of labor practices. Steel working requires skilled labor. Its not something a capitalist wants a slave doing.

There was only 1 truly significant difference between the North and the South. The widespread use and ownership of slaves. Every method of analysis ultimately stems back to slavery as a root cause of difference. And even then there are very few differences to be pointed out. Nothing significant enough to suggest the North and South should be fighting.

In the end, slavery was just a pretext for a war a long time in coming.



I've heard this theory before and its crap and always will be crap. Everything about the Civil War's origins is entrenched in slavery. The ongoing conflict between free soilers and slave owners is at the very heart of why it happened. The average southerner did not have a significantly different life from the average northerner. The elites of both regions had near identical interests baring slavery.

It really is about slavery. How the myth that it isn't and that the North and South were somehow widely different creatures has continued to persist baffles me. I blame Charles Beard. Damn fool should have kept his mouth shut.

One of the very first acts of the Confederate government was to offer the North a peace treaty and mutual defense agreement where in the South offered to purchase all the Federal lands in the South. Despite the urgings of his own cabinet, Lincoln refused to sign a peace treaty, as to do so, he felt, would legitimize the Confederacy. While neither side was willing to be the one to fire the first shot, Lincoln very deliberately closed the possibility of peaceful negotiation.



South offers deal. Lincoln refuses. That's not ending peaceful negotiation that's rejecting what he saw as unrealistic and asinine demands. Negotiations continued all the way until Fort Sumter was fired on.

Um, The Supreme Court ruled no such thing until after the war was over, and many view the ruling to this day to be more about legitimizing the war ex post facto then anything to do with the legal realities of the time.



There's no need to legitimize what was from the start a legitimate war. Protecting territorial sovereignty is the definition of a war of self defense. If the South sought to illegitimately break off from the sovereign authority of the United States, the United States is justified under any basic understanding of Just War to force their compliance.


So lets say it was about slavery? Does that make any difference as to the fact that it was Northern Aggression? And I'll respond to your "Secession is violence." With the response that "Abolition is theft." They would have abolished slavery and likely offered no compensation for would have essentially been a massive confiscation of property. Property that, at the time of purchase, had been legally obtained and paid for. Owning a slave was more expensive than owning a car is today iirc, if a President stated that he was going to confiscate every truck in america, and the North voted him in while the south didn't, there would be another attempt at secession because the impact is huge. All of those truck related businesses would be out of business, or would have to foot the bill for an overhaul of their entire truck fleet. So now their back's up against the wall the same as if you said you wanted to steal everything they own, because you're taking their livelihood from them. So they fight.

Plus, yes, the South took Fort Sumter, but it was in the South, that's like Ottawa declaring war on Quebec (if Quebec actually did manage to seperate) because Ottawa wanted to keep the Citadel and Quebec considered it theirs, because, you know, it's in Quebec.



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Ratbarf wrote:So lets say it was about slavery? Does that make any difference as to the fact that it was Northern Aggression?


If secession is illegitimate its very execution is aggressive. I never said secession is violent. That was another poster. Not all aggressive acts or acts of war are inherently violent. Northern Aggression is just some stupid term southerns use today to make it seem like the war wasn't their fault.

Truth: There would have been no war without Southern Secession. The South forced the war. Calling it Northern Aggression is absurdist.

They would have abolished slavery and likely offered no compensation for would have essentially been a massive confiscation of property.


Wow. Idiotic slave owning elites in the South had a paranoid delusion that the North was going to steal all their slaves and you actually support that? Had the South not seceded slavery as an institution would have probably continued in the United States for as much as a century! The Civil War ended slavery because the South forced the Norths hand by taking an extreme response to losing their stranglehold on federal power.

if a President stated that he was going to confiscate every truck in america, and the North voted him in while the south didn't, there would be another attempt at secession because the impact is huge.


Your being really really obtuse right now. Lincoln never supported Abolition. The South just had a delusion that he did.

So they fight.


Being 250 years in the future we have the benefit of knowing the South's fears were completely baseless.

Plus, yes, the South took Fort Sumter, but it was in the South,


If it is the federal governments position that a state cannot secede then no. Fort Sumter was federal land within the state of South Carolina which had engaged in open rebellion against its legitimate authority.

BaronIveagh wrote:You really want to go there? Fine: In 1859 New York had 33 seats in the House. Alabama had 7. Pennsylvania had 25 seats. Louisiana had 4. Connecticut also had 4 seats. Texas had 2, the same Rhode Island. Ohio had 21 seats. Virginia had 11. Notice a trend? (note that, at the time, Senators were not directly elected.)


Oh that is adorable. You assume that because Northern States had more seats that they marginalized the South? Aren't you cute.

Yes. I will go there. Here's a break down for you:

Senate

Year: Democrats/Whigs/Republicans/Other (Bolded for the Years Democrats had a Democratic President in office)

1839: 33/19/0/0
1841: 22/29/0/0
1843: 22/26/0/1
1845: 26/24/0/1
1847: 31/24/0/1
1849: 36/23/0/1
1851: 33/22/0/4
1853: 33/32/0/4
1855: 34/25 (This is the odd congress. The only known case of a Coalition Government in US history)
1857: 59/0/21/2
1859: 25/0/22/19

From 1845 onwards the Democratic party ruled the Senate, the most important gear in the legislative process at the time. The Whigs even when they still existed were to divided along regional lines to strongly oppose the Democratic party from 1847 onwards. A Democrat was president for all but 4 of these Congresses.

