A Historian Reacts | Was it REALLY the War of Northern Aggression? | Atun-Shei Films

hey youtube welcome back to another history teacher reacts video with me mr terry a high school history teacher and today we are headed back to atun shea so this video series the first video i watched of this actually first of the whole channel was voted on by patrons last week and the video did really well and a lot of people were saying you know that that the video i watched was actually a part of a series called checkmate lincolnites and that i should watch more of them and i loved that video and again it did well and a lot got a lot of good feedback from it so i am absolutely excited to check out another one so the video i'm gonna be checking out today is actually an interesting one based on the title because it's something that you might hear in debates about causes of the civil war and the title of it is was it really the war of northern aggression now that sort of tagline or question or whatever this this idea that's a war of northern aggression has been made by some people um and their interpretation of the south's perception of this war all right well anyways i'm excited to check this out and uh hopefully you'll like it again too let me know uh which one maybe i should watch next all right so the original video link is down below make sure you support a toon shay hope i'm saying that right i think somebody corrected me properly anyways uh make sure you do that so the original video gets likes views helps the algorithm and that stuff too and if you like me my video here and maybe you haven't subbed or if you liked the video please give it a thumbs up i'd be really appreciative of that and all right let's go ahead and watch [Music] you know i even brought back the lincoln fighting a bear for some reason shirt that i have from the other video that i watch from this series even though it's too small for me it fits the topic let's watch why did the north invade the south in 1861 was it because they hated slavery no it was to save the union checkmates lincoln it keeps going true it's like it's like nobody wanted to use the word slavery it's the elephant in the room sitting over there it's about slavery the right to do it ending of it preserving the union everyone's talking about using different words to get around the core issue right the core issue a program where we pulverize the outrageous slander so often leveled upon us by carpet bagging types who seek to besmirch the reputation of our great and glorious country the confederate states of america i i said this in the first one and if you didn't see that i really really love how he's edited this to have the two figures right the confederate and then the union figure and have them dialoguing basically in the same screen like this and doing the editing over he does it and it's really good because uh watch you know the person that's that's talking watch the other person and the responses and the facial expressions and stuff are very realistic to it being like somebody in the room and that's uh i don't know how again how he did it i was wondering does he have a sit-in that maybe goes over the lines for helping for timing or whatever either way if he did or didn't it's awesome and i think it just brings in a very uh it makes him look like he he's got an identical twin maybe he does i don't know tonight we examine the petafury hypocrisy and tyranny of our northern brethren the meddling yankee oh i'm sorry did you say something just before i simply could not hear you over the sweet sound of victory oh lost let's not get ahead of ourselves here just because absolution wasn't a primary northern war aim doesn't change the fact that the south unequivocally seceded to preserve slavery south carolina for example south carolina seeked succession okay okay so one of the things i loved about the first episode or that i watched was he would put in these youtube comments and so many of them that he put were just kind of funny because they were totally poorly written bad grammar and just the points sometimes we're we're out there um and kind of making fun of them i guess but i'm hoping to see more of that and if it the only ones they did was from the southern perspective and it just made the arguments look dumb so we'll see again if how this worked or if they are more legitimate commentary in first for reasons that are debated upon slavery debated upon what was lincoln reaction violate constitutional law and did multiple acts of war against a state that by law should have been able to succession from the union in response to the actions of the president which was tyrannical dude south carolina seceded before lincoln was even enough it's true he uh so election of 1860 right big problem for the south was that the south was not unified in any candidate and they ended up splitting votes among multiple candidates which is a big reason why lincoln won lincoln did not do well actually in that election that 1860 election when you look at total votes and things like that but since the south was so divided in the um in their parties that it basically gave lincoln the the victory that way but yeah just based on the election states started seceding and south carolina was the first one and a handful of other ones seceded before he was even inaugurated and even during the campaign his campaigning uh trail and his platform saying that he was not going to abolish slavery he just didn't want it to spread but said he wasn't going to abolish it but many southern voters did not trust that jefferson davis was sworn in as president the full six days before lincoln was in any event slavery was never at the forefront of the union reason for fighting most southern states and generals joined the csa after lincoln without approval from congress raised an army of 75k to invade the south which he did on april 15 1861 right after the attack on fort sumter yeah not before timeline is so important for all of this stuff and people don't often look at it it's really important to look at the timeline of the campaign and the pre-election and then into when fighting actually started like with the attack on fort sumter you got to look at that because if you don't see the timelines