Because I'm Close To Playing The New Demon Hunter CD to Death

Trent Reznor's dayum fine. But "The Hand That Feeds" sounds like it's the middle of another song.

*snaps fingers*

yeah, I said it.

But then, I never listened to The Fragile like I hear it should be listened to.

Anyway tonight I figured it would be nice to get some longass playlist on youtube of NIN videos blared through my room while I tidied up the bathroom.

Although "tidied up" is not enough of a verb.

For example, did you know that when you're wearing latex gloves - not the hand shaped thick yellow ones, but the proctologist-white powdered type...when you're wearing those to scrub the inside of the tub. When the gloves are turning first yellow, then dark beige, it's time to take a break because the chemicals are almost done eating the latex and are about to start eating your fucking hand.

So I found out many things about the house I've been living in for a few months. It's dustier than it is "dirty." Yeah I know, dust is dirt. But I noticed so many crevices...either the house was originally built a generally considered Long time ago (pre-1920s, since the tile in the bathroom resembles such in a bathroom in a house I know was built in the mid-20s) and hasn't been ...not so fancy as "renovated" but never really looked at; or it was built up to a couple decades after when I really think it was and has been ran into the ground. That, or the previous residents all had a weird habit of kicking at...they're not called vertices, but that intersection of where the walls and floors meet.

Damn. I gotta stop clicking over the the other NIN videos...he's distracting.

So I was ... no wait hold on. The Marilyn Manson songs came up now. I guess he got a new album last year, and one of the singles called "Heart-Shaped Glasses"

She reminds me of the woman ... she was dressed in white
And I couldn't take my eyes off her
But that's not what I took off that night

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOH, A COY MOTHERFUCKER ARE WE??? THOU DOST NOT KISS AND TELL...say no more say no more...retard.

Puerile dweeb. And I'm not even going on the "ooooooh he's thingin bout thiiin." When I had a problem with that I didn't listen to that stuff. My freshman roommate pleaded with me not to throw away my CDs, but to at least give them to her so she could sell what she could.

*rolls eyes* I liked his music in high school. Antichrist Superstar was... really perfect album. Some of it I knew didn't "make sense" for me but the stuff that did, really did. To a 16 year old girl who liked Goth-Industrial music and liked Skinny Puppy's "Rabies" album upon first hearing it. The first attribute no longer applies. And it's like...bleh. his music has all turned to shit, and not just because I also listen to different and some genuinely better stuff now, but it just...sucks now.

But the song sounds pretty. Nice and sad and pretty and "pop-gothy."

Perhaps Robert Rhett's Memoirs As a Starter

From reading Foner's Free Soil Free Labor Free Men it looks like....the Southern Democratic Party kinda...painted itself into a corner. I'm 'bout halfway through the chapter on the Democrats who defected to the Republican Party in the late 40's & 50's...

Since the book's about the ideology of the Republican Party, it's not about the Democratic Party, and isn't about the South. So I'm trying to keep that in mind when I form the impression that there was some body to the Bogerman that was/is the Slave Power conspiracy.

But then...they're politicians bitching about the party they just left. Zell Miller was just as much a politician as Jim Jeffords, and I don't see how the non-radical, pre-war Republicans should be considered any different.

And this too, sounds kinda...umm selective:

A local Republican paper in 1858 estimated that 40 per cent of the Michigan Republicans came from "the old Jackson party."

Republican paper saying that. I mean people complain today about ooh ooooh the liburul/ konservativ bias in media, and they're right. This book and Holt's Whig Party frequently refer to newspapers as "the Whig party organ in Kentucky/Tennessee" or "the Van Buren administration's mouthpiece, the Blah Blah Gazette" with quite familiarity.

So what I want to know of, is a book that covers the Democratic Party at the same time. Many on the Democratic Party are focused on Jackson though.

wow.

The awesome part of this is that I can't think of any way to improve it.

I Think Even The Tinfoil Hat Feels More Loose

Anyway.

Wilmot Proviso. We all know the Wilmot Proviso, right? Something something Mexican War, something something, acquired territory, amendment to some bill in Congress that definitively denied possibility of slavery in the new territory, everyone goes apeshit it gets defeated. Therefore, slavery is again pointed to as a cause of the Civil War. Voted down along sectional and not party lines as additional proof.

