1860 Presidential Election

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I previously thought Douglas would be the best option here, but looking at the election again, it appears that Bell may be preferable.

[SPC]

I previously thought Douglas would be the best option here, but looking at the election again, it appears that Bell may be preferable.

If you're a revolting piece of garbage, then sure, yeah, I guess that would make sense. But for everyone that doesn't think that people should be able to own other people, or that government should be a mere appendage of a class of parasites that raped, murdered, and enslaved an entire group of people in the pursuit of profit, i.e. people that aren't terrible or apologists for any sector of that class, Lincoln is the only actual choice here. Voting for anyone else is voting for the Slave Power.

Had Lincoln campaigned on an abolitionist platform, or made the Northern cause more explicitly an abolitionist crusade rather than an attempt to subjugate states desiring independence (albeit for nefarious reasons), or demonstrated a modicum of concern for restraint on executive power and respect for civil liberties while embarking on said crusade, then yes. However, liberation of the slaves appears to have come more as a fortunate accident of Lincoln's punitive measure against the seceding states rather than any principled belief in human freedom.

Abolition of slavery is an incontrovertible good. However, said objective should have been accomplished either through the constitutional process, or through an extraordinary measure without the pretension of setting any larger precedent regarding the relationship between the federal government and the states.  

[SPC]

I previously thought Douglas would be the best option here, but looking at the election again, it appears that Bell may be preferable.

But remember, Douglas would have died soon after entering office, and Bell joined the Confederacy.

As did Herschel V. Johnson

[SPC]

I previously thought Douglas would be the best option here, but looking at the election again, it appears that Bell may be preferable.

If you're a revolting piece of garbage, then sure, yeah, I guess that would make sense. But for everyone that doesn't think that people should be able to own other people, or that government should be a mere appendage of a class of parasites that raped, murdered, and enslaved an entire group of people in the pursuit of profit, i.e. people that aren't terrible or apologists for any sector of that class, Lincoln is the only actual choice here. Voting for anyone else is voting for the Slave Power.

Had Lincoln campaigned on an abolitionist platform, or made the Northern cause more explicitly an abolitionist crusade rather than an attempt to subjugate states desiring independence (albeit for nefarious reasons), or demonstrated a modicum of concern for restraint on executive power and respect for civil liberties while embarking on said crusade, then yes. However, liberation of the slaves appears to have come more as a fortunate accident of Lincoln's punitive measure against the seceding states rather than any principled belief in human freedom.

Abolition of slavery is an incontrovertible good. However, said objective should have been accomplished either through the constitutional process, or through an extraordinary measure without the pretension of setting any larger precedent regarding the relationship between the federal government and the states.  

Lincoln did campaign on an implicitly abolitionist platform. The Republicans called for the expansion of slavery to be halted. Everyone then (and everyone now) with half a brain knows that meant to strangle slavery from without; slavery, much like wage slavery in our current epoch, would not have survive if strangled from without and prevented from expanding and growing. This is why the Slave Power had designs for Kansas and Nebraska, and hell, Mexico, Cuba, and the 'Golden Circle' of nations whereby they would be able to colonize said areas, expel the natives and transform them into new slave states in order to maintain their favorable position within the federal government and continue their agricultural project.

If expansionism was essential for the survival of slavery (as I do concur that it was), then would not the whole Confederate project be doomed from the outset, lacking the access to new territory that came with leaving the Union?

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Those states did not try to take over the United States, thus I do not see how that is inconsistent with self-determination. Is any policy that secedes from a larger entity after an election expedites their realization that their interests are not being represented by the larger entity illegitimate?

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Only because the Union kept military forts on their territory. Granted, attacking Fort Sumter was a terrible move, but there is a distinction between attacking Union "territory" in South Carolina and in, say, New York.

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This is not a football game. I merely acknowledge that both sides had their faults. While chattel slavery is obviously the greater evil, one should not pretend that the erosion of checks on the power of a national executive is inconsequential or benign.

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I am fairly sure that critical Northern newspaper editors did not hold slaves.

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Hence my opposition to it. "Revolution" is usually used as a pretext for justifying horrid actions in the name of some enlightened "higher goal." The same reasoning could be used to defend the atrocities in Ireland, the Vendee, and the Ukraine, although given your sympathies I imagine you sympathize with the "revolutionaries" in those contexts as well.

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I concur. The Tories should not have had their property confiscated from them, or should have been provided appropriate restitution for their loss if returning the property became an impossibility.

