The shit in Spain falls mainly in the fan

[celedhring]

Gotta say it had been long since we got an ACW derail at Languish.

Talks between Madrid and Barcelona set to start this month, although I don't think they will go anywhere. Madrid will probably offer additional devolution and reduced jail time for the leaders of the October 2017 crisis via law reform, but separatist parties are not yet at the point where they can give up a referendum in the short-mid term without facing the ire of their base. We also have (another) Catalan election this summer so there won't be a place for political realism until after that.

[Valmy]

And the Jim Crow laws fit right in there?  Along with the lynchings?  I'm a little bit fuzzy about the Federal intervention in "State's rights" there, would you mind to enlighten me, please?

Care to enlighten me how these abuses help your cause? Because they continue to show how the secessionist movement was about abusing human rights. It took the Feds to eventually stop these things after all.

Look, the North could have sat with the South and negotiated a secession.  That wasn't the way of thinking anywhere back then, but they could have done it anyway.  Instead, they mobilized the army, ready for an invasion of the South, prompted more States to secede, and the Southerners, dumb fuck as they were, marched right into the trap and fired on Fort Sumter giving Lincoln a pretext to try and invade the South to bring them back into the Union as quickly as possible.

You have the order of events entirely wrong. I am not sure why you are lying and misrepresenting issues here. There was no army to mobilize and no volunteers were called until after Fort Sumter was fired upon. So you are lying, no army was mobilized to invade the South. The South could have sat with the North and negotiated secession but it was important to them to assert themselves by grabbing all federal land through force as soon as possible, Sumter was only at the very end of this. Lincoln was not even in office for most of the seizures.

If the war had truly been fought, right from the beginning to free the slaves and preserve human dignity, Lincoln would have announced it right from the start, not use some pretext about preserving the Union.

You are leaving lots of things out here aren't you? The whole reason Lincoln's Republican Party even existed was to stop the spread of slavery and it was on that point that secession happened in the first place. It was already announced. You are jumping all over the pro-slavery talking points that slavery was not the cause of the war, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

This does not change the fact that the South fought to preserve slavery, but the North had to wait until a really significant victory to emancipate the slaves so as to rally public opinion behind the cause, when victory was nearly a certainty in public opinion.

This is wrong, slaves were emancipated as "contraband" almost immediately and just because the strategy was not to just emancipate all the slaves does not mean the war did not always have a strong anti-slavery cause to it.

Until then, most Northerners likely felt like Otto that it was totally justified to invade the South to bring back the seceding States into the Union and not to free some negroes.

Because they felt like their republic was being hijacked by a cabal of aristocratic anti-democratic slave owners trying to preserve their lordly status at the expense of everybody else, the slave-power conspiracy theory, and had fired on the American Flag to display their hatred for the US and its values. I mean I guess I could accept your version if I just washed my brain of everything that had happened and everything that had been said between 1763 and 1861.

[Valmy]

30 extra years of slavery for millions of people = WORTH IT CAUSE TAXES SUCXX0RS

NB: I'm mostly just playing around. Mostly.

It wasn't the taxes. It was what the taxes represented.

[Valmy]

Gotta say it had been long since we got an ACW derail at Languish.

Talks between Madrid and Barcelona set to start this month, although I don't think they will go anywhere. Madrid will probably offer additional devolution and reduced jail time for the leaders of the October 2017 crisis via law reform, but separatist parties are not yet at the point where they can give up a referendum in the short-mid term without facing the ire of their base. We also have (another) Catalan election this summer so there won't be a place for political realism until after that.

Previous elections did not do that so I don't see how this one will.

[grumbler]

30 extra years of slavery for millions of people = WORTH IT CAUSE TAXES SUCXX0RS

NB: I'm mostly just playing around. Mostly.

It wasn't the taxes. It was what the taxes represented.

It was mercantilism.  The patriots made the tax argument because the mercantilism argument was too complex to be a popular cause.

[dps]

30 extra years of slavery for millions of people = WORTH IT CAUSE TAXES SUCXX0RS

NB: I'm mostly just playing around. Mostly.

It wasn't the taxes. It was what the taxes represented.

Yeah, I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek there.

[celedhring]

Gotta say it had been long since we got an ACW derail at Languish.

Talks between Madrid and Barcelona set to start this month, although I don't think they will go anywhere. Madrid will probably offer additional devolution and reduced jail time for the leaders of the October 2017 crisis via law reform, but separatist parties are not yet at the point where they can give up a referendum in the short-mid term without facing the ire of their base. We also have (another) Catalan election this summer so there won't be a place for political realism until after that.

Previous elections did not do that so I don't see how this one will.