I'm guessing that that last part is a tough pill to swallow, if you're of the "civil war was not about slavery" mindset. My knee-jerk mindset is that I don't want to hear anything good or laudable about the early Republican Party so far as it was a resurrected Whig Party with its economic platform.

My (hopefully) more reasoned mindset is that the first states to secede may well have seceded so as to protect "the Southron way of life" and any politician in the South at the time would damn well have agreed that slavery was a part of it. But the war started, going from First Manassas, over secession itself. I count Fort Sumter being bombarded as what anyone else would have been within their right to do; the political wisdom of attacking it instead of starving them out being another issue.

[But oh oh ooooh the tariffs! Well then, if that's the case, how was there a Whig Party in the South at all? Henry Clay was from Kentucky. oops! ]

So...we straight? If by Civil War you mean everything from 1860-65 then I got nothing for you. I break it up into Pre-Sumter, slavery may have been a motivating factor in secession; it was secession over which the Tyrant King played out Ft. Sumter, which drove other states to secede, which brought us to First Manassas, the first meeting of armies...over the right of secession and the Revolutionary Ideal of 1776, the right of consent of the governed. I allow for the condemnation of the institutional American slavery. I'm not Southron so I don't really care for approval by any, but roll my eyes at "omg Southron=dumb hick." It made the Civil War class I just got a B+ in (quite likely on account of my distracting rambling as such) seem more like...like same old, same old.

Where was I? Wilmot Proviso, yeah. From Michael F. Holt's Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. The title explains the book and it supposedly is not written with a view to "everything inevitably led to the Civil War," 985 small print pages before 263 pages of notes and index. Read this.

Developing a distinctive party stance and record on the [Mexican] war also required continued cooperation with southern Whigs, which could never be achieved on the Wilmot Proviso. [Wilmot was a northern Democrat from Ohio.] To the dismay of extreme antislavery Whigs...most northern Whigs, like their southern colleagues, were primarily concerned in 1846 and 1847 with returning to power, not with venting sectional grievances. ...control of the House depended upon the ninety seats to be contest in 1847, and most of those seats were in the South...of course, party unity would be necessary to carry the presidential election of 1848. The problem was not simply that the Proviso divided southern Whigs against northern Whigs. It was that opposition to the Proviso in the South, like support for it in the North, could not provide southern Whigs with a distinctive party position to it in 1847 and 1848 because of the bipartisan sectional consensus against it. To compound the problem, southern Whigs were even more eager than their northern colleagues to demonstrate that they matched Democratic support for American armies...because enthusiasm about their exploits in battle was especially avid in the South. Just like northern Whigs, however, southern Whigs quickly realized that opposition to all territorial acquisition offered them a viable and distinct platform.

Finish checking your email? Opposing Wilmot Proviso in the South wasn't enough to distinguish a Democrat from a Whig, as supporting it in the North didn't define, either. There was no viable "they don't support the troops" tag to pin on the Whigs...Henry Clay and Daniel Webster both lost sons in the war and everyone fell for the rah-rah bullshit. But what the Whigs can do...is oppose any acquisition of oil reserves from the war, as Democrats in both north and south were down for that along party lines and not regional.

Territory! I meant territory! Not oil reserves, how...utterly silly of me.

Read this now.

To fathom southern Whig confidence in the issue, one must understand the reasons for southern opposition to the Proviso. Contrary to the accusations of northern antislavery men, there was no widespread southern conspiracy to spread slavery by attacking Mexico. Most southern Whigs and many southern Democrats, including John C. Calhoun, who joined the Whigs in opposing a war of conquest against Mexico, believed and openly argued that slavery could not possibly exist in any territory to be acquired from it. Whatever the accuracy of that analysis--and it was undoubtedly wrong about California--for most Southerners the significance of the Proviso was symbolic, not substantive. They regarded it as a humiliating insult by the northern majority, a denial of the equal rights of white Southerners even when they had no intention of exercising those rights, and an attempt to subjugate Southerners to northern dictation, that is, as an attempt symbolically to reduce white Southerners to the status of slaves. Southerners who were particularly sensitive about defending their individual and collective honor and particularly fearful of enslavement to someone else's power refused to tolerate it. Some Southerners did indeed expect to carry slaves to acquisitions wrested from Mexico. But to most--and especially to most Whigs--Southern Rights, the defense of republican liberty and equality, were at stake, not the extension of slavery.