House

1839: 124/109/0/8
1841: 97/142/0/2
1843: 147/72/0/3
1845: 141/78/0/12
1847: 107/116/0/2
1849: 113/107/0/10
1851: 128/85/0/20 (What was that about the Democrats never having a House Majority in the 1850's?)
1853: 158/86/0/5[/b]
1855: 79/103/51
1857: 114/0/105/15
1859: 82/0/103/38

Of the 12 Congress' that preceded the war only 4 did not see more Democrats seated in the House than any other party and one of those Congress' was the congress of 1859 (the 36th). And for the later years of 1850's the opposition was too disorganized to oppose them. Those same years saw a Democratic president in office and Democratic control of the Senate. Buchanan may be from Pennsylvania but he was a Democrat. He even got nominated because he so closely towed the Party line and was pro-South (you couldn't get a Democratic presidential nomination without being pro-South).

Also: he Walker Tariff was a modified version of the Compromise Tariff of 1833 making it essentially meaningless and hurting industrialist interests in the United States particularly early textiles. Oh and yes. The Walker Tariff was passed in 1846. The Compromise Tariff was essentially black mailed onto the federal government by the Southern States but they still thought it was too high, especially after a boched attempt to get rid of it in 1843 backfired.

EDIT: The big problem for the Whigs, and the reason they dissolved, is that they were too divided along regional interests. They were nationally organized but many Whigs shared political positions with Democrats on numerous issues, especially in the border states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The Democrats could always rely on these Whigs siding with them on a lot of issues (and the constant threat of disunion was commonly used to blackmail others into capitulating to Southern demands).

For having a stranglehold, the Democrats did not have a majority in the House for about half the 1850's.


They didn't need one. Without a defined opposition party the Democrats held the most seats of any individual group and could do as they pleased. Stating the the Coalition opposition of 1855, the Democrats lost majority in the House but maintained it in the Senate and the Presidency making them more than able to do as they pleased since the Coalition was not effectively organized against them. Not surprising since the Coalition was made up of the American Party, the Know Nothings, early Republicans, remaining Whigs, and a bunch of independents. Even after the Republicans concretely formed and began taking seats it took until at least 1858 or 1859 for the party to truly organize.

When the Whigs collapses the Democrats were the ONLY nationally organized political party in the United States until the rise of the Republicans in 1858 and 1859. The Democrats were elected in the North and the South but federally supported Southern political ends and continued to do so all the way into the late 19th century. If you are truly incapable of even grasping this basic historical truth I suppose we'll just have to let you keep living your fantasy of how the North was oh so mean to the South.

Really? Mining over a million short tons of Coal per annum by 1840 (which quadrupled again by 1850) must have been a hallucination. Never mind all those mills, they're a mirage.


Pennsylvania's booming coal industry defines the entire North as superior to the South? Alabama and Virginia (later West Virginia) also had coal mining. Unfortunately their mines were deep in the interior and not geographically located near water ways.

Oh the textile mills? The ones using southern cotton? Yeah. The South was totally hosed by that industry. Also: The number one state for textile production in the United States from 1840 to 1860. Massechuttes of course. Number 2? Georgia. The number of textiles mills in Georgia in 1843 was thirteen. In 1849 there were thirty-three. Georgia's textile industry was so successful in growing that in 1855 it collapsed under its own weight when prices sharply dropped because they flooded the market and cotton prices rose.

Sure the North started to really over take the South by the mid 1850's and you want to know why? After Georgia's industry destroyed itself, the mills in New England were the only game in town. When capitalists tried to restart it in the South they had to problems. Land cost too much, and the South didn't have enough free labor. Yeah. It goes back to slavery. Shocker. Of course this was not a problem in Virginia, or North Carolina where there was an abundance of free labor. Investors had already started funding to facilitate the industry in these two states when tensions exploded.

EDIT: The Iron and Steel industry also suffered greatly because of the Democrats reduction of the tariff intended to protect them. No one in Europe wanted US iron as it was deemed lower in quality (and frankly it was). Without the tariff foreign iron was cheaper so the industry couldn't grow and in the mid-50's suffered a huge set back when iron flooded the market and prices dropped sharply. A case of Southern political interests hosing the North (mostly Pennsylvania).

The ultimate flaw though in the industry argument is this. If the North was so vastly more capable than the South, why then were the majority of arms and munitions used by the North in the Civil War imported from Britain. US industry prior to the Civil War was not strong in either the North or the South. It was weak before the war making up less than 10% of the national economy. You really want to argue that the United States was torn apart and embroiled in a 6 year war over 10% of the economy?

The war actually facilitated the massive northern boom that pushed the United States fully into the Industrial Revolution. The war shut the South out of Industry.

The North only gained its initial lead due to geographic advantages that throughout the 1850's were becoming less important. Miles of railroad is a commonly cited figure used to suggest the North had this massive industrial capability that didn't exist. Its deceiving. The South had a vastly well built network of Canals. They didn't need the rail road and canals are not exactly the easiest thing to build.