then it can change a lot of kind of lines of reasoning for these causes to the four states that were still holding out for a compromise in the spring of 61. the north was the only party calling for troops as virginia governor fletcher said you have chosen to inaugurate civil war the southern states never had any intention of invading the north we didn't need to true yeah i mean that's that's that's true the the war was a war of defense for the south it's a war of defense right now yes in the war they did cross those lines and those those state borders but um that wasn't later until later and but yeah it was more of a defense thing um anyway also if you didn't know too another important thing to realize is that not all states that allowed slavery necessarily seceded meaning pulled away from the united states and joined the confederacy not all of them did that which is why maybe they'll get to this but the emancipation proclamation which abraham has been looking for about freeing slaves only said it freed slaves in states that are an open rebellion against the united states probably a political maneuver to basically not those those slave states that were still on the fence if you make it about slavery then they might join the south so it was kind of intended it seemed like to um keep those those slave states that hadn't seceded out away from joining the the the the south you know what the seceded states were up to for the four months before fort sumter chilling for free from yankee well not quite january 4th 1861 anticipating alabama's immediate secession governor a.b moore ordered the state militia to seize federal property at mount vernon arsenal fort morgan and fort gaines effectively putting mobile bay in confederate control january 6 a group of armed men sent out to the age of empires florida and demanded the keys to the armory january 10th weeks before louisiana's secession state militia seized the u.s arsenal at baton rouge on orders from the governor the following day they seized forts jackson and saint philip which guarded the mouth of mississippi january 13th armed mississippians took force all right we get the point and hopefully the south guy january 20th confederate guy february 8 acting on orders from the governor arkansas militia volunteers seized the federal arsenal at little rock and escorted federal troops across march 6. the provisional confederate congress authorized president davis to raise an army of 100 stuff happening already april 12th south carolina militia fired on fortnite april 15th president lincoln called for 75 000 volunteers for three-month service to suppress the rebellion that's a lot of events leading up to what they say is that basically the creation of the union army call me crazy but all i see is southern aggression new yellow-bellied horse thief we raided those armories and farts cause we needed weapons and plenty of them to facilitate our peaceful and equitable separation from the union good thing we did too for soon after the war started the tyrant lincoln showed his true colors he suspended habeas corpus illegally and jailed his political enemies without any charges what do you call that except despotism of the highest order people absolutely absolutely talk talk about that um lincoln expanded the sort of power i guess traditionally exercised by presidents more than pretty much anyone had up to that point and a lot of things that people would say there's no way would be able to slide um during peacetime you know like suspension of habeas corpus i call that pretty typical for a 19th century wartime government personally i agree with you suspending habeas corpus during domestic emergencies is a very very slippery slope but it is constitutional article 1 section 9 forbids the suspension of habeas corpus except in cases of invasion or rebellion but in 1861 supreme court chief justice roger chaney challenged lincoln on that exact point arguing that the legislature alone had that power as the framers of the constitution clearly implied and not the president that's true but initially lincoln only suspended habeas corpus along rail lines leading to washington d.c and as he pointed out in his public response to taney he did it to make sure that those rail lines were kept intact without them congress wouldn't be able to physically get to dc to convene and by the way when he did suspect the south guy has kind of a point there it seems very convenient right he has corpus for the whole country in 1863 he did it with full congressional approval oh that is just so typical of you boot licking gankings you have no appreciation for personal freedom i bet you'll vote for palpatine we confederates on the other hand know the meaning of liberty yeah about that the restoration of civil liberties in the confederate states was actually way worse than it ever was up north the confederate confederates yeah glance past about that the restriction of civil liberties in the confederate states was actually way worse than it ever was up north the confederate continent also suspended habeas corpus twice they passed the alien enemies act which allowed the government to arrest anyone who didn't declare themselves as a loyal citizen of the confederacy they passed the sequestration act which allowed the government to seize private property they forbade civilian travel prohibited the sale of liquor and most famously instituted an extremely unpopular conscription act the first such draft in american history again it's true like there were a lot of people that were like you know the south side was supposed to be one of limited government virtually no national government right and all of a sudden there's like a conscription which is the draft which is where you select people basically against their will if even if if it is against their will to join the military right and you know that that's been very common in war um you know in the u.s too it's happening in in civil war and then wars going forward um and if remember right that was a point of contention for a lot of southerners which was like no this thing was supposed to be about personal rights right and you shouldn't be able to force me into fighting this thing again all pretty typical actions for a wartime