Bwahahahahaha....what a reasonable...totally coherent to today's students of history and political economy, manner of approaching an issue. What I put in bold I'd really love to check out, but the notation at the end of the paragraph is to Holt's other book, which I bet has the directions to get the speeches/whatevers that gave him that impression, because that sounds like one helluvan inference.

And yeah sure, tariffs this, tariffs that, Damyankees sux0rz, the idea of a Slave Power conspiracy is pretty up there with 9-11 Truthers (and I say that as someone related to probably three of 'em) on the "you've got to be fucking kidding me" scale, depending on who you're reading, but...

So the North had Yankees and the Burned-Over District up in their grill. The South had the FireEaters. Starting to look more and more like a tie.

I'll Be Making MY List

12

Find a Ultrasound school near you

I'll Be Here All Weekend

Augustinian Calvinism: There's always room for U.

aaaaah, I kill me.

Not as bad as the joke I thought of last night while writing my term paper on Lay Investiture:

Gregory's defensive points in these letters are more founded upon the gravity of Henry's specific sins, than any extreme understanding of the Gelasian formula. Hell, even Pope Celestine V could have excommunicated Henry.

*hangs head in shame* I need to take up either drinking or emailing Thomas DiLorenzo.

From My Final Today

"the Nullification Crisis and Calhoun's threat of secession in 1833 erupted over a fundamental disagreement on the nature of the ratification of the Constitution: whether it was a voluntary-conditional agreement upon satisfaction, subject to renewal at each political generation, or a voluntary agreement once it was created to the satisfaction of the generation that signed it, and binding on all men thereafter."

I think I'm gonna get an A for pulling stuff like that out of thin air. Oh well. The class is over. Time to finish my Medieval term papers (two, mofos, TWO!) and get ready for the final tomorrow. Then after the Thursday morning final on Roman Law in Medieval Europe, it's back to Rise and Fall of the Whig Party.

Overheard Yesterday

Guy1 Yeaaaaah that guy is SOOO huge.

Guy2 Oh yeah huh like Schwarzenegger

Guy1 That guy's really tall

Guy2 Like Schwar....how tall is he?

Guy1 Uuuuuh. Like...I don't know but he's pretty tall. Maybe like, six some-

Girl Yeah 'cause of all those steroids, that's why!

So there you have it. Steroids make you tall. Bones are muscles are bones.

.

So just what is it about sleeping on a kitchen floor for two hours to make someone else's snoring not so loud?

I swear I'm gonna just buy an effing taxi on Christmas, so I don't have to spend the night at my brother's house again. I live only 20 minutes away by car. I don't freaking get it.

Not States, Plural-The State, Singular.

I clicked on a googlevideo that started with "The United States of America, born in 1776."

And right then my eyes glazed over.

No.

That which was born in 1776, particularly since it is the Declaration of Independence and not the Constitution stated as the beginning, is not what we inhabit today.

That which was born in 1776 said "we are free."

That which we inhabit today says "you are subjects of the state."

Was that which we inhabit today born in...Appomattox in 1865? The Tyrant King's second inauguration a month before? First Manassas?

"Oh oh oh but Fort Sumter was the start of the war! 'Cause like...ummm...stuff went BOOM!"

The books aren't saying much about the Confederate states having seized federal forts and property, either because it isn't interesting to them; or that their method of doin' such was deemed inconsequential. DiLorenzo's Real doesn't really address anything other than Sumter, and even if he did address others like Sumter I'm still not trusting his Vallandigham piece in it so, too bad for him. I guess what I want to know is...what was the nature of the federal property within the states being seized? Were anti-secessionists harmed? Who were they, were they soldiers or just bureaucrats? Was there any such thing as a Southern anti-secessionist? Were people given ample time to get their shit packed to git?


Anyway...did this .... this...."you are subjects to the state" notion...born at First Manassas.

No.

Tyrant King >>>Never-President Henry Clay >>>Nicholas Biddle >>> Alexander Hamilton.

God bless Aaron Burr, even if he did take his sweet ass time.