Your flaw is that your using an argument produced by a Marxist historian from the 1920's who produced a horribly flawed narrative of US economic interests in the Antebellum period (his wife helped). Charles Beard's narrative was rejected by historians as inherently and fundamentally flawed in the mid 50's but for some reason people keep using the damn thing. It was an important step in Civil War scholarship because no one really talked about why the war happened until he came along and shook things up, but he was dead wrong.

 LordofHats wrote:
And all those diarists and soldiers writing letters home too. They should really have kept their mouths shut about how different things were down South, and how strange things seemed to them. (Poor Allen Landis couldn't even understand what his prisoner was saying.)


Oh yes, I love this argument. It was produced in the 1960's by a bunch of Southerners who cherry picked source material. There is a mountain of letters and diaries and guess what? Some people were shocked by how similar the South was and how it was nothing like what they thought! Just because Allen Landis is a famous story doesn't make his the only one. I go down to the Giant to get milk and the guy who stocks dairy is from Nigeria. I barely understand him at all. I'm not at war with him.

But no. Do go on. How very different were there? What differences other than those directly connected to slavery, could possibly be so great that the war had to happen?

 LordofHats wrote:
Yes, but without Lincoln. Lincoln refused to even read it, or meet face to face with the negotiators. Meanwhile, Seward worked through a third party and pumped them full of disinformation about how Lincoln had no intention of coercing the secessionists by force of arms for a month.


How is that disinformation? There's never been any reason to believe Lincoln wanted violence with the South. The incident with Fort Sumter is consider his greatest blunder because it eliminated any chance for peaceful reconciliation which he did want.

 LordofHats wrote:
Unless it's against a rebellion within those territories and then it's a war of suppression.


You're arguing semantics. No one in their right mind would ever propose that a (legitimate) state cannot legitimately suppress a rebellion.

Lone Cat wrote:
1. I've heard that Civil War is the rise of the Republican as a one of the two dominating political factions in the US. and Lincoln had been seen by southern politicians with contempts before the war broke out.


His election is why they seceded. Southern elites had this fear that if the Republicans came to power that they would abolish slavery. The fear was unjustified as this wasn't a goal of the early Republican party. The party was in line with Lincoln. Abolition wasn't their goal merely containment. However the South had developed a mentality that if Slavery wasn't to be allowed in the territories that it would soon be abolished.

The irony here is of course that without the Civil War, no emancipation proclamation and we'd have likely still had slavery well into the 20th century.

2. Before the war broke out. Did most of the southern (slave-owning) polulations really share the same view as a handful of politicians there? Other says that Southern cotton planters were ready for the change. to hire cheap 'freemen' labour instead of buying imported slaves in a 'bidding' price.


No they did not have the same view. Reference the story of Georgia's textile industry. Southern capitalists were realizing in the 1850's that the South was overly dependent on cash crops whose prices were unpredictable and unreliable. They wanted to diversify the Southern economy as the North had already started doing but slavery was an obstacle as slaves were just too expensive.* Unfortunately the men who were trying to convince others of this in the South were shut out when the war started and tensions completely polarized. Following the war, there was little interest in building industry in the South (thought ironically Georgia's textile industry did recover and by 1890 was the third leading state in textile production). By the close of the 19th century textiles had mostly shifted into the South.

*When the Slave trade was banned in 1828 the only way to get new slaves was good old human reproduction (smuggling did happen but we don't know the extent of it). However in a closed market prices rise sharply and the costs of slaves was getting so high that it was becoming a major hindering factor to Southern economic growth. However by the 1850's the South's GDP was roughly on par with that of the North. The major difference was in lower class Southern Whites who commonly were very very poor.

This message was edited 6 times. Last update was at 2012/11/15 16:22:01


   
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 LordofHats wrote:

The ultimate flaw though in the industry argument is this. If the North was so vastly more capable than the South, why then were the majority of arms and munitions used by the North in the Civil War imported from Britain.


Considering that over 1 million M1861s and an additional 700,000 M1863s were produced by Springfield and it's 20 odd subcontractors, including Colt, vs around 500,000 imports for the British Enfield, how are you getting a 'majority' out of that?

 LordofHats wrote:

Your flaw is that your using an argument produced by a Marxist historian from the 1920's who produced a horribly flawed narrative of US economic interests in the Antebellum period (his wife helped).


And yours is that you insult authors rather than actually post anything that actually disproves their work other than some airy references to unnamed authors in the 1950's.

 LordofHats wrote:

Oh yes, I love this argument. It was produced in the 1960's by a bunch of Southerners who cherry picked source material. There is a mountain of letters and diaries and guess what? Some people were shocked by how similar the South was and how it was nothing like what they thought! Just because Allen Landis is a famous story doesn't make his the only one.


Really? What unit was Landis with? I know, because I've read his personal letters home, which have never been published. I'll add that in the original material I've gathered, most of the average soldiers writing home are pretty much in agreement. Granted, the sample was limited to men in a single Brigade from the New York and Pennsylvania area, but... you're going to tell me that over 200 men writing home had no fething idea what they were talking about?