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So Lincoln violated nobody's rights who did not deserve it for being slaveholders or their supporters, and anyone who was arrested by the Union without cause was thus a "Copperhead." This sounds like a circular line of reasoning. Of course, the fact that they were held without trial means that no independent judge was required to verify the claim that such an individual was committing whatever crime "not supporting the war" would constitute, so we would just have to take the executive's word for it that every person that was locked up was "guilty of something." If this "revolutionary" judicial system is so great, then why not permanently adopt a policy of capricious detention by the executive without any input from the legislative or judicial authorities?

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Such an outcome was a likely consequence of using recently freed blacks as pawns to impose kleptocratic carpetbagger governments on the conquered South. While race relations were never going to be pretty in the aftermath, such a policy could not have possibly helped matters.

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If expansionism was essential for the survival of slavery (as I do concur that it was), then would not the whole Confederate project be doomed from the outset, lacking the access to new territory that came with leaving the Union?

First off, an independent Confederacy would have been free to filibuster in Mexico and Central America for new territory.  The4y might have been able to get Cuba, and northern Mexico was certainly obtainable.

But more importantly, the faster growth of the North compared to the South is what would have doomed slavery had the South remained in the Union.  But an independent Confederacy would have been much more stable with respect to slavery since the sectional pressures wouldn't have applied.  Slavery in an independent South would likely have lasted until at least when Brazil abolished it in 1889 and I could easily see it lasting until at least The Great War, assuming that the USA and CSA ended up fighting each other in it.

Given that the Confederate economy was vastly weaker than that of the United States (as evidenced by the outcome of the Civil War in spite of having better generals), I would think that even expansionism into Mexico and Cuba would be more difficult than that encountered by the IRL United States circa 1898. Unfortunately, slavery would likely have continued for a substantial period of time past 1865, but the fact that the Confederacy would undoubtedly remain an international pariah for doing so even with its most amicable international partners, in addition to the geographic limitations of plantation farming would have doomed the practice in due course.

In any event, one does not make these choices in a vacuum. While chattel slavery is an incontrovertible evil, was the death of 600,000 Americans, the impoverishment of many more, and the fundamental alteration of the American system of government that came as a result the appropriate price to pay for an expedited abolition to the practice? While I do expect to be slandered as a racist for merely asking such a question, surely any reasonable person would have such a point at which mass death outweighs Southern chattel slavery in their subjective scale of evil. Would extermination of the entire human race be an appropriate price to pay to ensure the freedom of Southern slaves?

Lincoln then, Lincoln now.

I must say that I find it incredible that out of the many libertarian critiques of Lincoln's handling of the Civil War I've seen on here almost none of them mention the extremely classist draft that was implemented.  To my mind that seems about the only real moral failing of the Union North, though the Confederate South obviously did the same thing with a lot more horrendous side flavors to choose from.  Rather, we hear about "those poor northern newspaper owners!" and how the protectionist trade policy of the North was "just too mean for producers man!"

My omission of the draft in listing my opposition to Lincoln was not intended to signal agreement with that policy; I did not intend to make an exhaustive list of every policy implemented by Lincoln that I disagree with. Rather, public opposition to forced labor seems to substantially diminish when the laborers must don a military uniform, and the imposition of a military draft is contradictory in spirit to the commission of a crusade to abolish involuntary servitude.

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And your outright dismissal of concern for the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights on the basis that publishers are not working class does not illustrate prejudice? In any event, are you seriously criticizing my argument for an accidental omission of one of the faults of the Lincoln regime, rather than on the substance of what was mentioned? Are you next going to criticize me for failing to mention the Union Army's horrific conduct toward the Indians? (or do their civil liberties not count either, because they are not blacks or working-class Irish?)

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I did not mention protectionism in my critique, although that is another of Lincoln's faults in my view. I failed to mention it because I concede that seven of the Confederate states did secede in order to protect their "peculiar institution." Lincoln did cite the collection of federal taxes as a reason for invading the South, but that seems more a proximal cause rather than an ultimate cause, hence why I did not bother to cite it.

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Given that the Confederate economy was vastly weaker than that of the United States (as evidenced by the outcome of the Civil War in spite of having better generals), I would think that even expansionism into Mexico and Cuba would be more difficult than that encountered by the IRL United States circa 1898. Unfortunately, slavery would likely have continued for a substantial period of time past 1865, but the fact that the Confederacy would undoubtedly remain an international pariah for doing so even with its most amicable international partners, in addition to the geographic limitations of plantation farming would have doomed the practice in due course.

While plantation farming was the most common use for slave labor in the Americas, it was far from the only use.  Nor was the Southern economy weak, rather it was non-industrial.  So long as there was no blockade (and the idea that Mexico could blockade the Confederacy is very fanciful), the South would have been able to obtain its arms on the world market.

Is your reasoning that Britain and France would have been less reluctant to supply arms to a nation still practicing slavery if the United States was not at war with it?