I posted earlier that I didn't believe the War of Etatist Supremacy (copyright...me) could accurately be considered a "Second American Revolution." I think differently. True, most of what people mean by that idea is that they're giddily choking on the dead Tyrant King's cock... ideologically, much to their chagrin I'm sure.


While they were revolutions, and things were changed radically blah blah, the people involved had 80 years of successful consolidationism on their shoulder.

The men of "76" had Jonathan Edwards.

The Union had the Burned-Over district and cities called Smyrna in New York.

Men of '76 had Sinners In The Hand Of An Angry God.

The Union had a "new holy book" that seems to have deified the notion of American Exceptionalism that everyone up there really really seemed to want to believe. The "city on a hill" notion pre-'76 iirc was more of a "don't be evil or God's gonna whup all our asses."

A is not B.

I wasn't even going to consider the religion stuffs. I think I'm done now.

Let Me See That Bloggy Roll

It's so depressing to read about Reconstruction. Obviously in a less personal manner, it's akin to an email from my dad about how nutto my mom was when they were together.

In the Senate, the bill to enlarge the Freedmen’s Bureau was passed, 37 to 10. The bill provides: 1^st. That the Freedmen’s Bureau shall be maintained, giving the President power to divide the section of country included within the provision of the bill into twelve districts;

Like nobody there saw this and thought HFS this is the federal government carving up people and their lands, like Poland was done 80 years ago. Or Africar a few years later. I know, there are huge differences, one being that Poles aren't really people to begin with.

Oh right. Because every man who did think that was either dead, or silenced for having spoken up a few years ago.

3d. That the Secretary of War may issue supplies, medical stores, etc., and may provide for the shelter of freedmen and refugees;

Why the Secretary of War? Because there was no department of Health and Human Services yet.

6th. That schools and asylums shall be built for the freedmen at the expense of Government

Someone get Horace Mann a cigarette. Oh wait, he was already dead. Oh wait but what a wonderful tangent that brings me to anyway. It's Saturday, no one's comin' over.

His only means for gratifying his eager desire for books was the small library founded in his native town by Benjamin Franklin and consisting principally of histories and treatises on theology.

say it with me now: AWWWWWWWWWW. No p0rnz.

He graduated as valedictorian of his class from Brown University in 1819. He then studied law for a short time at Wrentham, Massachusetts; was a tutor of Latin and Greek (1820-1822) and a librarian (1821-1823) at Brown University; studied during 1821-1823 at Litchfield Law School (the famous law school conducted by Judge James Gould in Litchfield, Connecticut); and in 1823, was admitted to the Norfolk, Massachusetts, bar.

Sounds like he did fine, having only Benjamin Franklin's library at his disposal. How did he live.

I don't trust any of these politicians coming out of Massachusetts.

From what I learned in spring quarter, the Early Republic class, was that when the Treasury hit a surplus and the federal/national debt was paid off, that moneys went back to the individual states "since it was their money." [ No, it wasn't brought up that it was the moneys of the individual peoples; that if today California would get the money that CA residents paid in taxes back as refund...might as well just send it back to Washington since not only would I not see a cent of what I was extorted out of back, but I'd rather not have to witness the smugness of the politicians unveiling what they're going to use it for. When I get mugged by someone in the street, at least the mugger runs away, I probably won't have to go with him to the liquor store and watch him buy cigs with my moneys. ]

So it was the state's money, or at least that what we all told ourselves, and with that money, schools were built, some famous school for mental handicaps or deaf or something. Taking into consideration the fact that's about as good as it was going to get, I'm fine with that.

But this thing in Massachusetts; that Mann was a state representative and such...don't sound no good.

Need to kill time?

First, have a single parent who raised you be adopted. With a bad memory/penchant for making things up. To whom you don't talk anymore.

Next, be almost obsessive about the past.

Noooooooow.

Try to look people up online. Y'know, your mom's adopted mom, her husband...who are dead--bonus.

Have no knowledge of origins. Middle names....great grandfathers who gave their son their same first name are totally awesome.