government but you don't really have a leg to stand on when you prop up the confederacy is this shining beacon of freedom especially when you take into account the tyranny that's inherent in the institution of slavery yes this isn't a what about ism right remember uh in the other video and the other one they talked about he would take a drink every time the southern guy did a what about ism do you think this is a what about ism slavery slavery slavery always you with the slavery well you'll be just devastated to learn that your lord and savior lincoln didn't give a damn about slavery and trump said so and i quote my paramount object in this struggle is to save the union i'm going to cut him off because i i'm going to predict what he could say the union guy in rejection of this well if slavery if if if uh if lincoln didn't really care about slavery then why are you succeeding could save the union by not freeing any slave i would do it and if i could save it by freedom or why are you saying why are you saying that it's about the north idea of slavery all the slaves i would do that and if i could save them by freeing some and leaving others in bondage i would also do that what i do about slavery and the colored race i do because i believe it helps to save the union ah yes the quote from the greely letter trouble is you've taken it completely out of context lincoln wrote that as a public response to an editorial in the new york tribune that criticized him for not taking more decisive action against slavery it's worth noting that when lincoln you know and a lot of this stuff too was in response to his campaign because he was campaigning against stephen a douglas and those two were kind of the big uh candidates for up north and both kind of had these different ideas about uh slavery in a way or trying to um create straw man arguments for each other and you wanted to try to make that clear that response he actually had a draft of the emancipation proclamation already written and was just waiting for an opportunity to put it into effect and of course he emphasized saving the union most of the north was intensely racist during the civil war and as president lincoln had to placate both white supremacists and ardent abolitionists exactly yeah he had to play both that's what he did because he basically like like douglas and stuff and others were like this guy thinks that uh whites and blacks are equal you know as this like derogatory thing to say about lincoln and he would be like no that's not what i'm saying at all i am not advocating they're saying that whites and blacks are equal or should be equal in society i forgot how he exactly did that i'm just talking about the institution of slavery it can't be a divided issue so it again might have one brownie points like he's saying with abolitionists but then also people that were not believers of the equality of the races that was lincoln's constant struggle throughout his presidency the purpose of that letter was to soften public opinion lincoln was emphasizing that he would put the immediate needs of the nation over his own personal preferences and his preference was ending slavery for good i noticed you didn't include the concluding remarks that lincoln made in that same letter i have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty and i intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free the link and this attitude you're seeing is changing from the way that lincoln campaigned because the stuff i was telling you about the campaign into 1860 but you do see maybe like like like he's kind of alluding to his or saying is that he actually did have more feelings about maybe the races were more equal or again not just ending slavery in new states because this is an area of western expansion but everywhere when again he wasn't campaigning on that that idea but once he became president it seems like that became the thing that he thinks needs to happen is no it actually can't exist divided house again divided it's against itself is it can't stand so in a way it's kind of like the southerners that believed that he was kind of lying in his campaigning about wanting to abolish slavery everywhere those southern voters were kind of they were basically correct that he did and that's the way it played out but is that because of the war or was it always his feeling i don't know enough he can personally abhorred slavery he initially refused to infringe on slaveholders constitutionally guaranteed property rights ending slavery was not his top or most immediate priority during the war but it was a priority in 1862 he repeatedly reached out to the border states to try to get them to favor compensated emancipation unless we forget it was lincoln's staunch opposition to expansion of slavery of any kind into the territories that caused the secession crisis in the first place so your master may not have been pro-slavery per se but he was still a filthy racist as he once said i as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position of sound yeah and see that going back that uh look at that time because again timelines are very important 1858 is not present yet this isn't the campaign trail of having the superior position assigned to the white race yes he said that in the fourth debate with stephen douglas on september 18th 1858 remember every 19th century politician had to contend with a voting base made up largely of white supremacists lincoln was trying to quell some potentially catastrophic rumors that he was in favor of amalgamation or the mixing of the races but was he lying that's that's the question was lincoln lying when he was saying that if it got out that he was in favor of equal rights he wouldn't get elected to anything in america because you want no real evidence that's right he believed anything different you're right but it's kind of ironic you have to admit that you confederates and his positions he was the extreme of the major candidates the the real legitimate uh people that could win that election he was on the extreme side towards abolition and race equality in a way although we would look at that and be like no really that's the extreme side definitely so suspicious of lincoln and of the federal government