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Ontario

If secession is illegitimate its very execution is aggressive. I never said secession is violent. That was another poster. Not all aggressive acts or acts of war are inherently violent. Northern Aggression is just some stupid term southerns use today to make it seem like the war wasn't their fault.

Truth: There would have been no war without Southern Secession. The South forced the war. Calling it Northern Aggression is absurdist.


But it was a legitimate secession, the forming of a central government from individual states is a delegation of authority given to a foreign power by it's people. If said people later decide to no longer delegate their authority to that foreign state it is their choice to do so, for it is their authority. Would you classify the United States as an illegitimate state? It seceded from Britain by choosing to take back its delegated authority.

Also, who invaded whom? The South prior to general invasion by the North only took aggressive action against those areas which were within its borders, and only later invaded the North in an attempt to force the capitulation of the government that had chosen to inaugurate said war.

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See, Ratbarf, this is where everything you're talking about falls apart.

The Colonies rebelled because they were not being represented by a legitimate government. If your government is illegitimate, which I'm sure we can all agree the British crown was because of that whole "taxation without representation" thing, than secession becomes a legitimate form of political action.

If you actively participate in the democratic process, which is a great way of giving it legitimacy, and then become unhappy with the results and choose to secede that it is not legitimate.

Had the South decided that the democratic process was no longer legitimate and chose not to participate in a form of government it viewed as a sham than maybe you might have a valid point. Instead they participated, and gave legitimacy, to a government up until they decided to take their ball and go home like children who just wanted to continue the very evil cause of slavery.

All this other bs that the Civil War was started because of something other than slavery, and that the South had legitimate secession is just awful.
   
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TheHammer wrote:

The Colonies rebelled because they were not being represented by a legitimate government. If your government is illegitimate, which I'm sure we can all agree the British crown was because of that whole "taxation without representation" thing, than secession becomes a legitimate form of political action.


Um...No, actually. There have been quite a few governments over the millennia who were quite legitimate and taxed without representation for the common man.

At the end, the only real determination of if a government is legitimate is 'We Won.'

Ex post facto, you can claim all the moral BS you like, history is, after all, written by the victors, but in the end, the only real measure of a government's legitimacy is survival.

After all, in the Civil War, the side that committed the most crimes against humanity won, and then claimed the moral high ground under the banner of it being a 'war on slavery'.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2012/11/15 23:08:15



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Ontario

The Colonies rebelled because they were not being represented by a legitimate government.


Actually under your definition it was a legitimate government, it was a government to whom they had sworn loyalty and fealty, in many cases explicitly, you can't get much more legitimate than that.

ie; George Washington.

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 BaronIveagh wrote:
Considering that over 1 million M1861s and an additional 700,000 M1863s were produced by Springfield and it's 20 odd subcontractors, including Colt, vs around 500,000 imports for the British Enfield, how are you getting a 'majority' out of that?


I know because I've seen the Springfield Armoy's production records maintained by the Ordnance Department. I've also seen James Ripley's personal correspondence compelling the Union to purchase foreign arms because domestic producers couldn't make enough weapons and ammo.

It is interesting though that you think the M1863 was a different rifle and that the Civil War lasted until 1872 when the Springfield armory ceased producing the M1861 and all its variants having only produced a grand total of ~1,050,000 arms for the entire decade. Only 700,000 Springfield rifles were produced period during the Civil War. Over a million arms were purchased from the British including the knock off Enfields. They also used over 300,000 of the Austrian Lorenz rifle between the two sides.

This isn't even going into ammo.

And no rebuttal for anything about the economics and industry of the North and South? Nothing about Congress? Nothing at all? Interesting.

And yours is that you insult authors rather than actually post anything that actually disproves their work other than some airy references to unnamed authors in the 1950's.


I'm willing to bet you've never even heard of Charles Beard and don't even know anything about the history of your own argument. There's too much to the Progressive interpretation of the war for me to bother going through explaining it to someone who probably doesn't care.

The most important author on the war in the 50's and 60's is Kenneth Stampp but I doubt you know who he is either.

EDIT: And Marxist isn't an insult. But I'm not shocked you don't know what a Marxist Historian is.

Really? What unit was Landis with? I know, because I've read his personal letters home, which have never been published. I'll add that in the original material I've gathered, most of the average soldiers writing home are pretty much in agreement. Granted, the sample was limited to men in a single Brigade from the New York and Pennsylvania area, but... you're going to tell me that over 200 men writing home had no fething idea what they were talking about?


Congrats on your super secret. I've also read letters from the war at the Army Hertiage Center, and I had access to ones from a hell of a lot more than just 1 unit.

Of course that's not even a real answer. Please. Tell us how so radically different the North and South were culturally. Go on.

At the end, the only real determination of if a government is legitimate is 'We Won.'


Michael Walzer would like to have a word with you.

This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2012/11/16 01:08:15


   
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This thread is becoming very hipster...

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Yes because I am sick and tired of this crap getting posted by people who probably just read some random website and otherwise have absolutely no knowledge about what their talking about.

If someone doesn't know who Charles Beard, Kenneth Stampp, or Eric Foner are they should probably just stop spewing this 'It wasn't about slavery' crap. At least McPhearson can shape an argument about the Civil War that makes a lick of sense when he goes off about economics and industry. Historians have been writing about this for too damned long for people to keep acting like Beard was the final word in the origins of the war when they've never even heard his name.