Oh did I mention that your 14-day free subscription to ancestry.com expired about 8 months ago? So you can't use that. You're stuck with Mormon geneaology websites.

ooh ooh oooooooh have it be an international adoption. From war-torn Germany, perhaps with still shitty records four years later. And when you did have that ancestry.com trial subscription and saw the place your mom, her twin brother, and a-grandmother port left from in Germany? Totally forget the name of that port and don't put it down anywhere.

I Think It's a Tie So Far

Oh. I was listening to this. And because I got hired somewhere today, I shall be buying it. I surprisingly do think it's better than the last one. "Sixteen" is awesome. I don't like the idea of having to go into the only music store in Rivercide that'll carry it, though. One of those NOTW stores. yeeesh.

An A on the Early Middle Ages midterm; which I somewhat expected from how easy it felt while taking it. A B+ on the Law and Society in Medieval Europe, the one that smashed my face; much better than I expected, as I was thinking I'd have landed a C if I were lucky.

I thought I did okay in defining a placitum and instead had tons of marks all over it and finally at the bottom "you missed this" written. Really doubt the Civil War midterm will be back tomorrow. And as to that, surprise will be very bad.

Yes.

This will not make my Early Middle Ages readings any more done.

Can't Sleep

Damn dude, I don't know why I should. I've been inside my room for most of the day. If you don't count the intern thing this morning, which was ingloriously cancelled. Without my knowledge. Until I got there. Even though...there still is no email saying it was cancelled. And I called Friday and talked to two people who have a clue as to what's going on there, neither of them told me. If anything I made up for it by applying at a ghetto Mcdonalds.

Ghetto Mcdonalds. Not a redundancy. While all Mcdonalds are ghetto by "virtue" of the ah, dinner rush clientele--though perhaps "ghetto" isn't the word so much as "trasshholes" a real ghetto Mcdonads is one placed in a neighborhood so diverse that I refuse to walk there, though this brings up several really annoying problems.

uno-menudo: Relying on the buses to get to work and back means I won't be able to work through an evening shift, having to be physically out the door by 8pm at the latest.

doso-minoso: Waiting at these bus stops while it's dark. Yeah, I'm paranoid and apparently give off a "no-sunshine" vibe to people who, if I ever got a bad drinking habit, I'd be tempted to call "my kind" of people or people "like me" so I tend to be left alone, there's a big chance that uno that won't hold up forevah and doso that I'll likely miss bus and be stuck with my fucking head for about an hour.

tresay: the people in this stupid city are fucking crazy. Just absolute batshit. I'm convinced that everyone here is here for a bad reason.


quatro: every other Mcdonalds is about an hour away by bus. Meaning again, I can't be there really early, nor could I stay late.

For some reason lately, I think this has been when I've looked at the bus schedules and the maps and such. I imagine Riverside to be the result of ... a micro view of Henry Clay's American System. Had he gotten all that he wanted, Jackson stayed in Tennessee or John Tyler had backed down...the whole country would be Riverside.

Dammit

If I were hired to have moved myself in, I'd fire myself. Was wondering why o why I was missing so many books, IMing Riley about every other week with "hey maaaaaan did I lend you X?" Turns out I had two whole full boxes of books still in the garage from when I moved all my stuff in back in August. Awesome...although the Decameron was lame when I had to read it, and I haven't read at least half of them all, some being for classes and barely opened, some being from Jon.

And We Vote!

This is how you study for midterms.