are just willing to take the president's word on which you just showed up it's like you just dredge up these quotes without taking even a little bit of time to research or comprehend their context context is important clear examples of political grandstanding politicians lie they exaggerate they try to appeal to as many people as possible progressive politicians in particular lie about how committed they are to progressive ideas all the time i believe that marriage is between a man and a woman i do not support uh gay marriage but i support a very strong version of civil unions this ruling will strengthen all of our communities by offering to all loving same-sex couples the dignity of marriage across this great land just because obama lots of people change their opinions right people change opinions that happens too everyone does especially based on new evidence right that's a good thing fair enough you know many free staters wanted their territories to be white's only havens oops not supposed to talk about that yes and speaking of lincoln throughout much of his political career he was in favor of colonization which would have entailed freeing american slaves and then sending them off to a colony in africa which yeah it was a proposed solution to the main argument against abolition at the time which was that it would be impossible to integrate blacks into american society and that's he's like got him but but at the time that was a very anti-slavery position now we can argue about whether yeah i mean you're talking about abolition of slavery and like send those slaves to africa none of those slaves were from africa you know slavery had already been a an institution for centuries and uh then the logistics of it of course would be something but it might make people happy to hear that sort of thing from a politician if you are more again on that side that is against uh integration or don't think it could be possible or something well maybe we can move them somewhere else right you can by the standards of racism in the 19th century or the standards of racism today but the fact that he consistently fought against slavery is beyond dispute so what if he did it doesn't change the fact that after the emancipation proclamation made freeing the slaves of war aim average yankee soldiers deserted in the thousands and that forced the united states that that is what people ought to say was really the official thing that basically said that this war is about slavery it's like really the time it was discussed when the emancipation occupation again freed the slaves in states of rebellion not the ones that had not joined the south but that's when it a lot of people say it officially became about slavery and that was into the war that wasn't great at the beginning to pass a conscription act of their own which famously led to the new york city draft what are the little numbers ugliest are there references in civil war history but focus on the bottom line on the undeniable white supremacy of northerners during the war diminishes the significance of the sizable minority of abolitionists in the north now it's important to differentiate here between an anti-slavery position and an abolitionist one sure most northerners before the war were anti-slavery but they either wanted to contain it and allow it to go extinct on its own right or they wanted to gradually free this language some people thought it would in a way but it hadn't because in the constitution basically said that the the import by this time the importation of slaves is gone it's ended constitutionally as part of the three-fifths compromise you can look into that if you want to know more about it but the importation of slaves was over and it'd be hard to say though that you think it would just die out because as long as slaves are seen as long as it's chattel slavery which means that they can be passed along as property including their descendants their children then technically yes slavery could persist you wouldn't need new importation of new slaves so i don't think it could die out on his own okay containing it maybe meaning in all the new states that are being created on the west maybe you block that um but it wouldn't just die on its own i wouldn't think compensation to slave owners abolitionists took it a step further they wanted to see the immediate unconditional emancipation of all black americans new england was the hotbed of abolition at the time and was home to its most famous and influential advocates when john brown's raid failed in 18 john brown most northerners viewed him as a lunatic look that guy up you don't know john brown he was nice abolitionists like henry david thoreau successfully changed hero the abolitionist movement brown was being regarded as a martyr and a hero they sent the song right john brown's body lies murdering in the grave john getting it down the grave john brown's body lies [Music] oh [Music] by the end of the war many union soldiers did consider their cause to be abolitionist this was mainly because of the large number of contraband slaves that would follow union armies wherever they went and these yankee boys many of whom had never been to the south in their lives were being confronted by the horrifying realities of slavery for the very first time yeah this hardened their hearts against the north and south are very different worlds very different worlds northerners didn't understand what slave life was like it's not so you started to get more publicized documentation of it like frederick douglass which you know some of that stuff's going to start happening now where um the northerners again didn't understand the full extent that institution and they said as much in their diaries and letters higher up the logistical problems caused by this large number of escaped slaves forced commanders and politicians to take the idea of immediate abolitionism more seriously so by mid-war freeing the slaves wasn't just a moral imperative it was also a practical necessity well you yankees are just uncultured and miserable that's the main difference between what uncultured and basically miserable that's the main difference between us as our glorious president jefferson the confederates pfp at the mississippi