If I have to be hipster to end this crap so be it. I'm not a Civil War buff I don't even care about the Civil War. I just hate all this make believe fantasy coming from people who've probably never read a single scholarly text on the war because even the most basic ones will tell them their wrong. Even James McPhearson, the champion of economic and cultural explanations about the wars origins' adds a foot note to most of his work that basically amounts to "but it was kind of about slavery."

This message was edited 6 times. Last update was at 2012/11/16 01:14:12


   
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 LordofHats wrote:
Yes because I am sick and tired of this crap getting posted by people who probably just read some random website and otherwise have absolutely no knowledge about what their talking about.

If someone doesn't know who Charles Beard, Kenneth Stampp, or Eric Foner are they should probably just stop spewing this 'It wasn't about slavery' crap. At least McPhearson can shape an argument about the Civil War that makes a lick of sense when he goes off about economics and industry. Historians have been writing about this for too damned long for people to keep acting like Beard was the final word in the origins of the war when they've never even heard his name.

If I have to be hipster to end this crap so be it. I'm not a Civil War buff I don't even care about the Civil War. I just hate all this make believe fantasy coming from people who've probably never read a single scholarly text on the war because even the most basic ones will tell them their wrong. Even James McPhearson, the champion of economic and cultural explanations about the wars origins' adds a foot note to most of his work that basically amounts to "but it was kind of about slavery."


Hear hear.

(Only I am a Civil War buff )

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 Ratbarf wrote:
So lets say it was about slavery? Does that make any difference as to the fact that it was Northern Aggression?


When the South fired the first shots that just makes no damn sense at all.

And I'll respond to your "Secession is violence." With the response that "Abolition is theft." They would have abolished slavery and likely offered no compensation for would have essentially been a massive confiscation of property. Property that, at the time of purchase, had been legally obtained and paid for.


You know, somehow I've never been able to really feel very sorry for the lack of compensation offered for the loss of 'property' that is actually living, breathing human beings.

Owning a slave was more expensive than owning a car is today iirc, if a President stated that he was going to confiscate every truck in america,...


Outside of the world of the Transformers, a truck doesn't have a mind of its own. Which makes this extremely stupid.

Plus, yes, the South took Fort Sumter, but it was in the South, that's like Ottawa declaring war on Quebec (if Quebec actually did manage to seperate) because Ottawa wanted to keep the Citadel and Quebec considered it theirs, because, you know, it's in Quebec.


The fort wasn't impeding shipping in Charleston harbour. When attacked, the Fort fell within a day, and so it presented no serious threat to shutting down the harbour. If there was any real political desire in the South to avoid the war, they could have continued to negotiate for surrender of the fort as part of settlement on secession. But instead they attacked.

Then they lost, and pissed and moaned about the War of Northern Aggression. What a bunch of losing whingers.

Man up. Take it on the chin. You picked a fight with someone bigger, gave it a good shake, but got beat.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 AustonT wrote:
I might have scanned it with a mildly biased eye.


Fair enough. I've done the same myself more than once.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Ratbarf wrote:
But it was a legitimate secession, the forming of a central government from individual states is a delegation of authority given to a foreign power by it's people. If said people later decide to no longer delegate their authority to that foreign state it is their choice to do so, for it is their authority. Would you classify the United States as an illegitimate state? It seceded from Britain by choosing to take back its delegated authority.

Also, who invaded whom? The South prior to general invasion by the North only took aggressive action against those areas which were within its borders, and only later invaded the North in an attempt to force the capitulation of the government that had chosen to inaugurate said war.


When a state declares it is seceding and attacks a Federal fort, what in the feth do you think is going to happen?

I mean, its like I'm in a street gang, and I tell the boss I'm leaving and then I slap him. When I wake from my coma I start moaning to everyone, saying that apart from a couple of times when managed to get some hits in the gang boss was doing all the punching. And so he was the aggressor and it's all not fair.

I mean seriously, you want to avoid a fight, don't fire cannons at a Federal fort. If you do fire at a Federal fort, well then you've got a war on your hands, and from there if you don't manage to win then you man the feth up and admit you started it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 BaronIveagh wrote:
At the end, the only real determination of if a government is legitimate is 'We Won.'


Okay, see what you're doing there is thinking up something that sounds nice in your head, but basically all it shows is that you've never spend a second studying what political legitimacy actually means.

Legitimacy is actually the idea that entirely outside of force, there exists a consent of the people to be governed by the government of the day, and that for many reasons that legitmacy can go away. So for instance, in a feudal state a monarch might be a legitimate government, as the people believe him to be legitimate through various cultural, philosophical and religious ideas (mandate from heaven, for instance). However, that same nation, a few hundred years later, might no longer find their monarch legitimate, as the people have become more educated and more politically aware, and now believe they deserve a say in how they are governed.

This change occurs without any change in the military power of the government and the people.

The idea that legitimacy is dictated by power is actually the exact opposite of what legitimate means. Indeed, if power were dicated entirely by power then we wouldn't have the concept 'legitimacy'.


