AP US stops before Nam, usually. they teach twentieth century class now, but it isn't required, not sure if is AP or IB.

And Berlin is inside the soviet union.

Last time I checked, West Berlin was not under East German control at that time. Soviets had explicitly agreed to West Berlin in the Potsdam agreement IIRC.

#learningsomethingeveryday

pvn,

Their analogies are imperfect. Yours was horrendously awful.

This seems to explain the mass confusion by many RP supporters about the facts of and the reasons for the CW.

I'm not sure what RP's excuse is though, b/c he went to school in PA.

If Virginia had made preparations for a war, Washington would have fallen in May, and the whole thing over. Before Sumter, the South did not think the North would invade, nor did Secessionists in the Middle South have the upper hand in state capitals. Unorganized, impromptu militias were not capable of "military maneuvers". If someone in Virginia had moved on Harpers Ferry before secession, Lee would have hung them as quick as John Brown swung. And almost no one was an abolitionist. Accept it or not, the war in the North began as retention. Hell, Union policy on runaway slaves was to return them to masters who were loyal, regardless of what state they were from in 1861.

Even WWI, WWII, War of Independence?

Texas Aggies must learn that stuff though.

That's just really weird to me.

How many snake oil salesmen actually drink their own product to get well?

And pvn is the Ayatollah of Libertarianism!

Another reason for the FDA and govt and why Libertarianism is dangerous and silly at the same time. lol, true tho.

I don't think the North hung on to things as long as the South. The South was devastated, and almost every adult white male who didn't have twenty slaves served. Something like 1 in 4 died, or had a serious injury or disease. Then, the South closed off to most immigration. It was a nursed grievance, buoyed as well as propaganda to support that Libertarian Nirvana called Jim Crow. Now, it is an acceptable form of code used to signal white identity in political speech, another Lib staple.

30% of Southern men who were of military age died in the war. The figure was something like 10% for the North.

lol wut. I thought I sensed a blame VA post with your pacifist cult, Union spies, officers holding to their oath post. People who believe they "know" the outcome of war before it happens are fooling themselves.

I'm done w/ this thread for a while.

The south sure thought they were fighting against abolition. That was the whole point of secession in the first place. And the Union was at all times fighting to prevent the expansion of slavery, if not always explicitly for immediate abolition.

When I took it (2003ish) we definitely had Vietnam stuff on the syllabus but didn't really get to it.

I don't know the military aspects very well at all. It's very possible that I'm remembering what I've read wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston...Sumner_assault

Re-reading Brooks' assault on Sumner, this seems more detailed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles...tack_by_Brooks

I just learned that Jim Crows were a libertarian idea.

A+ gif

Yeah, also this. I mean, Ft. Sumter wasn't under CSA control

North failed by 70% according to Fly.

Sounds to me like some people in the south were anticipating a war long before the shots were fired.

Never thought I'd get my daily portion of lolz from Fly and MissileDog dissing the libertarian side of the argument.

I know I once was in this thread, arguing that the North's war aim could not simply be the abolishment of slavery, as wars are mostly fought for geopolitical reasons and that is not one of them. But Jesus, the mental gymnastics displayed by some people itt defending the South (or Ron Paul's stance on similar issues in the RP thread for that matter) is really lolworthy. Or quite sad actually, and even troubling in some cases.

Mpethy: I somewhere feel where you are coming from, but Fly is spot on. How do you defend the right of the Southern states to secede, when those states were the represented legislature / executive of an oppressive and oppressing minority? If they were even that. Does it then still matter that the people in power in the North had their own ulterior motives?

And seeing pvn getting rightly lolpeared by fly is really, really, REALLY funny.

Eminent domain obv.

Do you think people who, e.g. murder other people should have rights? Is the right to, e.g. free speech dependent on being a nice guy?

This is a particularly weird argument to make, since it also sort of implies that ending slavery was the goal of the north, which you've pretty much already agreed was not the case.

Let's say I have a neighbor that is robbing banks. I go burn his house down. Is the fact that he was robbing banks enough to justify any and all actions against him? I mean, after I burned his house down, it just happens that he was incapacitated and no longer able to rob banks, so hey, I can just retroactively shout about how I stopped this bad bank robber and it's all good, right?

Cliffnotes: people in this thread are highly results-oriented.

note: I'm not defending bank robbery