[01:57] Paula: okay, you know how a while ago you said you thought the government shouldn't issue marriages
[01:57] Paula: only civil unions
[01:57] Paula: would the governemtn uphold civil unions they way they uphold other contracts?
[01:58] Paula: or would a civil union dissolve as easily as a marriage contract is dissolved?
[01:58] Joss Fritz: hmm
[01:58] Joss Fritz: a good question
[01:58] Paula: man, it is soooo annoying when people say "gay people aren't allowed to marry"
[01:58] Paula: 'cause they ARE
[01:58] Paula: they aren't being excluded because they are gay
[01:58] Paula: jeez
[01:59] Paula: they can enter a marriage so long as they fulfill the current legal requirements of a marriage
[01:59] Joss Fritz: well
[01:59] Paula: but you know this, but I need to gripe
[01:59] Joss Fritz: [01:57] Paula: would the governemtn uphold civil unions they way they uphold other contracts?
[01:58] Paula: or would a civil union dissolve as easily as a marriage contract is dissolved?
[02:00] Paula: it would be good if the government upheld civil unions the way it upheld other contracts
[02:00] Paula: well?
[02:00] Joss Fritz: i'm not sure of the difference between the "the way they uphold other contracts" and how that's different from how they uphold marriage...except there's No-Fault and "moral" reasons and such
[02:01] Paula: "other contracts"...i mean business contracts
[02:01] Joss Fritz: and i'm not sure how that "the way they uphold other contracts" would be different with civil unions
[02:01] Joss Fritz: yeah
[02:01] Joss Fritz: i really don't know
[02:01] Paula: like, you know, for example, between a service provider and a consumer
[02:01] Joss Fritz: did you argue with someone jsut now about it?
[02:01] Paula: like how they can sue each other for not providing what was outlined in the contract
[02:01] Paula: or not following it
[02:01] Joss Fritz: yeah
[02:01] Joss Fritz: so...in that case
[02:01] Paula: they should be able to do that with marriage
[02:02] Joss Fritz: to get out of a civil union, someone would have to prove something more than "i'm finding myself" or "i'm unhappy"
[02:02] Joss Fritz: ?
[02:02] Joss Fritz: if the government were treating it as the same as other contracts?
[02:02] Paula: yeah, I'm thinking now, and I'm guessing for that to happen, people would have to draw up extensive contracts
[02:03] Joss Fritz: yeah
[02:03] Paula: very specific things they are expectnig from your partner
[02:03] Joss Fritz: but people are stupid
[02:03] Paula: they should
[02:03] Paula: people should do that
[02:03] Paula: that would make them think twice about shit
[02:03] Joss Fritz: i wonder how many people would alksjf;lasdfjkads
[02:03] Joss Fritz: that too
[02:03] Joss Fritz: would fill their own civil union contract with bs like "love MEEEEEEEEE"
[02:03] Paula: it would also clear up lots of sdkjfowiuoiuwera
[02:03] Joss Fritz: "long tiiiiiiiiiiime"
[02:04] Joss Fritz: "so hoooooooooooneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"
[02:04] Paula: well, people aren't very business minded, so I wouldn't doubt it
[02:04] Paula: jeoawueroiweuroiwjera
[02:04] Paula: I would be very specific
[02:04] Joss Fritz: in which case, the situation would be the same as now
[02:04] Paula: what do you mean
[02:04] Paula: OH yeah
[02:04] Joss Fritz: well the "dumbasses getting divorced all the time" situation
[02:05] Paula: yeah yea
[02:05] Paula: yeah, people are so dumb
[02:05] Joss Fritz: but the gay thing would be solved
[02:05] Paula: definitely
[02:05] Joss Fritz: OR
[02:05] Joss Fritz: OR OR OR
[02:05] Joss Fritz: OMG THIS WOULD BE GREAT
[02:05] Paula: lol
[02:05] Paula: OR?Q!
[02:05] Joss Fritz: the government could make up its own general civil union contract
[02:05] Joss Fritz: AND YOU COULD GET A GOVERNMENT STAMP
[02:05] Paula: what wouldsldkjfoiwuer
[02:06] Paula: SDKFJOWEUROWEIRUA
[02:06] Joss Fritz: that'd be so easy, wouldn't it?
[02:06] Paula: damn, that would be great
[02:06] Joss Fritz: City O God....soon as we elect people who caaaaaaare
[02:06] Joss Fritz: who care long time
[02:06] Paula: sdfkwerjwerwueyr
[02:06] Paula: me soooo caring
[02:06] Joss Fritz: ONLY five dollah for government civil union contract
[02:07] Paula: KSJFOIWUEWER
[02:07] Paula: LOL

3am Freak Out, Wednesday Edition

Samuel P. Chase.

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

I think that's enough.

Random Think From Today's Class

First...the South was full of a bunch of really stupid people. LOLOLOLZ...okay whatever.

Doso...the South started the war. Ft. Sumter. Lincoln manuevered it so that they fired "the first shot." Which they did...so they started the Civil War. And it's totally fact and anyone who thinks diffurntle is a neo-Confederate because the .... well because you're a neo-Confederate and that is superplusungood.

if Lincoln had to manuerver around like that, then isn't that implying that Lincoln already had decided on war; that it was just a matter of making the South look as the aggressor...because they were not?