After all, in the Civil War, the side that committed the most crimes against humanity won, and then claimed the moral high ground under the banner of it being a 'war on slavery'.


Ah, the old trick of pointing out the North did bad things, and weren't really motivated by the cause of ending slavery, and therefore the South were the victims.

Except all you're really doing is playing a neat little trick, and pretending the two sides in the engagement must have opposite motivations. The South was concerned, as the North grew in power politically, and as abolition movement became increasing powerful, that sooner or later the North would ban slavery in United States. And so they seceded. The North, in response, fought to preserve the Union.

And hundreds of years later people play silly little political tricks to pretend the South wasn't motivated to protect the key industry in their region.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 LordofHats wrote:
If I have to be hipster to end this crap so be it. I'm not a Civil War buff I don't even care about the Civil War.


Not at all. What you are is a guy arguing from a very strong position of knowledge on the subject.

I've enjoyed reading your posts, and learned a lot from it.

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2012/11/16 02:54:57


“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”

Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something. 
   
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Ontario

I mean, its like I'm in a street gang, and I tell the boss I'm leaving and then I slap him. When I wake from my coma I start moaning to everyone, saying that apart from a couple of times when managed to get some hits in the gang boss was doing all the punching. And so he was the aggressor and it's all not fair.


To use your analogy I would have to point out it would be more like the leader of the Gang left some weed at your house and so you phoned him up a bunch of times telling him to come and pick up his stuff and if he doesn't you're going to smoke it, then you do, and proceeds to beat the living crap out of you.

Secondly, hopefully government would be slightly more civilized than a street gang?

Plus, secession is more like a divorce, and the South, again, tells the North to come pick up it's crap and leave, and then when the North doesn't the South throws the North's crap on the street, after which the North decides to burn the South's house down.

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 sebster wrote:
Not at all. What you are is a guy arguing from a very strong position of knowledge on the subject.

I've enjoyed reading your posts, and learned a lot from it.

He's really not.
   
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 LordofHats wrote:

*his Post*


I sat down and tried to rebut each point of your various assertions, and created the sort of wall of text the mods made me promise never to create again. So...
Buy my book when it comes out. You'll enjoy it.


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 Ratbarf wrote:
To use your analogy I would have to point out it would be more like the leader of the Gang left some weed at your house and so you phoned him up a bunch of times telling him to come and pick up his stuff and if he doesn't you're going to smoke it, then you do, and proceeds to beat the living crap out of you.


You didn't smoke his weed. You shot cannons at his fort. Your analogy uses a non violent metaphor to hide from the plain and simple fething reality that opening fire on a fort is an act of violence.

Secondly, hopefully government would be slightly more civilized than a street gang?


Of course. That's why there was meetings and discussions and a whole bunch of elections and everything. All the stuff you expect of civilised societies... until the South started shooting cannons.

Plus, secession is more like a divorce, and the South, again, tells the North to come pick up it's crap and leave, and then when the North doesn't the South throws the North's crap on the street, after which the North decides to burn the South's house down.


No, they didn't throw their crap out. They opened fire with cannons. fething crap on a cracker, it shouldn't be that hard to follow.

It was, exactly like my first analogy, a slap. Didn't do meaningful damage, but was definitely the first act of violence, and something every sane person on the planet would expect to see leading to an escalation of violence.

Your suggestion of a divorce is a good example. And in the midst of arbitration, as everyone is debating if divorce should happen or if the differences can be reconciled, the South slapped the North. After a good fight the North got the upper hand, and then set about really showing the South what it was like to lose a war.

And then years later the South still goes on about how mean the North was, pretending that the North started it. Well if the South didn't want a war it should have stayed in arbitration and not slapped the North. But it did. So it should man up, admit it fethed up and get on with life.

This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2012/11/16 07:23:45


“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”

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 BaronIveagh wrote:
Buy my book when it comes out. You'll enjoy it.


George Saliba is a published professor of Middle Eastern history from Columbia. He's also a giant moron.

Grats on getting published. Hopefully you'll make some $$$ but if I had a dime for everyone who ever produced a book that was horrible wrong and touted it around as though it were anything but wrong I'd be a very rich man with many hats.