state capitol our enemies are a traditionalist and a homeless rich from the time of cromwell to the present moment they have been disturbers of the peace of the world gathered together by cromwell from the bogs and fans of the north of ireland and of england they commenced by disturbing the peace of their own country they disturbed holland to which they fled and they disturbed england upon their return they persecuted catholics in england and they hung quakers and witches in america and clearly that doesn't make a good point at all from the tree pilgrim he's talking down on the ancestry of america's old you're talking he's talking about the northerners right i think it's a that's a pretty bad point right it's not australia believe that pip is quakers and witches because you're talking about pete a lot of these people who said they were they were fleeing from persecution and wanted more rights and stuff the same thing maybe these the uh uh confederates are also saying like that's what's happening to them that's a these these again people of northern ancestry were saying they were doing when they were fleeting fleeing the country their countries freedom was one of the founding principles ah the devil's tongue wags in the mouth those who love the lords most needs separate themselves entirely from the professors of ethan faith you know that's not a bad point mixed communities are a disaster usually it's just one community getting to the top anyway communities are better kept separate or at least totally homogenous this is straight out of kkk it's happening bastardism [Music] all right this just pissed off everybody of southern heritage conflating the confederates the using saying they're using they're using the same argument and people have said today like that that whole platform about um that racers should live in their own communities right is a modern talking point of like the kkk and um he's conflating now that those lines of argumentation to nazi nazi arguments [Music] all those people use the bible for justification for whatever it is poison is drawn from a one if i go down here sorry [Music] he's freed let me go back to the point i was making all all these different sides like abolitionists those protecting slavery and some would always you know pull out verses from the bible and and from whatever it is that they they believe in and use that you know a lot of quote mining right where just take things and ignore other things that makes it something contradictory and that was used heavily by again abolitionists and slavery protectors saying that there's like biblical justification for these things okay uh what happened pilgrim guy are you okay you [ __ ] stupid to compare nazi to a confederate that's yankee propaganda teaching you more lies good to have you back buddy southern's treated african-american maybe better in some cases i know there were bad treated but you think us grant treated them better them days lmao okay youtube comments are so funny sometimes especially the the rage inducing ones where it's like this is a run-on sentence full of grammatical errors and then just starts just uh um going into caps and i don't know if they're trolling or if people are doing that or whatever and then it's just big run on like they're just like they didn't have time to punctuate and like think about what they're doing and organize they just went and then put it on the keyboard [Music] checkmating uh checkmate lincolnites checkmate all right let's break this down all right so again this uh this series is great this checkmate lincolnites thing with this i love the style of it it's great it's it is very funny obviously it's very uh union biased you know um it's taking that perspective but they are bringing up and talking about legitimate arguments that were being made from both perspectives from the union side as well as the confederate side and if you are maybe not american and you haven't been learning about the stuff you didn't learn about this stuff in your education i think there are some useful things happening in here uh the fact they are bringing up actual arguments that were used from the day if you're interested in learning more about the american civil war but anyway i again i love the style is very funny it uh hits hits well great use of of documentation and again points um from history he's got they got quotes and again real arguments that you can cite and things like that and one of the the things i'm glad that is being kind of preached in here and it was in this episode was the idea of contextualization when talking about history just like i was saying how people would say cherry pick versus from like the bible to be pro or like anti-slavery people do that in history when they especially look at speeches laws you know anything just documented really from history and just taking those without any context context is so important some of the big skills as a teacher that is emphasized for us to teach students which is context or other historical thinking skills that go along but one of the big ones is context okay so if anything take that away for sure if you know as you you continue to study history all right if you guys want to see more of these videos um you can definitely let me know and i can hopefully get to them to get along with the other stuff that of course i want to check out but if it's something again that is as popular as maybe that first one was you know probably a better chance we'll see more of it all right with that the original video link is down below make sure you support um this guy uh i don't know his name sorry but he's you know he's awesome what he's doing there and give that a thumb up um subscribe to it share it around that really helps the content creators get noticed more in the algorithm and stuff like that and if you liked what you saw here and if you haven't yet hit that thumbs up button helps out a lot too sub if you haven't and um yeah thanks again just for watching all right and with that we'll see you next time bye

Channel: Mr. Terry History

Views: 62,653

Keywords: react, history, civil war, war of northern aggression

Id: rHnb3ldMr1A

Length: 34min 32sec (2072 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 29 2021