Right now campaigning will prevent any kind of sensible approach from happening. The incumbent separatist party is already saying they won't sit at the table unless there's "international mediation"  . After the election... I guess it depends on whether ERC (who at least appear to be embracing pragmatism) wins out versus the more radical separatist parties (CUP and JxCAT). Most polls show a close race within the separatist camp (and the same separatist/unionist split we currently have) so I presume we'll get another deadlock and the thing will just drag on. I want to think at some point people will get tired of banging their head against the wall, but I guess I'm too optimistic. It's like the last seasons of Lost.

[viper37]

And the Jim Crow laws fit right in there?  Along with the lynchings?  I'm a little bit fuzzy about the Federal intervention in "State's rights" there, would you mind to enlighten me, please?

Care to enlighten me how these abuses help your cause? Because they continue to show how the secessionist movement was about abusing human rights. It took the Feds to eventually stop these things after all.
.

It shows how little the Unionist care about human dignity.  Before and after the Civil War, the US had no qualms about moving indians into reservations and stealing their territory.  I don't see how that is respectful of human dignity in any way.

The Northerners wanted their union preserved and that's the main reason they answered Lincoln's call for volunteers.

[viper37]

Talks between Madrid and Barcelona set to start this month, although I don't think they will go anywhere. Madrid will probably offer additional devolution and reduced jail time for the leaders of the October 2017 crisis via law reform, but separatist parties are not yet at the point where they can give up a referendum in the short-mid term without facing the ire of their base. We also have (another) Catalan election this summer so there won't be a place for political realism until after that.

that's at least a start toward something.  Much more productive than sending the police/army to violently arrest people exercising their democratic rights.

[dps]

If you don't see a difference between not being terribly concerned with late 20 century/early 21 century ideas about human dignity and being willing to fight to preserve the institution of chattel slavery, I don't think you are going to find much common ground with many posters here.  The Union didn't have to be perfect to be better than the Confederacy.

[Valmy]

It shows how little the Unionist care about human dignity.  Before and after the Civil War, the US had no qualms about moving indians into reservations and stealing their territory.

The States that formed the Confederacy were pretty instrumental in doing that as well. But that has nothing to do with the reasons behind the war. Shows how much secessionists care about human dignity that they would try to twist that around for their own purposes.

don't see how that is respectful of human dignity in any way.

Ok and if the Confederacy was seceding for that reason that would paint the whole thing in a different light. But that had nothing to do with it.

The Northerners wanted their union preserved and that's the main reason they answered Lincoln's call for volunteers.

That is idiotic. Nobody is going to leave their civilian life and family and go die for a reason that lame and abstract. They were angry viscerally for the reasons I already explained. If Lincoln hadn't called for volunteers he would have been finished as a politician.

[Valmy]

I will support any secessionist movement if two qualifiers are met:

1. The human rights of the people in the seceding territory are being abused in some way.

2. The population overwhelmingly supports it.

Hency why South Sudan I support, Scotland and Catalonia I do not.

[viper37]

If you don't see a difference between not being terribly concerned with late 20 century/early 21 century ideas about human dignity and being willing to fight to preserve the institution of chattel slavery, I don't think you are going to find much common ground with many posters here.  The Union didn't have to be perfect to be better than the Confederacy.

But the Union did not go to war because it war better than the South.  Had the South not seceeded and accepted that slavery would not be allowed in new States, at the condition that slavery would be maintained in existing States, there would have been no war.

It's hard to pretend the North entered the war to end slavery.  That was only an afterthought.

Voting for something is not the same as risking your neck for something.  Lots of people vote for lower taxes or better social justice.  Waging war over it is another matter.

[viper37]

I will support any secessionist movement if two qualifiers are met:

1. The human rights of the people in the seceding territory are being abused in some way.

2. The population overwhelmingly supports it.

Hency why South Sudan I support, Scotland and Catalonia I do not.

that is not your call.  Nor mine.  It's up to the people in these territories on how they feel.

Catalonia showed the world that Franco's Spain isn't too far behind.  Scotland showed that England's colonial past is definately over.

The British government has gained a lot of respect in my eyes for how it handled the situation, and that's why Scotland lost their referendum and we only here about independance due to the Brexit movement.

I was against Brexit, but if the UK democratically decided to leave the EU, so be it. It's up to them.  There was no referendum elsewhere in the EU about it, nor did I hear anyone here clamor for it.

[viper37]

The Northerners wanted their union preserved and that's the main reason they answered Lincoln's call for volunteers.

That is idiotic. Nobody is going to leave their civilian life and family and go die for a reason that lame and abstract. They were angry viscerally for the reasons I already explained. If Lincoln hadn't called for volunteers he would have been finished as a politician.

And that is why we immediatly saw free black Northerners enrolled in the army, fighting side by side with their white brothers as equals... oh wait...