   
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1. The cornerstones of the earliest Republicans mainly consisted of abolitionists. before the Republicans there were a failed "The Free Soil Party". they. however, presented a concepts that the slavery prevents 'social mobility' through the farmer's viewpoint. a slave owners, which consisted of a very few percentages of the 'southerners' are wealthy and they can make best of their wealths purchasing the most fertile plots of land as much as they can and then worked the land with a 'band of slaves' (by the 1850, most of slaves working in the plantations were all of the chattel systems. the only rights they had was the rights of the reproduction.. of course! a kid born unto an enslaved parents will automatically enslaved at birth, the burden ends only if
- his/her masters choses to free them
- his/her masters went bankrupt and is liquidated (this was unlikely! slave owners were also politicians and will do everything to keep their businesses running, they might even write the law to subsidy their businesses with state taxation levy from the less prestigious citizens.. for example)
- his/her masters broke a serious law and were either incarcenated or executed, later the government seized the property. (this happens only if the owners were found guilty of serious crimes such as murder (but then again. deathmatch duelling wasn't count amongs murder since it was it was viewed as a resolution to dispuites, rather than either crime or punishment, also only a citizen of the high social status can do it by then i think. and even if they indeed do a murder, in the days of robber barons they could buy their way out of trouble and acquitted), or high treason (also unlikely! slave owners are not only just wealthy, before 1860 they also content with the then-current codes of laws and lifestyles so no point to stage a rebellion, also to conspire with European empires against the federal government is out of question.)
The Free Soil movements believed that the Slavery is bad because it is not only inhibits social mobility (both of the slaves, and those free farmers who can't afford to bid for any), it also economically inefficient. they however articulated their anti-slavery on the grounds of economics development (in the newly annexed territories) rather than moral standards. and the articulations limited their manpower resources.
2. Also in the years leading to the Civil War. some abolitionists view the violence as an only answer to slavery problems. at least two cases suggested that.
- John Brown. tried to stage a 'slave revolts' in Harrisburg, too bad he did not have enough public support to keep his cause so his intended revolts fails, and he was publicly hanged. funny enough, troops that suppress his intended revolts in the 1860 fought for his cause in 1861
- The Beechers, a pair of 'hardcore' abolitionists siblings. while Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote The Uncle Tom's cabin. Henry Ward Beechers took the 'books' further. instead of just distributing the books/Holy Bible to Kansas folks, he trield to smuggle Sharps rifle to a group of abolitionists in Kansas. I only know that the slave problems will end in an armed conflict. but did he actually instigate the war?
were the two cases further proves the Southern politicians a legitimacy to break away from the Union?
3. It is said that in the final days of the Confederacy. southern folks staged series of revolts against the 'slave owining' governments. some state governors simply defected. it is said that garrisoning troops in many cities spent many shots either doing a firing squad or suppressing the citizen revolts, rather than figting the 'Yanks'. one might said that the Confederacy actually dissolved 'internally' they can't actually fund their war efforts and thus resulting in a high rate of inflation, and followed by a wave of desertions which ruines the efforts to stave off the sieges laid by the 'Yanks' correct?



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 LordofHats wrote:
 BaronIveagh wrote:
Buy my book when it comes out. You'll enjoy it.


George Saliba is a published professor of Middle Eastern history from Columbia. He's also a giant moron.

Grats on getting published. Hopefully you'll make some $$$ but if I had a dime for everyone who ever produced a book that was horrible wrong and touted it around as though it were anything but wrong I'd be a very rich man with many hats.


Sorry, reading that it sounds like you've met Bilby too.

Don't worry. I stuck to hard facts and leave the interpretation to the reader. Though I must admit that some of the letters I find hilarious. There's one from a lady of means in California (to her father, a Senator) about Union meetings and how the 'scourge of slavery will be done away with, and the traitors punished', and then she goes on to write: '...and our Chinaman is stomping around in the kitchen. He just purchased a new pair of boots now that we pay him one dollar a week, and is very proud of them.'

Somewhere, I think she may have missed the point...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Lone Cat wrote:
It is said that in the final days of the Confederacy. southern folks staged series of revolts against the 'slave owining' governments. some state governors simply defected. it is said that garrisoning troops in many cities spent many shots either doing a firing squad or suppressing the citizen revolts, rather than figting the 'Yanks'. one might said that the Confederacy actually dissolved 'internally' they can't actually fund their war efforts and thus resulting in a high rate of inflation, and followed by a wave of desertions which ruines the efforts to stave off the sieges laid by the 'Yanks' correct?


Depends on where they were. The North had reached the point of practicing 'total war' and Sherman made it clear he considered civilians a legitimate military target. Given the situation, civilians would be looking for someone to blame. Plantation owners and the government made for good targets.

And defecting made it less likely that the North would move on to simply exterminating the civilian populace.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2012/11/16 08:07:29



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BaronIveagh wrote:Don't worry. I stuck to hard facts and leave the interpretation to the reader. Though I must admit that some of the letters I find hilarious. There's one from a lady of means in California (to her father, a Senator) about Union meetings and how the 'scourge of slavery will be done away with, and the traitors punished', and then she goes on to write: '...and our Chinaman is stomping around in the kitchen. He just purchased a new pair of boots now that we pay him one dollar a week, and is very proud of them.'

Somewhere, I think she may have missed the point...


The entire country kind of ultimately missed the point I think Not much of a difference between slavery and post-war sharecropping.

Depends on where they were. The North had reached the point of practicing 'total war' and Sherman made it clear he considered civilians a legitimate military target. Given the situation, civilians would be looking for someone to blame. Plantation owners and the government made for good targets.

And defecting made it less likely that the North would move on to simply exterminating the civilian populace.


To add to this its also not entirely clear just how much support the Confederate government really had. Southerns certainly seemed willing to fight the North, but how much stock they put into the new government is up for debate.

Lone Cat wrote:1. The cornerstones of the earliest Republicans mainly consisted of abolitionists. before the Republicans there were a failed "The Free Soil Party". they. however, presented a concepts that the slavery prevents 'social mobility' through the farmer's viewpoint. a slave owners, which consisted of a very few percentages of the 'southerners' are wealthy and they can make best of their wealths purchasing the most fertile plots of land as much as they can and then worked the land with a 'band of slaves' ...