Lecture today centered around the advantages that both South and North had. North had more in population, manufactures, rail, draft animals, on and on. At least a 3:1 ratio in...about everything. It was numerically obvious that the South had no chance to win, or at least outlast the North.

If that's the case, that kinda makes the "South started the war/was the aggressor" to be kind of...a head scratcher. Unless you hold that they Did start the war...because they were just stupid.

Come On.

Republicans did not generally adopt the argument that there was a danger of slavery spreading into the North until after the Dred Scott decision of 1857....for it declared that slavery must be protected by the national government in the territories. "It is now demonstrated," announced the moderate Cinncinati Commercial, "that there is such a thing as the Slave Power," and Republicans who had not already seen the wisdom of Chase's constitutional arguments quickly adopted them...But many Republicans went even further, and claimed that according to the logic of the Dred Scott decision slavery could not be barred from a state any more than from a territory. If slavery were protected by the Constitution, they asked, how could a state, without violating the Constitution, exclude it? "Does the Constitution make slaves property?" asked one Republican speaker. "If so, slavery exists in Ohio today, for the Constitution extends over Ohio, doesn't it?"

-Eric Foner. Free Soil, Free
Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil
War. page 97

uuuuuuuuuuuuuh. Seriously, I've been suspending judgment throughout the civil war class. Using "TB" as initials for Lincoln is more out of habit than as a judgment based on any actual research I've done any farther than reading blogs and Di Lorenzo's The Real Lincoln. Also when I'm writing notes down, I can't spell Lincoln. I don't know why, but I can't do the "l" and then the "n,"it always gets made into an "h" with an extra bump, and then I cross it out. And mess it up again. I don't _really_ care, and even if I did, I'm not from the South, so I don't "get" anything out of having an ungoodthink opinion. Nor am I from 'the North.'

The stats I've heard "oh well only 10% of the Southern soldiers actually owned slaves so it wasn't about slavery"...ummm. How many head of households were soldiers? How many young men who ended up fighting were in a position to have the kind of wealth where they could choose to own slaves or not? If I have 7 literate kids under the age of say, 15, and I vote socialist, then yeah, only 12.5% of my household voted socialist. OBVIOUSLY, my home is not a socialist-leaning home. Oh wait. But that can wait for another time, as I don't have the answer to how many of the soldiers in the CSA were actual head of households or not.

The subject of Texas overrides that of Clay's System. After the face stomping he and Nicholas Biddle receive from Jackson in the early thirties, that subject kinda dies out and, as I understand it (which is probably an oxymoron) "internal improvements" isn't dusted off as super brand new innovation until the New Cripple in 1933.

Part of my suspension kinda hangs on the issue of slavery. Oh yeah I know. The War of Northern Aggression was not about the issue of slavery. I get it. That doesn't mean slavery was not an issue, does it? Douglas and Lincoln were not debating tariffs. No, I don't know how Douglas really did stand in the Democratic Party, so he very well may have been more northerner than Democrat. If slavery was only an issue because the North was bitching and moaning...why did slaves run away? Frederick Douglass, anyone?

But then I run into the above posted section from my reading last night. Oh good God, people. If a southern state is violating the Constitution when it excludes slavery...then grow a pair and nullify the damn part of it that does that. Declare that aspect of the Supreme Court decision null and void. Did they overstep in that decision, or in that court opinion? Then defy it. Declare your state to be one that will not will never tolerate slavery, that any slave, as soon as they step foot in this state, are free. You bring your slaves through this state for whatever reason? All of your slaves have the power to sue for their freedom and we'll be damn sure to pack our courts full of people that'll love to free them.

South Carolina nullified federal laws, under Jackson, of all Presidents. That, cupcake, takes balls.

Douglass said that if federal agents went kicking in his door to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law, that those federal agents would have to fight for their lives.

But but...Kansas all over again! Oh no! Anarchy!

Well gosh, sounds like the peaceful thing to do would be for the Northern states to just secede from the union that the Constitution binds them to. The Slave Power is entrenched throughout the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative branch? Everyone in the restaurant you eat at regularly smokes? Get the hell out and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

Buncha damn babies.