The Free Soil movements believed that the Slavery is bad because it is not only inhibits social mobility (both of the slaves, and those free farmers who can't afford to bid for any), it also economically inefficient. they however articulated their anti-slavery on the grounds of economics development (in the newly annexed territories) rather than moral standards. and the articulations limited their manpower resources.


Partially. The Free Soilers formed the bulk of early Republican support and political ideology. The Republican party ultimately formed up of politicians from the Whigs, Free Soiler Democrats (Democrats from the New England states mostly) and a hodge podge of American party, Know Nothings, and Free Soil party. 'Free Soil' refers to the desire of Northerns to give out land in the territories freely. This idea eventually became the Homestead Act.

What has gone unmentioned thus far in this thread are some of the stupid paranoid delusions the North had about the South. The biggest one and the primary one behind the Free Soiler movement was that rich slave owning plantation owners would buy up all the land in the territories and force free men out. This isn't something that could have happened as most slave owners weren't that rich. Most of their wealth was tied directly into the land they already owned and their slaves. Buying up swathes of land in the territories wasn't something they'd likely be able to do.

But yes. The Free Soil movement was not a moral opposition to slavery so much as personal one. Abolitionism didn't have that much support before the war. There were the Radical Republicans, a small group of Republicans who wanted to abolish slavery outright, but before the war they were few and had little support.


- John Brown. tried to stage a 'slave revolts' in Harrisburg, too bad he did not have enough public support to keep his cause so his intended revolts fails, and he was publicly hanged. funny enough, troops that suppress his intended revolts in the 1860 fought for his cause in 1861


Yep. History is full of that stuff

- The Beechers, a pair of 'hardcore' abolitionists siblings. while Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote The Uncle Tom's cabin. Henry Ward Beechers took the 'books' further. instead of just distributing the books/Holy Bible to Kansas folks, he trield to smuggle Sharps rifle to a group of abolitionists in Kansas. I only know that the slave problems will end in an armed conflict. but did he actually instigate the war?


The Civil War? Not really. He helped contribute to the conflict of Kansas' state hood called Bloody Kansas but I don't know if the weapons he acquired for that conflict were actually used. Bloody Kansas itself I don't really see as a cause of the Civil War so much as a early sign of what was coming. His sister's book however did ignite a wave of tensions between North and South.

one might said that the Confederacy actually dissolved 'internally' they can't actually fund their war efforts and thus resulting in a high rate of inflation, and followed by a wave of desertions which ruines the efforts to stave off the sieges laid by the 'Yanks' correct?


Yes. The Confederacy found itself in heavy debts because Northern blockades were crippling the Southern economy.

I don't know how severe desertion was. The thing about the Confederate Army is that there really wasn't one. One existed on paper, but effectively there was not organized command until very late in the war. The army had no unified goals other than 'win the war' and the leaders like Robert E. Lee, Braxton Bragg, and Edmund Kirby Smith were all fighting their own wars. They never had the concrete strategic organization of the Union army or the support network. Robert E. Lee seems to have maintained a great deal of order and discipline in his army, but I'm not sure how bad the situation got for others as the war drew to a close.

IMO I think internal dissolution would have been the Confederacy's state war or no war. In the 1850's cotton prices spiked as a result of warfare in the Middle East between Egypt, the Saudi's, and the Ottomans and generally the gradual dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Egypt wasn't a major source of cotton but the conflict did cause cotton prices to spike. This hurt the British textile industry as well as the US industry. The British in turn advanced rapidly their cotton production in India. This ended up having drastic ramifications for the South after the War because Britain no longer depended as heavily on US cotton supplies (and US cotton was deemed inferior to Indian cotton). The Boll Weavil also had a population explosion in the late 19th century greatly damaging cotton crops in the US.

Both these events would have happened with or without the Civil War. The South's economy was going to collapse either way in the 1870's and 1880's. Would have been interesting to see their reaction to that.

And defecting made it less likely that the North would move on to simply exterminating the civilian populace.


I find that suggestion hilarious.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2012/11/16 13:20:50


   
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Way on back in the deep caves

Let me just jump in here and say that Texas now has over 100,000 signatures on their petition.
You must admit, if Texas closed its borders the US would look awful bad if it fired on its own citizens in order to keep its territory.
Just sayin.

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100,000 of 25,000,000 is only .004% (gotta round up) of Texas' population.

Seriously. Its not going to happen.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2012/11/16 15:02:16


   
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 d-usa wrote:
This thread is becoming very hipster...

"I read something by that one guy, you probably haven't heard of him..."


You got that from Vickers, 'Work in Essex County,' page 98, right? Yeah, I read that too.

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 Monster Rain wrote:
 d-usa wrote:
This thread is becoming very hipster...

"I read something by that one guy, you probably haven't heard of him..."


You got that from Vickers, 'Work in Essex County,' page 98, right? Yeah, I read that too.


I've not read that, it's become too mainstream.

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 Monster Rain wrote:
 d-usa wrote:
This thread is becoming very hipster...

"I read something by that one guy, you probably haven't heard of him..."


You got that from Vickers, 'Work in Essex County,' page 98, right? Yeah, I read that too.

I read it too...




Ironically.

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